Author Archives: markdowe1

Arts, Books, Economic, History, Society

Book Review – ‘Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time’

REVIEW

IN 1776, Economist Adam Smith predicted that one day machines would “abridge labour”. We were meant to be able “to lie on the grass under trees on a summer’s day . . . watching the clouds float by”.

John Maynard Keynes, in the 1930s, thought that by now robots would be doing the donkey work, and food, water, warmth and safety would be “universal… and experienced equally by everyone”.

To which the only reasonable rejoinder or retort is: pig’s bottom. In 2020, owing to what James Suzman, a Cambridge professor, calls “cyber-physical systems animated by machine-learning algorithms”, i.e., computers, people are spending much longer staring at screens. In Britain in 2018, there were 600,000 work-related mental health issues reported to doctors.

In Professor Suzman’s reading of human history, nothing ever runs smoothly for long. For primitive peoples, life was “a constant battle”. When agriculture was developed, there were always droughts, floods and frost. What characterised us, however, was persistence. With the herding of animals came settlements and barns for grain, thence the need for carpenters, blacksmiths, merchants, stonemasons – eventually doctors, teachers and lawyers. Literacy enabled the keeping of accounts and the creation of banks.

The fatal paradox, though, is that gains in productivity are cancelled by population growth – more mouths to feed. Britain’s population in 1750 was 5.7 million, in 1851 21.1 million. Today it is nearly 70 million.

The Industrial Revolution behind the boom had little to recommend it: in the mines, children toiled like slaves. Women worked 14-hour shifts in mills. The working class were nothing but “a pin in a big machine”. Creativity was not wanted, only “target-driven, repetitive work”.

It has not been the proletariat, however, who benefit. Suzman quotes the alarming statistic that between 1978 and 2016, while the average pay increases were 11.7 per cent, the remuneration of CEOs went up by a staggering 937 per cent.

Clearly, we are victims of our ingenuity: we clear rainforests and generate greenhouse gases in the name of cheap food. Each year, 66 billion chickens are reared – triple the number of all wild birds.

Greed is the key to modern problems, what Suzman calls “the malady of infinite aspiration” – more microwave ovens, cars, phones. Nor is there a proportional correspondence between human labour and reward. What really counts if you want good prospects, are family connections, inheritance and “getting lucky”.

When order is under threat from human folly, Suzman says famines, wars and pandemics are the usual “imminent and severe correction” – so coronavirus should not be a surprise.

– ‘Work: A History of How We Spend Our time’ is published by Bloomsbury, 447pp

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Arts, Books, Culture, Society

The Life of John le Carré

John le Carré, one of the greatest spy novelists, died at the end of last week following a short illness. He was 89.

The Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy author – whose real name was David Cornwell – has been described as an “undisputed giant of English literature” who “defined the Cold War era and fearlessly spoke truth to power”.

Le Carré – who had been in the intelligence services himself – rallied against the idea of spies being glamorous characters like James Bond.

His self-effacing spymaster George Smiley was created as a deliberate contrast to Ian Fleming’s OO7, who he felt inaccurately portrayed the life of a spy.

The writer worked for both MI5 and MI6 during the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, before leaving the service in 1964 to become a full-time writer.

Many of his novels were adapted into successful films and TV shows starring a wide array of Hollywood talent including Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Ralph Fiennes. His 1974 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was first turned in to a TV miniseries in 1979 starring Alec Guinness. The book was then adopted for a second time 32 years later into a successful film starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Kathy Burke.

In 2016 his first post-Cold War novel The Night Manager was serialised in six parts on the BBC starring Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman.

The show was widely praised and won two Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes.

Despite his international success – the wife of the Russian leader, Raisa Gorbachev, was said to be a fan – the author once said he did not want his books considered for literary prizes.

He reportedly turned down an honour from the Queen but accepted Germany’s Goethe Medal in 2011.

Le Carré was born in Poole, Dorset on October 19, 1931. After attending Sherborne School he spent a year studying German literature at the University of Bern, before enlisting for compulsory military service in Austria, where his tasks involved interrogating Eastern Bloc defectors.

Upon his return to England he earned a degree in modern languages at Oxford University, then taught at Eton before joining the Foreign Service.

It was during his time at MI5 and MI6 that Le Carré began to write down ideas for spy stories, often on trips between work and home.

His first novel, Call For The Dead, was published in 1961 under his pen name, to get around a ban on Foreign Office employees publishing books under their own name.

George Smiley featured in nine of Le Carré’s books and played the central character in his Karla Trilogy, made up of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.

Le Carré said the character was based on John Bingham, an MI5 agent who wrote spy thrillers and encouraged Le Carré’s literary career and the ecclesiastical historian Vivian Green, the chaplain of his school and later his Oxford College who he said became his “confessor and godfather”.

Le Carré married Alison Sharp in 1954, with whom he had three sons before the couple divorced in 1971. In 1972, he married Valerie Jane Eustace, with whom he had a son, the novelist Nick Harkaway.

Fellow writer Robert Harris said: “I think he will be one of those writers who will be read a century from now.”

Le Carré is survived by second wife of almost 50 years, Valerie Jane and his sons Nicholas, Timothy, Stephen and Simon. A family statement thanked the NHS team at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro for the care and compassion that he was shown. His illness from pneumonia was not Covid-related the statement said.

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Arts, Books, Culture

Book Club: Au Revoir, Tristesse

Groskop

AN excellent read. Viv Groskop takes a light-hearted look at how to bring more humour and happiness into our lives through French literature

Viv Groskop may wish she were a little more French. Like many people perhaps the world over. Starting at the age of 11 she studied the language obsessively and spent every vacation in France. Her desperation to escape her Britishness is obvious in pursuit of that French chic characterisation she feels more aligned and in comfort with. The author is cultured – a writer, comedian and journalist by trade.

In Au Revoir, Tristesse, Groskop blends literal history and memoir to explore how the classics of French literature can infuse our lives with joie de vivre (the joy of living) and how to say goodbye to sadness.

This is a cleverly written book. It is, in effect, a love letter to the great French writers: from the frothy hedonism of Colette and the wit of Cyrano de Bergerac to the intoxicating universe of Marguerite Duras and the heady passions of Les Liaisons dangereuses.

There are chapters on Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Albert Camus, and of course Françoise Sagan. This is a delectable cultural read for book lovers everywhere.

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