Author Archives: markdowe1

Arts, Books, Literature

Recommended Biographies…

SUMMARIES

. Robert Graves by Jean Moorcroft Wilson (published by Bloomsbury for £25, 480pp)

ALONG with Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves was one of the great poets of the First World War. Graves was born in 1895 and when war broke out a week after he left school, he enlisted aged 19.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson describes his troubled schooldays at Charterhouse and the horror of the war, during which he was wounded and reported dead. He survived, and, whilst he was haunted by his experiences, married 18-year-old feminist artist Nancy Nicolson.

The first volume of Moorcroft Wilson’s finely researched biography concludes with the scandalous end of Graves’s marriage, when he and American poet Laura Riding – who had been conducting a turbulent, four-sided relationship with Nancy and Riding’s married lover – threw themselves out of the upstairs windows of their Hammersmith house.

. Becoming by Michelle Obama (published by Viking for £25, 448pp)

FOR most of us, making a toasted cheese sandwich would be almost the least exotic thing we could do. But for Michelle Obama, after eight years in the White House, sitting in the garden of her own house and eating toasted cheese felt like “my new life just beginning to announce itself . . . Here I am, in this new place”, she writes in the preface to her autobiography, “with a lot I want to say”.

Born into a working-class family in Chicago, she studied at Princeton and became a lawyer at a prestigious Chicago law firm, where she mentored a geeky summer associate named Barack Obama. When they bought ice-cream cones one summer evening and kissed for the first time, Michelle had no idea of the destiny that would one day find her bonding with the Queen over their uncomfortable shoes.

Warm-hearted, funny, passionate about social justice and movingly candid about the problems of being a politician’s wife, Becoming is as compulsive to read as a great novel.

. On Leopard Rock by Wilbur Smith (published by Zaffre for £20, 368pp)

FROM his early childhood years and onwards, Wilbur Smith’s twin passions have been hunting and writing. The secret of both, he observes, is tenacity. Smith was born in 1933, in what is now Zambia, to parents who would inspire his future career in different ways. His father, Herbert, was obsessed with hunting (when Wilbur was a child, Herbert shot three man-eating lions), while his mother, Elfreda, was a passionate reader. Shelves of books lined the walls of their ranch house, and every night she would read to Wilbur in bed.

Soon he was determined to become a writer himself, an idea that his father vigorously opposed: “You’ll starve to death,” he predicted.

Uninhibited by the political correctness he detests, Smith’s memoir is a rollicking yarn of slaughtered wildlife, literary superstardom and late-blooming love. “I won’t stop writing until I stop breathing,” he promises.

. Not The Whole Truth by Angela Huth (published by Constable for £20, 320pp)

“SUDDENLY I am old”, writes the journalist and novelist Angela Huth, author of Land Girls. She was born in 1938, the daughter of the director and producer Harold Huth and his wife, Bridget. While Angela adored her father, her mother was “bored stiff by small children”, leaving Angela and her sister to be looked after by a devoted Nanny, who did her best to conceal their mother’s penchant for gin: “Oh dear, poor mummy fell down the stairs last night.”

Haphazardly educated at a girls’ boarding school, Angela studied art in Paris and Italy before returning “to face the dotty business of becoming a debutante”. A longing to write led her to Queen Magazine, where she met the brilliant journalist Quentin Crewe, who would become her first husband. There ensued an intensely glamorous Bohemian social life, with friends including David Frost and Princess Margaret, who shared Huth’s unusual phobia about dolls.

Deliciously gossipy and trenchant, Not The Whole Story is an entertaining collection of stories from times past.

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Arts, History, Literature, Theatre

Theatre: The Convert

REVIEW

COLONIALISM is undoubtedly one of the most vexed issues of modern times. If you throw God into the mix, things can really be stirred up.

But what many theatre goers will love about Danai Gurira’s dramatical play, set during the 1890s in what is now Zimbabwe, is that in the end it also achieves something transcendental.

First seen in America in 2012, Gurira’s story is about a young black Catholic called Chilford who saves a young woman from an arranged marriage.

The girl is the niece of his maid, who secretly practices the traditional religion of her Shona tribe.

Outside their home, trouble is brewing, with attacks on black collaborators known as “bafu” (meaning “traitor” in Shona). After a fatal scuffle, the girl is forced to choose between her people and her Catholic faith.

The big – and some critics may say ultimate – question posed by Gurira’s compelling and intense play is expressed by the maid: “What is wrong with our ways?”

It’s a subject that goes to the heart of our understanding of cultural identity, economic development and whether one way of life can ever be set above another.

The language is uncompromising, with the missionary reviling his fellow Africans as “savages”. But there is innocence and humour about the writing, too, with English phrases mutating into local forms, echoing the direct effects of colonisation.

Ola Ince’s solemn yet vital and emotional production distils all this, and more, into a spellbinding and riveting two hours and 40 minutes, with two short interludes.

The stage design by Naomi Dawson, with a central concrete arena set with European furniture surrounded by red cracked earth – all under a crucifix provocatively bearing a conspicuously white Jesus – is a clear example of the divisions on show.

It’s a fine play for two reasons. One is that it is potently tragic, hingeing on a hard-won and deeply moving act of forgiveness at the end. The other is that it has terrific stage parts for the actors. Paapa Essiedu is taut with uncertainty throughout as the strict and pious, chaste Chilford.

He is offset by Pamela Nomvete as his insubordinate maid, and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo as a social climber speaking the Queen’s English.

It’s Letitia Wright, though, who is the play’s dramatic engine, transforming from nervy tribesgirl to a confident young Christian woman. Her role portrays a determination to hold together her past and her present.

This is a serious piece of play writing, which deserves a run in the West End.

Verdict: A potent mix of God and tradition. A missionary’s culture clash in colonial Africa is utterly spellbinding.

★★★★

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Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Should we really despair over Brexit? Europe is in a mess.

BREXIT–EUROPE

THE Brexit debate has plunged British politics into a rollercoaster of agony and self-doubt.

Following a year of political high drama and turbulence, and, given the parliamentary impasse over the Prime Minister’s deal, there are significant anxieties about the consequences of leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place.

Some will ask whether it will plunge us into an economic depression? Others are predicting that prices will rocket and ask whether essential goods will be in short supply? And some doom-mongers even suggest that there will be riots on the streets as the ugly new social divisions opens up as Brexit plays out.

We shouldn’t doubt for one moment that these concerns are wholly understandable, and it is right that we focus on them.

But we are also in a position where we should be counting our blessings. We are not the only country experiencing turmoil – and for many of our European neighbours it is far worse.

Around Europe, many leaders have spent the last few months contemplating chaos and political confusion, widespread public dissatisfaction, growing unrest and even violence. For some, economic winter is already descending.

Indeed, the continent of Europe confronts a growing crisis which could yet cause the collapse of the EU.

So whatever our Brexit troubles – and there are doubtless more to come – we should remind ourselves that unemployment is at a record low, and that since 2009 the UK has enjoyed continuing economic growth.

Compare this with Spain. Whilst our rate of youth unemployment stands at just 9.3 per cent, the comparable rate in Madrid is just under 35 per cent – and more than a third of young people who are able to work have never had a job. Moreover, this human tragedy is directly linked to Spain’s membership of the EU because the euro has rendered large tracts of the Spanish economy hopelessly uncompetitive.

Economically, Italy’s story is even more harrowing. Its economy is barely any bigger than it was twenty years ago, employment stands at 10.6 per cent and youth unemployment is 32.5 per cent. The national debt stands at almost 2.5 trillion euros – more than 130 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. That money will never be paid back and Italy is heading once more for bankruptcy.

No wonder so much of the country feels total frustration and fury at distant EU bureaucrats whom they believe – and with some justice – have condemned Italy to economic decline and failure, let alone their incompetency on migration, which Italians feel they are now bearing the brunt of.

In Greece, the very birthplace of European democracy, an epic tragedy continues to play out: membership of the eurozone has wiped out businesses, jobs and entire industries that will take generations to recover.

Let’s look, too, at fraud and corruption. We’ve had serious problems on this front here in Britain, not least among scores of MPs who infamously were found to have fiddled their expense claims. And, yes, the occasional business executive is disgraced or imprisoned. But Britain is a remarkably honest country compared with what has been happening throughout the EU.

Take Malta, viewed by most Britons as a holiday paradise. Recently, a dark underside came to light with the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption, including the sale of EU passports to shady figures from the former Soviet bloc. Many believe Malta escapes sanction from Brussels because the country’s deeply compromised ruling elite can be relied on to do what the European Commission tells it to do.

Romania and Bulgaria are two other countries where corruption flourishes. The culture of greed and backhanders in these two former Iron Curtain nations helps explain the poverty and mass emigration to the rest of the EU. The problem is so flagrant that the Romanian government has sacked the EU-backed chief anti-corruption prosecutor.

As for concerns about law and order, well we have no reason to be complacent. London has seen 131 murders during 2018 – an increase of 38 per cent (excluding deaths by terrorism) on 2014.

There is public anxiety about the ability of our police forces to deal with everyday crimes, while the recent events at Gatwick – when the drone scare brought the airport to a standstill – did us few favours by exposing lax security.

Politicians were slow to react, while the police, military and intelligence services were made to look foolish.

But compare that with France, where for more than seven weeks now, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) fuel protestors took violent unrest to the streets.

The protests are about more than just France; they are of existential importance to the EU because President Macron has become the poster boy for the European project as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s star starts to fade in Germany.

Macron’s response has so far been weak. He has responded with a mixture of police brutality and concessions to rioters which so far have not worked.

As for political stability in Europe, well therein lies the greatest crisis for the EU.

In Britain there have been warnings that the two-party system which has governed us for more than two centuries may collapse – damaged irreparably by the Brexit fallout. And there are menacing signs that the far-Right racist parties are on the rise, all the more so now UKIP employs the thug Tommy Robinson as an adviser.

No one should dismiss the reality of these fears. Only Italy’s government, out of the EU’s Big Four (France, Germany, Spain), has strong support and a clear political majority.

And that is for the so-called “government of change” – made up of two populist parties – which has flouted EU budgetary edicts, and rails heavily against immigration policies.

Consider also the bitter dispute between Madrid and the Catalan separatists, whose leaders either await trial at home or are in exile.

In Germany, social democracy is on the wane and the far-Right poses a menacing threat with the electoral successes of the popular nationalists of the neo-fascist Alliance for Germany party.

Even Belgium, the headquarters and the centrepiece of the EU, is in a political shambles. Prime Minister Charles Michel has resigned leaving a vacuum, while concerns about chronic unemployment and immigration fester.

Further east, the situation is much more threatening with the rise of far-Right parties exploiting popular fears about immigration. Poland and Hungary, both at daggers drawn with Brussels, increasingly present a chilling authoritarian alternative to the EU model of liberal democratic politics.

Brexit confronts Europe with a fresh problem. As one of the biggest financial contributors to the EU, the UK has been essential for balancing the books.

At a time of economic stress, Germany, Holland and the other large contributors will refuse to pay more. However, supplicants such as Bulgaria and Romania will be furious at receiving less.

Elections are due in the spring for the European Parliament and these may prove a shock to the EU elite as Right-wing parties score more significant gains. We will see new populist politicians emerge.

There is no question the EU is about to enter the greatest crisis in its 60-year history – and Brexit is just a small part of it.

This is not a reason for the Brexiteers to gloat. Trouble among our closest neighbours will hurt us badly at home. We are entering truly troubling times, but we should keep a sense of perspective during 2019 and remind ourselves we have every reason to feel some pride in the stability, prosperity and decency of 21st-century Britain.

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