Wednesday 13 October 2010

The boulders of Sisyphus


Do you ever feel a sense of sinking despair looking at the constant flow of newly published books? I certainly do. I keep saying to myself: resist the temptation, ignore the review pages in the newspapers and magazines, don’t open that copy of The Literary Review or The London Review of Books; you know exactly what’s going to happen! And it does, it invariably does. It’s then that the warning of Ecclesiastes whispers in my ear;

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

In much study there is indeed weariness of the flesh. But I have to read the literature; I have to keep abreast of new developments in my area of research. The problem is I almost always get diverted by books that have nothing at all to do with the seventeenth century; books that simply touch on subjects that interest me, and recently they been rolling down the mountain like boulders in an avalanche, things I simply must read, but nothing lightweight, no, all heavy tomes.

So, darting back and forth to Amazon, I now have several new publications staring at me in silent reproach, waiting impatiently for their turn to be sifted through my mind. There is Crimea- the Last Crusade (608 pages) by Orlando Figes; Looking for Trouble (478 pages) by Virginia Cowles; Super Mac: the Life of Harold Macmillan (896 pages) by D. R. Thorpe; The Burma Campaign (544 pages) by Frank McLynn and State of Emergency – the Way we were: Britain 1970-1974 (768 pages) by Dominic Sandbrook. This is before I add the novels brought to my attention by other bloggers, which include Andersonville by Kantor McKinlay, a sylph-like seven hundred and sixty eight pages! How I envy Sisyphus; he had only one boulder to roll up his hill!

I try so hard to be disciplined, to be a stern mistress- “Wait. Don’t be impatient. I’ll get around to each of you – eventually.” But some of them plead so hard. For me it’s always a mistake to just taste, to get a flavour; for a taste almost invariably turns into a gorge. But Sandbrook’s history of Britain in the early 1970s looked at me with such forlorn appeal; I simply could not help myself.

I’ve advanced rapidly through a hundred pages of a book that attracted some really impressive reviews; I intend to add my own when I’ve finished. I can understand why it’s been so well-received: what I’ve read so far is quite excellent. As a social and political history it proceeds so well, written by a man who has complete command of such a wide range of sources and subjects. In a hundred pages he has given me greater insight to the premiership of Edward Heath than Phillip Ziegler, Heath’s official biographer, did in almost seven times as many.

I now begin to understand the full tragedy of Heath. I will say more about this soon, but to give you a flavour I think the years from 1970 to 1974 stand comparison in British history with the four-year period from 1910 to 1914, summed up so well by George Dangerfield in the classic The Strange Death of Liberal England. If I were to write a book about the Heath period I think I may very well call it The Strange Death of Consensus Britain.

Before I leave you I must mention one small item of information in Sandbrook’s book that made me laugh out loud; indeed, it did (I’ve written Ha! Ha! Ha! in the margin to mark the occasion). It concerns the proposed closure of loss-making shipyards on the River Clyde in 1971. Rather than accept this, the workers, led by one Jimmy Reid, organised an occupation of the shipyards which eventually forced the government to back down.

During the height of the dispute criticism was lodged against the government for its perceived callous indifference. At one point Heath, a keen sailor, took a break to participate in the Admiral’s Cup race. Harold Wilson, leading the Labour opposition, saw an opportunity, my, did he see an opportunity. He would sail a boat up the Clyde as a gesture of solidarity with the beleaguered workers to contrast with Heath’s jaunt. Not just that, but he intended to do so in style!

Wilson was enrolled as an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the national lighthouse authority, an honorary title accorded to all former prime ministers. This gave him the right to wear the uniform, which he intended to do on his banana-boat voyage. As Sandbrook says, the spectacle of the Leader of the Opposition sailing up the Clyde dressed as lighthouse keeper really would have been worth seeing. Sadly, he was dissuaded by Tony Benn, a leading left-winger in the Shadow Cabinet, who noted in his diary that “my contempt for Harold, which has been pretty high this week, reached a peak.” Oh, if only he had kept his mouth shut. But that was something Benn could never do.

I have to leave you now; the boulders are waiting. :-)

46 comments:

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  5. Ah, so you lived through the seventies, did you? :-)

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  8. Your dismissal of Sandbrook. I can see nothing at all Bourbon about this book. :-))

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  9. In spirit I visit the seventeenth century. In body this is my age!

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  13. Golly gosh, where have I come across that before?! Shall I go back to the seventeenth century? :-))

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  15. All I can so is that's not my reading of the book, so far anyway. I certainly don't expect a major change of gear in the seven hundred or so pages I have left. If I remember I think you took exception to some comment that he made on seventies fashions? Adam, I think they were funny verging on the ridiculous. I certainly don't wish to cause offence in saying this, but as I told you when my class was shown an old OU recording of Arthur Marwick dressed in a floral shirt and kipper tie we were overcome by gales of laughter! No matter; if you don’t want to read the book don’t read it.

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  17. It's just that you said that you would 'go back' to the 1970s, which rather suggests that you had already been there. No matter; let it pass. Bigots, yes that's us! More than that I simply love gutter-press ideology. :-))

    On a serious point I'm not quite sure what horrors the poor old Bourbons inflicted on France, certainly in contrast to what came after 1789.

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  19. The Edict of Fontainebleau had unpleasant consequences, yes, but nothing as unpleasant as the Terror. The Bourbons were no more squalid or bellicose than the Tudors or the Plantagenets before them.

    I ridiculed no one. I simply found Arthur Marwick's shirt and tie combination absurdly funny. If that makes me one with the National Front and North Korean communists that's something I shall just have to live with. :-)

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  22. Monarchs do what monarchs do. I could go on about Henry VIII's attempts to revive the claim to the French Crown or Elizabeth's provocation of the Spanish but it's late and I'm tired. I will just say that monarchs do what monarchs do. The Bourbons simply fished in a bigger pond, that's all. In relative terms Henry was just as ruinous for the English crown as Louis XIV was for the French.

    I do think you should reflect, Adam, on the way you express yourself, on the extreme way you express yourself. If you want to dismiss me as a member of the National Front because I found a man in a floral shirt ridiculous then I really have no more to say.

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  24. I feel your pain. My solution is to be several years behind the curve. This gives me the luxury of skipping ephemera and reading around the gems. E.g. I've just got round to reading A.N.Wilson's "Victorians". Before starting on the next installment I hope to read "Victorian Firebrand" (biography of J.S.Mill), some Carlysle, Dickens, Tennyson & Kipling.

    P.S. don't be too harsh on Tony Benn. He was silly but principled. I was shocked to find myself in complete agreement with him on Europe.

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  25. Can't be done, Ana. More than 100,000 books are published (in English) every year . . . and the number is increasing. Add in dissertations and academic publications and you'll be lucky to keep abreast of the highlights. You are going to have to learn to be very, very selective - or random. On the plus side, what you read now will stick with you in a way that becomes less effective with age, so stuff your head with as much as you can, now. And be eclectic in your choices: originality often consists of mixing well-known disparities from unrelated fields and drawing the connections between them. Everything is connected.

    BTW: I was about your age in the 1970s, and I can attest Heath and Wilson were both shits, and all of us young dudes were sartorially exquisite, romantic, creative, courageous, and modest. Except Marwick, who was already past his sell-by.

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  27. Sucio, behind the curve you may be, but you really are mining some gems! If Benn had actively encouraged Childe Harold to sail up the Clyde as a lighthouse keeper I can assure you I would rate him very highly indeed!

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  28. Calvin, I fear you are right, even if I narrow myself down simply to the field of history.

    As far as your sartorial elegance is concerned I'm sure you were a delight to behold! I tried to find a YouTube video or even a picture of Marwick in that shirt and tie combo, sadly with no success. He also had long hair and a beard at the time. In the only picture I can find of him now he looks as old as Methuselah. I note that he died aged 70 in 2006, so I'm guessing he must have been somewhere in his early to mid thirties in the Open University broadcast. He was not a delight to behold, the poor old soul. Still, he brought us a lot of amusement, even if his presentation was a tad on the dullish side. :-)

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  34. I really am not quite sure which I enjoy most: the quite excellent prose of Ana (always thought provoking)or the exchanges between the good lady and Mr Garrie.

    Inevitably when a slight difference of opinion occurs it is difficult not to recall Leo Tolstoy's excellent comment: "historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them."

    Keep up the good work, it is not only thought provoking it is, at times, hugely entertaining!

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  35. You can laugh at my floral shirts as much as you please, Anastasia. If you can find the Bangladeshi rag-heap they're probably rotting on while awaiting recycling.

    I think the styles of the 70s were actually an attempt to revive something of the whimsy of the 19th Century. Shame the real thing can't come back..I like those Onedin Line costumes.

    On the subject of reading..I know the pain..so little time and an ever-proliferating body of enormously interesting writing. Speed-reading? A hoax.

    October 14 is a significant anniversary in WA and I have an interesting yarn you may like to hear about it. Is your current email available through Wikipedia? If so I'll send it to you.

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  36. Oh, my goodness, Adam, you musn't concern yourself; it's not important! Even when I disagree with what you say I always value your contributions, even if, on occasions, you push your point further than I would. :-)

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  37. Dear Retarius, another beautiful romantic. I just wish I could show you Marwick that was! My email should still be avialable on Wikipedia, but in case it is not post your own here - I won't publish- then I will contact you directly.

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  38. Ana,
    For me, fashion is both an artistic passion and a deeply political affair. I welcome your forthcoming blog on fashion...yes, that's a request...most umbly

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  39. Adam, for me fashion is just fashion, and all contemporay!

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  43. For thee we dim the eyes and Stuff the head
    With all such reading as was never read:
    For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
    And write about it, Goddess, and about it.


    You should see my Amazon Wish List. I wonder how many of the books I intend to read will remain unread when I depart this God-forsaken abode. Thus the Sufi poet and humanist philosopher Bulleh Shah:

    One reads and reads thousands of books
    Yet has not read one's own
    One enters and frequents temples and mosques
    But has not entered one's own heart


    Having said that, I've just bought -

    Prose 1997 - 2008. Rehan Qayoom. (Revised & Updated).
    The Mirror of the Soul: The Forough Farrokhzad Trilogy. (DVD).
    Madder Music, Stronger Wine : The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet & Decadent. By Jad Adams.
    Poems & Journals 1960-1968. By Susan Alliston. She was to Assia Wevill what Assia Wevill was to Sylvia Plath!
    Memories of Ted Hughes 1952-1963. Daniel Huws.
    In The Mood For Love ... & more. (CD).
    At My Door. Samantha Marais. (CD).
    Guilty. Eau de Toilette by Gucci. (2).

    And as I write, I listen to the soundtrack to The Virgin Queen. I don't much like the other work by Mediæval Bæbes (not as much as this). It is a true masterpiece, I often listen to it when I have some hardcore writing to do. Requiring some good music and something to munch on. The soundtrack to Amélie, undying, much else, besides.

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  44. Rehan, you would not believe that number of ‘waiting to be reads’ in my collection, both in my rooms here and at home. Those I've mentioned above are but a tiny example! If I decided to stop now, to buy no more books, I reckon it would take, oh, two or three years to catch up, and that, I assure you, is a conservative estimate!

    You're listening to the Medieval Baebes, are you? How is that for a coincidence!!! Keep watching. :-)

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