Category Archives: Culture

Arts, Culture, Literature, Poetry

Poetry for Autumn: A collection

SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER

– note: intermittent and not always concurrent days.

12 November · ‘No One Cares Less than I’ · Edward Thomas

In this poem Edward Thomas can be seen to parody the opening lines of Brooke’s “The Soldier”. In response to Brooke’s notion that, should he die in “some corner of a foreign field”, that place shall be “for ever England”, Thomas responds that he doesn’t care whether he is “destined to lie / Under a foreign clod”. Here the poet warns the reader of the dangers of patriotism and the glorification of war. Thomas died on 9 April 1917 in Pas-de-Calais, France. He was thirty-nine years old.

‘No one cares less than I,

Nobody knows but God,

Whether I am destined to lie

Under a foreign clod,’

Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning.

But laughing, storming, scorning,

Only the bugles know

What the bugles say in the morning,

And they do not care, when they blow

The call that I heard and made words to early this morning.

…

Edward Thomas’s short but powerful poem ‘No one cares less than I” (sometimes subtitled Bugle Call) is a poignant reflection on fatalism, wartime detachment, and the impersonal nature of conflict. Written during World War I, it encapsulates the stoic acceptance of death by a soldier – a sentiment that tragically foreshadowed Thomas’s own death in 1917.

The opening lines are a bleak declaration of indifference regarding his own survival:

“No one cares less than I, / Nobody knows but God, / Whether I am destined to lie / Under a foreign clod,”

This expresses a complete resignation to fate. The soldier is beyond worry, having accepted that his destiny is out of his hands and known only to God. The euphemism “foreign clod” refers simply to being buried abroad, highlighting the likelihood of a soldier’s death in France.

The most striking element is between detachment and the impersonal war: between the soldier’s personal words and the impersonal nature of the bugle call. The soldier makes his words to the call, imposing his private anxiety and acceptance onto an official, militaristic sound.

“Were the words I made to the bugle call in the morning.”

The bugles themselves, however, do not care. They are described as “laughing, storming, scorning,” suggesting a vibrant, chaotic, and unfeeling force.

The Indifferent Machine: The bugles function as a metaphor for the entire war machine. They know the reality of war, but they are completely indifferent to the individual soldier’s fate:

“Only the bugles know / What the bugles say in the morning, / And they do not care, when they blow”

The bugle call signals routine, duty, and the possibility of imminent action and death, but it has no humanity or empathy. The individual soldier’s life is merely a step in the larger, noisy, and uncaring rhythm of the military.

The poem is structured in a single stanza with a relatively conversational tone that belies the seriousness of its subject.

The rhythm is irregular, mimicking natural speech and the somewhat awkward fit of the soldier’s personal thoughts to the military rhythm of the bugle. The rhyming couplets (AABB for the first half, then a more complex CC DDEE pattern) creates a sense of simplicity and finality.

On diction, Thomas uses plain and direct language (“Nobody knows but God,” “foreign clod”), which contributes to the poem’s sense of stoicism and realism. There is no elaborate poetic flourish, just the blunt observation of a man facing the imminent possibility of death.

The poem stands as a powerful and understated example of WWI poetry, moving away from romantic heroism toward a stark acknowledgement of the soldier’s reality and the sheer cold indifference of the war.

11 November · In Flanders Fields · John McCrae

John McCrae was a Canadian doctor who served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the First World War. The poem was published in 1915, and its immediate success led to it being quoted in propaganda as part of the war efforts. Its reference to the red poppies of Flanders led to the symbolic wearing of poppies on Remembrance Day each year. McCrae died of pneumonia during combat service in 1918, just eight months before the war ended.

1

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

2

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

3

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

…

“In Flanders Fields” is a powerful and enduring lyric poem written by Canadian military doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae in May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres in World War I. The poem is written from the perspective of the fallen soldiers, speaking from their graves.

The poem starkly juxtaposes images of the natural world and life against the grim reality of war and death.

. Natural/Life: Poppies blooming, larks “bravely singing” in the sky, and memories of the dead who “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.”

. War/Death: “Crosses, row on row,” the barely heard sounds of the larks “amid the guns below,” and the soldiers who are now “the dead.”

The most enduring image is that of the red poppies growing over the graves. This image of poppy symbolism, inspired by the reality McCrae witnessed, became the global symbol for military remembrance. The poppies represent a commemoration of the fallen and the resilience of nature amidst destruction.

The final stanza shifts from sorrowful reflection to a command and a warning to the living:

. The dead pass a “torch” to the living, symbolising the continuation of the fight or the cause.

. The living are urged to “take up our quarrel with the foe.”

. The powerful warning, “If ye break faith with us who die, / We shall not sleep,” stresses the duty of the living to honour the soldiers’ sacrifice by ensuring their fight was not in vain.

The structure and form of the poem is a 15-line rondeau, a French form, though McCrae’s use of it is relatively free.

It is composed of three stanzas, each with a distinct focus:

Stanza 1: Sets the scene with the imagery of the poppies, crosses, larks, and guns – contrasting tranquillity with battle.

Stanza 2: Gives voice to the dead, reflecting on their lost lives and peaceful moments.

Stanza 3: Issues the poignant and challenging appeal to the living. The rhyme scheme (AABBA AABBC CCDDE) and meter contribute to an elegiac (mournful and sad) and stately tone, giving a sense of solemn rhythm appropriate for a memorial. The abrupt end of lines, as noted by critics, sometimes conveys the suddenness of the soldiers’ deaths.

9 November · Here Dead We Lie · A. E. Housman

Like Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, A. E. Housman wrote some of his most famous poetry during the Great War. This poem reminds us that many of the soldiers were very young.

Here dead we lie because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,

But young men think it is, and we were young.

…

A.E. Housman’s short poem, “Here Dead We Lie,” (also titled “Here dead lie we”), is a powerful, elegiac epigram that captures the tragic irony of young lives lost in war, often perceived as a reflection on World War I.

The poem consists of just one four-line stanza, and is spoken by a collective voice of deceased soldiers.

The voice is a collective “we” – the dead soldiers themselves – speaking from the grave with a sense of stoic and bitter resignation. The direct address immediately establishes a sombre, reflective tone, setting the poem as an epitaph or lament.

The first two lines state the reason for their death: a choice not to live in shame. This points to the intense pressure of patriotic nationalism and duty prevalent during wartime. They died to avoid the perceived dishonour of being a coward or deserting their country.

“Here dead we lie because we did not choose / To live and shame the land from which we sprung.”

The emotional core of the poem lies in the final two lines, which present a stark, philosophical contrast:

. The Adult/World View: “Life, to be sure, / Is nothing much to lose,” – This line is brutally ironic. It suggests that, in the grand scheme or from the perspective of older, detached generations (or commanders), a young man’s life is expendable. This cynicism reflects Housman’s often-pessimistic worldview.

. The Soldiers’ View: “But young men think it is, and we were young.” – This is the tragic turn. The soldiers, now dead, realise that they, as young men, did value life immensely, believing it was everything to lose. Their noble sacrifice, made out of a sense of patriotic duty, is ultimately undercut by the tragic realisation that they gave up what they considered most precious.

The poem is remarkable for its brevity and clarity. Housman uses a simple quatrain (four-line stanza) with an AABB rhyme scheme (choose/lose, sprung/young) and a relatively consistent meter (often iambic tetrameter), which creates a controlled and epigrammatic style that makes the bitter message even more impactful. The simplicity of the language gives the poem a stark, universal resonance.

In short, “Here Dead We Lie” is an extremely concentrated expression of the waste of youth in war. It critiques the patriotic fervour that led young men to sacrifice their lives based on a belief in a value (“honour,” “shame”) that, from the perspective of the grave, seems tragically misplaced compared to the immense value of the life they lost.

7 November · from As You Like It · William Shakespeare

This song is sung at the end of the second act of Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, when the runaway gentleman, Orlando, and his old faithful servant, Adam, arrive at the court of an exiled Duke who is living as an outlaw in the Forest of Arden. Despite the song’s many references to human ingratitude and feigned friendship, the travellers receive a hearty welcome at the feast.

1

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

2

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly . . .

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

…

William Shakespeare’s work “As You Like It” primarily refers to his renowned pastoral comedy play. As a whole, it contains several significant poems and songs, most famously the monologue often referred to as a poem: “All the world’s a stage.”

Written around 1599, As You Like It contrasts the artificial and corrupt life of the court with the relative freedom and harmony of nature in the Forest of Arden.

This famous piece, “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” is a song from As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7). It is sung by the character Amiens to Duke Senior and his exiled court in the Forest of Arden.

The song’s main purpose is to contrast the tangible, physical harshness of nature with the far greater and more enduring pain inflicted by human cruelty and betrayal. It is a melancholic comparison: the singer finds the harshness of the winter wind to be less unkind and less sharp than the emotional pain caused by human failings, specifically ingratitude and false friendship.

Stanza 1: The Winter Wind

The speaker directly addresses the winter wind, personifying it as an antagonist.

. Comparison – The wind’s “tooth is not so keen” as “man’s ingratitude.”

The wind’s harshness (“breath be rude”) is bearable because it is impersonal and unseen. It is simply nature’s way.

The bitterness of a cold, physical element is preferable to the visible, psychological wound of betrayal from a person you trusted.

Stanza 2: The Bitter Sky

The speaker challenges the freezing sky, and makes a similar comparison.

. Comparison – The “bitter sky” does not “bite so nigh” as “benefits forgot” (kindnesses that have been forgotten or ignored).

The metaphor is apparent: The cold can literally “wrap the waters” (freeze them), but its “sting is not so sharp / As friend remembered not.”

The pain of an ungrateful mind that forgets past help and friendship is a deeper and much sharper sorrow than any physical cold or frost.

The refrain, repeated after each main stanza, offers a cynical but ultimately resilient resolution to this painful truth:

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly . . .

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

Then, heigh-ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly.

. The Green Holly: The holly, with its persistent green leaves and sharp thorns, is a traditional symbol of endurance during winter. It represents the resilience needed to face life’s hardships.

. Cynicism: The lines “Most friendship is feigning (false), most loving mere folly” express a profound disillusionment with human connection. The singer has concluded that loyalty in relationships is rare.

. The “Jolly” Twist: The final line, “This life is most jolly,” provides a jarring counterpoint. It is not an expression of genuine happiness, but a form of stoicism or resigned acceptance. The sentiment is: Since friendship and love are largely fake, one should stop caring, take life lightly, and force a merry outlook to cope with the inevitable betrayal.

A number of poetic devices are used throughout the song, namely:

. Personification: Giving human qualities to natural elements (“winter wind,” “bitter sky,” “Thy tooth,” “Thy sting”). This elevates nature to a moral force, contrasting it with human morality.

 . A-B-A-B-C-C Rhyme Scheme: The tight, musical structure makes the song memorable and contributes to the rhythmic and melancholic tone.

. Juxtaposition: The stark contrast between the physical pain of the cold and the emotional pain of ingratitude is the core device.

. Repetition: The repeated refrain emphasises the core message of resignation. The song serves as an integral part of As You Like It, providing a brief, beautiful moment of melancholy and realism amid the playful romance and idealism of the Forest of Arden. It echoes the cynical philosophy of Jaques, reminding the exiled court (and the audience) that while nature is harsh, human relationships can be even crueller.

4 November · Dulce et Decorum Est · Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen composed “Dulce et Decorum Est” while recovering from shell shock in 1917. The title is taken from a passage of Horace, the Roman poet, who wrote that dulce et decorum est pro patria mori: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

While Horace meant to praise the bravery of the Roman army, in Owen’s poem the phrase takes on a bitter irony. Owen’s descriptions of war are not lofty and idealised but brutally graphic. He attacks the military propaganda of the time which encouraged “children ardent for some desperate glory” to serve in the war, setting the supposed sweetness of glory in battle in contrast with the horrendous reality.

– Some verses in the third stanza have been omitted

1

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

2

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

3

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

…

Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is one of the most powerful and widely cited anti-war poems to emerge from World War I. Written while Owen was recovering from shell shock in 1917 and published posthumously in 1920, the poem directly challenges the prevalent patriotic glorification of war.

The poem’s title is the beginning of a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Horace: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori which translates as “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.”

Owen uses this patriotic slogan with bitter irony. By vividly depicting the gruesome and unsightly realities of a soldier’s death, he refutes this “old Lie” in the final lines, asserting that there is nothing sweet or proper about the suffering and senseless violence of war.

Owen employs intense, graphic, and immediate sensory imagery to convey the utter horror of trench warfare, forcing the reader to witness in fine detail the reality he experienced.

The poem opens with soldiers described as “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,” and “coughing like hags.” These similes immediately strip the soldiers of any heroic glamour, portraying them instead as broken, exhausted, and prematurely aged victims.

The central event is a sudden chlorine gas attack. Owen uses stark, vivid, and unsettling (if not very upsetting) language to describe the dying soldier. The descriptions are unflinching and these disturbing lines have been omitted from this site.

The two-line third stanza shifts the perspective to the speaker’s lasting trauma, the scene forever etched “In all my dreams before my helpless sight,” emphasising the psychological toll, or shell shock.

The poem is structured into four stanzas of varying length, initially adopting a loose ABAB CDCD rhyme scheme similar to the French Ballade form, though Owen subverts the form’s conventions. The shifting rhythm and incomplete rhymes often reflect the chaos and disharmony of the battlefield.

With ingenuity and adept use of the language Owen uses powerful sound devices to heighten the experience. In the full third stanza, onomatopoeia is used unsparingly which make the dying soldier’s agony visceral and auditory. The device of alliteration is also used: phrases like “writhing in his face” intensify the dreadful imagery.

The final stanza directly addresses the reader (“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest…”), making the critique personal and accusatory.

The poem’s enduring power lies in its relentless dedication to truth and its refusal to romanticise death, making it the definitive rebuttal to the lie of wartime glory.

3 November · The Girl with Many Eyes · Tim Burton

The American Tim Burton is best known for his film-directing work that includes The Nightmare Before Christmas and screen/film adaptations of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. He is also a writer and an artist, and much of his work reflects his quirky and fantastical imagination.

1

One day in the park,

I had quite a surprise.

I met a girl,

who had many eyes.

2

She was really quite pretty

(and also quite shocking)

and I noticed she had a mouth,

so we ended up talking.

3

We talked about flowers,

and her poetry classes,

and the problems she’d have

if she ever wore glasses.

4

It’s great to know a girl

who has many eyes,

but you get really wet

when she breaks down and cries.

…

The poem “The Girl with Many Eyes” by Tim Burton, first published in his book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, uses a bizarre character to explore themes of inner beauty, acceptance of difference, and the anxiety of being an outcast.

It tells of a narrator who meets a girl in a park described as “really quite pretty (and also quite shocking)” because she has “many eyes.” Despite her unusual appearance, the narrator strikes up a conversation with her, focusing on normal topics like “flowers” and “her poetry classes.”

The narrator’s willingness to look past the girl’s shocking appearance and engage with her suggests that inner connection and personality are more important than physical looks. The line, “It’s great to know a girl who has many eyes, but you get really wet when she breaks down and cries,” emphasises her humanity and vulnerability, suggesting that her unusual trait doesn’t override her basic emotions. The narrator sees her as “pretty” and “shocking,” indicating an appreciation that incorporates her oddity.

Like many of Burton’s creations (for example, Edward Scissorhands), the girl is a classic Burtonian outcast – a character who is physically different and therefore isolated or misunderstood. The poem is often interpreted as reflecting Burton’s own feelings of being an outsider growing up and his wish for others to break social conformity and connect with people who are different.

The final line, focusing on her tears, is a powerful reminder that despite her extraordinary nature, she experiences deep emotions. Her many eyes, perhaps a symbol of greater sensitivity or perception, also mean she “breaks down and cries,” showing her profound vulnerability.

1 November · No! · Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood was a nineteenth-century English author and poet. This poem is an example of a kind of extended pun, as Hood’s list of phrases beginning with “no” is revealed by the final line to be a list of all the negative characteristics of the month of November.

No sun – no moon!

No morn – no noon –

No dawn – no dust – no proper time of day.

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member –

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,

November!

…

Thomas Hood’s poem “No!” is a playful, yet a poignant depiction of the month of November. It primarily focuses on the dismal and foggy conditions of London and the accompanying sense of isolation.

The phrases are taken from the single, long, free-form list of negations. Almost every line or phrase begins with the word ‘No,’ emphasising the overwhelming sense of absence. This relentless use of anaphora (repetition at the beginning of phrases) mimics the oppressive and monotonous nature of the November gloom. The lack of traditional meter or rhyme scheme contributes to a contemporary, conversational, and almost rambling feel. The poem captures a spontaneous outpouring of frustration.

The core of the poem in its longer form is the heavy debilitating London fog. This obscures everything and makes the city unrecognisable.

. Natural World: The fog obliterates the sky and natural markers (“No sun – no moon!”, “No sky – no earthly view – No distance looking blue –”). The typical vibrancy of nature is absent: “No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees / No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds.”

. Urban Life: The dense fog makes navigation impossible (“No road – no street –”) and even hides architectural landmarks (“No end to any Row – No top to any steeple –”).

The poem in its entirety is based on the themes of isolation and disorientation. The bad weather keeps people indoors and apart, which commonly leads to a breakdown in social life. Familiar faces are unrecognisable (“No recognitions of familiar people”). The social spaces are deserted (“No park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility –”). Even communication is cut off (“No mail – no post – No news from any foreign coast –”).

With everything obscured – from the sun in the sky to the street across the way – the speaker feels a profound sense of disorientation, a lack of reference points, and a feeling of being trapped (“No travelling at all – no locomotion, No inkling of the way – no notion –”).

While the subject is dreary, the tone is not a serious lament or a dirge. Hood, also known as a humourist, maintains a light-hearted, exaggerated, and satirical tone. The sheer scale of the complaints and the exhaustive list of nothings are designed to amuse as much as to reflect a genuine melancholy. This makes the poem an engaging and accessible piece of social commentary on the November blues.

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Arts, Britain, Culture, Government, Politics, Scotland, Society

The life of Alex Salmond

1954–2024

THE death of Alex Salmond, 69, former First Minister of Scotland, marks not only the passing of a formidable man, but of a generation and a style of politics. Mr Salmond belonged to the postwar baby boom generation, and it showed. He mastered the art of television and was adept at delivering pithy quotes for newspapers, for those were the dominating news sources of his formative years.

He was also an avid parliamentarian, believing that what was said in the House of Commons mattered.

And he was a Nationalist. His political consciousness was formed in the late Sixties and Seventies when a nationalist spirit was in the air. Winning Ewing had won Hamilton in 1967, the North Sea had struck oil, and the SNP was climbing up the polls.

Mr Salmond had grown up in a nationalist-minded household, and it is perhaps here that his ideological instincts were formed. Whatever the case, the young man who turned up at St Andrews University in 1973 was a fully formed devotee of Scotland and the restoration of her national sovereignty.

It was as a student that he joined the SNP, but the Salmond of those times was a very different quantity to the political figure Scotland came to know and be led by.

Back then he was a fiery Left-winger and a member of the SNP’s fundamentalist wing, which was on the march to independence and impatient about the pace the rest of the party was taking.

He would eventually drift into the radical ’79 Group, which deemed the SNP too Right wing to win over the Scottish working classes and advocated a lurch to the Left that scandalised the leadership of the day. The ’79 Group was expelled but several of its members were later readmitted and went on to gain prominent careers in the SNP and its governments.

Political office was still some way off and Alex Salmond needed a career. After graduating from University, he took up a series of postings as an economist, first behind enemy lines in the Scottish Office, and then at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

But the man was too bright, too charismatic, and far too ambitious to dedicate his life to price indexes and market surveys, and in 1987 he stood for and won the constituency of Banff and Buchan, taming the famed “Buchan Bulldog”, Sir Albert McQuarrie, a Tory grandee thought unbeatable up to that point.

Just three years later, he was elected leader of the party. These were still the doldrum days of the SNP, not yet forgiven for its role in bringing down James Callaghan’s Labour government and hastening an election which put Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street. In Scotland, the Nationalists had a young and energetic figurehead, a smooth and competent talker capable of getting himself ejected from the Chancellor’s Budget statement and yet having his face plastered across every newspaper and evening bulletin in the process. The Tony Blair era was still a few years away but in some ways Salmond prefigured the man whose Iraq war he used to peel Scottish voters away from Labour.

Like Blair, he was a big personality, a ruthless strategist and tactician, a presidential-style leader, and an advanced practitioner of the dark arts of spin.

It was Blair who transformed Salmond’s fortunes and those of his party. By establishing a devolved Scottish parliament, he unwittingly built a new platform from which the SNP could flourish and advance its cause of independence.

Salmond quit as leader in 2000 after a decade in which he made a name for himself, and his party made modest but important gains.

While Salmond moved the party closer to the centre, aspects of his early radicalism occasionally broke through and revealed a politician of dubious judgment – none more so than his notorious description of NATO’s intervention against Serbia, then engaged in what many regard as an attempted ethnic cleansing of the Kosovar Albanians, as “unpardonable folly”. It was a quote that many people never let him forget.

Despite issuing a Sherman-esque statement in response to speculation that he would recontest the leadership – “If nominated I’ll decline, if drafted I’ll defer, and if elected I’ll resign” – he went on to throw his hat in the ring and, in 2004, returned to the top position in Scottish politics. With him he brought a protégé in the form of Nicola Sturgeon, who would become his deputy and later his fiercest enemy in politics.

By this point, he understood the opportunity that the Scottish parliament offered to the SNP and set about knocking his party into shape for the 2007 election. That poll produced a narrow victory for the SNP, which secured just one more seat than Labour, but the outcome represented a political earthquake. Labour had been defeated in its Scottish heartlands. Scotland was now SNP country.

As First Minister, Salmond set about governing in a populist fashion, prioritising police recruitment and a council tax freeze while passing on swingeing but not yet discernible cuts to local government and beginning a slide in Scottish education that continues to this day. His minority government convinced Scots that the SNP could be trusted to manage the country. In 2011, Alex Salmond was awarded a victory that will stand monumental in the history books.

Holyrood’s electoral system was designed so no one party would hold a majority of seats, making compromise necessary. Salmond, not one for compromise, let the electoral system know what he thought of it winning with 69 seats – an outright majority. It was a volcanic rupture of an earthquake.

Salmond was now at the peak of his power and political stature. He was not merely at the summit of Scotland’s politics; he was the mountain. No one dared challenge him. He was, in effect, a Scottish Louis XIV.

The hubris shown in these years would eventually contribute to his undoing, but for now Alex Salmond was calling the shots. The biggest shot of all was demanding, and securing, a referendum on the question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” Salmond was the architect of the Edinburgh Agreement.

He threw himself into the campaign with gusto, delighting his hordes of admirers but leaving critics despairing of his divisive rhetoric and abrasive manner, and how his campaign was setting Scot against Scot.

In the end, he fell short of the dream of independence but he got too close for comfort for many of his opponents. The additional powers heaped on the Scottish Parliament in the wake of the referendum revealed just how rattled Westminster had been by 45 per cent of Scots voting for the exit.

This left Scotland embittered, less at ease with itself, though if this ever troubled the former Banff and Buchan MP he never showed it. When he resigned in the wake of the referendum, he gave the impression of a man who thought his political career was not yet over.

We cannot chronicle Alex Salmond’s rise and his time at the top of public life without addressing the fall.

He did not take well to the removal of the robes of office. Shorn of power and position, an old king without a court, Salmond cut a sometimes-desperate figure, making ever-more outlandish interventions that were beneath him in dignity but which nonetheless kept him in the limelight.

Among the adventurously notorious were a fruity Fringe show replete with humour that would have been considered a bit too Seventies even in the Seventies, and a stint as a presenter on Kremlin-backed propaganda channel Russia Today (RT).

This is when relations with Nicola Sturgeon began to publicly disintegrate. He was becoming a distraction, his antics an embarrassment, but he remained intensely popular with party members and voters.

His return to Westminster only reelevated his public profile and put further strain on the relationship with Sturgeon. He may have been part of the class of 2015, the 56 Nationalist MPs elected to the Commons in a landslide, but there was no doubt Salmond represented and spoke for his own party: the Alex Salmond party.

Then the party came to an abrupt end. He was accused of sexual harassment by women he worked with during his time as First Minister and in 2018 the Scottish Government set up an investigation. But the probe itself came under scrutiny and was ruled by the courts to have been “unlawful”, “procedurally unfair”, and “tainted with apparent bias”, because the inquiry’s head previously had contact with the accusers.

Mr Salmond touted this as vindication. But just two weeks later, he was arrested and later charged with a string of offences. The courts, however, came down on his side, with a jury acquitting him on all charges.

There were dark mutterings from his supporters that he had been framed, but it was not until an inquiry into the Scottish Government’s handling of the matter that the man himself went on the record.

There had been, Mr Salmond said, “a malicious and concerted attempt to damage my reputation and remove me from public life in Scotland”.

He described “a deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort amongst a range of individuals within the Scottish government and the SNP to damage my reputation, even to the extent of having me imprisoned”.

The former first minister made yet another political return, which proved to be his last, in Alba, a breakaway party that stood against the SNP in the 2021 Holyrood election. While it made almost no electoral impact, it opened a fissure that had been running through the Nationalist movement since its defeat in the 2014 independence referendum.

Alba challenged the SNP on independence strategy, for Salmond believed his old party had become too timid. It dissented from Sturgeon’s embrace of gender ideology and identity politics more generally, with some women who had been long-time SNP members defecting in protest over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill (GRR).

Above all, though, Alba was Salmond personified, a party for a leader who could no longer lead the party he wanted to. While Alba is unlikely to survive him for very long, it will be remembered as a spirited attempt to revive a grassroots Nationalism divorced from the shiny, professional, poll-driven New Labour tribune act into which Nicola Sturgeon arguably turned the SNP.

In the days and weeks ahead, many words will be spilled over the passing of Alex Salmond, and there will be tears. Not all those words will be kind, not all those tears will be sincere. That is the way of it when a statesman of consequences dies.

For good or ill, he was the man who took Scottish Nationalism from the fringes to the mainstream and from there into government, the first time in its history that the SNP held executive power at Scotland-wide level. He not only renamed the Scottish Executive but redefined the rules of Scottish politics.

A devolved parliament set up by New Labour to “kill Nationalism stone dead” has helped make the SNP the natural party of government. Alex Salmond did that.

Scottish independence, once a cause limited to daydreaming, is the preferred constitutional outcome of roughly half of Scottish voters. Salmond did that.

All of Scotland’s political parties are more outwardly nationalist in their branding and positioning, eager to play up Scottish identity and patriotism. Salmond did that.

We live in a post-Salmond Scotland and will do for some time yet. How we think about his legacy might change but the legacy itself never will. He renewed a party, revived a movement, and remade a much fairer country.

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Arts, Culture, History, Society, Technology

Deepfake technology and the rewriting of history

SOCIETY

THE PRACTICE of doctoring photographs can be a very wicked thing, as we shall see. But it can also be trivial. Many of us must wish that various pictures of us did not exist. That awful school photo from primary school, or other disastrous snaps from our early childhood.

Is it wicked for us to do what we can to keep other people from seeing them? The fashion desert of the 1970s, for instance, where countless couples were married, do not display their wedding photographs. And who can blame them?

And to the Royal Family. Many of us still have no idea what the Princess of Wales was up to in her recent family snapshot, and outrage should be far from our minds.

The public demands a lot of photographs of the Royal Family, and why not? Half its power comes from the fact that it is a family, rather than a gang, cabinet, or a board of directors.

But families, even Royal ones, are not always as cheerful, contented, or well behaved, as we wish they were. It would have been a cleverer thing not to have done whatever it was that they did.

Far worse, and much fishier, was the curious case of the Bullingdon Club images of David Cameron, Al “Boris” Johnson, and George Osborne, from their Oxford days.

David Cameron obviously detested these records of debauchery, not wanting the public to be reminded of his time in this alcohol-fuelled society of well-heeled brutes. Was it a mere coincidence that they were mysteriously withdrawn by the company which owned them in 2008, so newspapers had to stop using them?

As it happens, Coincidence Theory (the idea that things happen by accident far more often than by design) is often believable. But not in this instance.

Odd was the obviously doctored 1992 Bullingdon pictures, featuring, among others, George Osborne and his (now former) friend Nat Rothschild. At first glance, it appears normal, but look carefully, and you will see it is full of suspicious peculiarities.

To the left of the middle, there’s a mysterious gap where somebody ought to be standing but isn’t. Weirder still, there’s a patch of shirt-front and waistcoat there, with no person attached. The right trouser leg of Mr Rothschild has a white lapel on it, not usual even under the bizarre dress code of the Bullingdon.

On close examination, the three seated figures at the front appear to have been stuck in place after being moved from somewhere else.

But again, these are tiny things compared with the monstrous crimes which the truly powerful commit with photographs, when they can. In pre-internet days, they simply hacked up the old pictures and replaced them with new items. Only the tiny few with access to original archives could ever be sure that what they were seeing was true.

TWO

THOUSANDS of images of the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, sometimes standing near the Soviet demi-god, Vladimir Lenin, were wiped from Soviet history books, magazines, newspapers, and encyclopaedias, after Trotsky fell from favour.

In 1997, David King chronicled the photographic murder of the past, in his book “The Commissar Vanishes”. And it was murder. Those whose pictures were removed usually became dead soon afterwards.

The most poignant story of this kind is told by Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It concerns the Czech Communist Vladimir Clementis. Clementis was standing beside the Czech Communist leader, Klement Gottwald, at a huge public meeting in Prague to mark their takeover of the country. It was snowing heavily, so Clementis lent his fur hat to the bare-headed Gottwald. Pictures recorded the comradely scene.

But four years later Clementis was purged for having the wrong view of Marx. He was hanged, cremated, and abused still further after death on the streets of Prague in a most barbaric way. And he was wiped from the images of 1948, leaving only his hat behind.

THREE

WHO knows what a future totalitarian regime might do, with the limitless powers provided by modern technology? This cannot only erase the past but can, through deepfake methods, create a wholly different past so convincing that only those who were actually there would be sure it was not a lie.

If human gullibility is anything to go by, even eyewitnesses of the truth might eventually fall in with the new altered version.

This was prefigured, as are so many evils of today, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The central character, Winston Smith, has the highly responsible job of cleaning up the paper archives of The Times, to make sure they do not clash with official lies. His discovery of a photograph, of three leaders of the ruling party – Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford – fills him with terror. Its obvious location and stated date show that official history is false.

He sends it swirling into the “memory hole” which leads to the great furnace where all inconvenient facts are burned to ashes.

But he is still not safe. What if someone else saw him as he looked at it? What if the surveillance cameras picked it up (as we learn later, they did)?

The mere fact that he has seen this picture puts him in danger. He knows what nobody should know. He can never forget it. He cannot unsee it. His actual existence is a peril to his totalitarian chiefs.

Orwell writes: “It was curious that the fact of having held it in his fingers seemed to him to make a difference even now, when the photograph itself, as well as the event it recorded, was only memory. Was the Party’s hold upon the past less strong, he wondered, because a piece of evidence which existed no longer had once existed?”

As it turns out, in the torture cellars of the Ministry of Love, Winston, amongst other humiliations of the mind, is compelled to affirm that the photograph never existed.

In the end, with tears in his eyes, he joins the great deceived multitudes who believe what the authorities tell them and who have no idea what the past was really like, even if – especially if – they lived through it.

It is that sort of thing, not a mildly doctored family snapshot trying to provide some cheer and happiness, that we need to be worrying about. Useful as it is to know that the technology exists to turn anyone with the right equipment into a potential liar and fraud, and to make us all open to monstrous deceit, of a kind that even Stalin never dreamed of.

The truth needs to be told.

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