The streaming series Young Royals, produced by Netflix Sverige, is a coming-of-age story about teenagers with the unusual feature that the main actors are themselves only teenagers. (Most series aimed at teenagers seem to employ actors in their twenties.) Because of this focus, the reviews of the series I have seen are aimed at parents deciding whether or not they should allow their teenage children to watch it.
A book review by Gian-Carlo Rota [1991], Editor of Advances in Mathematics (volume 88, issue 2, page 301):
Review of: S. S. ABHYANKAR: Algebraic Geometry for Scientists and Engineers. American Mathematics Society, 1990, 295 pp.
Every field has its taboos. In algebraic geometry, the taboos are (a) giving an exposition that can be followed by anyone but one’s two or three closest friends, (b) claiming that a result has any applications whatsoever, (c) mentioning the word “combinatorial,” (d) claiming that any mathematics existed before Grothendieck (only some vague handwaving references to “the Italians” are occasionally allowed, provided they are not supported by bibliographical data). Abhyankar has violated all these taboos. He’d better get himself some bodyguards.”
I have just read the memoir of Michael Hayden, USAF General and former head of both NSA and CIA. The book is interesting and mostly well-written. It appears, as much as such a memoir could be, honest and truthful.
The torture of detainees undertaken by CIA personnel took place before Hayden was Director, so he could absolve himself of it completely. But, as he did while Director and subsequently, he defends strongly and bravely his CIA staff, who acted under what they believed were legal orders and within what they believed to be constitutional limits. This defence is admirable.
How one could imagine that torture would be legal under a constitution which prohibits cruel or unusual punishments remains one of the great mysteries of our age. Hayden, however, also defends the torture itself. He does so on grounds of effectiveness, grounds which are demonstrably, and which have repeatedly been demonstrated to be, spurious. It is no good Hayden, or any other official paid by the public purse, saying “trust me, I know”. We live in a democracy, and we need, we citizens ourselves, to see the evidence. It has not ever been provided, at least not definitively and uncontestably.
Such a defence is essentially that the end justifies the means. As a Roman Catholic, Hayden should appreciate the counter-argument that rebuts this defence: that certain means may vitiate, or irredeemably taint, the ends. So, even if using torture were to be more effective than not using it, we still should not use it. We should not because torture is contrary to our values as a humane, civilized, society, respectful of human dignity, and because using it undermines any claims we may have to moral superiority over our terrorist enemy.
Like players cheating in sports, support for torture shows what sort of person you are, and what values you consider important. Hayden seems like an intelligent, thoughtful, and humane person, so it is a great pity that he, and others in the Bush 43 administration, came to view torture as acceptable. Not everyone in CIA thought so, which was, indeed, how we citizens came to learn about the secret detention camps and the torture in the first place.
Reference:
Michael V Hayden [2016]: Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror. New York: Penguin Press.
I am reading Andrew Lownie’s fascinating new biography of Guy Burgess, member of the Soviet spy circle, the Cambridge Five. Lownie’s book contains something very curious. (I am reading a Kindle edition, so can only give chapter references.) In Chapter 20, Relationships, we read in paragraph 1:
In June 1945 [Peter] Pollock returned to Britain.”
Pollock had been away several years, fighting with the British Army in North Africa and in Italy, and having been captured and held as a POW in Italy. In Paragraph 4, we read:
That summer Pollock and Burgess had seen much of Brian Howard and his boyfriend, Sam, staying with the couple at their home in Tickerage, East Sussex. On one occasion, they had visited the elderly Lord Alfred Douglas in Brighton, as Burgess wanted to show off Pollock and prove he was even more attractive than the famously attractive Douglas in his youth. [Footnote 5]”
The source (footnote 5) is given as: “Pollock taped interview, by kind permission of Miranda Carter.” Pollock died in Tangier on 28 July 2001.
But, according to Wikipedia, Bosie Douglas died on 20 March 1945, so Pollock and Burgess could not have visited him in summer 1945.
Although the content of the book is superb, the book shows the weaknesses of a text written over a long period (30 years), together with some fairly mediocre editing. On several occasions, the author mentions something without explaining it, forgetting that what he knows is different to what the reader knows. Sometimes explanations are given at the second or later mention, instead of at the first. When Lownie mentions “Johnny Philipps, a rich gay bachelor who lived in Albany”, for example, he does not explain what or where is Albany. Only in a later chapter when talking of someone else do we learn that the Albany was “a fashionable set of apartments off Piccadilly.” Likewise, the Venona transcripts are mentioned in Chapter 26, but only explained in Chapter 28. At one point, we learn that Burgess earnt some GBP 800 pa from a Canadian Trust Fund (£800 in 1945 would be about £29K in 2024). Nothing is said about this fund, nor how Burgess came to be a beneficiary of it, although there is an earlier mention of a trip he took in 1930 with his mother and brother to visit Canada, before going up to Cambridge. The 1959 TV interview which Burgess gave to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which was only rediscovered in 2015, the only TV interview he ever gave, is mentioned (at location 5566). But Lownie seems to have missed Burgess’ statement in that interview that, “I’m a quarter Canadian myself.” Which grandparent was Canadian? In Chapter 40, in another example, there is a throwaway reference to a Moscow party given by “the Burchetts”. Australians of a certain age would catch the reference to left-wing journalist Wilfred Burchett, who lived in Moscow in the 1950s, but who else would?
Another instance of poor editing is the description of Novodevichy Cemetery in Chapter 37. Burgess moved to a flat near the cemetery in 1956. Lownie describes the cemetery thus: “where amongst others were the graves of Chekhov, Gogol, Khrushchev, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stalin’s wife . . . “. That “were” points to the time Burgess moved nearby. But, Khrushchev only died in 1971, and Shostakovich in 1975, both well after 1956; indeed, well after 1963, when Burgess himself died. I imagine that such poor editing must be an embarrassment to an author whose day job is acting as a literary agent for other authors. Or is Lownie another author confused about the working of tense in English?
And perhaps taking so long to write a non-fiction book means not enough advantage has been taken of the Web. For instance, is the young German actor named George Mikell mentioned in Chapter 26 the same person as the Lithuanian-Australian actor named George Mikell who has a website? Is the drifter of no fixed abode named James Turck mentioned in Chapter 29 the same James Turck (1924-2011) who acquired an MBA from Columbia and a seat on the American Stock Exchange? I find myself Googling every name mentioned, so I am surprised the author has not done so too.
Overall, the book is fascinating and riveting despite the sloppy writing and apparent lack of editing. Lownie makes a convincing case for the importance of Burgess as a Soviet agent, detailing the documents he was able to provide to his handlers at each stage of his career. Whether Burgess was MORE important than his fellow spies could not be assessed from a life of just one of them. My one major disappointment from the book was the absence of any discussion of the theory that one or more of the Cambridge Five were known to Britain’s senior spy-masters, long before their departures East, to be Soviet agents and were allowed to remain in place. If you want to deceive your enemy you need to communicate through channels your enemy will likely believe, and that may mean using their own loyal agents (or people they believe to be their loyal agents). Such channels are even more necessary if you mostly communicate to deceive but occasionally want, or may need, to send truthful messages.
Indeed, this hall of mirrors might even have further mirrors, if one or more of Burgess, Maclean, or Philby were themselves witting in this deception, and sacrificed their public reputations, their pensions, and their quiet English country-side retirements to serve the land of their birth even beyond their defection. Lots of Britons gave their lives to defend their country in WWII, so the Cambridge spies may have done similarly. To my mind, such knowing and self-sacrificing deception by these upper-class Englishmen, students of great public schools and habitués of fashionable London clubs, is immensely more plausible than any other explanation I have seen for their treason. Does MI6 hold secret medals for them all in a hidden safe in its Ziggurat-on-Thames?
PS (Added 2022-04-09)
In Donald Sinden’s autobiography (1982) we find confirmation of the date of death of Bosie Douglas: 20 March 1945 (see page 54). Sinden had befriended Douglas a few years earlier and was informed of his death by a telegram sent that same day by Edward Colman, with whom Douglas was living at the time. Sinden says that Douglas had moved from Brighton to Colman’s farm near Lancing some time before his death, so it is even less likely that Pollock visited Douglas in Brighton.
Reference:
Andrew Lownie [2015]: Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess. London, UK: Hodder & Stoughton.
Donald Sinden [1982]: A Touch of the Memoirs. Hodder & Stoughton.
On Friday, I was privileged to see a final dress rehearsal of King’s Shakespeare Company’s production of Measure for Measure. Performed as a cabaret, the production is set in Weimar Germany, and the songs make this a production to remember. They are fast, witty, tuneful and memorable expressions of the interior lives of the main characters, and they add a depth of meaning to a play which is otherwise confusing. It is impressive how much intellectual heft and coherence the cabaret setting gives to the play.
The production is directed by Lauren O’Hara, with music by Henry Keynes Carpenter, and the cast includes: Rhia Abbott, Henry Keynes Carpenter, Hannah Elsy, Freddie Fullerton, Serena Grasso, William Holyhead, and Rupert Sadler. The production is only on for five nights, tomorrow Monday 21 July to Friday 25 July 2014, at the Bierkeller in Bristol. Go see it if you are anywhere nearby.
Lucy Corley has a review here.
Two life-changing concerts this weekend, both including Finnish violin virtuoso, Pekka Kuusisto, and both in Folkestone as part of the annual Sacconi Quartet’s Chamber Music Festival.
The first was a concert in St. Mary and St. Eanswythe’s Church that included the Sacconi Quartet and the Chamber Orchestra of the Royal College of Music. With PK, they performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and knowing they would was the main reason for my attendance. PK’s recording of Vivaldi is the most exciting and thrilling I know. But this live performance was on another plane entirely. Usually The Seasons are twee and effete and smugly complacent. PK’s recording is not that, but rather raw and rustic. (See my comments here.) The live performance, in contrast, was sharp and edgy, thrilling and exciting too but in a different way entirely to the recording. If Vivaldi is usually suburban Barnet gemütlichkeit, then the recording is from the wild places of Cornwall or the Hebrides, and this performance was from the mean streets of Toxteth or Mile End.
PK’s playing as always was superb. He has an amazing ability to mimic the breathy tone of a flute, producing a sound sublime, something I have heard him do before in very different work. Yet, at other times it was if he construed the violin as a percussion instrument, not hitting it with his hand but striking the strings in a multitude of carefully-calibrated ways with the bow. Later, in the pub after the second concert, he agreed that this notion of the percussive violin described his intention. Violinists often see the instrument as a sort of uncanny extension of themselves, and here was an extension that was brash, direct, and forceful – someone who is here to live out loud, in Zola’s great phrase. How different to the twee Vivaldi of most other performances I have seen.
In addition, PK treated the work as a modern work, interpreting it afresh – moving around the stage, for example, to confront directly the other players in the various duets and rounds, having face-offs at various times, and interacting physically and with immediacy in accord with the temper of each phase of the music. The other performers responded in kind to his enthusiasm. The acoustics in the church were excellent, so that everything could be heard well. This was certainly the best musical experience of my life, and I feel immensely privileged to have witnessed it.
The second concert followed straight afterwards, in the primary school across the street. We were party to a violin and electronics meditation on Bach’s Partita in D minor, by PK and Teemu Korpipaa. The movements of the Bach were played without modification by solo violin, and interleaved with duo improvisations on what we had just heard. This was also sublime, and had the effect of elongating and deepening the emotions invoked by the Bach, an annotation that added to the original. It was clear the two had worked together before, and so the annotations were profound and heartfelt.
When a group of people jointly undergo an intensely searing experience, especially one where they face a mortal enemy or opponent, a bond is created between the participants that outsiders can find hard to penetrate or even to understand. Soldiers in battle, for example, often experience this, as good novels and films have long shown.
Last night, the audience at a King’s Players’ production in London had such an experience, and we will remember for the rest of our lives the courage and fortitude, resilience and – yes, dammit! – just plain, old-fashioned grit we all showed in the face of great odds. Nobody left, nobody laughed out loud, nobody became an alcoholic, nobody set off the fire alarm to bring this cruel and unusual torment to an end. During the quiet patches, those long dark nights of the soul, our focus on survival was so intense that the only sound you could hear was the swiveling of eyes.
Our first enemy was the play itself, Trojan Barbie, by Christine Evans. What an appalling piece of radfem agitprop! The writing is surely a parody of feminism, not intended to be serious, written as if by a teenager discovering poetry for the first time. The male characters are all evil rapists and thugs, and the women are either harlots or mad. Even the everywoman character Lotte is dotty. Not a single character appears real or embodied, a normal human being. No one grapples with the actual moral dilemmas of war, no one weighs pros and cons of different courses of action, not even in dialogue with one another. What plot there is is too ridiculous to be described, but involves unexplained time travel between ancient Troy and the present-day, with scenes set in doll repair shops, Mediterranean street cafes, refugee camps, battlefields, and the odd zoo. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
Our second enemy, colluding with the first, were the cast and crew. Given the flaws of the script, one can only sympathize with actors having to make something of this. But why would anyone even try? Life is too short to waste it on such dross. And if, for some reason, you had to try, why not do it well? Why act badly? Why run around like a horse? Why impersonate Che Guevara and Zsa Zsa Gabor? Honestly, the only person missing from the production was Carmen Miranda with her hat made of fruit – although, there was in fact a samba. What was that doing there?
And the set! It included the world’s largest collection of Barbie Dolls, a massive pink cellophone heart, and the odd tiger. What normal person could possibly imagine that a large stuffed animal, a children’s toy, would convince us we are in a zoo? At first I thought it was intended as a visual metaphor for something else, something profound, perhaps a subtle reference to well-known war poet William Blake. (“Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright, In the forests of the Night.”) But No: the stuffed tiger behind a cage on stage was intended to be what it was: a tiger in a zoo. It roared through the sound-system, and it magically moved between scenes, sometimes lolling this way, and sometimes that. I have to say its acting was perhaps the most realistic of the evening, and I’m sure the tiger’s agent will be fielding many calls this morning.
No one would be converted to the merits of feminism by seeing this play, and lots of people would be deconverted. But that’s the usual way with agitprop: if you preach only to the choir, you lose the rest of the congregation. But of course, as with all agitprop, the preaching is not aimed at converting anyone, it’s aimed at making the preachers feel good about themselves. Shame about the poor audience, but.
However, we did make it through, we survived to the end without a single casualty. True, we lost two hours of our life that will never be regained. But we saw what we were all capable of under extreme pressure, we showed grace under fire, and we stood by each other right to the end. Being under fire together has made us life-long comrades, and at the annual reunions we survivors will no doubt tell and retell our stories of the time we fought Trojan Barbie, like the Band of Brothers that we now are.
Message to Homer: Your position as Trojan War historian is safe. No need to call your office.
PS (2014-04-06): Another review is here. “The stuffed animal representing the tiger was a bit unnecessary”
Police report of “Romeo and Juliet” Confidence Scam
Location of crime: Upstairs Foyer, Greenwood Theatre, Guy’s Campus, King’s College London.
Date of crime: Evenings of 5th, 6th, 7th February 2014. The crime may also have been “rehearsed” before these dates on unwitting spectators.
Financial sponsors: A group calling itself King’s College London English Literary Society.
Nature of crime: Deconstruction of playwright’s text without single reference to post-colonial or feminist perspectives. Co-conspirator “The Friar” tore out pages of “Romeo and Juliet” text to manifest true nature of crime.
Key victims: William Shakespeare, women.
Perpetrator: Unknown. Calls himself “The Director”. Identity: Elusive. Real identity unknown. May use pseudonyms: W. Nash, Rookie Monster, DPR, Edward Snowden.
Known Co-conspirators: Marcus “The Friar” Bazley, Hillary “The Counsellor” Chua, Laura “Juliet” Deering, Jackie “Lady Capulet” Edwards, Matthew “Romeo” Hodson. Others involved in supporting the scam thought to be: Catherine Walters, Elena Gillies, Emma Lawrence, Aja Garrod, Aggi Cantril, Sophie Omar, and Kate Gardener. Notes found at crime scene indicate others may also have assisted, almost certainly without realizing the consequences.
Modus Operandi: Perp takes out-of-copyright play text, reducing number of characters, even using unwitting mark in audience to play role in deception. Play cut down and cut up, and done as crime scene investigation, with scenes “reconstructed” by “actors”. Legal counsel present to narrate events and give illusion of objectivity.
Perp uses intelligence and wit to produce amusing, clever, and sophisticated version of play, which is used as a “script” that is then executed (“performed”) by co-conspirators in front of marks. Performance of script of professional standard, and very realistic. Thus, marks easily deceived and soon suspend disbelief.
Only one of the known co-conspirators is believed to actually make his living in theatre. Remaining co-conspirators possibly being groomed.
Co-conspirators take on “roles” to execute script. Thus, “The Friar” is a Cockney ex-junkie offering life advice to the other conspirators, along with marriage ceremonies and store-and-forward messaging services; “Romeo” is a lovestruck young man, writing dreamily in his Moleskine; “Lady Capulet” is a tyrant of the household interior, a dictator of the domestic. The different “roles” cleverly interleave, and jointly enable confidence scam. Indeed, witnesses report that the acting was so intense that it approached the threshold of caricature, but without ever crossing that threshold, making the performances thrilling to watch. Co-conspirators all appear to be under direct influence of Perp.
Co-conspirators use a variety of names, including real names, to confuse audience about when co-conspirators are “acting” in their “roles”, and when not. Humour and wit used to distract attention of audience from reconstruction of double suicide, following madness of young love, set amongst inter-gang warfare in inner-city Italy.
Toying with nature of “acting” indicates this is crime of real sophistication by people with extensive experience in deception and illusion. Perp and co-conspirators may have worked in Elizabethan theatre before. Crime shows many hallmarks of two known literary deceivers and wits with Elizabethan previous, Thomas Nashe and Kit Marlowe. Neither likely involved: Nashe believed deceased, Marlowe either deceased (Deptford Regional Office view) or living in exile in Italy.
Production involves post-coitus scene, drugs, violence, suicide, and death. No rock and roll, but. One person injured by vicious slap. Music deployed very effectively to “set the scene” and relax audience in preparation for confidence scam, and at various times during the operation to manipulate emotions of marks.
Use of Barber’s Adagio for Strings obviously intended as subtle allusion to FDR’s funeral and Oliver Stone’s film about Vietnam. This double allusion should allay concerns of English Department about absence of references to post-colonial oppression and the wickedness of US global hegemony, as well as providing a warm glow of self-satisfaction to the one person who caught the allusions.
Related scams: West Side Story, High School Musical.
Known beneficiaries of scam:
Progress of investigation: Police seeking the 132 witnesses to garner further information.
Public warning: These people are armed with professional acting skills and are very dangerous. Perp may be serial dramaturge, intent on career in intelligent theatre or deception. Co-conspirators capable of superb acting at the highest level.
Deptford Regional Office reports rumour that next confidence scam may take place in Copenhagen.
Conspirators also believed to hold raucous after-play parties to celebrate success of scam, involving alcohol, tobacco, witty conversation, and profound arguments about the existence of God and the nature of relationships. Kit Marlowe would feel at home. US State Department Advisory: Americans visiting London particularly at risk.
Note: Potential side-effects of scam include reviews written as police-reports, pretentiously imitating style of the production itself.
The best stage production of Hamlet I have seen so far was that of Calixto Bieito, in a 2003 production for the Edinburgh Festival, which I caught in Birmingham in September 2003.
This production set the play in a piano lounge, with chrome-and-black-leather furniture and the participants wearing modern dress. Horatio (Karl Daymond) played the piano, and like it, was dressed entirely in white. The music was chosen very well, with Bach before and after “To be or not to be”. The other music was mostly jazz and the music expected of a piano lounge. At the moment when Hamlet got Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern to confess they were working for Claudius, Hamlet pointed to Horatio at the piano, who played the theme from Dragnet (Da-ta-da-daaaa). The music seemed to intensify the emotions of the play, and the modern dress and setting led this to seem like a Eugene O’Neill psychodrama.
Prior to seeing this version, I’d only ever considered two broad interpretations of Hamlet – the personal (Should I avenge my father’s murder?) and the political (Can I kill the King?). This production emphasized, in between the personal and the political, the family dimensions – hence the feeling that O’Neill had written and directed it. Adding to this feeling was the acting-out of some of the accusations made – eg, of Polonius killing his daughter (which revulsed her), and of Hamlet raping Ophelia.
The family setting was further emphasized by the absence of any attendant servants, lords or ladies, and the absence of regal attire. The single lounge room set, with a grand piano and a drinks cabinet, also added to the cosy, biedermeier feeling. Here, there were scenes of Claudius and Gertrude playing sexy games together in their pajamas. As in any 20th century American drama, drinks played a large part in action: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, with soliloquies.
A very nice touch was Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern arriving dressed as the Blues Brothers – dark suits, sunglasses, and briefcases. Overall, this was a superb production. The theatre, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, was about 25% full, with perhaps 400 people present.
Another modern interpretation of Hamlet, as a German comedy, was reviewed here.
The Brass Band of the Queensland Conservatorium of Music is the only English-style brass band in an Australian tertiary music college, which says something about the impoverished musical taste of those who run Australian music education institutions. Because the brass are mostly little-used in orchestral music (relative to, say, the strings, who play all the time), orchestral brass players usually also play in other wind ensembles and bands, both for the practice and to build their stamina. So a distaste for brass band music is usually not something shared by orchestral brass players. And a good thing too, given the high calibre of the best brass bands.
With about 100 other people, I caught the QCM Brass Band last weekend, performing as part of the 21st Tyalgum Festival of Classical Music. The band was led by Peter Luff and Greg Aitken, both of the QCM. The festival began in this small and isolated mountain village after some performers had experienced the very good acoustics of the Tyalgum Literary Institute Hall, the main public hall in the town. The acoustics of the Hall are indeed excellent, although surely not of a design praised in modern architecture schools. The Hall, built in 1908, is a single rectangle, with side walls made of wooden planks, having many windows and doors. On one side is an enclosed verandah, open to the main room. The roof has a single pitch and is made of corrugated iron, and there is no ceiling – the iron reflects sound well, and the undulations would send it in all directions. Mostly, the band sat on the floor at the front beneath the stage, with only the percussion on the small stage, yet the sound in the middle of the room was clear, very full and very loud. The reverberation was noticeable but not overly long. Apart from rust (and thus the need for regular replacement), the only downside of corrugated iron roofs is that nothing else can be heard when it is raining.
Tyalgum lies under the calming shadow of Mount Warning, a mountain named by James Cook in 1770, and which is the first place on the Australian land-mass to see the sun each morning. We could see the close-by mountain from inside the hall. So it was fitting, then, that the walls were decorated with several paintings of the mountain. Oddly, though, all these images showed the mountain from the usual eastern vantage point, yet the village itself is on the western side. So what you saw on the walls did not match what you saw through the windows. (For that matter, the same wrong view of the mountain is on the Festival poster and web-page.)
The Band made very good use of the space. A fanfare by Ann Carr-Boyd was played before the concert from the upstairs front windows to people in the street. This fanfare was repeated inside at the start of the concert, with the composer present in the audience. Later, a piece by Gabrieli for three brass choirs was played with the choirs arranged around the hall: At the front, 5 players in SAT (Soprano, Alto, Tenor) instrumental combination, at the side under the enclosed verandah (ATB) and in the first-floor balcony at the back (SAT). This was superb use of space for surround sound, and stunning playing.
There were some moments to treasure. The open side doors allowed a sudden breeze to blow away the music of the tenor trombone during the Vivaldi. As with any music from this period, intonation was difficult, particularly for the horn player, and at times for the two solo piccolo trumpets. With lots of fast-moving duo passages (the horn with one or other trombone) – very typical of Vivaldi – creating havoc for the three performers accompanying the soloists, it is perhaps not surprising that one trumpet soloist had a look of absolute astonishment on his face when the players ended the third movement together.
The pieces for the full ensemble were all well played, although perhaps more attention was needed to choreography of the percussionists. Some of the 5 people who were at one time or another on stage in the percussion section appeared unfamiliar with that part of the band.
The complete program was:
Some of the same players were seen here.