Category Archives: History

Arts, Films, History

Film Review: The Favourite (15)

REVIEW

THE FAVOURITE, set in the corrupt and debauched court of England’s Queen Anne during the 18th century, played magnificently by Olivia Colman, is an absolute hoot. The War of the Spanish Succession is also raging on the Continent.

Colman will soon be appearing as Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix series The Crown, but it’s safe to say that this regal outing doesn’t give us much of a preview in what’s to come.

Her Anne character here bears more resemblance to another Elizabeth: Miranda Richardson’s Queenie in the TV sitcom Blackadder. She is childlike, prone to taking tantrums, full of self-pity, and in need of constant nursing at the hands of her lifelong but infinitely more glamorous and capable friend, Sarah Churchill, acting the part of the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz).

At the start of the film, Anne shows Sarah a model of the fabulous palace she is gifting her and her husband, the Duke (Mark Gatiss), to mark the famous victory at the Battle of Blenheim. But as Sarah points out, that victory didn’t actually end the war:

“Oh, I did not know that,” replies the Queen, who is not only dim, but also crippled with gout, overweight and given to eating until she makes herself sick. Her courtiers might flatter her absurdly, but the camera says something quite different. Colman, hobbling along the corridors of her palace, gives an uproarious and decidedly un-vain performance. The palace itself is Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.

Weisz similarly delivers an excellent performance. She plays Sarah which at times is almost like the thigh-slapping principal boy in a panto. Both are matched by an ambitious and conniving servant, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), who inveigles her way first into Sarah’s affections, then into the Queen’s.

Hill has an impeccable English accent, connected to her lineage from an aristocratic family. Indeed, her father was Sarah’s cousin; yet, he was also irredeemably feckless.

“When I was 15 my father lost me in a card game,” says Abigail, so matter-of-factly. Sarah condescendingly tosses her a job as a kitchen maid. However, Abigail has not arrived at court to scrub floors and wash dishes. When she uses her foraging skills to make a herbal treatment for the Queen’s gout, she begins her inexorable rise in the court hierarchy.

She then discovers that there is a very secret dimension to the relationship between Sarah and the Queen, who even have pet names, Mrs Freeman and Mrs Morley, for each other.

How can she use this knowledge to her advantage? By this stage it should have occurred to the audience that the film’s title might not refer to Weisz’s calculating Duchess, but to Stone’s social-climbing servant.

Despite this Sarah will still take some supplanting as the power behind the throne. She is politically astute, a vital ally to the Prime Minister (James Smith), as he seeks to raise taxes to subsidise the war effort, which is being led in the field by her heroic husband. Her sworn enemy is the Leader of the Opposition, Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult), who hopes to outflank Sarah by recruiting Abigail as a spy.

Handily, his protégé Colonel Masham (Joe Alwyn) fancies Abigail rotten. “Have you come to seduce me or rape me?” she asks, as he slips into her room one night. With an indignant reply, Masham replies: “I am a gentleman.”

“So, rape then,” she mutters. Repeatedly, the women in this film get the better of the men. All the bawdiness – and the language gets extremely salty at times – would be entertaining enough, but it is given a raucous spin by director Yorgos Lanthimos, working from a very comical and original screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara.

In one marvellous scene, he has a ball – quite literally with the baroque fashions of the time – with all those teetering wigs, powdered cheeks and fake beauty spots. The Greek director can hardly be accused of making ordinary films. His last two screen pictures, 2015s The Lobster (which again featured both Weisz and Colman) and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer in 2017, lurched between the whimsical and the downright weird.

The Favourite contains plenty of whimsy, too. But, without doubt, it is comfortably his best yet; Lanthimos has a director’s eye for the grotesque that suits overt comedy even better than it does for quirky horror. He is aided here by a droll chamber-music score, and by Robbie Ryan’s clever artistry and cinematography – which, sometimes, makes use of a wide-angle lens to wreak further distortion on the film’s twisted characters. The framework of the story, though, is entirely factual. Abigail Masham, as she later became, really did topple Sarah Churchill as the Queen’s favourite, if not perhaps as ruthlessly as she does here. But with hilarious audacity, Lanthimos along with his fellow screenwriters also sprinkle the story with anachronisms, including a dance that is more Saturday Night Fever than House of Stuart, and all sorts of modern-day idioms.

There is also great poignancy beneath all the fun. Abigail finds a way to Anne’s heart partly by playing with the 17 rabbits the Queen keeps in her bedchamber as substitutes for the 17 children she has lost. A later act of callous cruelty reminds us, however, that Abigail does not have her sovereign’s best interests at heart. In fact, she barely has a heart at all.

The Duchess, for all her machinations, genuinely does. This is a film which, at its own heart, is about friendship – both real and faked. A superb film that comes with the highest recommendation.

Verdict: A regal treat of historical fact.

★★★★★

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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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Arts, Books, History

A Review of Recommended History Books 2018:

SUMMARIES

. Churchill: Walking With Destiny by Andrew Roberts (published by Allen Lane for £35, 1,152pp)

ANOTHER Churchill biography? Surely, some might say, that’s as unnecessary as a second Brexit referendum.

But Andrew Robert’s immensely readable and engaging addition to the already vast oeuvre poses a timely question: are sheer bloody-minded grit and bulldog determination really enough to win the day against impossible odds?

They were for Churchill – but now?

For all the failures in his political life – with the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in World War I just one of many – he proved himself equal to a crisis. When the crunch came, he, unlike more timid contemporaries, had the vision to call correctly the biggest issue of the time: that Hitler had to be faced down and damn the consequences.

Just as importantly, he had amassed the political skills, the rounded life experience that comes from both success and failure and the sheer strength of personality to be a leader who, against incalculable odds, could pull this off.

He had the oratory too – that soaring ability to persuade and inspire, to win over hearts and minds to a common cause. (Yes, he told lies, he exaggerated, he talked setbacks into victories – regrettable but necessary for the greater good, he argued.)

Politicians today are sound-bite ciphers, robots or clowns by comparison. This book is a reminder of what greatness is, and how far short of it they fall. Too many, on all sides in the Brexit debacle, believe destiny is calling them, as it did Churchill in 1940. But is there a new Churchill among them at this hour of need? Many will fear not.

. Written In History: Letters That Changed The World by Simon Sebag Montefiore (published by W & N for £14.99, 272pp)

PRIVATE LETTERS are crucial building blocks for the historian, their authentic voices a passport to the realities of the past – and so much more discreet and revealing than today’s emails and texts are ever likely to be. Simon Sebag Montefiore’s entertaining and enlightening miscellany includes Gandhi, Napoleon, Picasso, Mozart and a hundred more across the centuries where rich pearls of their lives can be extracted.

Some are truly revolutionary and visionary – such as Christopher Columbus’s 1493 message to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella that he has sailed west across the ocean and discovered “many new islands”. He reassures them that “I saw no monsters”.

Others are very personal – a defiant Mark Antony insists he’s done nothing wrong in sleeping with Cleopatra.

Then there’s Hitler explaining to Mussolini why he’s about to invade Russia, signing himself off with “With hearty and comradely greetings” and unaware that this was the action that would ultimately lose him the war.

Not all changed the world – Leonard Cohen’s farewell to his muse Marianne is not in that category – but all are fascinating, as are the compiler’s comments on each letter, little gems of potted history in their own right.

. Thomas Cromwell: A Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch (published by Allen Lane for £30, 752pp)

NOR is there anyone with the political genius of Thomas Cromwell, the architect of the original Brexit – England’s split from the pan-European power of the Pope in Rome in the 16th century.

He did this initially so his royal master, Henry VIII, could divorce the queen who had failed to produce him a son, and marry Anne Boleyn. In the process, he established the supremacy of the Crown, national independence from a foreign overlord and the distinctive Protestant nature of the Church of England.

What gave the low-born Cromwell the edge to carry through such fundamental change was that he combined the skills of businessman, lawyer and astute politician to outmanoeuvre the aristocrats of the Tudor court. His meticulous, almost obsessive attention to every last detail was the key to his success, along with a ruthlessness and ambition that helped him acquire positions, wealth, power – and enemies.

He fell in the end because Leaver Henry turned out to be a closet Remainer when it came to religion. Clinging to the Catholic faith and distrusting Cromwell’s brand of Protestantism, he cut off his chief minister’s head out of pique – and promptly regretted it.

The book is, though, a master-class in good, old-fashioned academic history as MacCulloch, professor of church history at Oxford, brings Cromwell to life exclusively from contemporary sources. No speculation or flights of fancy, just superb investigative work in the archives. Hard going at times but well worth it.

. Crucible by Jonathan Fenby (published by Simon & Schuster for £25, 624pp)

THE 13 months from June 1947 to June 1948 are when the modern world as we know it was forged, according to Jonathan Fenby, sadly stacking up more problems than solutions and bequeathing us global troubles that, 70 years on, are still flashpoints.

In the aftermath of World War II, there was flux and change everywhere. It was as if the world were recalibrating and rebooting itself all in one go. Old certainties were discarded; new alliances formed.

The British left India in a hurry and religious groups fought each other for supremacy in a civil war of such violence that the only solution was the partition between India and Pakistan, leaving a terrible legacy of distrust and hate.

At the same time, Israel was forcibly created out of Palestine, in the teeth of deep-seated Arab opposition and displacement. The British Balfour Declaration which created the initial territorial split in Palestine was the precursor to seeding decades of a dangerous conflict which still remains unresolved.

Europe split into the armed camps of western capitalism, led from Washington, and Soviet communism, led from Moscow. Lands were fought over and divvied up between the super-powers. Germany was divided. A Cold War ensued.

Fenby plots these changes month by month as, across the globe, a brand new world emerged – one every bit as fragmented, perhaps even more so, than the one it replaced.

. Arnhem by Anthony Beevor (published by Viking for £25, 480pp)

WHAT turns battles is often not the enemy but the overreaching egotism and dubious motives of the commanders who plan them.

Arnhem was far-fetched from the moment Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery proposed flying Allied paratroopers to eastern Holland, seizing the bridge across the Rhine and launching a surprise attack through the back door into Hitler’s Germany in September 1944.

It was a product of his self-obsession with getting one over on the Americans. He felt slighted that they were grabbing pole position for the invasion of the Third Reich. I’ll show them how it’s done, was his response.

High-risk even on paper, to have any chance of success the operation depended on precision, coordination and good luck. But when boots were on the ground, none of these happened.

The result was a shambles, with communication lines hopelessly overstretched and those at the forefront of the assault outgunned and outflanked.

With his telling eye for personal detail, Beevor’s roundly researched account of the battle is overladen with gloom that so many men fought heroically but went to their deaths or into captivity for no good reason. He quotes a despairing officer who watched his men fall one by one to sniper fire and could only hope that “the sacrifice that was ours will have achieved something – yet I feel it hasn’t.”

. See also Book Review – Arnhem: The Battle For The Bridges, 1944

COLD WAR

. A Spy Named Orphan: The Enigma of Donald Maclean by Roland Philipps (published by Bodley Head for £20, 448pp)

TWO things never cease to amaze about the Cambridge spy ring exposed in the 1950s.

First, that these closet communists who sold their souls to the Soviet Union were allowed to reach some of the most sensitive positions in British government circles; second, that their indiscreet personal behaviour never raised any doubts that they might be security risks.

Donald Maclean was given two monikers at the Foreign Office – “Sir Donald”, because he was an exceptional Whitehall mandarin tipped for the top job as Permanent Secretary, and “Gordon”, after the gin he was often inebriated on. This incompatibility should have triggered red-flag warnings.

Instead, since he was so palpably “one of us” – aristocratic air, MP father, public school education, first from Trinity Hall – the deluded, self-serving Establishment failed to realise that, in reality, he was “one of them”, a mole working undercover for Stalin.

Drawing on classified government files not released until 2015, Roland Philipps reveals the truth about the troubled toff who was a genuine convert to communism in his student days and recruited by the Russians with the deliberate intention of infiltrating the Civil Service.

As this superbly written tale unfolds, you find yourself screaming in exasperation – how did no one within the security and intelligence community notice until it was too late?

. The Spy And The Traitor by Ben Macintyre (published by Viking for £25, 384pp)

LIKE Maclean, Oleg Gordievsky was a believer who switched sides – though in the opposite direction. A senior KGB officer, he came to detest the dour Soviet regime in Moscow and its denial of freedom.

Seeking its downfall, he took the huge personal risk of dangling himself in front of MI6, who (cautiously at first) snapped him up and made him its most successful double agent.

The story – of his recruitment, his spying activities as he rose to be the top KGB man in the Soviet embassy in London, then his grim encounters with the Moscow spy-catchers and hair-raising escape from Russia under the noses of suspicious Soviet minders – is told with the panache of a spy thriller. And it’s all the more gripping because this is real life, not fiction.

But, as well as the drama, what is fascinating is to discover what the West learned from Gordievsky. He passed on a deep, insider’s knowledge of the inner sanctum and workings of the KGB and the paranoid mindset of the Kremlin. This was invaluable to the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in deciding how to stand up to the Soviet leadership without frightening them into precipitating World War III.

More than 30 years since his defection in 1985, Gordievsky still lives in hiding for fear of a revenge attack. His caution is wise, given the attempt to assassinate a more recent double agent and defector, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury. Though the Skripal event should properly rank more as current affairs than history, it is, nevertheless, the latest phase in the lengthy spy war between the West and Russia.

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