One of the most pervasive myths about the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde is that prison destroyed him and that his remaining couple of years of life after release were a sorry saga of penury and ill health, leading to an early death in Paris. But as Oscar said himself, truth is never pure and rarely simple. Behind the bare facts of this decline lies the reality of many months of enjoyable travels and hedonistic pleasures, not least in Italy. Like many Victorians, Wilde was attracted by the warm climate, classical legacy and artistic treasures of Italy, in his case supplemented by the welcoming smiles of local youths, especially in the south. Though Naples was the scene of much tension as he tried cohabitation with Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas for one last time, he found much delightful companionship to console himself there, as indeed in Sicily and Rome. His letters from Italy to his devoted friend, erstwhile lover and literary executor, Robbie Ross, bubble and fizz with the joy of so much adventure. These letters — quoted extensively — form the backbone of Renato Miracco’s new book, Oscar Wilde’s Italian Dream 1875-1900 (Damiani, £22), the rest of the skeleton mainly provided by further Wilde letters and quotations from other writer’s books, including one of mine.
For the dedicated Wildean, therefore, there is very little that is new, the notable exception being translations of some interviews Oscar gave to Italian journalists, mainly in Naples. It is interesting to note how many of them reported inaccurately, or made things up. Miracco’s original commentary is by comparison slender and contains a few glaring errors, the oddest being his placing of Wilde’s arrest at the Cadogan Hotel in London after his being found guilty of gross indecency. There are, however, many attractive photographs in the book, not least the sepia neo-classical portraits by Wilhelm von Gloeden of youths in Sicily (where Wilde did visit von Gloeden). The finest of these is the wrap around printed on the book’s hard binding. But it is rather sad when one has to admit that the best thing about a book is its cover.
When a German naval force arrived off the coast of Oslo in April 1940 the message from Berlin was that the manoeuvre was to “protect” Norway from a British invasion. But in reality the Germans wanted to coerce Norway into submission, as had happened with Denmark — and get its hands on the country’s mineral resources. Though there was some initial defensive resistance from the Norwegian armed forces they were seriously outnumbered. Meanwhile, King Haakon VII and his family left the capital, slowly moving northwards with Nazi troops in pursuit. The resident German diplomatic envoy, Curt Bräuer, tried to persuade the Norwegians to accept the formation of a collaborationist government in order to avoid more casualties. The King refused to give his imprimatur to the deal, which would make Vidkun Quisling the nominal Prime Minister, instead with great dignity abdicating, later leaving for England where he sat out the rest of the War. Bräuer was deemed too soft by his Nazi overlords and was sent to the Eastern Front as a punihsment, ending up a prisoner of war in Soviet hands. Erik Poppe’s reconstruction of the first fortnight in April 1940 and the King’s dilemma, The King’s Choice (available on BBC iPlayer, in Norwegian and German with English subtitles, for the next fortnight) sticks pretty closely to the historical facts while focusing intimately on the King (Jesper Christen) and Bräuer (Karl Marcovics). Christen is particularly strong in his role. But for me the most impressive aspect of the film is it pace: while the crisis injects a dramatic urgency into the lives of the main characters the tempo of most of the action is deliberately slow and the snowy landscape further mutes the atmosphere and the colours. For Norwegians watching Th King’s Choice must be a national feel-good experience, but for the rest of us it gives a valuable insight into a less well known chapter in the history of the Second World War.
In an isolated Bedouin community in the Negev desert, Suliman (Hitham Omari) decides to take a second wife, building a house for her literally adjoined to the ramshackle dwelling where his wife and four daughters live. Though it is never stated overtly, one imagines the reason for this new marriage is the hope of having a son, as well as a younger bride. Meanwhile, he has treated his eldest daughter Layla (Amis Ammar) with an unusual degree of preference, even teaching her how to drive his battered pickup truck. He is proud of her success at school but everything turns sour when she reveals that she has fallen in love with a boy from another tribe. Immediately traditional values and practices swing into action, Layla’s mother (Ruba Blal) is as angry and shocked as her father, who quickly sets about finding a “suitable” husband for his daughter. In this début film, in Arabic, with subtitles available in English and other languages, Israeli director Elite Zexer starkly portrays the limits to which women can rebel against tradition in a closed society. Yet the characters are finely drawn, so one understands the conflicts going on inside their heads Despite the relative poverty and the distant threat that the Israeli authorities might suddenly demand that they demolish their home (as we are told happened to another family) there is a melancholy beauty about this film. It is handled sensitively and one feels one has been transported into the lives of others.
The ousting of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 as part of an Anglo-American conspiracy is perhaps the darkest chapter in the murky history of Britain’s involvement in the Persian Gulf. Mossadegh had upset Winston Churchill by nationalising the country’s oil industry, from which the UK profited hugely, as well as having access to a steady supply of fuel. The company withdrew all its staff and their dependents from Abadan, bringing production to a sudden halt, and once the Iranians had got things working again sabotage came into play. Although a scion of a noble family, Mossadegh was essentially a reformist liberal, who wanted to further democratise the country following his election in 1951 and to reduce the immense gap between the rich and poor. For this he was branded a socialist, even a Communist fellow-traveller, by the West, which wanted to prop up the young and ineffectual Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Time Magazine nonetheless saw fit to make Mossadegh its Man of the Year in 1952. Despite flattering the Shah, the British colonial mentality prevalent at the time looked down on ordinary Iranians as uncivilised wogs (sic). The British were keen for US help to slap Mossadegh down, but President Harry S Truman was reluctant. However, the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, with Allen Dulles as the first civilian Head of Intelligence, gave Churchill the backing he wanted. From now on the CIA would be working hand-in-hand with MI6, dishing out large amounts of money to royalist sympathisers, including the Shah’s scheming twin sister, Ashraf, in the hope of bringing Mossadegh down.
The coup against Mossadegh came in two installments, as the first attempt to seize him from his residence backfired. Several CIA agents were ready to drop the matter then, despite the enthusiasm of the agency’s Middle East Director, Kermit Roosevelt. But the key MI6 operative in the region, Farsi-speaking Norman Darbyshire, persevered. The new loyalist police chief whom Mossadegh had appointed, Mahmoud Afshartous, was kidnapped, tortured and shot dead, his mutilated body displayed on the front pages of Iran’s daily newspapers as a brutal warning of what was to come. Paid instigators sparked mob riots in the streets, while the Shah and his Queen ran to safety in Rome for a while. The second time anti-Mossadegh army officers came for Mossadegh he could not escape. He was tried for treason, sentenced to three years in solitary confinement, after which he spent a decade under house arrest
The CIA has always claimed the main credit — if credit is not a grossly inappropriate word — for the 1953 coup, which was dubbed Operation Ajax (after the cleaning fluid). Emboldened by its success, successive US Presidents would later try to bring about regime change all over the developing world. But as is clear from a brilliant new documentary, Coup 53, by Iranian-born director (and physicist), Taghi Amirani, it was the British who were the real villains of the piece. Far from crowing about it, however, MI6 and parts of the Foreign Office tried to play down and even cover up the degree of UK involvement, especially the key role of Norman Darbyshire. Paradoxically, Darbyshire himself offered a remarkably frank account of his behaviour to a Granada TV film crew making a documentary about the coup in the mid-1980s. As Taghi Amirani discovered as part of his meticulous research into his own film, Darbyshire’s contribution to the Granada programme was mysteriously excised — though some of its contents were leaked to the Observer newspaper. Full details are still considered classified material. What makes Amirani’s documentary so outstanding is not only the wonderful archive material illustrating the main story of the coup, alongside a reconstruction of the Darbyshire Granada TV interview by actor Ralph Fiennes, but also the fascinating explanation of how the film itself was put together, over a period of several years. It is certainly one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen, significant both as an historical record and as a virtuoso exercise in film-making.
The Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan is my favourite hotel in the world. Perched on the rocks overlooking the River Nile, it offers blissful views of feluccas drifting slowly by and hints of the desert beyond. Not surprisingly, it has featured in a number of novels and films, notably Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Christie stayed there herself and was enchanted, as many other celebrated visitors have been. And in the Netflix series Secret of the Nile, the hotel takes centre stage, under the name Grand Hotel, rather as Highclere Castle plays the part of Downton Abbey in that cult British TV series. Indeed, in many ways Secret of the Nile is a sort of Downton Abbey transferred to Upper Egypt around the year 1950, as the glamorous world of the owners and guests by necessity interacts with that of the servants, while on the surface strict class distinctions are maintained.
However, Secret of the Nile (called Grand Hotel in its Arabic original) has some deeply sinister plot lines and most of its characters are seriously flawed. Indeed, at least three of them could be described as evil. All the seven deadly sins are present, envy and greed being the most obvious. But it is not just the main story line (plus its many tributaries) that takes unexpected twists and turns. So does one’s attitude to individual characters, as suddenly they seem not quite as nice or quite as nasty as one originally thought. Deceit is a constant thread, much of it calculated, some spontaneous, while as a form of light relief malicious gossip offers a titillating accompaniment.
The series — 30 45-minute episodes — begins when a young man (Amr Youssef) arrives at the hotel under a false identity in order to find out what has happened to his sister, who worked there as a maid but who has disappeared. It soon becomes clear that the answer involves all sorts of unexpected, troubling elements; behind their elegant facade, the family who own and run the hotel are rotten to the core, with one notable exception (Amina Khalil). The newcomer strikes up a friendship with a seriously overweight, simple but kind-hearted waiter (brilliantly portrayed by Mohamed Mamdouh) and this unlikely pair gradually uncover, wittingly or otherwise, not just one secret but the many secrets of the Grand Hotel on the Nile. Some of them are very unpleasant indeed, but all taking place in an exquisite physical setting, as well as in the rather overblown fin de siècle interiors of the hotel and among the sumptuous clothes of the elite clientele. The series (in Arabic, with English subtitles) is quite addictive and visually splendid. Not for nothing did the Egyptians conquer the Arab world’s TV and cinema.
The Kremlin declared today that President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko had agreed in a phone call that the “problems” in Belarus would be swiftly resolved. I am not alone in finding this deeply ominous. What has been happening on the streets of Minsk and other towns and cities in the landlocked republic recently has been both depressing and inspiring. Depressing because of the violence meted out against peaceful protesters outraged by the blatantly fraudulent election that officially saw Lukashenko returned with over 80% of the vote. But inspiring because the “usual suspects” of liberally-minded young university graduates have this time been joined by a more representative cross-section of the Belorussian public, including striking workers. This even led to the unusual step of hundreds of detainees being released — many displaying hideous bruises and other injuries from brutal mistreatment.
Meanwhile, Lukashenko has been on television arguing that this whole pro-democracy episode has been orchestrated from abroad. It is true that many opponents of the regime in Minsk have sought sanctuary in Lithuania and Poland. But there is no doubting the popular momentum on the ground inside Belarus. Remembering how the crowds managed to dislodge Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania in 1989 one can’t help but wish for history to repeat itself — but without a bloody end for the dictator . Let him retire to a dacha in Sochi or some other Russian safe haven. Or maybe preferably stand trial. I am sure Vladimir Putin will firmly resist the latter. Although he has become increasingly impatient with Lukashenko in recent years he finds Belarus is a useful buffer zone between Russia and the EU. Let us hope that he does not respond to the current challenge by deciding that Belarus would be an even more important buffer if it were absorbed into the Russian Federation. The narrative that what is turning into an uprising is the work of foreign agents must be challenged and the voices of the people of Belarus must be heard.
For more han half a century, Rupert Murdoch has been a sort of Deus ex Machina in Western politics, not so much saving as sinking the forces of reason. He never really got over the fact that his father, an Australian media magnate, died before bequesting him his stable of titles. Instead, Rupert received just one, in Brisbane, but then built up his own Australian media empire, not least with the nationwide The Australian, before moving on to Britain, the United States and then the world. In the UK, like a spider drawing newspaper and TV outlets into his web, Murdoch corrupted the British political establishment, first the Conservatives, then Blairite Labour, then Conservatives again, before swinging behind Nigel Farage and Brexit. The Sun newspaper, not so much the zenith but the nadir of Murdoch’s influence, trumpetted that it won the 1997 election for Labour. I am not sure that is necessarily true, but I do think that it was crucial in winning the slight majority for Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum.
In the meantime, the Murdoch stable, most infamously represented by the News of the World, had engaged in phone-hacking and all sorts of underhand, indeed illegal, activities. That Sunday newspaper was liquidated as a result, but anyone who thinks that Murdoch and his henchmen thereby repented needs their head seeing to. All this figures in the BBC’s new three-part documentary, The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty, currently available on iPlayer. There are lots of good interviews with people who worked inside the Murdoch machine, as well as insights into Rupert’s three children, and how they waltzed into and out of favour. There is particularly interesting footage about Murdoch’s involvement with Fox News — the ultimate pits — and his embrace of Donald Trump. Much of this is pretty ghastly stuff, and it would have benefitted from a more lengthy opportunity for people who had been screwed over by the Murdoch Mafia to set out their views. I would also like to have known more about Murdoch’s various wives, before and after; what on earth did Jerry Hall see in him (other than zillion dollar signs), for example? I have always felt uncomfortable with Kate Fleetwood’s style in such documentary commentary, but don’t let that put you off. There is much to savour and retch over in these three programmes. In recent years, Murdoch offloaded much of his media estate to Disney. But I long for the series’ inevitable sequel, The Downfall of the Murdoch Dynasty.
The figures from the Office of National Statistics today are startling. It was widely expected that Britain would be declared to be in a recession (technically two consecutive quarters of negative growth) but no-one expected the April-June performance to show a fall in GDP of 20.4% — the worst among the G7 economies. Twice as bad as Germany and the United States. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, who has been perceived as something of a golden boy in contrast to PM Bumbling Boris, will find it difficult to talk himself out of this disaster. The Conservatives are meant to be good for the economy and good for business, but recent opinion polls suggest that more Brits now think the still fairly new Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, would make a better Prime Minister than Johnson. BoJo meanwhile has certainly lost his mojo; only nine months ago he was crowing about the size of his majority following the general election. But he proved to be ineffective as the coronavirus pandemic hit, indecisive and contradictory. The virus was allowed to get too firm a hold in the population before lockdown was introduced, but then that lockdown was so severe and so prolonged that the economy took a real battering. Despite a welcome uptick in GDP in June as some businesses reopened the worst is far from over. Other firms — not least in the services sector — are continuing to go to the wall. Moreover, Brexit at the end of the year is bound to make things much worse. The sad thing is that Britain, now out of the EU and floundering in the harsh new global reality, is not on top of things but bottom of the class, with much more pain to come.
Quirky British comedy has long been one of my favorite cinema genres and the charm and at times outrageousness of Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin’s What We Did on Our Holiday (available via BBC iPlayer until 5 September) hit the spot for me now just as much as when I saw it on the big screen when the film came out. The skeleton of the plot is simple: a separated couple who have been fighting like cats in a sack travel up with their three small children to the Highlands of Scotland for a special birthday of the husband’s father, who is ill with terminal cancer. Both husband and wife (David Tennant and Rosamund Pike) are keen to keep up appearances, despite their disintegrating marriage, but the kids, one just knows, are going to shatter these. The younger, cheekier girl, for example, has a breeze block as a best friend. The birthday celebrations are being organised by the husband’s officious brother and his mentally disturbed wife, in a large but soulless mansion not far from the sea. Grandpa — a masterly performance by Billy Connolly, at his most philosophical — no longer really cares what people think, and probably never did. But even he could not imagine what his sweet little grandson and his two sisters will dream up when suddenly things go horribly wrong. Several scenes in the film are hilariously funny, others more poignant. But what entails in the context seems perfectly plausible, even if the local powers that be are flummoxed. Yet all ends happily ever after.
A hundred years ago today, in a porcelain factory outside Paris, a Treaty was signed which effectively dismembered the Ottoman Empire, handing large tracts of land over to Britain, France, Greece and Italy, establishing an Armenian Republic and raising the possibility of an independent Kurdistan. This was a far more drastic settlement than Germany’s losses under the Treaty of Versailles, as the Turks had to surrender all claims to predominantly Arab lands in the Middle East and North Africa as well as to accept a much truncated presence in Anatolia, parts of which were put under Greek and Italian zones of influence. Unsurprisingly, this did not go down well among the defeated Turkish military, including Mustafa Kemal, later dubbed “Atatürk”, Father of the Turks. The First World War may have been declared finished but in the Eastern Mediterranean fighting continued. Turkish nationalism became a vibrant political as well as military force and the tables were turned to such an extent that the Treaty of Sèvres had to be scrapped. Its replacement in 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne, ended the various conflicts and defined the borders of modern Turkey (later subject to small adjustments). A new nation had risen phoenix-like from the ashes, but Kurdish and Armenian hopes of autonomy were dashed.
Jonathan Fryer 