Men on International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day, so surely men should shut up. Absolutely not! To spare the event being tokenistic, putting women in the spotlight just for today, while men dominate the public sphere for the other 364 days in the year, men should stand up and be heard on International Women’s Day as vocal champions of true gender equality. Can men ever be feminists? You bet they can, if they recognise that women’s place is everywhere, alongside men. Of course there are cultural differences around the world, but the cause of women’s rights has advanced a great deal in recent years. It is true that much remains to be done. Only in a very few countries do women make up more than a limited number of parliamentarians. But the world of politics is by no means everything. The work place and the domestic space are equally important in ensuring that women have a fair deal. And men have a crucial role to play in this, if necessary modifying their behaviour from the patriarchal “norm”. The two sexes can learn a lot from each other, but not when they are hidebound by ideas from the past. I’m not saying that there are no differences between men and women; obviously there are. But many of these are related to constructed gender rather than biological characteristics. More important, we need to acknowledge and celebrate real difference where it does exist — and accept that by having the full contribution of both men and women in at all levels society will mean a healthier future for us all. So, happy International Women’s Day, everyone — including the men!

Naughty Boy Britain

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UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made a successful career out of being the cheeky chappie who breaks the rules. As a journalist in Brussels he made up “funny” stories about the European Union; this cost him his job on at least one occasion but in the meantime a reputation had been made. Famously he drafted Telegraph articles on both sides of the Brexit argument, but eventually for personal political reasons decided to hitch his horses to Vote Leave.The result of the European Referendum was close enough that this may have made all the difference. In the campaign he was happy to endorse statements that had little connection with reality — for example, that the NHS would benefit from an extra £350 million a week if we stopped contributing to the EU and that 70 million Turks were getting ready to move to Britain when Turkey joined the EU — as a tsunami of falsehoods about the EU swept over Britain taking the country out of the Union after more than 40 years membership. Johnson has kept up the rhetoric of anti-EU sentiment since becoming Prime Minister and he knows, like former US President Donald Trump, that his supporters are happy to believe him. Sadly, this includes a sizable proportion of the British media. And he has ensured that the Government is dominated by Brexiteer yes-men and women. But by threatening the integrity of the Withdrawal Agreement Britain under the Conservatives has shown itself to be a corrupt and untrustworthy partner. Twice now the UK has stated that it is ready to violate international law, most recently by unilaterally extending the light touch control on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland for another six months, until October. The EU is understandably furious; how can one deal with a country that breaks its word? No wonder the European Parliament has postponed its consideration of the Brexit agreement in protest. No matter what emphasis Boris Johnson and his Ministers place on a joint Anglo-Irish bid to host the World Cup in 2030 rarely have the relations between Dublin and London been so bad. The Republic of Ireland is furious with Britain for undermining the so-called Northern Irish Protocol which has even led to unionist paramilitary groups challenging the basis of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, though mercifully so far without the threat of a return to violent unrest. Johnson and his pals are no doubt jubilant that Naughty Boy Britain is making its presence felt on the world stage and they will get applause from the usual suspects in the Press. But at a time when we should be forging the closest possible new relationship with our EU27 partners despite Brexit this is a strategy of fools which bodes ill for the coming months and years.

Short Stories from Azerbaijan

Though V S Pritchett is widely acknowledged to be the doyen of short story writing, as a literary genre in Britain it is particularly favoured by women. It is something of a surprise, therefore, that only two stories included in this extensive collection of short stories from Azerbaijan (published in the UK by Hertfordshire Press) are from female hands. This tells us quite a lot about a society in which women writers have failed to make much impact. In fact, none of the writers is young, either; all are aged 50 or more. Indeed, most of the works chosen are by men firmly in and of the 20th century, at a time when Azerbaijan was still part of the Soviet Union. Politics, accordingly, does not rear its head.

Only three of the tales is set it the capital, Baku, so this is very much about the village. Where men (usually) are men, when they have not had too much vodka, where the women often get knocked about — yet they yearn for love from their mates. The best of all, in my view, is Elchin’s “The Death of Koschei the Deathless”, about a prize cock who loses all his bravado after a single defeat in a cockfight, though I also smiled at Anar’s “A Georgian Surname”. In her brief introduction, Elizabeth White, the British Council representative in Azerbaijan, says that this anthology lets us know about the people of that country and those who lived there. She is right.

The Dig ***

England before the War was still a class-ridden place and when a widowed Suffolk landowner, Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), has “feelings” that there might be something buried under the odd mounds on her property she initially treats the local amateur excavator, Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), like one of her servants. He holds his ground, determined to be paid £2 a week, rather than the pittance she offers. But he receives more condescension, even rude dismissal, when officials from Ipswich Museum and then the British Museum descend as they sense he may be onto something. That “something” turns out to be perhaps the most significant find in Britain in modern times: the burial ship containing the 7th century Anglo-Saxon King Rædwald of East Anglia and a treasure trove of golden and other precious items, which Mrs Pretty subsequently donated to the British Museum. The site of Sutton Hoo is now a National Trust property. The story of this spectacular find is recounted in Simon Stone’s film, The Dig, drawn from the novel by John Preston. An interesting (platonic) relationship develops between Mrs Pretty and the self-taught Mr Brown as their mutual love for digging up the past overcomes the social chasm that divides them. The fact that Mr Brown takes an avuncular interest in the young son of the house (Archie Barnes), helps; there is no father, as he has died. In real life, Edith Pretty was in her mid-50s in 1939, when the film is set, on the eve of War, and originally Nicole Kidman was going to play the role. When she dropped out she was replaced by Carey Mulligan, 33 — it’s a fine performance but inevitably there is a certain disconnect, with her being a good 20 years too young, even though she is said to have a heart condition. The real Mrs Pretty died in 1942, only three years after the dig, at the age of 59. There is therefore something uneasy abut the dynamic between the two main characters, if one cares for historical truth. What cannot be denied, however, is that Ralph Fiennes is magnificent as Mr Brown, curmudgeonly, dedicated and truly a man of the Suffolk soil.

To the End of the World

About three years ago I was contacted by the young actor, Edwin Thomas, who was playing the character of Robbie Ross in Rupert Everett’s imaginative biopic of Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince. He was holed up in a hotel on location somewhere on the Continent and had just read my biography of Robbie. Could I give him any advice? Unfortunately some of the film was already in the can so it was too late to take on board my point that Robbie spoke with a marked Canadian accent all his life. But I hope some of my other remarks were of use. Everett, while naming the film from one of Wilde’s best-loved children’s stories actually tilted the movie in the direction of arguing that Robbie was Oscar’s true love, not Bosie — as my own book suggests. I loved The Happy Prince when it came out, mainly because Everett (as Wilde) really externalised the playwright’s inner turmoil, one might even say putrefaction. But the film was a bit of a damp squib commercially, not receiving the critical attention it deserved and failing to pull in the crowds before quickly entering that purgatory of non-hits. However, it was a joy to read the whole story of the film’s creation — from initial idea through numerous setbacks and budgetary problems before its final realisation. This is in Rupert Everett’s new book, To the End of the World: Travels with Oscar Wilde (Little Brown, £20) — the third of Everett’s autobiographical tomes and, to my mind, by far the most successful and engaging. Earlier volumes rather grated with their endless trumpeting of the author’s low-level criminality and sluttishness; there is much less of that here and the highs and lows of the creative process give the book an engrossing narrative arc. For anyone interested in film-making this book is worth reading, and for fans of Oscar Wilde, it is a must-have. At one point, Everett as director is encouraged to make some cuts because someone comments that Oscar comes across as rather disagreeable. But of course a crucial point about Wilde is that one loves and admires him, despite his glaring faults.

Mrs Lowry & Son ****

Growing up on the outskirts of Salford I was able to witness the slow decline of the post-War industrial North. The pong from the chemical works alongside the Manchester Ship Canal was awful when the wind blew in the wrong direction. The stone buildings of the city were black and each winter there were frequent smogs, though by this time caused by domestic coal fires and vehicle exhaust, rather than emissions from the mills and factories, which were all closing down. Local artist L. S. Lowry, famous for his little stick men and women trotting past smoking stacks, lamented the loss of the industrial scene that had inspired him to work away at his canvases in the attic in Station Road, Pendlebury, after his bedridden mother had gone to sleep. He turned instead to portraits and it was a couple of those that I first clapped eyes on, at a charity sale that an older neighbour took me to. They were black and white drawings, framed back to back, with glass on each side, so you could choose which one you looked at when you hung them on the wall. I seem to recall that they went for £100, which seemed like a fortune at the time. But by then Lowry was gaining a huge reputation. In 1964, at Monk’s Hall Museum in my hometown of Eccles, there was an exhibition of his work to celebrate his 77th birthday. That Christmas, Prime Minister Harold Wilson chose Lowry’s The Pond for his greetings card, though I only saw an illustration of that in the newspaper.

Timothy Spall as L S Lowry

When Adrian Noble’s biopic, Mrs Lowry & Son, came out last year I missed it at the cinema. But I was pleased to come across it as I trawled through Netflix on the last evening of lockdown last night. The film focuses on a short period in the late 1930s while Lowry’s mother was still alive but a very demanding and cantankerous women who took a very dim view of her son’s “hobby”. A merciless snob who treasured golden memories of dancing on the beach with her young son at Lytham St Annes, she totally emasculated Laurence, who worked as a humble rent collector, as his late father had done. Vanessa Redgrave puts in a virtuoso performance as this self-centred harridan, whom Lowry obviously loved despite her ways. Yet I was even more impressed by Timothy Spall as the artist. His face mutates from its default hangdog expression through an extraordinary range of frowns and grimaces as his mother batters him emotionally. I suspect that the real Lowry had a little more of a sense of humour than his on-screen character — in the film this is shown merely by a charming sort of blind man’s hide-and-seek played with local children — but clearly much of the time he was in a state of creative anguish. Even as the artist’s success soared in the 1960s he nonetheless retained a certain aura of bitterness about his early rejection. He turned down a knighthood, along with many other honours. Now his mother was dead, he mused, what was the point?

Second Lockdown Has Been Worse

For me, it was with a great sense of relief that London was confirmed to be in Tier 2 when the current England-wide lockdown ends next week. Though I am used to working mainly from home nonetheless I miss the camaraderie of meeting up with chums at my Clubs, or even just being able to go to the local Costa for a capuccino and cake. Or to browse in a shop other than the local supermarket. A take-away coffee or meal is no proper substitute, especially as it is too cold to sit outside now, even when there is sun. The current lockdown is only four weeks rather than the nearly four months first time round, yet I have found it much more demoralising. That is partly because of the weather; an unusually mild spring meant it was a joy to walk in the woods behind the house each afternoon to watch the different flowers emerge. And I could sit in the tiny front garden to watch the world go by — and chat to some people as they went past. Not now.

But it isn’t all about the temperatures. During the first lockdown I felt I was taking part in a big national effort to try to bring the virus under control, even if the government did start this too late. But the second lockdown that began as a second wave of COVID-19 really took hold brought with it a sense of disappointment bordering on despair and a worry that we will all go through a cycle of periodic lockdowns over the winter until an effective vaccine is rolled out across the whole country. Opening everything up for five days at Christmas strikes me as a recipe for a fresh clampdown almost immediately afterwards. Finally, there is the matter of travel, or more accurately non-travel. As someone used to regular, stimulating trips abroad, usually for work, it has been painful to have all of them evaporate, with no indication of when things might get back more to normal. I know I should be thankful that I am not in a part of the country that will be in Tier 3 from next Wednesday, but perhaps it would help all our collective mental well-being if we admitted that, frankly, second lockdown has been shit.

The Crown’s Triumphant Return *****

I loved the first two seasons of The Crown, not least because of Claire Foy’s sympathetic rendering of the young Queen. The historical context of some mainly peaceful examples of decolonisation such as Ghana was particularly engaging, too. But the third season was more problematic. Though Olivia Colman is one of my favourite actors, I felt her rendition of the monarch (presumably at the director’s request) too cold, too aloof, actually anti-pathetic. And elements of the plot were too far-fetched. I know faction straddles a precarious line between reality and make believe, but there were moments when I felt such-and-such could not have happened and so-and-so would never have said that. So I awaited the fourth season with a certain degree of trepidation. It starts with a bang — the assassination of Lord “Dickie” Mountbatten (Charles Dance) on a boat off the Mullaghmore coast in Ireland — reminding one of the horrors of IRA terrorism. This is one of the first challenges that the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) has to address, along with her all-male Cabinet.

Anderson has been made-up and voice-coached to be a credible impersonation of the Iron Lady, though her hollow cheeks and stress lines are more typical of a later Thatcher than the newly-elected Prime Minister. But she captures the style and has an amiable foil in her husband Denis (Stephen Boxer), who does rather resemble the original. Geoffrey Howe (Paul Jesson) and Bernard Ingham (Kevin McNally) are very realistic look-alikes, though the real Sir Bernard has railed against what he sees as a distortion of the facts for mass entertainment. The real revelation, however, is Emma Corrin as Princess Diana. Not long out of drama school, Corrin captures the vulnerability of the teenager who suddenly finds herself endorsed by The Firm to be a suitable bride for Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor). She mimics some of Diana’s mannerisms to a T, including the half shy, half resentful, look of an injured faun. The production has been lavishly funded, which has resulted in a luscious spectacle. Rarely have the Scottish Highlands around Balmoral looked so wonderful. Of course one can criticise certain departures from historical reality, but the pace and thrust of the story are beautifully controlled and the dysfunctional Royal Family are portrayed with affectionate candour, warts and all.

Election 2020: A Collective Sigh of Relief

Victory in sight

For four long days, the world held its breath as the US presidential election was on a knife edge. Opinion polls had proved to be wildly askew. But did that really mean that Donald Trump would hold on to the White House for four more years? For a while it looked as though that might be the case, but then the postal votes were tallied and Joe Biden crept ahead in important swing states. Late this afternoon, UK time, TV networks started to call the election for Biden and his victory in Nevada was really the clincher. But Trump was away playing golf, determined to maintain that he won on the basis of “legal” votes. He certainly is in no mood to concede any time soon. But under American law he does not need to concede. If the Electoral College is constituted on the basis of the recorded tallies then they will anoint Joe Biden, who will take office on 20 January.

Partners in crime

It was touching to see thousands of young people pouring onto the streets of Washington and New York in celebration of the Biden-Harris win (even if social distancing was sadly absent). For them, and for millions of other people around the world, the Trump nightmare is now in its final act. Even if he has to be dragged off screaming by men in white coats, his era of lies, misogyny, casual racism and thugishness is coming to an end. Maybe not surprisingly, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was slow and terse in his expression of congratulations to Mr Biden and his Vice-President-elect, Kamala Harris. To a large extent, Johnson has modelled himself on Trumpian populism, churning out lies spiced with a bit of verbal gymnastics on a daily basis. That’s what won him and his ilk Brexit, which Trump endorsed. He will find Biden a far less congenial interlocutor. No easy UK-US trade deal unless Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement is protected. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro must be feeling a little low tonight because of the US election result, too. But elsewhere one can sense the collective sigh of relief.

Congratulations, Guadalajara!

Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady

The Mexican city of Guadalajara may be best known for Tequila and mariachi, but now citizens have another reason to celebrate as it has been named by UNESCO as World Book Capital for 2022. It was selected for its comprehensive plan for policies around books to trigger social change, combat violence and build a culture of peace. The programme — which will start on World Book and Copyright Day, 23 April 2022 — has three strategic axes: regaining public spaces through reading activities in parks and other accessible places; social bonding and cohesion especially though reading and writing workshops for children; and strengthening of neighbourhood identity using inter-generational connections, story-telling and street poetry.

Mexico has a very rich literary culture. Mexican writers who have acquired a global reputation include Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márques and Octovio Paz. Contemporary authors will be invited to participate in some of the events and the theatrical and musical links to literature will be promoted. Guadalajara is famous among the global book trade as hosting a huge annual International Book Fair which is not only the largest in the Americas but second only to Frankfurt. The city also boasts many bookshops, which, along with libraries, reading rooms and local publishers will be involved in World Book Capital events. However, as in many Latin American countries book are inaccessible to vast swathes of the population because of their low and unstable incomes. So making content available to them through outdoor performances, the radio and so on will be important in making sure benefits from the festivities percolate through the different social layers.

Guadalajara bookshop

Guadalajara, like most Mexican cities, has endemic problems of drug trafficking and violence but organisers hope that the resources and programme of World Book City can be leveraged to advance human rights, gender equality and the culture of peace among members of the public and harness the great potential of books to contribute to social transformation.

This year’s World Book Capital is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2021, it will be the turn of Tbilisi, Georgia. Only one other Latin American city has hosted before: Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2011.