New Statesman - 19 December 2011-01 January 2012

19 December 2011-1 January 2012/4.95 www.newstatesman.
com
Bill Gates The era of
innovation isnt over
Kate Atkinson A new
short story, Darktime
Philip Pullman
The world needs
wonder a defence
of fairy tales
Christmas
Daniel Dennett Carolyn Porco Carol Ann Dufy Paul Nurse Will Self
Sam Harris The free will delusion Tim Minchin Lying about Santa
Richard
Dawkins
Christopher Hitchens
Exclusive He talks to Richard Dawkins
about God, US politics and Tony Blair
Current afairs and newspaper magazine of the year
Double lssue
Guest editor:
19 DECEMBER 2011 1 JANUARY 2012 | NEW STATESMAN | 3
Contents
19 December 2011 1 January 2012
Christmas issue guest editor: Richard Dawkins 6 Lord of the rings: the wonder of space 34
Up Front
Observations
Columns
Articles
In Pictures
The Critics
6 Leader
8 Correspondence
12 In the Picture
13 History Bart D Ehrmaninvestigates the story of Jesuss birth
14 Medicine Edzard Ernst makes an apology, of sorts, to Prince Charles
15 Science Helen Lewis-Hasteleysalutes the Royal Institutions Christmas lectures
15 In the Red Laurie Pennyon the Santas who started a riot
17 Commons Confidential Kevin Maguire on what Michael Gove did with a traffic cone
17 Guyana Girish Gupta visits a jungle outpost at the centre of a new gold rush
11 First Thoughts Peter Wilbyon bulldog spirit, Camerons secret plan and a litre of wine a day
18 The Politics Column Rafael Behr explains why the Eurosceptic vision is the only one in town
21 The Guest Column Douglas Alexander offers to work with the Lib Dems over Europe
23 Technology Bill Gates believes that innovation is the way to save the worlds poor
25 Religion Maryam Namazie on why the Charlie Hebdo attack was an assault on free speech
27 Education Rabbi Jonathan Romainweighs in against faith schools for entrenching division
28 Cover Story Never be afraid of stridency The NSguest editor talks to Christopher Hitchens
34 Adventures in wonderland Carolyn Porcoguides us through the solar system to Saturn
38 The NS InterviewSophie Elmhirst asks Carol Ann Duffy about poetry, politics and sexism
40 Give em hell, Barry Alan Ryansurveys the US political scene and finds cause for optimism
46 The free will delusion Sam Harris unpicks the complex neuroscience of free will
48 Christmas Essay The social cell The philosopher Daniel Dennett on the ties that bind us
54 The tyranny of the discontinuous mind Richard Dawkins asks why we dont like grey areas
59 The vision thing Paul Nurse makes the case for investment in science, a key driver of growth
60 The NS Quiz Olav Bjortomt tests your knowledge on the best and oddest news of 2011
Illustrations and cartoons By Jon Berkeley, Grizelda, Tom Kirbyand Josh Poehlein
68 Short Story darktime Kate Atkinsonimagines the end of the world as we know it
74 Critic at Large Imaginary friends Philip Pullmanremembers his childhood love of fairy tales
78 The sense of an ending Nicholas Clee says the rise in ebook sales has not saved publishers yet
79 The Books InterviewJonathan Derbyshire talks to the Swedish war historian Peter Englund
80 The killing machine Richard J Evans praises a major new biography of Heinrich Himmler
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4 | NEW STATESMAN | 19 DECEMBER 2011 1 JANUARY 2012
Back Pages
83 Only the lonely Julie Myersonreviews the art critic Brian Sewells tell-all autobiography
85 Known unknown Ryan Gilbeyon a parable of modern loneliness, Dreams of a Life
85 Bubbles with your Bubl Rachel Cooke rounds up some Christmas delights on television
87 Farce poetica Andrew Billenrevels in a high-spirited performance of The Ladykillers
88 Magic moments Antonia Quirke picks out her recommendations for Christmas listening
89 Madam A poem by Christopher Logue, the late New Statesmancontributor
89 Real Meals Will Self explains why he loathes the festive meal: for the gluttony it demands
More reviews: Sophie Elmhirst takes on the big one God, Jonathan Derbyshire on great
Scots and Frozen Planet takes us into worlds of ice-bound beauty
91 Drink Nina Caplansuggests that overdoing it during the holidays is best done in style
92 NS Christmas Crossword Otterden. Plus answers to the Christmas Quiz
93 NS Christmas Puzzles Brain-teasers to keep you busy on Boxing Day
95 CompetitionOur final literary challenge for 2011. Plus answers to the Puzzles
97 The Fan Hunter Davies gathers up his best football jokes. Plus This England
98 I love Christmas for its frictions Tim Minchinon fessing up about Santa and God
The New Year
issue of the
NS is out on
Thursday
29 December.
Until then
Merry
Christmas!
Fairy godfather: Philip Pullman 68 Poets corner: Carol Ann Duffy 38
Cover artwork
Julian de Narvaez/
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Established 1913
Do you get it now,
Prime Minister?
Dear Prime Minister,
Merry Christmas! I mean it. All that Happy Holiday Season
stuff, with holiday cards and holiday presents, is a tire-
some import from the US, where it has long been fostered
more by rival religions than by atheists. A cultural Anglican
(whose family has been part of the Chipping Norton Set
since 1727, as youll see if you look around you in the parish
church), I recoil from secular carols such as White Christ-
mas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the loath-
some Jingle Bells, but Im happy to sing real carols, and in
the unlikely event that anyone wants me to read a lesson Ill
gladly oblige only from the King James Version, of course.
Token objections to cribs and carols are not just silly, they
distract vital attention from the real domination of our culture
and politics that religion still gets away with, in (tax-free)
spades. Theres an important difference between traditions
freely embraced by individuals and traditions enforced by
government edict. Imagine the outcry if your government
were to require every family to celebrate Christmas in a reli-
gious way. You wouldnt dream of abusing your power like
that. And yet your government, like its predecessors, does
force religion on our society, in ways whose very familiarity
disarms us. Setting aside the 26 bishops in the House of Lords,
passing lightly over the smooth inside track on which the
Charity Commission accelerates faith-based charities to tax-
free status while others (quite rightly) have to jump through
hoops, the most obvious and most dangerous way in which
governments impose religion on our society is through faith
schools as Rabbi Jonathan Romain reminds us on page 27.
We should teach about religion, if only because religion is
such a salient force in world politics and such a potent driver
of lethal conflict. We need more and better instruction in com-
parative religion (and Im sure youll agree with me that any
education in English literature is sadly impoverished if the
child cant take allusions from the King James Bible). But faith
schools dont so much teach about religion as indoctrinate in
the particular religion that runs the school. Unconscionably,
they give children the message that they belong specifically
to one particular faith, usually that of their parents, paving the
way, at least in places such as Belfast and Glasgow, for a life-
time of discrimination and prejudice.
Psychologists tell us that, if you experimentally separate
children in any arbitrary way say, dress half of them in
green T-shirts and half in orange they will develop in-group
loyalty and outgroup prejudice. To continue the experiment,
suppose that, when they grow up, greens only marry greens
and oranges only marry oranges. Moreover, green children
only go to green schools and orange children to orange
schools. Carry on for 300 years and what have you got? North-
ern Ireland, or worse. Religion may not be the only divisive
power that can propel dangerous prejudices down through
many generations (language and race are other candidates)
but religion is the only one that receives active government
support in the form of schools.
So deeply ingrained is this divisive ethos in our social con-
sciousness that journalists, and indeed most of us, breezily
refer to Catholic children, Protestant children, Muslim
children, Christian children, even where the children are
too young to decide what they
think about questions that di-
vide the various faiths. We as-
sume that children of Catholic
parents (for instance) just are
Catholic children, and so
on. A phrase such as Muslim
child should grate like fin-
gernails on a blackboard. The
appropriate substitution is child of Muslim parents.
I satirised the faith-labelling of children, in the Guardianlast
month (26 November), using an analogy that almost every-
body gets as soon as he hears it we wouldnt dream of la-
belling a child a Keynesian child simply because her parents
were Keynesian economists. Mr Cameron, you replied to that
serious and sincere point with what could distinctly be heard
on the audio version as a contemptuous snigger: Comparing
John Maynard Keynes to Jesus Christ shows, in my view, why
Richard Dawkins just doesnt really get it. Do you get it now,
Prime Minister? Obviously I was not comparing Keynes with
Jesus. I could just as well have used monetarist child or fas-
cist child or postmodernist child or Europhile child.
Moreover, I wasnt talking specifically about Jesus, any more
than Muhammad or the Buddha.
In fact, I think you got it all along. If you are like several
government ministers (of all three parties) to whom I have
spoken, you are not really a religious believer yourself. Sev-
eral ministers and ex-ministers of education whom I have
met, both Conservative and Labour, dont believe in God
but, to quote the philosopher Daniel Dennett, they do be-
Your government
forces religion on
our society in ways
whose familiarity
disarms us
lieve in belief. A depressingly large number of intelligent
and educated people, despite having outgrown religious
faith, still vaguely presume without thinking about it that
religious faith is somehow good for other people, good for
society, good for public order, good for instilling morals,
good for the common people even if we chaps dont need it.
Condescending? Patronising? Yes, but isnt that largely what
lies behind successive governments enthusiasm for faith
schools?
Baroness Warsi, your Minister Without Portfolio (and
without election), has been at pains to inform us that this
coalition government does indeed do God. But we who
elected you mostly do not. It is possible that the recent census
may register a slight majority of people ticking the Christ-
ian box. However, the UK branch of the Richard Dawkins
Foundation for Reason and Science commissioned an Ipsos
MORI poll in the week following the census. When pub-
lished, this will enable us to see how many people who self-
identified as Christian are believers.
Meanwhile, the latest British Social Attitudes survey, just
published, clearly demonstrates that religious affiliation, reli-
gious observance and religious attitudes to social issues have
all continued their long-term decline and are now irrelevant
to all but a minority of the population. When it comes to life
choices, social attitudes, moral dilemmas and sense of iden-
tity, religion is on its deathbed, even for many of those who
still nominally identify with a religion.
This is good news. It is good news because if we depended
on religion for our values and our sense of cohesion we would
be well and truly stuck. The very idea that we might get our
morals from the Bible or the Quran will horrify any decent
person today who takes the trouble to read those books
rather than cherry-pick the verses that happen to conform
to our modern secular consensus. As for the patronising as-
sumption that people need the promise of heaven (or the
obscene threat of torture in hell) in order to be moral, what a
contemptibly immoral motive for being moral! What binds
us together, what gives us our sense of empathy and compas-
sion our goodness is something far more important, more
fundamental and more powerful than religion: it is our com-
mon humanity, deriving from our pre-religious evolutionary
heritage, then refined and improved, as Professor Steven
Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature, by centuries
of secular enlightenment.
A diverse and largely secular country such as Britain should
not privilege the religious over the non-religious, or impose
or underwrite religion in any aspect of public life. A govern-
ment that does so is out of step with modern demographics
and values. You seemed to understand that in your excellent,
and unfairly criticised, speech on the dangers of multicul -
turalism in February this year. Modern society requires and
deserves a truly secular state, by which I mean not state athe-
ism, but state neutrality in all matters pertaining to religion:
the recognition that faith is personal and no business of the
state. Individuals must always be free to do God if they wish;
but a government for the people certainly should not.
With my best wishes to you and your family for a happy
Christmas,
Richard Dawkins. l
newstatesman.com/leader A
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newstatesman.com/letters
Correspondence
relevant to a broad range of policy
decisions. To suggest otherwise
smacks of a hubris, which leads to
excessive faith in supposedly
scientific methodologies. This
is dangerous for policymakers.
Dr Carl Thompson
Via email
Khartoum motion
Peter Wilby was making a good
joke at Lib Dem expense when
he suggested that our record
was besmirched by Gladstones
failure to rescue General Gordon
in Khartoum (First Thoughts,
5 December). For me it was not
so funny: in the 1966 general
election, when I was fighting hard
to retain the seat I had won in the
by-election the previous year, my
wife was confronted by a woman,
when she was canvassing door
to door in Roxburghshire, who
said, I quite like your husband as
our MP but I could never vote
Liberal. Why not? asked Judy.
Because they didnt send help
to General Gordon. No doubt
people will have other reasons for
not voting Lib Dem nowadays.
David Steel
House of Lords
London SW1
Two points on Slavoj ieks
review of Coriolanus (The
Critics, 12 December). First,
clearly iek hasnt read Mehdi
Hasans well-argued and open-
minded piece in the same issue
(The power of a dangerous
idea) on the pacifism that is
at the core of monotheistic
religions and of others, too.
Second, iek paraphrases Steve
Weinbergs tired old aphorism:
only religion can make good
people do bad.
Weinberg actually said, But
for good people to do evil things,
that takes religion. And just
because Weinberg asserted
something doesnt mean its
true. Any belief, creed, religion
or ideology can be used to make
good people do bad things, but
its individuals who choose to
do those bad things, whatever
excuse they might give.
Contra ieks statement that
very few atheists engage in mass
murder: I dont imagine that Pol
Pots killers believed they were
slaughtering fellow Cambodians
for any reason other than that
they hoped to bring about the
end of religion (and capitalism)
in their brave new world.
Alastair Llewellyn-Smith
London W14
New old hatred
Regarding the Chief Rabbis
observations about anti-Zionism
and anti-Semitism (NS Interview,
28 November), the subtleties of
the association seem to elude
many commentators. Of course,
anti-Zionism is not innately anti-
Semitic, but it is contemporary
anti-Semitisms primary vehicle;
the current discourse is rich with
predictable old tropes.
Israel, we gather, has an
insatiable appetite for US money;
its lobbyists possess mystical
power and wealth; its behaviour
toward Palestinians bears
comparison with the Nazis
actions; it holds Gentiles in
contempt because they are not
chosen. Meanwhile British
Jews should not be trusted in
diplomatic relations with Israel
lest they go native. Double
standards apply: the Israel
Defence Forces are inhumane,
whereas indiscriminate suicide
bombing and rocket fire from
Gaza are the understandable
product of a despair engendered
by Israeli inhumanity.
Here, as ever, Jews have only
themselves to blame for their
predicament. The oldest hatred
LETTER OF THE WEEK
In the name of God
lSend letters for publication
to letters@newstatesman.co.uk,
fax to 020 7305 7304 or to the
address on page 3. We reserve the
right to edit letters and to publish
a further selection on our website.
Pride and plebs
There are different interpretations
of Coriolanus (The Critics, 12
December). The late Paul Foots
interpretation shared, I believe,
by Bertold Brecht was that he
was a fascist who should have
been killed rather than exiled, and
the pleb tribunes were the heroes.
I have mixed feelings. He was a
great soldier and a war hero but
no politician, goaded into losing
his temper and consulship by
his courage, stubborn pride and
snobbery. He and his friends
could have slaughtered their
opponents in battle. Yet the plebs
tribunes had reason to fear a
Coriolanus consulship, as their
powers had been granted against
his opposition. The likes of Sparta
are good allies but bad role models.
Mark Taha
London SE26
We are animals
I accept Mehdi Hasans point that
some followers of religion can do
good in the world (The power of
a dangerous idea, 12 December).
I am an anti-theist: the evidence
from such sources as astronomy
demonstrates that there is no god
out there in the universe. There
would still be wars and injustice
if there was no religion, as we are
part of the animal world. But we
do not need any religious beliefs
to have principles of justice,
freedom and non-violent action.
Michael Moore
Loughton, Essex
Method man
Im a great admirer of Brian Cox,
but I wish hed stopped repeating
the silly mantra that making
rational decisions based on
evidence is somehow unique
to the scientific method (NS
Interview, 5 December). Believe it
or not, this is also what you do in
the serious study of literature and
history; its what happens in law
courts; and there are numerous
researchers up and down the
country assessing the evidence
is stealthily infecting the thinking
of too many self-professed
opponents of prejudice.
Keiron Pim
Norwich
Your bad health
I was disappointed to see the NS
publish such a one-sided view
of the Health and Social Care Bill
reforms (Health Supplement, 12
December). The benefits of choice
and competition in health care are
nowhere near as clear-cut as your
report would suggest. In markets,
neither choice nor competition is
a guarantee of improving quality
look at exam boards, bus services,
or private pensions.
Dr Katherine Teale
Manchester
Money galore
Peter Wilby (First Thoughts,
12 December) makes a good
point with regard to the German
attitude to inflation. But the idea
of inflation could do with more
analysis than it usually gets.
I remember many years ago
seeing Milton Friedman on the
television pointing to a printer
churning out dollar bills and
exclaiming: Thats the cause of
inflation! Nonsense. The need
for more money in circulation is
the result of inflation, not its cause.
Frank Jackson
Harlow, Essex
Let us adore her
Congratulations to Sophie
Elmhirst for her column
Advent (Word Games,
12 December). Writing (and
thinking) of that calibre is the
reason why I buy the New
Statesmanand nothing else.
Felix Sanchez del Rio
Felsted, Essex
Bill Gates
is the former chief
executive and current
chairman of Microsoft.
His work with the company
made him one of the richest
men in the world. In 2000, he
established the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation with his wife.
The foundations aims are to
enhance health care and reduce
extreme poverty and since its
inception it has committed over
$26bn in grants. Gates writes
about innovation that can help
the poor on page 23.
Kate Atkinson
is a novelist and
short-story writer.
Her first novel, Behind
the Scenes at the Museum, won
the Whitbread Prize in 1995.
She has also written a series
of crime novels featuring the
former detective and now
private investigator Jackson
Brodie. Her new short story
darktime is on page 68.
Daniel Dennett
is an American
philosopher, cognitive
scientist and writer. He
is a professor at Tufts University,
Massachusetts, and one of the
Four Horsemen of New
Atheism, along with Richard
Dawkins, Sam Harris and
Christopher Hitchens.
Dennetts most recent book, co-
authored with Alvin Plantinga
is Science and Religion (Oxford
University Press, 6.99). His
essay on social systems and the
biological cell is on page 48.
Carolyn Porco
is an American
planetary scientist
based at the University
of Colorado at Boulder. She leads
the imaging science team on
the joint Nasa/European Space
Agency/Italian Space Agency
Cassini mission, now in orbit
around Saturn. Her photographs
from the mission and essay on
the wonders of space exploration
are on page 34.
Sam Harris
is a fellow horseman
of New Atheism,
neuroscientist and
polemicist. He has written a
series of books on atheism and
philosophy, including The End
of Faith, Letter to a Christian
Nationand The Moral Landscape.
Free Will, his new book, will
be published in February 2012.
His piece on this subject,
arguing that it is a delusion,
appears on page 46.
Philip Pullman
is the bestselling
author of the His Dark
Materials trilogy.
A recent work, The Good Man
Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ,
retold the story of Jesus, and
Pullman has been outspoken on
the subject of faith and religion.
He is also a strong advocate for
civil rights and defender of
public libraries. His account
of his childhood games and
imaginary friends is on page 74.
Children, Pullman argues, are
perfectly capable of immersing
themselves in an imaginary
world without believing in
it wholeheartedly.
Maryam Namazie
is a campaigner,
commentator and
broadcaster. She is the
spokesperson for Equal Rights
Now: Organisation against
Womens Discrimination in
Iran, the One Law for All
Campaign against Sharia Law
in Britain and the Council of Ex-
Muslims of Britain. She works
closely with Iran Solidarity,
which she founded, and the
International Committee
Against Stoning. Her column on
free expression is on page 25.
CONTRIBUTORS
The TALISKER word and associated logos are trade marks 2011
THE SINGLE MALT
MADE BY THE SEA
Camerons real agenda, the new
Dark Ages and a litre of wine a day
Peter Wilby
|
First Thoughts
Why do we all find Europe so boring? I dont
mean were bored with France, Italy, Spain,
Greece or even Belgium but bored with the
idea of Europe as embodied in the EU. David
Cameron, I suspect, spoke for many when
he said, of the most important meeting of
European leaders since oh, I dont know
Munich 1938: I dont actually think the world
is waiting with bated breath . . . wondering
whether theres going to be a new reverse
QMV article on integrated budget setting of
blah, blah, blah.
I have lunched, dined and drunk with vari-
ous informed and opinionated people over the
past two weeks and I cannot recall exchanging
a single word on the EUs fate. If the British, as
polls suggest, want to get out of the EU and
warmly endorse Camerons use of the veto, it
is probably because they think they wont have
to listen to politicians and pundits wittering
interminably on about Europe.
Change the script
Perhaps theres something about the word
Europe. It doesnt somehow roll off the
tongue the European people or my fellow
Europeans wouldnt have the same ring as
the British people or my fellow Americans
possibly because its short on hard conso-
nants. But it is surely more than that. Most po-
litical entities have some inspirational history
behind them: a struggle against colonialism,
say, or an assertion of great ideals. They have
myths, heroes and sacred texts. Europe is just a
geographical location, a land mass where peo-
ple agreed to stop fighting one another. In that,
it has been extraordinarily successful, perhaps
more so than any other human political en-
deavour of the past 100 years. We should not
underestimate what that meant, and still
means, to older generations who lived through
two savage wars.
But where is the poetry? Where are the
great tales to pass on to younger generations?
Americas story begins with the Boston Tea
Party, George Washington and a declaration
that all men are created equal; Europes with
the Coal and Steel Community, the lawyer
Robert Schuman and a declaration of determi-
nation to create the first supranational institu-
tion. If the EU dies, it will be for lack of a
decent scriptwriter.
The bulldogs back
There are many puzzling aspects of Camerons
Brussels veto. Why jeopardise a proposal that
appears to institutionalise the deflationary,
anti-Keynesian deficit reduction policies that
the coalition follows? Why be so insouciant
about turning us into an offshore Switzerland,
when Camerons party has historically set such
store by Britain retaining its place at the inter-
national top table?
Politically, however, it is win-win for
Cameron. He need no longer fear a Lib Dem
walkout from the coalition; on the contrary, he
may do everything possible to provoke it. He
can just call an election and ride to outright vic-
tory, posing as the leader who revived the
wartime Churchillian bulldog spirit. That, I
think, is his real agenda.
Bad marks
Most parents, I would guess, think GCSEs, A-
levels and other exams for teenagers are set and
marked by public bodies, learned societies or
universities. Now the Daily Telegraph has ex-
posed the truth: the exams that determine the
life chances of millions are mainly controlled
by private companies, one of which is owned,
along with Penguin Books and the Financial
Times, by the publishing giant Pearson. They
operate on commercial lines (though some are
technically non-profit) and compete fiercely
with each other. To maximise market share,
each board tells schools, which are themselves
in a competitive market, that it offers the best
chance of high grades. As part of the service, it
puts on, for schools that can spare a few hun-
dred pounds, courses on how to help pupils
through the exams.
Thats what can happen when the market is
allowed to penetrate every corner of national
life. Michael Gove proposes just one exam
board for each subject and quotes with ap-
proval the example of collectivist Scotland
where he was educated. So a Tory Education
Secretary, after an investigation by a Tory
newspaper, agrees that markets can be bad.
No, you really couldnt make it up.
The roaring 400s
The contrived jollity of Christmas normally
leaves me in a Bah, humbug! frame of mind
but, this year, I wonder if I should make a spe-
cial effort with the flimsy paper hats, useless
trinkets and weak jokes that fall out of the over-
priced crackers. Next year, we probably wont
be able to afford crackers, even if we feel like
pulling them. Think of it: financial Armaged-
don, war with Iran, a Republican crazy in the
White House and, to cap it all, a royal jubilee
plus the hullabaloo of the London Olympics.
Only the last two, I concede, are certainties
but it is hard to imagine that 2012 will bring
much cheer. A columnist in the FT, which is
oddly keen on apocalyptic predictions, takes
seriously the possibility that this is not a reprise
of the 1970s or even the 1930s but of the early
fifth century, when the Roman empire fell, the
Dark Ages began and the British economy (the
archaeological record suggests) regressed by
400 years. His conclusion that it wont be
quite as bad as that is not terribly reassuring.
Vine advice
Even to curmudgeons such as myself the season
presents dangers to health. I shall therefore take
inspiration from a French government poster
that a friend swears he remembers from the late
1950s or early 1960s. It showed a glass of wine
and superimposed upon it the words: Only
a litre a day! Happy Christmas. l
Peter Wilby was editor of the New Statesman
from 1998-2005
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Were not a Nativity . . . We live here
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IN THE PICTURE
10 December 2011: Police guard the
interior ministry in Moscow during a
protest against suspected fraud in
Russias parliamentary elections. Tens
of thousands of demonstrators called
for an end to rule by Vladimir Putin
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Medicine Edzard Ernst makes an apology to Prince Charles
Science Helen Lewis-Hasteleyon 220 years of Royal Institution lectures
In the RedLaurie Pennyon Santa Claus, extremism and peaceful protest
Commons Confidential Kevin Maguire reveals a secret from Michael Goves past
Guyana Girish Gupta on a new gold rush caused by the financial crisis
HISTORY
Dark side of
the manger
Bart D Ehrman
These two versions of
events cannot be reconciled. In
Matthew, Joseph and Mary live
in Bethlehem before, during
and after the birth; they leave to
escape the kings wrath and only
later relocate to Nazareth.
Not so for Luke, who introduces
the census precisely to take the
couple to Bethlehem so that
the child can be born where the
Hebrew prophet Micah had
predicted. Moreover, if Matthew
is right that the holy family fled to
Egypt, Luke can scarcely be right
that they returned home just a
month after the birth.
Star treatment
Not only are the accounts at odds,
each is problematic on its own
terms. Matthew introduces the
star leading the wise men to Jesus,
a star that moves, stops over
a city, disappears, reappears,
moves again and finally stops
over a small town, directly over
a particular house.
This was no star, comet or
supernova; and this is no
historical narrative. So, too, with
Lukes tax by Caesar requiring a
worldwide census. Joseph
registered in Bethlehem because
his ancestor King David came
from there. But David lived a
thousand years before Joseph.
Are we to believe that everyone
in the Roman empire returned
to the homes of their ancestors
of ten centuries earlier? They all
knew where to go? And no other
ancient source mentions it?
Then again, none of these
stories is mentioned in other
ancient sources. But why would
they be? They are all part of
a complex myth. The myth is
O
nce more the season is
come upon us. At its heart
stands a tale of 2,000-year
vintage, the Christmas story.
Or perhaps we should say the
Christmas myth.
When post-Enlightenment
scholars turned their critical
tools on the tales of Scripture,
the birth of Jesus to a virgin in
Bethlehem was one of the first
subjected to sceptical scrutiny.
Not only was the notion of a
virgin birth deemed unhistorical
on general principle, the other
familiar aspects of the story were
seriously called into question.
The story comes to us as a
conflation of episodes found in
only two of our Gospels, Matthew
and Luke. (The Gospels of Mark
and John begin with Jesus as an
adult, and give no information
about the unusual circumstances
of his birth.) Combining these
accounts into a mega-story for an
annual Christmas pageant bears
a cost, as they are very much at
odds with one another.
Matthew alone has the wise
men bearing gifts, Luke alone has
the shepherds watching over
their flocks by night. Matthew
alone portrays the wrath of
Herod, foiled in his attempt to
destroy the child when an angel
warns Joseph to flee with his
family to Egypt. Luke alone
mentions that the whole world
is to be taxed by Caesar Augustus,
forcing Joseph and the pregnant
Mary both from the town of
Nazareth, in the northern part of
Israel to return to Josephs
ancestral home of Bethlehem to
register. It is while they are there
that Jesus is born, and the three
return home a month later. t
Observations
designed to show that Jesus
really did fulfil prophecy, starting
with the very beginning of his life.
Both Matthew and Luke told
stories to make it happen so that
Mary was a virgin who gave birth
in Bethlehem even though the
accounts cannot be historical.
We all have myths, stories that
buttress our view of the world
and make our understanding
of it appear natural; myths that
are religious, national, cultural,
political and economic. This is
true whether we are Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or
humanist; whether we are
English, American, French,
Cambodian, or Chinese;
whether we are capitalists,
Marxists or anarchists. Or none
of the above.
We should be careful not to
rush to denigrate the myths of
others, as those tables are oh
so easily turned. But we should
also recognise myth for what
it is. The myth of Jesuss birth
contains good news for
believers. It maintains that we are
not alone. God came into the
world to save us from ourselves
and from others, from the evil,
pain, misery and suffering that is
otherwise the lot of mortals
here on earth.
At the same time, it is easy
to see the problems with this
myth. The Christ child who
brought good news for his
followers brought very bad
news for others not just the
innocents of Bethlehem who
were slaughtered in his wake, but
also all those Jews who refused
to come and worship him in the
manger. The myth, needless to
say, had some very bad after
effects in the centuries to follow.
Myths are like that and not
just the Christian ones. They
can have a dark underside, often
obscured for their devotees. Even
a myth so seemingly innocent as
a babe laid in a manger. l
Bart D Ehrman is the James A
Gray Distinguished Professor
of Religious Studies at the
University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. His most recent book
is Forged: Writing in the Name
of God Why the Bibles Authors
Are Not Who We Think They Are
(HarperOne, 19.99)
Too good to be true: an illustration from Claris Artis, a 17th-century treatise on alchemy
A
ll right, all right, I admit
that I have been unfair.
In July this year, at a press
conference, I got carried away and
called Prince Charless Duchy
Herbals Detox Tincture Dodgy
Originals. Even worse, I recently
suggested that he is a snake-oil
salesman. But now, in the true
Christmas spirit, I am ready to take
it all back. Not only that, I profess
that Charless magic detox potion
might be thegift for this years
festive season.
Christmas is the time when we
all overindulge. We eat too much,
we drink even more and we move
too little. Everybody knows how
unhealthy this is, but habits die
hard and inertia is laborious to
overcome. No sweat, says the
heir to the throne, just buy my
Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture
and all will be pukka.
According to the Duchy
Originals website, the biologically
grown dandelions and artichokes
in this remedy support the
bodys natural elimination and
detoxification processes. Isnt
that just great?
Some say that Charles has a
bee in his royal bonnet about all
things alternative, particularly
medicine. He does not know what
he is talking about, they claim.
I think this is too harsh after all,
its only alternative medicine.
Sure, when playing with the big
boys in conventional health care,
one should be in possession of a
functioning brain, but Charles
isnt into all that. For alternative
medicine, enthusiasm can be
quite enough.
Pass the Duchy
And, by Jove, enthusiasm he
and his marketers from Duchy
Originals do have by the
bucketload. They even assure
us that the Detox Tincture has
been produced to the highest
quality standards. True British
quality: thank you, Charles, we
didnt expect anything less.
Considering this level of
excellence, the tincture is a steal
at 9.19 for a 50ml bottle, or
183.80 a litre. Here, Charles
demonstrates his empathy with
us commoners; this is a present
we all can afford.
Dont expect too much in the
way of science, though. Indeed,
the tincture turns out to be
unadulterated alchemy no
evidence at all that the dandelion
and artichoke mixture supports
the bodys detoxification
processes. The NHS Choices
website (nhs.uk) agrees. It bluntly
states: There is no evidence that
the process of detox works.
The British Dietetic Association
goes one impolite step further
and calls the whole idea a load
of nonsense.
But please, lets get a sense
of proportion here: absence
of evidence is not evidence of
absence of detoxification. And
anyway, who wants rationality for
Christmas? It is the season of joy
and belief. So, for Christs sake,
lets not be beastly to the Prince
of alchemy-based medicine.
Lets put some faith in our
future king. Lets make our
friends and family happy with an
affordable bottle of his magic
potion. If it does not eliminate any
toxins from our bodies, at the
very least, it will eliminate money
from our wallets. l
Edzard Ernst is professor of
complementary medicine at
the University of Exeter
MEDICINE
Charles, prince
of alchemy
Edzard Ernst
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cience is always better when
it involves things going
bang. So perhaps it should
surprise no one that so many of
the Christmas lectures at the
Royal Institution have involved
explosions or minor acts of arson.
Even Christopher Zeeman, the
first mathematician to do one,
blew up a light fitting; although
he also insisted on showing the
children a series of mathematical
proofs on waveforms, so they did
deserve some sort of reward.
The lectures, which started
in 1825, offer leading scientists a
chance to explain their specialism
to teenagers. Michael Faraday,
who gave 19 of them, laid out
the rules: speak for less than an
hour and make sure the path
be strewed with flowers.
The live recordings are always
heavily subscribed and more than
two million viewers saw them
last year on BBC4.
Ask most scientists and theyll
be able to tell you their favourite
perhaps Carl Sagan talking about
human beings astronomical
egotism in 1977; Richard
Dawkins in a Hawaiian shirt
being assaulted by stick insects
in 1991; or the physicist Eric M
Rogers firing himself off stage
on a sledge powered by two fire
extinguishers tucked under his
arms in 1979. (The 77-year-old
was widely reckoned to be the
most dangerous experimenter the
RI ever hosted.)
Preparations for the Christmas
lectures begin well in advance,
several months for the scientist
and more for the lab technicians
in charge of the complicated props
that have become a hallmark of
the series. I got a chance to see the
techies in action on 3 December
at an event called Ghosts of
Christmas Lectures Past.
It was held to raise money for
the programme, which had to
be scaled back from five days to
three last year because of funding
problems at the RI. The host
for the evening was Robin Ince,
Something miraculous occurred
on 9 December. Hundreds of
robed and bearded men, many
of them carrying unmarked
packages, descended on central
London. A lot of them openly
claimed to have flown around
the world without passports,
collecting information on
millions of private citizens,
surviving on food donations
provided by credulous followers
and breaking into private homes
at night to deliver suspicious
parcels. Yet not one member of
the 2011 SantaCon was arrested.
The new global Christmas
tradition of revellers emerging
from the bowels of the internet
dressed in tacky Santa suits
and flashmobbing public
squares to drink heavily and
give vaguely to charity is,
in practical terms, more of a
health and safety threat than
many modern-day street
protests. In Auckland, New
Zealand, in 2005, tanked-up
Santas really did start a full-on
riot, looting stores, throwing
bottles and generally causing
jolly havoc. Yet the terrifying
paraphernalia of police
militarisation deployed during
the nationwide public-sector
strikes on 30 November was
nowhere in evidence. Not
a single Santa has been detained
or stopped and searched in
Britain this year, even though
that mustering in large groups
and giving out free treats is now
more than enough to get you on
the official naughty list.
According to a recent
Terrorism/extremism
update, sent by the City of
London Police to business
leaders, protesters
against corporate
greed in London and
elsewhere are now
considered domestic
terrorists alongside
external threats
such as al-Qaeda
and Belarusian
extremists. Police ask local
members of the 1 per cent and
their employees to be extra-
vigilant, particularly when
talking to young people
with cameras in their hands.
Peaceful protesters who spend
their time distributing soup to
the homeless and holding
earnest open discussions about
the future of capitalism are
considered the same flavour of
security risk as the perpetrators
of the 7 July 2005 bombings.
Present danger
This says more about mission
creep in the war on terror
than it does about the protesters.
Anti-terror legislation has
long been used to intimidate
ordinary citizens in 2009-
2010, not a single charge of
terrorism was made over the
course of 101,248 stop-and-
searches under Section 44 of the
Terrorism Act, use of which
disproportionately targets
young black men in urban areas.
Now, however, it seems that
the description terrorist
itself is fungible enough that
it can be applied to anyone who
challenges the status quo.
In the US, the National
Defence Authorisation Act for
the fiscal year 2012 enshrines
in policy the militarys power
to seize and hold suspected
terrorists indefinitely, without
charge or trial, until hostilities
end which in an age of
perpetual war can mean
anything. The definition of
terrorist activity is up to
the state department and
suspected terrorists can
include citizens of any country,
including the US. The
prospect of peaceful domestic
dissidents on the left and the
right of the political spectrum
being held without trial
remains unlikely
but for how long? l
newstatesman.com/
blogs/laurie-penny
IN THE RED
Santa Claus domestic terrorist?
Laurie Penny
a comedian obsessed with Sagan
and Richard Feynman, the pioneer
of quantum mechanics.
True to Christmas lecture form,
the props were amazing: Simon
Singh brought out an Enigma
machine and explained how its
rotating cylinders created the
cipher that kept Bletchley Park
so busy during the Second World
War. The chemist Andrea Sella
floated soap bubbles in ether
in honour of James Dewars 1878
lectures on the subject (Theres
no bar tonight, joked Ince, so
breathe deeply). And the stand-
up mathematician Matt Parker
brought out Zeemans original
wave-generator from 1978: a long
snake of slats strung along a wire.
Life cycle
The best entrance of the night
belonged to the material scientist
Mark Miodownik, who rode in
on a ten-foot unicycle a homage
to the 1968 series on Gullivers
Laws by Philip Morrison of MIT,
who had giant stationery made
to make the audience feel like
Lilliputians. As a newspaper
at the time put it: A 5ft professor
who helped make the atomic
bomb has come to London with
an 8ft pencil . . . an urgent little
man of 54, he flew overnight
from New York and drove
straight to the Institute. There
he disported himself with
the vast pencil, a 12ft ruler and
the smallest motor in the world.
(Now, thats how to write.)
The point of the pencil was
that scale matters; as Morrison
told his audience, elephants cant
jump because of the size of their
leg muscles proportionate to their
total mass. Last year, Miodownik
took on the principle by proving
that a hamster is small enough to
survive a fall from a skyscraper.
The scientist on the hot spot
in 2011 is the psychologist
Bruce Hood, who refuses to be
drawn on his props though
he promises lots of brains to
help him explain what it means
to be human. In between last-
minute rehearsals, he told me:
Im not nervous in the slightest.
And if you believe that, youll
believe anything. l
The RI Lectures are on BBC4 on
27, 28 and 29 December at 8pm
SCIENCE
Bang goes
the theory
Helen Lewis-Hasteley
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COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL
The Cone Secretary strikes again
Kevin Maguire
Michael Gove, educashon
dunce, is one of the most rabid
Euroseptics in Little Englander
Dave Camerons jingoistic band.
But its Im All Right Micks
history as an unruly striker that
is of renewed interest, after your
correspondent encountered an
eyewitness to a notorious
incident that ended with the
Militant Minister bundled into
a police van.
I heardan intriguing explanation
for Liam Byrnes Theres no
money left suicide note. Byrne
left it for his Tory mate Philip
Hammond, who was expected
to be chief secretary. Instead the
Lib Dumb David Laws briefly
got the job and released the letter.
I hear Byrne, whose seat is to be
axed, fancies running for mayor
of Birmingham. Nick Brown has
similar designs on
Newcastle.
Mike Elrick, on
strike with Gove
in Aberdeen
during a 1989 local
newspaper dispute
when both were
young hacks, spoke
out after Gove attacked
public servants as militants
itching for a fight over
pensions. Gove, embarrassed by
that photograph of a bespectacled
him on a picket line, plays
down his past. The reluctant
striker, sneered Elrick, led
a deputation of strikers to
Strasbourg to lobby MEPs and
to Tory conference.
Fast with a retort, Gisela Stuart.
On being introduced to Our Man
in Kabul, the Tory Bob Stewart
quipped that they shared a
surname but werent married.
No, said the Labour woman,
hes my father. Ouch! For the
record, shes 56 and hes 62.
Most damaging for Gove,
however, is the account of
Elrick, a former adviser to those
Labour Johns, Smith and Reid,
to an act the minister might
well declare worthy of a sacking
if committed by a teacher. I
witnessed the future Education
Secretary throwing a traffic
cone wilfully off a viaduct on
Aberdeens busiest street on to
another street below, admitted
Elrick. The incident took place
on Union Street. The cone was
dropped probably 40 feet. No
one else was involved.
A friendly Conservative revealed
why Camerons backbenchers
shake their heads when David
Milibrother speaks in the
Commons. We cant believe
hes not the Labour leader,
whispered the grinning Tory.
A growing number on the
Labour side agree.
The Cone Secretary,
recalled Elrick, was
collared: Gove
was spotted by
the police doing it
and was bundled
swiftly into the
back of a police van,
which then drove off
to police HQ.
The Financial Times scribbler
Quentin Peel was overheard in
Brussels bemoaning Camerons
appeasement of the Euroseptic
Sun, Mail, Express, etc. Does the
Europhile FTregret its May 2010
Tory endorsement?
Sadly, complained Elrick,
Gove wasnt charged but let
off with a warning. But at the
end of the day it was an act of
hooliganism. Youthful high
jinks? Well, by that stage he had
already graduated from Oxford,
He was, like me, in his twenties
and working. He wasnt a
student. He was old enough
to know better. Quite so. l
Kevin Maguire is associate editor
(politics) of the Daily Mirror
with white tape to a wooden joist
above a small kitchen area.
Allens small group will take in
about 15 for each ounce of gold
they find. Allen tells me he finds
roughly ten ounces every four
days or so, earning him about
80 times less than a trader in
New York. Working 12-hour days,
the miners must contend with
wild animals and disease as well
as bandits. Had malaria many
times, says Neil Hutton, one
of Allens colleagues. Sick today,
tomorrow I get up.
Some days after my visit to
Mahdia, I meet Guyanas outgoing
president, Bharrat Jagdeo, at a
rally in Anna Regina, a town in
the west of the country. Gold
reserves in Guyana, a former
British colony, were neglected
until relatively recently, but
Jagdeo tells me that the country
expects to produce 320,000
ounces of the precious metal this
year, up 5 per cent on last year.
We have seen some movement
of criminals, Jagdeo concedes.
Patrick Harding, president of
the Guyana Gold and Diamond
Miners Association, says that
mining makes up 70 per cent of
the countrys economy. The
violence is something were very
worried about, he says from his
office in Georgetown. It could
impact the whole industry.
Heavy metal
For the most part, traders on the
financial markets make no link to
men on the ground such as those
in Mahdia. For 5,000 years, gold
has maintained purchasing power
for the holders, says George
Gero, senior vice-president at
RBC Wealth Management in New
York, who has been trading and
analysing gold for half his life.
Investors see gold as an
additional currency and as an
asset-allocation tool, he says.
Nobody is that concerned about
the people panning for it.
Bridgemohan, speaking after
hours in his hospital waiting
room, has one message for
the traders. Enjoy the gold,
he says. Its a great sacrifice
the workers are making out
here so just cherish what they
are providing for you. l
newstatesman.com/world-affairs
S
ix hours journey through
savannah and thick jungle
from Guyanas capital,
Georgetown, Mahdia boasts
no landline telephones or bank
machines. But this small dirt
town in the Amazon rainforest
is experiencing the sharp end of
turmoil in the financial markets,
as it finds itself at the centre of
a new gold rush.
Its kill or be killed, says
Rovin Allen, a young miner who
was shot in the leg and robbed of
1,150-worth of gold just months
ago. As investors place their bets
on gold a supposedly secure
asset in times of crisis prices
have soared. Prospectors have
flocked to Mahdia, but so have
thieves. The 26-year-old Allen
now carries a 38mm pistol when
working at his small camp. You
cant trust anyone, even your
friends and those you work with.
Vivakeanand Bridgemohan,
one of the towns two doctors,
is seeing double the number of
patients he received 12 months
ago. He has treated miners
stabbed in the head, face and
jugular this week alone. There
are a lot of bandits here, he says,
for the gold and the money.
Allen works at Pamela camp, in
the forest that surrounds Mahdia.
As I am driven there on the
miners quad bike, a large clearing
opens, revealing makeshift huts
strung with hammocks, next to
a small river cutting through the
rock. To the side is an electricity
generator, allowing the miners
to enjoy pirated music DVDs on
an antique television set strapped
A gold-mining settlement near Mahdia
GUYANA
Murder in
the jungle
Girish Gupta
Wanted: a vision to trump Camerons
offer of bleak isolation in Europe
Rafael Behr
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The Politics Column
British politics is still hung. As 2011 draws to
a close, no party has broken the deadlock that
produced an indecisive result in the last general
election. Opinion polls have told pretty much
the same story all year. The Labour Party is
liked much more than it was when led by Gor-
don Brown, but Ed Miliband is not deemed
to be as plausible a national leader as David
Cameron. The Prime Minister is much more
popular than his party, which still retains a
toxic whiff of moneyed complacency.
The Liberal Democrats are reviled or ignored.
Nick Cleggs alliance with the Tories has alien-
ated many of his partys old supporters with-
out recruiting new ones. The Deputy Prime
Minister had hoped to fight the next election
claiming credit as an equal partner in a joint
venture to rescue the economy from the disas-
trous legacy bequeathed by Labour. The strat-
egy was to make the Lib Dems the party of
competence and compassion.
The former would be expressed in the tough
decisions taken to tackle a ruinous budget
deficit; the latter in policies to mitigate the
harsh effects of spending restraint. Neither is
being achieved. The economy is stagnant and
we might well see in the new year in recession.
The deficit will still need cutting after the next
election. What little palliative social interven-
tion the Lib Dems claim to have secured will
be scant compensation for falling real incomes
and lost public services.
Tory foot-stamping
The Lib Dems do have substantial voting rights
on the coalition board but Tory backbenchers
hold a golden share. That much was proved by
the veto that was wielded at the emergency
Brussels summit to save the European single
currency on 8-9 December. To be clear, I am re-
ferring to the prohibition imposed by the Con-
servative Party on the Prime Minister pursuing
a policy of constructive engagement with other
continental leaders. The veto that Cameron
claims to have deployed at the negotiating table
doesnt prevent eurozone countries from pur-
suing an agenda of closer integration. It merely
guarantees that they will do so in consultation
with every non-eurozone member state apart
from Britain. Obstinate foot-stamping has
cleared the room of people minded to accom-
modate UK interests, especially when it comes
to protecting the City of London from Euro-
pean regulation, which was the advertised mo-
tive for Camerons intransigence.
That outcome caused dismay in Cleggs
team, verging on despair. The words disaster,
awful and miscalculation have all been
freely used in the Deputy Prime Ministers of-
fice to describe Camerons handling of the ne-
gotiations. In public, Clegg limits himself to ex-
pressions of pained regret and martyred
determination to continue fighting for pet
causes in government his signature tune.
Lib Dem torment over Europe was prefig-
ured earlier in the year in the referendum cam-
paign on switching to the Alternative Vote
(AV) electoral system. Then, too, Clegg
thought his intimacy with Cameron was a safe-
guard against indulgence of Conservative reac-
tionary impulse. Cameron would support the
no camp, Clegg would call for a yes vote,
but there was a gentlemans agreement not to
let it get personal. Then Tory backbenchers,
furious at their leaders apparent preference
for coalition cosiness over party policy, per-
suaded Cameron to sanction a campaign that
mercilessly punched Cleggs bruises. AV was
denounced as a stitch-up to promote perpetual
hung parliaments of benefit only to a Lib
Dem leader considered to have swapped
principle for power.
Cameron takes no pleasure in disrupting
coalition harmony but he also knows that,
when the alternative is rebellion in his own
ranks, trampling the Lib Dems is the safer path.
Cleggs miserable poll ratings preclude flounc-
ing out of the coalition. Besides, the Lib Dems
have aligned themselves irrevocably with Con-
servative economic policy, which overshad-
ows all other considerations. George Osborne,
Camerons election strategist as well as his
Chancellor, had a plan to subject Britain to a
short, sharp dose of austerity and then, as
growth returned towards the end of the parlia-
ment, compensate voters with pre-polling-day
tax cuts. That timetable has been sabotaged by
economic reality. The government is now
heavily reliant on voters continuing to blame
Labour for the nations economic problems and
remaining unconvinced of Milibands creden-
tials as a potential prime minister. Cameron
will present himself as the only serious candi-
date, determined to finish a job that Labour
only reluctantly acknowledge needs doing at
all. The Lib Dems, having backed Osbornes
plan, are obliged to second that attack.
Clegg has argued that partnership with the
Tories was essential for the pursuit of the na-
tional economic interest. Yet he believes
Camerons sulky isolation in Europe is dan-
gerous and bad for Britain. It is also a lumi-
nous signpost announcing the limitations of
Lib Dem influence and the strength of those
Conservative MPs for whom enmity with
Brussels is an old vendetta. That in turn sup-
ports the Labour claim that Camerons project
to modernise his party in opposition was
spurious a line of attack Clegg has discreetly
abetted in the hope that voters would see him
as a moderating influence, diluting or blocking
the ambitions of Tory zealots. Clegg is left star-
ing at a blank sheet of paper where he needs an
explanation for why his party should remain in
coalition, other than tackling the deficit and
postponing electoral annihilation.
Atlantis myth
Labour, meanwhile, needs prescriptions for the
economy and Britains future in Europe that
cant be caricatured as variations on we
wouldnt start from here. Miliband complains
that Camerons path of maximum austerity at
home and mean diplomacy abroad makes it
harder to boost growth and create jobs. The To-
ries are confident that the public sees no alter-
native. More significantly, having captured UK
foreign policy, the hard-line Eurosceptics be-
lieve they have an alluring destination for the
country. Over time, further detachment from
the EU is inevitable. The nation will be liber-
ated from the bureaucratic meddling that is
supposed to have held back the economy. With
entrepreneurial dynamism thus restored, we H
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will flourish as a global trading hub while other
European nations look on enviously, trussed in
red tape, stranded on the capsized hull of their
single currency. That is the underlying ration-
ale for Euroscepticism creating an island
utopia where commerce is unencumbered by
footling matters such as geography or regional
diplomacy; Atlantis.
The problem is that if the euro sinks, the UK
economy will be dragged down with it and if it
is rescued the ill will generated by Britains po-
sition guarantees unfavourable terms of trade
in the future. Companies that are based here
because it is a useful avenue into Europes sin-
gle market, the worlds largest unified trading
space, will relocate if it becomes clear that
British influence is waning. Atlantis is a myth.
But the mundane imperative of our depend-
ence on good EU relations is obscured by exal-
tation in a two-fingered gesture of defiance.
Opinion polls show clear support for the Prime
Ministers actions in Brussels. Cameron has
proved adept at cutting through complex issues
with a glib, parochial account of Britains inter-
ests. Last year he and Osborne outmanoeuvred
Labour by presenting the countrys woes as the
result of Gordon Brown blowing the national
budget on public services. With no sign of re-
covery in sight, the Tories find in Brussels a
new scapegoat and one against which most of
the press has spent years whipping up hostility.
Anyone looking to Labour for a more uplift-
ing vision for the future will find only a sketch
on Milibands drawing board. In his party con-
ference speech in September, the Labour leader
expounded his thesis that the British model of
capitalism is broken, rewarding delinquent
predatory behaviour and failing to honour
productive activity. The financial crisis, he
argued, signalled the end of the era in which a
tiny minority would be allowed to monopolise
wealth and power, while for the rest living
standards fall and insecurity rises. It is unclear
how Miliband intends to reverse that trend. It is
still less clear whether his new model of capi-
talism envisages Britain more or less integrated
with the rest of Europe.
The view in Downing Street is that voters
will see Milibands moralising calls for fairer
capitalism as hand-wringing, well-meaning
perhaps, but impotent. It isnt as if anyone is
out there calling for unfair capitalism, ob-
serves one Cameron aide.
But when politics is hung, the deadlock can
only be broken by something more compelling
than the promise of well-managed stagnation.
Labour want to present the Tories as relent-
lessly pessimistic, offering only grim resigna-
tion to long-haul austerity. That attack only
works alongside an optimistic counter-offer.
The Holy Grail in Westminster is a convincing
account of how Britain can make its way in a
world made scary by economic crisis, on the
periphery of a continent resisting decline.
Miliband doesnt yet have such a story. Nor
does Nick Clegg. The most developed project
around, and the one with the most momen-
tum, is the populist island tale peddled by the
Eurosceptics. The question for David Cameron
is whether he wants to lead a real European na-
tion or follow the men from Atlantis. l
Rafael Behr is chief political commentator for
the New Statesman
newstatesman.com/writers/rafael_behr
The problem is that if the
euro sinks, the UK will be
dragged down with it
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Labour will make a big, open offer
to the Lib Dems on Europe
Douglas Alexander
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The Guest Column
Britains relationship with the United States
and our membership of the European Union
have been the fundamental building blocks of
our foreign policy but today we risk being less
relevant in both. Europe is engulfed by the
eurozone crisis and the US, weary after ten
years of war in Afghanistan, is rebalancing its
priorities from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That
broader context only makes the Prime Minis-
ters decision to leave Britain more isolated
than at any time in the 38-year history of our
EU membership even more dangerous.
The recent EU summit could and should
have taken the vital decisions needed to sta-
bilise the eurozone and boost growth and jobs
but, instead, it was economically inadequate
and politically damaging. There was no plan
for growth agreed, no credible plan for reduc-
ing deficits agreed, no plan for recapitalising
the banks agreed and no plan agreed for the Eu-
ropean Central Bank to act as the lender of last
resort. That the British government did so lit-
tle to advance these objectives is inexcusable.
There was hardly any evidence of either the
Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary visit-
ing European capitals ahead of the summit to
build support for Britains position. Indeed, the
governments demands were tabled only a few
days before, after David Camerons mauling at
the hands of his backbenchers at Prime Minis-
ters Questions in the House of Commons.
Why did the Polish foreign minister, Ra-
dosaw Sikorski potentially a key ally for
Britain the week before the summit single out
the UK for criticism in a speech and accuse the
government of failing to provide political lead-
ership on Europe?
Elephant in the room
To win the leadership of his party, Cameron
promised to pull out of the centre-right group-
ing the European Peoples Party, as he did, and
so he was left unable to attend the pre-summit
meeting of the leaders of France, Germany,
Portugal, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria, Malta and
Poland. When we entered the final hours of
the summit in so shambolic a fashion, is it
any wonder that Cameron was left unable to
secure a single objective Britain had set or se-
cure a single ally?
We have heard a lot about vetoes but to
veto something means to prevent it from
happening. Cameron walked out having pre-
vented nothing from happening and having
failed to secure any of his demands; that is not
called a veto that is called defeat.
Isolation can sometimes be a price worth
paying for getting your own way but isolation
achieving only defeat is unforgivable. Despite
all the talk about protecting the City, the Chan-
cellor was unable, 24 hours afterwards, to point
to a single piece of financial regulation that
was now not going to be applied to Britain as
a result. Instead, weve got up to 26 countries
discussing financial services without Britain
being at the table, a development John Cridland
of the Confederation of British Industry de-
scribed as the elephant in the room.
The roots of what happened on the night of
Thursday 8 December lie deep in Camerons
failure to modernise the Tory party. Just be-
cause he puts party interest before the national
interest, there is no reason others should do the
same. That is why I make a genuine offer to Lib-
eral Democrats to work with us to try to get a
better outcome for Britain, between now and
when this agreement is likely to be finally tied
down in March. Work can and should start im-
mediately both to win back friends and allies
and to consider what rules and procedures can
avoid Britains further marginalisation.
My message to Lib Dems would be that, over
the next few years, the public will reward politi-
cians who show serious statesmanship, not
shrill showmanship in the face of economic
events none of us has witnessed before and the
outcome of which remains uncertain.
This is the immediate task. But over the
longer term, we must also remake the case for
British membership of the EU. Today, accord-
ing to one ICM poll, 49 per cent would vote to
get Britain out of Europe, against just 40 per
cent who would prefer to stay in.
What are the reasons for this and what
should a progressive response be? In a recent
speech, I talked about how, to my parents gen-
eration, the rationale for Europe was establish-
ing peace and stability on the continent after
a century scarred by two world wars. This was
a cause that had powerful emotional reso-
nance. However, for the 20 years after Britain
joined the European Community, that emo-
tional cause was supplemented by a somewhat
drier one: that being part of Europe would help
reverse Britains postwar decline and would
help boost our prosperity and productivity.
Riding the tiger
Britains rising prosperity during the long
boom that began in the 1990s contributed to
a growing sense of national self-confidence,
which again led people to question Europes
role. One response to this rising scepticism,
however, not only failed but, certainly in this
country, actually heightened suspicions about
the intentions of Europes institutions. The
push for anthems, flags and the apparent aping
of the symbol of nationhood left the impres-
sion of a half-built superstate and provided a
rallying point for Europes opponents.
In response, a defence of the status quo wont
be good enough. I do not believe Britain would
ever be a pygmy nation but I believe we are
better off as part of a market of 500 million peo-
ple, with a 10trn economy.
In recent days, in Durban, South Africa, we
saw welcome progress in global climate talks.
Whether on climate development or trade,
Britains voice is amplified on the world stage
by our European membership. Yet our future
in Europe cannot be taken for granted. Cam -
eron has embarked on a very dangerous course.
He has closed his eyes and bet that he can ride
the Tory eurosceptic tiger. The rest of us should
open ours and make the case for a reformed
Europe before it is too late. l
Douglas Alexander is shadow foreign secretary H
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Cameron prevented
nothing. That is not a
veto that is a defeat
When Philip Hammond, the former Secretary of State for Transport, handed over
the reins to Justine Greening, he must have breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Every one of the arguments for the 32bn HS2 project has been convincingly
challenged by experts in their fields and thoroughly put in doubt by the
Transport Select Committee.
The last straw was a survey showing peak trains from Euston are only half full,
two more carriages are being added next year and more could be added.
Given the weakness of the case there can only be one rational conclusion.
HS2 is the wrong priority. www.hs2actionalliance.org
The era of innovation isnt over.
For the poor, its just beginning
Bill Gates
The world population just passed seven billion,
on its way to at least nine billion. The number
of people on the planet is growing so rapidly
that the margin of error for the UNs 2050
population projection is larger than the entire
world population in 1950. Meanwhile, climate
change is bringing a flood of adverse weather
events that affect crop yields. Last year,
droughts in eastern Europe cut global wheat
production by 5 per cent. This year, floods de-
stroyed 20 per cent of the harvest in the state of
Queensland, in Australia the worlds fourth-
largest wheat exporter.
At this moment, it seems wise to ask whether
we will have enough food to eat in the future.
There are plenty of pessimists about food secu-
rity, but I believe the smart money is on opti-
mism. Pessimists extrapolate from the present
to the future in a straight line. As an optimist,
I look for key junctures where we can apply in-
novation to bend trend lines and avert crises.
Currently, four million tonnes of rice in India
and Bangladesh are lost to flooding every year.
But if farmers in the region grow a flood-tolerant
variety that recently became available, they will
flip that curve upside down, producing enough
extra rice to feed 30 million people.
In sub-Saharan Africa, new varieties of maize
can be 50 per cent more productive under the
type of drought conditions that helped cause
the Horn of Africa famine. In fact, despite this
general environment of scarcity (whether its
food or government finances), I have never been
more optimistic about the future.
Happy hour
I am optimistic because I believe in the power
of innovation and because I believe the
world is on the cusp of finally
unleashing innovation for the
poorest. It is ironic, perhaps, but
historically we have been very nar-
row-minded about innovation. We
have put the vast majority of our
effort into solving a small minority of
the worlds problems. But I believe
that era in history is coming to an
end. My whole career has
been inspired by the
conviction that break-
throughs can make the
impossible possible.
When I was a teenager, I was addicted to
computers, not unlike many teenagers today.
But in the early 1970s, computers were a diffi-
cult addiction to satisfy, because the personal
computer didnt yet exist. Luckily, I lived a few
minutes away from a large research university
where I had access to PDP-10 computers, which
were about the size of a large car. I would sneak
out of my house in the middle of the night to
get a few hours of computer time while the stu-
dents were asleep. Then came the microproces-
sor, and everything changed. In the past 35
years, everything from storage costs to proces-
sor speed has improved exponentially. Now,
the very concept of computer time makes no
sense; there is an infinite amount of it.
When my wife Melinda and I created our
foundation and gradually started learning more
about global development, we were stunned by
the underfunding of innovation targeted at the
needs of the poor. In information technology,
the challenge was to see 20 or 30 years into the
future. In development, the task at hand was
very different: to catch up with the present.
Take the example of tuberculosis, which
affects nine million people every year. For the
most part, the diagnostic test hasnt changed in
more than a century. The standard practice is to
take someones saliva, smear it on a slide, stain
it and look at it under a microscope. By that
method, we catch about half of cases. Finally, last
year, there was a breakthrough in rapid diagnos-
tic testing that could change the way we fight TB.
What explained this shocking lack of innova-
tion? When I was born, the world was roughly
one-third rich and two-thirds poor. The rich
portion had an amazing capacity to innovate,
but it didnt have tuberculosis, or harvests de-
stroyed by flooding. The poor had the dis-
ease and the hunger, but they didnt have
the technological capability to develop
solutions. And so most of the worlds in-
novation was directed at the worlds least
pressing problems, relatively speaking.
Now, however, that tragic misallocation
of resources is changing, because
the world has changed. The
number of dynamic,
healthy and highly edu-
cated countries is much
higher. In the past 20
years, China has grown
by an incredible 9 per cent annually and slashed
its poverty rate by 75 per cent. In the past ten
years, Brazil has lifted 20 million people out of
poverty. This group of rapidly growing coun-
tries, which also includes India, Indonesia,
Mexico, South Africa and Turkey, can drive in-
novation for the poor in ways we never imag-
ined, because they provide a bridge between
what used to be the rich and poor worlds. These
countries have both a sophisticated under-
standing of the challenges that developing
countries face and the technical capacity to in-
novate to spur development.
A new awakening
There are many examples of this innovation.
Last year, the Serum Institute of India released
a vaccine it has developed for meningitis A, an
epidemic disease that strikes fear in the hearts
of people across Africas meningitis belt. This
vaccine is the first one ever created specifically
for poor countries, and only an Indian company
accustomed to low-cost manufacturing was
able to price it low enough for African govern-
ments to purchase. Brazil, which learned how
to grow soybeans in its semi-arid soil in the
1980s, is now helping Mozambican farmers
cope with very similar climate and soil condi-
tions. Meanwhile, the Chinese, who have the
worlds leading rice research programme, have
been instrumental in projects such as the flood-
tolerant rice described earlier.
The worlds failure to address the suffering of
its poorest people is one of the tragedies of the
past century. But our awakening to these issues
is one of the most important developments of
the past decade. Yes, we have a global food cri-
sis. But with new innovators all over the world
focused on the problem, we also have a good
chance to fix it. And with more innovators fo-
cusing on more areas where innovation is
needed, I am optimistic that we are about to en-
ter a new period in global development.
Just as innovation over the course of a few
decades turned the car-sized computer into a
pocket gadget, innovation in the field of devel-
opment will lift billions out of poverty and
make the world a more equitable and prosper-
ous place. l
Bill Gates is the chairman of Microsoft and
co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. gatesfoundation.org R
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Fear of offending Muslims should
not stop us fighting Islamism
Maryam Namazie
On 2 November, the offices of the French sa -
tirical weekly Charlie Hebdo were firebombed,
after the publication of an issue guest-edited
by Muhammad, Islams prophet. Its cover had
a caricature of Muhammad, saying: 100 lashes
if you dont die laughing.
Though no one has yet claimed responsibil-
ity, the attack bears the hallmarks of the politi-
cal Islamic movement. For its followers, threats
and firebombs are business as usual. Where
they have political power, they forgo any nice -
ties reserved for western public opinion and
imprison and murder anyone who speaks their
mind, transgresses Islamist norms and causes
offence. Under sharia law in Iran, for instance,
there are more than 130 offences punishable by
death, including apostasy, blasphemy, heresy,
enmity against God, homosexuality andcrimes
against chastity.
In the west, the debate on Islam and free ex-
pression is absurdly framed within a context
of racism and Islamophobia, though Islamism
has been creating havoc in the Middle East and
North Africa for several decades and most of its
victims are Muslims. A piece in Timeby its Paris
correspondent Bruce Crumley (2 November)
was a case in point. He blamed Charlie Hebdo
for causing offence and bait[ing] Muslim
members. Tellingly, he seemed to see extrem-
ists and Muslim members of society as one
and the same thing, rather than making the dis-
tinction between Islamism (a far-right political
movement) and Muslims.
The Islamists barbaric, medieval values are
portrayed as the values of all Muslims. This is
something both the far right and the postmod-
ernist left do albeit for different reasons. The
far right blames and scapegoats Muslims for Is-
lamisms crimes and the pro-Islamist left de-
fends Islamism and its crimes as the right of a
Muslim minority. Both sides oppose or defend
Islamism at the expense of human beings.
Sense and sensibility
Muslims, like all other groups, are not homoge-
neous. Among them are secularists, freethink -
ers, dissenters, rationalists, rights campaigners,
humanitarians and socialists. Many belong
to civil society organisations, political parties
and movements that are diametrically opposed
to Islamism. Islamist violence and terrorism
are tactics and pillars of the political Islamic
movement and have nothing to do with Mus-
lim sensibilities. Though we are all offended at
least some of the time (and often by religion it-
self), most of us religious or not, Muslim or not
never resort to death threats and firebombing.
Equating the intimidation and terror imposed
by political Islam to the expression of Muslim
sensibilities is like equating the oppressor with
the oppressed, and is intrinsically racist. If those
really were peoples sensibilities and beliefs,
Islamist states and movements wouldnt need
to resort to such indiscriminate violence.
This raises the important question of whose
sensibilities one sides with the mother and
daughter stoned to death in Afghanistan in
November, or the Taliban who stoned them to
death? The actor Marzieh Vafamehr, who was
sentenced to one year in jail and 90 lashes for
taking part in a film, or the Islamic regime of
Iran that sentenced her? Charlie Hebdo or the
firebombers? You cant side with both.
Whether you like or dislike Charlie Hebdos
political position is irrelevant. Its just as irrele-
vant as what the woman who was raped was
wearing or the nature of the crime committed
by the person facing execution that is if you
agree that rape, execution and firebombing a
publication for expressing a point of view are
wrong, irrespective of the circumstances.
Describing Charlie Hebdos criticism as an
attack on a Muslim minority not only mistak-
enly presents Muslims as a uniform group and
equates them with Islamists, but fails to ac-
knowledge the power and politics behind Is-
lamism, which in many places is a global move-
ment with state power. Sharia law is now the
most widely implemented religious law world-
wide. Correspondingly, it would be like discus -
sing the English Defence League without see-
ing its links with far-right politics in Norway or
the US and would be like denouncing criticism
of the EDL as an attack on the British working
class and Christians. Absurd!
Speak out
Saying Charlie Hebdoshouldnt criticise Islam is,
in effect, saying that Islam, Islamism and sharia
law are off-limits, which means that the vic-
tims and survivors of Islamism are not allowed
to do the only thing they have at their disposal
to resist. It is telling people who most need free
expression that they cannot speak. Its an effort
to censor people such as the naked Egyptian
blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy or Gulnaz, one
of two women filmed in a documentary, first
commissioned by the European Union and then
blocked by the EU days before its first screening.
Gulnaz was raped and sentenced to 12 years
for a moral crime under sharia law. She bravely
tells her story to help other women avoid the
same fate. But the EU is more concerned about
its relations with the [in]justice institutions
in Afghanistan than the abysmal situation of
women there.
The debate on free expression is much larger
than Charlie Hebdo. Restricting free expression
to what is acceptable only restricts the right to
speak for those, such as Gulnaz, who need it
most. After all, what is the point of free expres-
sion if you cannot criticise that which is deemed
to be taboo? On 1 December, Gulnaz was par-
doned by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai,
but activists are concerned that she will be pres-
sured to marry her rapist to gain a father for her
daughter, born on the prison floor. Why arent
more people angry about this? l
Maryam Namazie is spokesperson for One Law
for All, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
and Equal Rights Now: Organisation Against
Womens Discrimination in Iran. Read her blog:
freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie
Gagged: outside the Charlie Hebdo offices
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eter Hain has had an extraordinary life. He held
an array of glittering posts in the British
political firmament, from key roles in the
Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and
Industry to leadership of the Commons and
brokering the 2007 devolution settlement in
Northern Ireland.
Formerly an outsider he became an insider, as
one of the governments most effective ministers.
Underpinning Hains career is a tradition of political
campaigning that stretches back nearly four
decades, the political values he holds today
springing directly from the injustices he witnessed
when he was growing up and which drew him into
politics in the first place.
OUTSIDE IN
Peter Hain
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Class has divided us for years dont
let faith schools do the same
Rabbi Jonathan Romain
Once seldom discussed, faith schools are now
a contentious part of the political debate. There
are four reasons for this. The first is that al-
though they started as private endowments,
faith schools are now publicly funded and
therefore answerable to the taxpayer. To an ex-
tent, that has been the case for at least 100 years
but scrutiny has become much more searching
for public institutions, with demands for trans-
parency placing the BBC and the NHS under the
spotlight. Faith schools have not escaped atten-
tion nor should they.
Second, the taxpaying society of today is
very different from that of 1870, when the great
transition occurred in the Education Act, result-
ing in church schools receiving funds from the
state. Society today is much less religious and
many of us no longer see the need for separate
faith schools, while others accuse them of be-
ing biased and doctrinaire.
Third, even the religious element of society
has fundamentally changed. Today, we have not
one majority faith, but a plethora of religions.
This has led to questions over the relationships
between them and whether segregating chil-
dren of different backgrounds encour ages inte-
gration or inhibits it.
The fourth reason is the unease caused by
events such as the Bradford riots of July 2001;
then there was 9/11 in the US, whose shock-
waves hit harder here after the bombings in
London on 7 July 2005.
Pride and prejudice
These events forced us to look again at the
Church of Englands pledge to build 100 new
faith schools, and to look at the expansion of
Jewish schools, the growth of Muslim schools
and the creation of the first Sikh and Hindu
schools. There is a worry that the new shape
of education created by such schools in my
view, one that is close to being a form of volun-
tary apartheid might produce a landscape in
which separatism and prejudice flourish.
The battle lines are well rehearsed: propo-
nents of faith schools claim that they maintain
identities and produce good citizens, while
opponents condemn them for ghettoising the
children and fragmenting society.
Rather than engaging in stale arguments or
swapping anecdotes about best and worst prac-
tices, we need to locate larger principles that
will inform the policy options more accurately.
For instance, are pupils and society best served
by the considerably independent say that vol-
untary-aided schools (most of which are faith-
based) have over admissions, the curriculum
and employment of staff, even though they are
state-funded?
The creation of more state academies and Ed-
ucation Secretary Michael Goves free schools
many of which have a religious foundation
has raised the stakes even higher, because al-
though some of us will rejoice at the freedoms
they have been granted, others will despair
that this includes the freedom to discriminate
against admitting pupils and hiring teachers of
the wrong faith or no faith at all. The task has
become more urgent since the governments
astonishing decision this year to abandon Of-
steds duty to inspect schools record of promot-
ing social cohesion. Many fear that this sends
out a disheartening message to those who value
an inclusive and tolerant Britain.
Another pressing issue is that, although reli-
gious education (RE) is a statutory subject and
has to be taught, it is not part of the National
Curriculum and so can be taught in any way
a school chooses. While some schools follow a
multi-faith syllabus, others limit their pupils
to knowledge of only one faith. Would it not
be better to have a national curriculum for RE,
so that all schools were obliged to teach about
all kinds of belief, including humanism? This
would help increase general knowledge, as well
as prepare pupils for life in a diverse society.
A similar argument could apply to the Eng-
lish Baccalaureate. One of its effects has been
to diminish the time that schools spend on
teaching subjects other than the five core ones
of English, mathematics, science, languages
and humanities. If RE, with an inclusive syl-
labus, were made one of the core subjects, it
would boost efforts to broaden childrens reli-
gious horizons. Once again, this would be of
benefit both academically and in terms of fu-
ture citizenship.
Divide and rule
The Runnymede Trusts 2008 report Right to
Divide?is one of many studies that pick up con-
cerns about the social inequalities caused by
schools freedom to select pupils on the grounds
of religion. It finds that, despite high-minded
pronouncements suggesting a mission to
serve the most disadvantaged in society, faith
schools educate a disproportionately small
number of young people at the lowest end of
the socio-economic scale.
This is borne out by statistics. Faith schools
have fewer children on free school meals (11.5
per cent) than other schools (15.7 per cent).
They also cater for fewer pupils with special
educational needs (SEN). According to the
House of Commons Library (2009), 1.2 per cent
of pupils at state faith schools had local author-
ity statements for SEN, compared to 1.7 per cent
at schools with no religious character.
In 2008, the Accord Coalition was created
to provide a voice for those, from religious and
secular groups alike, who seek to promote inclu-
sive schooling. The goal is to create an environ-
ment in which children of different religious
backgrounds grow up as neighbours rather than
as strangers, and to forge a society that is at ease
with itself.
Britain has spent centuries struggling to
reduce class divisions in society. It would be
regrettable indeed if these were now replaced
by religious ones. l
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain is the chair of the
Accord Coalition. accordcoalition.org.uk
newstatesman.com/subjects/religion
Separation anxiety: do faith schools discriminate?
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COVER STORY
Never be afraid
of stridency
Interview by Richard Dawkins
Photographs by Michael Stravato
Meeting of minds:
Richard Dawkins (left)
and Christopher
Hitchens in conversation
Richard Dawkins Do you have any memories
of life at the New Statesman?
Christopher Hitchens Not that I want to im-
part. It seems like a different world and a dif -
ferent magazine and it happened to a different
person. Id love them to interview me one day
about it, for an edition about the role of the
Statesman, but Id really rather you and I focus
on the pulse of the issue, which is obviously our
common cause.
RD Ive been reading some of your recent col -
lections of essays Im astounded by your
sheer erudition. You seem to have read abso -
lutely everything. I cant think of anybody since
Aldous Huxley whos so well read.
CH It may strike some people as being broad
but its possibly at the cost of being a bit shal-
low. I became a journalist because one didnt
have to specialise. I remember once going to
an evening with Umberto Eco talking to Susan
Sontag and the definition of the word poly-
math came up. Eco said it was his ambition
to be a polymath; Sontag challenged him and
said the definition of a polymath is someone
whos interested in everything and nothing
else. I was encouraged in my training to read
widely to flit and sip, as Bertie [Wooster] puts
it and I think Ive got good memory retention.
I retain whats interesting to me, but I dont
have a lot of strategic depth.
A lot of reviewers have said, to the point of
embarrassing me, that Im in the class of Ed-
mund Wilson or even George Orwell. It really
does remind me that Im not. But its something
to at least have had the comparison made its
better than I expected when I started.
t
Is America heading
for theocracy?
How worrying is
the rise of the Tea
Party? Christopher
Hitchens and
Richard Dawkins
discuss God and
US politics
COVER STORY
it but this, Richard, is a red herring. Its not
even secular. Theyre changing the subject.
RDBut it comes up over and over again.
CH You mentioned North Korea. It is, in every
sense, a theocratic state. Its almost supernatu-
ral, in that the births of the [ruling] Kim family
are considered to be mysterious and accompa-
nied by happenings. Its a necrocracy or mauso -
locracy, but theres no possible way you could
say its a secular state, let alone an atheist one.
Attempts to found new religions should at-
tract our scorn just as much as the alliances with
the old ones do. All theyre saying is that you
cant claim Hitler was distinctively or specifi-
cally Christian: Maybe if he had gone on much
longer, he would have de-Christianised a bit
more. This is all a complete fog of nonsense.
Its bad history and its bad propaganda.
RDAnd bad logic, because theres no connection
between atheism and doing horrible things,
whereas there easily can be a connection in the
case of religion, as we see with modern Islam.
CH To the extent that they are new religions
Stalin worship and Kim Il-sungism we, like
all atheists, regard them with horror.
RD You debated with Tony Blair. Im not sure
I watched that. I love listening to you [but] I
cant bear listening to . . . Well, I mustnt say
that. I think he did come over as rather nice
on that evening.
CHHe was charming, that evening. And during
the day, as well.
RD What was your impression of him?
CHYou can only have one aim per debate. I had
two in debating with Tony Blair. The first one
was to get him to admit that it was not done
the stuff we complain of in only the name
of religion. Thats a cop-out. The authority is in
the text. Second, I wanted to get him to admit,
if possible, that giving money to a charity or or-
ganising a charity does not vindicate a cause.
I got him to the first one and I admired his
honesty. He was asked by the interlocutor
at about half-time: Which of Christophers
points strikes you as the best? He said: I have
to admit, hes made his case, hes right. This
stuff, there is authority for it in the canonical
texts, in Islam, Judaism.
At that point, Im ready to fold Ive done
what I want for the evening.
We did debate whether Catholic charities
and so on were a good thing and I said: They
are but they dont prove any point and some
of them are only making up for damage done.
For example, the Church had better spend a lot
of money doing repair work on its Aids policy
in Africa, [to make up for preaching] that con-
doms dont prevent disease or, in some cases,
that they spread it. It is iniquitous. It has led to
a lot of people dying, horribly. Also, Ive never
looked at some of the ground operations of these
charities apart from Mother Teresa but they
do involve a lot of proselytising, a lot of propa-
ganda. Theyre not just giving out free stuff.
Theyre doing work to recruit.
RD And Mother Teresa was one of the worst
offenders?
CH She preached that poverty was a gift from
God. And she believed that women should not
be given control over the reproductive cycle.
Mother Teresa spent her whole life making sure
that the one cure for poverty we know is sound
was not implemented.
So Tony Blair knows this but he
doesnt have an answer. If I say, Your
Church preaches against the one cure
for poverty, he doesnt deny it, but
he doesnt affirm it either.
But remember, I did start with a
text and I asked him to comment
on it first, but he never did. Cardinal
Newman said he would rather the
whole world and everyone in it be
painfully destroyed and condemned
for ever to eternal torture than one
sinner go unrebuked for the stealing
of a sixpence. Its right there in the
centre of the Apologia. The man
whose canonisation Tony had been
campaigning for.
You put these discrepancies in front
of him and hes like all the others. He keeps two
sets of books. And this is also, even in an honest
person, shady.
RD Its like two minds, really. One notices this
with some scientists.
CHI think we all do it a bit.
RDDo we?
CHWere all great self-persuaders.
RDBut do we hold such extreme contradictions
in our heads?
CHWe like to think our colleagues would point
them out, in our group, anyway. No ones
pointed out to me in reviewing my God book
I have one consistency,
which is being against
the totalitarian
RD As an Orwell scholar, you must have a
particular view of North Korea, Stalin, the So-
viet Union, and you must get irritated perhaps
even more than I do by the constant refrain we
hear: Stalin was an atheist.
CH We dont know for sure that he was. Hitler
definitely wasnt. There is a possibility that
Himmler was. Its very unlikely but it wouldnt
make any difference, either way. Theres no
mandate in atheism for any particular kind of
politics, anyway.
RD The people who did Hitlers dirty work
were almost all religious.
CH Im afraid the SSs relationship with the
Catholic Church is something the Church still
has to deal with and does not deny.
RD Can you talk a bit about that the relation-
ship of Nazism with the Catholic Church?
CHThe way I put it is this: if youre writing about
the history of the 1930s and the rise of totalitar-
ianism, you can take out the word fascist, if
you want, for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslo-
vakia and Austria and replace it with extreme-
right Catholic party.
Almost all of those regimes were in place
with the help of the Vatican and with under-
standings from the Holy See. Its not denied.
These understandings quite often persisted
after the Second World War was over and
extended to comparable regimes in Argentina
and elsewhere.
RD But there were individual priests who did
good things.
CH Not very many. You would know their
names if there were more of them.
When it comes to National Socialism,
theres no question theres a muta-
tion, a big one the Nazis wanted
their own form of worship. Just as
they thought they were a separate
race, they wanted their own religion.
They dug out the Norse gods, all kinds
of extraordinary myths and legends
from the old sagas. They wanted to
control the churches. They were will-
ing to make a deal with them.
The first deal Hitler made with the
Catholic Church was the Konkordat.
The Church agreed to dissolve its
political party and he got control
over German education, which was
a pretty good deal. Celebrations of his
birthday were actually by order from
the pulpit. When Hitler survived an assassina-
tion attempt, prayers were said, and so forth. But
theres no doubt about it, [the Nazis] wanted
control and they were willing to clash with the
churches to get it.
Theres another example. You swore on Al -
mighty God that you would never break your
oath to the Fhrer. This is not even secular, let
alone atheist.
RD There was also grace before meals, person-
ally thanking Adolf Hitler.
CH I believe there was. Certainly, you can hear
the oath being taken there are recordings of
t
God Is Not Great that theres a flat discrepancy
between the affirmation he makes on page X
and the affirmation he makes on page Y.
RD But they do accuse you of being a contrar-
ian, which youve called yourself . . .
CH Well, no, I havent. Ive disowned it. I was
asked to address the idea of it and I began by say -
ing its got grave shortcomings as an idea, but
I am a bit saddled with it.
RDIve always been very suspicious of the left-
right dimension in politics.
CHYes; its broken down with me.
RD Its astonishing how much traction the
left-right continuum [has] . . . If you
know what someone thinks about the
death penalty or abortion, then you
generally know what they think about
everything else. But you clearly break
that rule.
CH I have one consistency, which is
[being] against the totalitarian on the
left and on the right. The totalitarian,
to me, is the enemy the one thats
absolute, the one that wants control
over the inside of your head, not just
your actions and your taxes. And the
origins of that are theocratic, obviously.
The beginning of that is the idea that
there is a supreme leader, or infallible
pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever,
who can ventriloquise the divine and
tell us what to do.
That has secular forms with gurus and dicta-
tors, of course, but its essentially the same.
There have been some thinkers Orwell is
pre-eminent who understood that, unfortu-
nately, there is innate in humans a strong ten-
dency to worship, to become abject. So were
not just fighting the dictators. Were criticising
our fellow humans for trying to short-cut,
to make their lives simpler, by surrendering
and saying, [If] you offer me bliss, of course
Im going to give up some of my mental free-
dom for that. We say its a false bargain: youll
get nothing. Youre a fool.
RDThat part of you that was, or is, of the radical
left is always against the totalitarian dictators.
CHYes. I was a member of the Trotskyist group
for us, the socialist movement could only be
revived if it was purged of Stalinism . . . Its very
much a point for our view that Stalinism was
a theocracy.
RD One of my main beefs with religion is the
way they label children as a Catholic child or
a Muslim child. Ive become a bit of a bore
about it.
CHYou must never be afraid of that charge, any
more than stridency.
RD I will remember that.
CH If I was strident, it doesnt matter I was a
jobbing hack, I bang my drum. You have a dis -
cipline in which you are very distinguished.
Youve educated a lot of people; nobody denies
that, not even your worst enemies. You see
your discipline being attacked and defamed and
attempts made to drive it out.
Stridency is the least you should muster . . .
Its the shame of your colleagues that they dont
form ranks and say, Listen, were going to de-
fend our colleagues from these appalling and
obfuscating elements.
If you go on about something, the worst
thing the English will say about you, as we both
know as we can say of them, by the way is
that theyre boring.
RD Indeed. Only this morning, I was sent a
copy of [advice from] a British government web -
site, called something like The Responsibili-
ties of Parents. One of these responsibilities
was determine the childs religion. Literally,
determine. It means establish, cause . . . I could-
nt ask for a clearer illustration, because, some-
times, when I make my complaint about this,
Im told nobody actually does label children
Catholic children or Muslim children.
CH Well, the government does. Its borrowed,
as far as I can see, in part from British imperial
policy, in turn borrowed from Ottoman and
previous empires you classify your new
subjects according to their faith. You can be an
Ottoman citizen but youre a Jewish one or an
Armenian Christian one. And some of these
faiths tell their children that the children of
other faiths are going to hell. I think we cant
ban that, nor can we call it hate speech, which
Im dubious about anyway, but there should be
a wrinkle of disapproval.
RD I would call it mental child abuse.
CH I cant find a way, as a libertarian, of saying
that people cant raise their children, as they
say, according to their rights. But the child has
rights and society does, too. We dont allow
female and I dont think we should counte-
nance male genital mutilation.
Now, it would be very hard to say that you
cant tell your child that they are lucky and they
have joined the one true faith. I dont see how
you stop it. I only think the rest of society
should look at it with a bit of disapproval,
which it doesnt. If youre a Mormon and you
run for office and say, Do you believe in the
golden plates that were dug up by Joseph
Smith? which [Mitt] Romney hasnt been
asked yet sorry, youre going to get mocked.
Youre going to get laughed at.
RD There is a tendency among liberals to feel
that religion should be off the table.
CH Or even that theres anti-reli-
gious racism, which I think is a terri-
ble limitation.
RDRomney has questions to answer.
CHCertainly, he does. The question
of Mormon racism did come up,
to be fair, and the Church did very
belatedly make amends for saying
what, in effect, it had been saying:
that black peoples souls werent
human, quite. They timed it sus -
piciously for the passage of legis -
lation. Well, OK, then they grant
the right of society to amend [the
legislation]. To that extent, theyre
opportunists.
RD But what about the daftness of
Mormonism? The fact that Joseph
Smith was clearly a charlatan
CHI know, its extraordinary.
RDI think there is a convention in America that
you dont tackle somebody about their religion.
CHYes, and in a way its attributed to pluralism.
And so, to that extent, one wants to respect it,
but I think it can be exploited. By many people,
including splinter-group Mormons who still
do things like plural marriage and, very repul-
sively, compulsory dowries they basically
give away their daughters, often to blood rela-
tives. And also kinship marriages that are too
close. This actually wont quite do. When it is
important, they tend to take refuge in: Youre
attacking my fundamental right. I dont think
they really should be allowed that.
RD Do you think America is in danger of be-
coming a theocracy?
CHNo, I dont. The people who we mean when
we talk about that maybe the extreme Prot -
estant evangelicals, who do want a God-run
America and believe it was founded on essen-
tially fundamentalist Protestant principles
I think they may be the most overrated threat
in the country.
RDOh, good.
CHTheyve been defeated everywhere. Why is
this? In the 1920s, they had a string of victories.
They banned the sale, manufacture and distri-
bution and consumption of alcohol. They made
it the constitution. They more or less managed
to ban immigration from countries that had
non-Protestant, non-white majorities.
From these victories, they have never recov-
ered. Theyll never recover from [the failure
COVER STORY
Extreme Protestant
evangelicals may be the
most overrated threat
t
COVER STORY
of] Prohibition. It was their biggest defeat.
Theyll never recover from the Scopes trial.
Every time theyve tried [to introduce the
teaching of creationism], the local school board
or the parents or the courts have thrown it out
and its usually because of the work of people
like you, who have shown that its nonsense.
They try to make a free speech question out
of it but they will fail with that, also. People dont
want to come from the town or the state or the
county that gets laughed at.
RDYes.
CHIn all my tours around the South, its amaz-
ing how many people Christians
as well want to disprove the idea
that theyre all in thrall to people like
[the fundamentalist preacher Jerry]
Falwell. They dont want to be a
laughing stock.
RDYes.
CH And if they passed an ordinance
saying there will be prayer in school
every morning from now on, one of
two things would happen: it would
be overthrown in no time by all the
courts, with barrels of laughter heaped
over it, or people would say: Very
well, were starting with Hindu prayer
on Monday. They would regret it
so bitterly that there are days when
I wish they would have their own way
for a short time.
RDOh, thats very cheering.
CH Im a bit more worried about the extreme,
reactionary nature of the papacy now. But that
again doesnt seem to command very big alle-
giance among the American congregation. They
are disobedient on contraception, flagrantly;
on divorce; on gay marriage, to an extraordi-
nary degree that I wouldnt have predicted; and
theyre only holding firm on abortion, which,
in my opinion, is actually a very strong moral
question and shouldnt be decided lightly. I feel
very squeamish about it. I believe that the un-
born child is a real concept, in other words.
We neednt go there, but Im not a complete
abortion-on-demand fanatic. I think it requires
a bit of reflection. But anyway, even on that,
the Catholic Communion is very agonised.
And also, [when] you go and debate with them,
very few of them could tell you very much
about what the catechism really is. Its increas-
ingly cultural Catholicism.
RDThat is true, of course.
CH So, really, the only threat from religious
force in America is the same as it is, Im afraid,
in many other countries from outside. And
its jihadism, some of it home-grown, but some
of that is so weak and so self-discrediting.
RDIts more of a problem in Britain.
CHAnd many other European countries, where
its alleged root causes are being allowed slightly
too friendly an interrogation, I think. Make that
much too friendly.
RD Some of our friends are so worried about
Islam that theyre prepared to lend support to
Christianity as a kind of bulwark against it.
CH I know many Muslims who, in leaving the
faith, have opted to go . . . to Christianity or
via it to non-belief. Some of them say its the
personality of Jesus of Nazareth. The mild and
meek one, as compared to the rather farouche,
physical, martial, rather greedy . . .
RDWarlord.
CH . . . Muhammad. I can see that that might
have an effect.
RDDo you ever worry that if we win and, so to
speak, destroy Christianity, that vacuum would
be filled by Islam?
CHNo, in a funny way, I dont worry that well
win. All that we can do is make absolutely sure
that people know theres a much more wonder-
ful and interesting and beautiful alternative.
No, I dont think that Europe would fill up with
Muslims as it emptied of Christians. Christian-
ity has defeated itself in that it has become a cul-
tural thing. There really arent believing Chris-
tians in the way there were generations ago.
RD Certainly in Europe thats true but in
America?
CH There are revivals, of course, and among
Jews as well. But I think theres a very long-
running tendency in the developed world and
in large areas elsewhere for people to see the vir -
tue of secularism, the separation of church and
state, because theyve tried the alternatives . . .
Every time something like a jihad or a sharia
movement has taken over any country admit-
tedly theyve only been able to do it in very
primitive cases its a smouldering wreck with
no productivity.
RDTotal failure. If you look at religiosity across
countries of the world and, indeed, across the
states of the US, you find that religiosity tends
to correlate with poverty and with various
other indices of social deprivation.
CHYes. Thats also what it feeds on. But I dont
want to condescend about that. I know a lot of
very educated, very prosperous, very thought-
ful people who believe.
RD Do you think [Thomas] Jefferson and
[James] Madison were deists, as is often said?
CH I think they fluctuated, one by one. Jeffer-
son is the one Im more happy to pronounce
on. The furthest he would go in public was to
incline to a theistic enlightened view but, in his
private correspondence, he goes much further.
He says he wishes we could return
to the wisdom of more than 2,000
years ago. Thats in his discussion
of his own Jefferson Bible, where he
cuts out everything supernatural re-
lating to Jesus.
But also, very importantly, he says
to his nephew Peter Carr in a private
letter [on the subject of belief]: Do
not be frightened from this inquiry
by any fear of its consequences. If it
ends in a belief that there is no God,
you will find incitements to virtue
in the comfort and pleasantness you
feel in its exercise and the love of oth-
ers which it will procure you. Now,
that can only be written by someone
whos had that experience.
RDIts very good, isnt it?
CH In my judgement, its an internal reading,
but I think its a close one. There was certainly
no priest at his bedside. But he did violate a rule
of C S Lewiss and here Im on Lewiss side.
Lewis says it is a cop-out to say Jesus was a great
moralist. He said its the one thing we must not
say; it is a wicked thing to say. If he wasnt the
Son of God, he was a very evil impostor and his
teachings were vain and fraudulent.
You may not take the easy route here and say:
He may not have been the Son of God and he
may not have been the Redeemer, but he was
a wonderful moralist. Lewis is more honest
than Jefferson in this point. I admire Lewis for
saying that. Rick Perry said it the other day.
RDJesus could just have been mistaken.
CH He could. Its not unknown for people to
have the illusion that theyre God or the Son.
Its a common delusion but, again, I dont think
we need to condescend. Rick Perry once said:
Not only do I believe that Jesus is my personal
saviour but I believe that those who dont are
going to eternal punishment. He was chal-
lenged at least on the last bit and he said, I dont
have the right to alter the doctrine. I cant say
its fine for me and not for others.
RD So we ought to be on the side of these fun-
damentalists?
CHNot on the side, but I think we should say
that theres something about their honesty that
we wish we could find.
RDWhich we dont get in bishops . . .
CH Our soft-centred bishops at Oxford and
other people, yes.
t
Abortion is a strong moral
question and shouldnt
be decided lightly
COVER STORY
RD Im often asked why it is that this republic
[of America], founded in secularism, is so much
more religious than those western European
countries that have an official state religion, like
Scandinavia and Britain.
CH [Alexis] de Tocqueville has it exactly right.
If you want a church in America, you have to
build it by the sweat of your own brow and many
have. Thats why theyre attached to them.
RDYes.
CH [Look at] the Greek Orthodox community
in Brooklyn. Whats the first thing it will do? It
will build itself a little shrine. The Jews not all
of them remarkably abandoned their religion
very soon after arriving from the shtetl.
RD Are you saying that most Jews have aban-
doned their religion?
CH Increasingly in America. When you came
to escape religious persecution and you didnt
want to replicate it, thats a strong memory.
The Jews very quickly secularised when they
came. American Jews must be the most secular
force on the planet now, as a collective. If they
are a collective which theyre not, really.
RD While not being religious, they often still
observe the Sabbath and that kind of thing.
CH Theres got to be something cultural. I go
to Passover every year. Sometimes, even I have
a seder, because I want my child to know that
she does come very distantly from another tra-
dition. It would explain if she met her great-
grandfather why he spoke Yiddish. Its cultural,
but the Passover seder is also the Socratic fo-
rum. Its dialectical. Its accompanied
by wine. Its got the bones of quite a
good discussion in it.
And then there is manifest destiny.
People feel America is just so lucky.
Its between two oceans, filled with
minerals, wealth, beauty. It does seem
providential to many people.
RDPromised land, city on a hill.
CH All that and the desire for another
Eden. Some secular utopians came
here with the same idea.
Thomas Paine and others all
thought of America as a great new
start for the species.
RDBut that was all secular.
CH A lot of it was, but you cant get
away from the liturgy: its too power-
ful. You will end up saying things
like promised land and it can be mobilised
for sinister purposes. But in a lot of cases, its
a mild belief. Its just: We should share our
good luck.
RD Ive heard another theory that, America
being a country of immigrants, people coming
from Europe, where they left their extended
family and left their support system, were alone
and they needed something.
CHSurely that was contained in what I just . . .
RDMaybe it was.
CH The reason why most of my friends are
non-believers is not particularly that they were
engaged in the arguments you and I have been
having, but they were made indifferent by com-
pulsory religion at school.
RDThey got bored by it.
CH Theyd had enough of it. They took from
it occasionally whatever they needed if you
needed to get married, you knew where to go.
Some of them, of course, are religious and
some of them like the music but, generally
speaking, the British people are benignly indif-
ferent to religion.
RD And the fact that there is an established
church increases that effect. Churches should
not be tax-free the way that they are. Not auto-
matically, anyway.
CHNo, certainly not. If the Church has deman -
ded that equal time be given to creationist or
pseudo-creationist speculations . . . any Church
that teaches that in its school and is in receipt
of federal money from the faith-based initia-
tive must, by law, also teach Darwinism and
alternative teachings, in order that the debate
is being taught. I dont think they want this.
RDNo.
CHTell them if they want equal time, well jolly
well have it. Thats why theyve always been
against comparative religion.
RD Comparative religion would be one of the
best weapons, I suspect.
CH Its got so insipid in parts of America now
that a lot of children are brought up as their
parents arent doing it and leave it to the schools
and the schools are afraid of it with no know -
ledge of any religion of any kind. I would like
children to know what religion is about because
[otherwise] some guru or cult or revivalists will
sweep them up.
RD Theyre vulnerable. I also would like them
to know the Bible for literary reasons.
CH Precisely. We both, I was pleased to see,
have written pieces about the King James Bible.
The AV [Authorised Version], as it was called in
my boyhood. A huge amount of English litera-
ture would be opaque if people didnt know it.
RD Absolutely, yes. Have you read some of the
modern translations? Futile, said the preacher.
Utterly futile.
CHHe doesnt!
RD He does, honestly. Futile, futile said the
priest. Its all futile.
CHThats Lamentations.
RDNo, its Ecclesiastes. Vanity, vanity.
CHVanity, vanity. Good God. Thats the least
religious book in the Bible. Thats the one that
Orwell wanted at his funeral.
RD I bet he did. I sometimes think the poetry
comes from the intriguing obscurity of mis-
translation. When the sound of the grinding is
low, the grasshopper is heard in the land . . . The
grasshopper shall be a burden. What the hell?
CH The Book of Job is the other great non-reli-
gious one, I always feel. Man is born to trouble
as the sparks fly upward. Try to do without
that. No, Im glad were on the same page there.
People tell me that the recitation of the Quran
can have the same effect if you understand
the original language. I wish I did. Some of the
Catholic liturgy is attractive.
RDI dont know enough Latin to judge that.
CH Sometimes one has just enough to be irri-
tated.
RD Yes [laughs]. Can you say anything about
Christmas?
CHYes. There was going to be a winter
solstice holiday for sure. The domi-
nant religion was going to take it over
and that would have happened with-
out Dickens and without others.
RD The Christmas tree comes from
Prince Albert; the shepherds and the
wise men are all made up.
CHCyrenius wasnt governor of Syria,
all of that. Increasingly, its secular -
ised itself. This Happy Holidays
I dont particularly like that, either.
RDHorrible, isnt it? Happy holiday
season.
CHI prefer our stuff about the cosmos.
The day after this interview, I was
honoured to present an award to
Christopher Hitchens in the presence of a large
audience in Texas that gave him a standing
ovation, first as he entered the hall and again at
the end of his deeply moving speech. My own
presentation speech ended with a tribute, in
which I said that every day he demonstrates the
falsehood of the lie that there are no atheists
in foxholes: Hitch is in a foxhole, and he is
dealing with it with a courage, an honesty and a
dignity that any of us would be, and should be,
proud to muster. l
Read an extended version of this interview at:
newstatesman.com/subjects/
christopher-hitchens
Do you ever worry that if
we destroy Christianity,
Islam will fill the vacuum?
Richard Dawkins
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A glistening, golden spaceship, with seven
lonely years and billions of miles behind it,
glides into orbit around a ringed, softly hued
planet. A flying-saucer-shaped machine de-
scends through a hazy atmosphere and lands
on the surface of an alien moon, ten times fur-
ther from the sun than the earth is.
Fantastic though they seem, these visions are
not a dream. The Cassini spacecraft and its
Huy gens probe have travelled invisible inter-
planetary highways to the place we call Saturn.
Their successful entry into orbit, the landing of
Huygens on the cold, dark equatorial plains of
Saturns moon Titan and Cassinis subsequent
explorations of the Saturnian environment are
already legend one act in a mythic saga of high
adventure and deep spiritual yearning that be-
gins and ends with us.
Our tale begins at the dawn of the space age.
We humans have been interplanetary travel -
lers now for over 50 years. In that time, weve
explored nearly every corner of the solar sys-
tem. Weve sent robotic spacecraft to the plan-
ets, all eight of them. Our exploratory ma-
chines have rendezvoused with comets and
landed on asteroids, we now have a spacecraft
on its way to Pluto and in what I regard as
humanitys finest hour we have set foot on
our own moon.
Like wandering pilgrims, our spacecraft have
journeyed far and wide to quench an innate lust
to explore, to survey our cosmic surroundings,
to ensure the future of our progeny and to seek
the answers to questions that have vexed us and
every generation of our ancestors before us:
how is it that our small planet, and our living on
it, came to be? What is the great cosmic theatre
within which life on our planet has unfolded?
And are terrestrial organisms, evolved as we are
from inanimate materials, the only living crea-
tures there are or ever were in the 13.7-billion-
year history of the universe?
At the heart of every scientific voyage, be it
to the planets or to probe the quantum world
of fundamental particles, is the same abiding
quest: to understand the deep connections
joining us to all that surrounds us and to
glimpse our part in the greater whole. A half-
century of travelling the solar system has
rewarded us with insights into the interrelat-
edness and origins of the earth and its sibling
planets and has shown us with unmistakable
clarity exactly what our cosmic setting really is.
Cassini, the joint American/European mis-
sion launched in 1997 to orbit Saturn seven
years later and the latest chapter in our saga,
has done this and more. Its voyage has been
one of hope and daring, an astonishing feat
The ring cycle: an
image taken by the
Cassini spacecraft
in February 2005 of
Saturn with its rings
and three of moons
Titan, its largest
(far left), its second
largest, Rhea (top)
and bright Enceladus
(furthest right)
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THE SPACE STORY
New images of the planet Saturn and its rings
inspire awe and could answer the oldest
question in human history: are we alone?
Adventures in
wonderland
By Carolyn Porco
of technological skill and mastery. Its
story has been part scientific travelogue, part
metaphor: a long reel of alien scenes and extra-
terrestrial vignettes that have informed and de-
lighted us with startling discoveries and splen-
dour beyond compare, and a metaphor for that
acute, uniquely human hunger to understand
ourselves and the underlying meaning of our
own lives.
A galaxy far, far away
Ten times further from the sun than the earth,
the Saturnian planetary system is so remote
and other-worldly that we might as well have
travelled to a faraway place in orbit around a
distant star in another quadrant of our galaxy.
It is tethered by a giant planet, second in size
only to Jupiter, with a muted but complex at-
mosphere cleaved by ferocious, planet-girding
winds and prone to the episodic eruption of
colossal storms. Saturn hosts an enormous,
resplendent set of rings, wreathing it in a vast
garland of icy rubble, perpetually in motion
and slicing knife-like across the sky directly
above the planets equator.
It boasts Titan, a moon the size of the planet
Mercury, with a cold, thick, hazy atmosphere
suffused with simple organic molecules and a
strangely earth-like, geologically diverse surface,
sculpted by wind and rain, girdled by a broad
equatorial belt of dunes and dotted in its polar
regions with lakes and seas of liquid organic
compounds. And it is home to more than 60
other moons, including bright, icy Enceladus.
The south polar terrain of this body, no bigger
than Britain, is shockingly warm and crossed
by deep fissures whose towering jets of fine, icy
particles erupt from salty, organic-rich liquid
water reservoirs below its surface. This thrilling
set of conditions points to a subsurface oasis in
which earth-like prebiotic chemistry and per-
haps even life itself may be roosting.
As an interplanetary vehicle bestowed,
through its on-board cameras, with a sense
of sight, Cassini has allowed us to peer into
these exotic realms with an acuity we once
could only dream of. Because we humans are
exquisitely engineered to comprehend visual
stimuli arrayed into two dimensions, images
hold a pre-eminent position in the vocabulary
of human communication.
And Cassinis images, coming as they do
from across the solar system, have commu -
nicated to us a sense of being there, a sense
of immersion and engagement in a strange,
forbidding environment we could otherwise
only imagine. They have achieved the near-
miraculous, converting the fleeting and indif-
ferent fluctuations of lights electromagnetic
fields into powerful visceral emotion an awe-
inspired exaltation at seeing what has never
been seen before.
Look at the images on these pages only
a fraction of Cassinis offerings and immerse
yourself in their grandeur, and you will come to
know the joy and soul-filling sustenance that
discovery and knowing, the scientists ken, can
bring. Spectacular phenomena in the atmos-
phere of Saturn, such as the explosive birth of
colossal storms or a giant vortex capping the
planets south pole, are seen here in mesmeris-
ing detail and provide a crucial point of com-
parison with our own planet in understanding
the forces driving earths atmospheric systems.
Physical mechanisms at work today in Sat-
urns rings, which were also key in sculpting
and configuring the early solar system, can be
observed in these images. Small moons, re-
sponsible for keeping the ring gaps in which
they dwell open, are the best windows we have
into the process by which a planet such as
Jupiter, slowly accreting material from the solar
nebula, finally grows large enough to truncate
its own growth by opening and maintaining
a gap along its orbit. Even smaller ring-embed-
ded moonlets can be observed over time drift-
ing back and forth across this disc of icy debris,
mimicking the migratory motions of the plan-
ets across the solar nebula in the very early days
of the solar system.
The surface of Titan, once mysterious and un-
seen, fascinates as you gaze at its geographical
contours and meandering riverbeds and con-
sider its position as the only body today in all
the solar system where, like the early earth, liq-
uid organics are ponded on its surface. Regard
Titan, imagine a long-ago time on our planet
when molecular interactions within pools of
organic compounds eventually led to the origin
THE SPACE STORY
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Left: an artists
rendering shows Cassini
passing through jets
of vapour and fine icy
particles erupting from
the south polar terrain
of Saturns small moon
Enceladus
Right: a Cassini image
from February 2011
shows a vast northern
storm and Saturns
second-largest moon,
Rhea, along with the
planets rings (seen
nearly edge on) and
their shadows
Far right, top: while
in the shadow of Saturn,
Cassini captured an
unprecedented image of
a total eclipse of the sun,
and a spellbinding view
of Planet Earth a mere
dot seen from a billion
miles away
Far right, bottom: part of
a large mosaic of images
of Enceladus, Saturns
most fascinating moon,
which harbours an
organic-rich sea of liquid
water beneath its south
polar cap a potential
source of life
t
THE SPACE STORY
of terrestrial life, and youll immediately com-
prehend the significance of our findings here.
And oh, the wonder you will feel at setting
eyes for the first time on the geysering turmoil
at the south pole of Enceladus, knowing that
therein may possibly lie the most promising,
most accessible locale in orbit around our sun
for unveiling Genesis II: a second origin of living
matter beyond the earth. This possibility alone
has made the toil of more than two decades
on Cassini worth every strain. For, should we
ever discover that life has independently arisen
twice in our solar system, then at that point
we could safely infer that life is not a bug but
a feature of the universe in which we live and
has occurred a staggering number of times
throughout the cosmos during its 13.7 billion
years. And that would be a final answer to prob-
ably the oldest question in human history.
These discoveries and more make clear to
us processes that operate well beyond Saturn,
from the origin of solar systems to the drivers
of meteorology on our own planet, all the way
to the origin and cosmic distribution of life
itself. In this regard, the scope of Cassinis mis-
sion has been truly universal and its findings
are revolutionary.
Moving image
As I write, Cassini continues to return one phe-
nomenal discovery after another from within
a far-flung planetary system that we have been
privileged to come so intimately to know. And
when it is all done, it will undoubtedly go down
in history as one of the most scientifically pro-
ductive missions that has ever flown.
But in the end, the story of Cassini, like that
of all our interplanetary explorations over the
past five decades, has been a story about longing
a longing to know ourselves, to finally under-
stand our place in the magnificent scheme of
cosmic evolution. There is one image we have
taken of Saturn that says this so much better
than words ever could an image that, despite
all the dazzling vistas we have been witness to
over the past seven years, remains Cassinis
most beloved one. Taken in late 2006, it was a
sight humankind had never seen before a total
eclipse of the sun seen from beyond Saturn.
Among the striking glories visible in this image
the unfamiliar appearance of backlit rings, the
refracted visage of the sun seen diamond-like
along the limb of Saturn and the beautiful blue
ring created from the spray exhaled by Ence-
ladus you can spot, across a billion miles of
interplanetary space, our own planet, earth, as
if nestled in the arms of Saturns rings.
There is a powerful emotion that stirs within
us when we catch sight of our small, fragile,
blue-ocean planet as it would be seen by others
in the skies of other worlds. It is that startling
recognition of ourselves, as weve never seen
ourselves before, that never fails to move us.
And it moves me to think of evolution. For me,
this is where the astronomer Galileo and the
biologist Charles Darwin come face to face, be-
cause it is an image that was made ultimately
possible by Galileos first experiments 400 years
ago, an image that shouts evolution.
I look at this image and see our distant ances-
tors, stepping down from the trees and walking
upright for the first time on to the African sa-
vannahs, pausing to look back at the forest from
which they came. And I look at this image and
I see a species that is unyielding in its pursuit of
knowledge and brave and ardent in its longing
to grasp the meaning and the significance of
its own existence.
Finally, I cant help but look at this image and
see the very best that humanity has to offer. We
are no doubt the troubled and warlike inhabi-
tants of one insignificant little planet. But we
are also the dreamers, thinkers and explorers
who took this picture one world clear across
interplanetary space to another. To be so small
and reach so far is what makes us, in the end,
the extraordinary citizens of Planet Earth. l
Carolyn Porco is an American planetary
scientist and the director of the Cassini Imaging
Central Laboratory for Operations in Boulder,
Colorado. For more information, see: ciclops.org
newstatesman.com/subjects/science
The story of Cassini has
been about a longing to
know ourselves
The NS Interview
Carol Ann Duffy, poet
I used to be called a poetess
it was stuffy and sexist
Portrait by Joss McKinley
You have written often on love, and now your
mothers death. Is all poetry personal?
Poetry is the music of being human, isnt it? The
poems are the songs we make out of what hap-
pens to us. And the three big things that hap-
pen to us are: falling in love, in my case having
children, and bereavement or loss.
Do you feel that you have a duty of care
to the people youre writing about?
I dont think so, because a love poet is always
writing about themselves, even though they
might be celebrating.
Your latest collection is called The Bees. Why?
Ive loved bees from childhood. When I was
reading what Id written, I noticed the bee was
appearing as an image, almost unsummoned.
Has the way you write poems evolved?
I started writing early I was 16 and my po-
ems were to do with subjects: This is a poem
about . . . As I got older I was more interested in
form and the relationship between words.
So what do bees mean to you?
My bees are my poems. Its how I see poetry, in
the ways that bees gather theyre very indus-
trious and then they add. I think a good poem is
a gift to the world; it adds something.
Is writing a poem an act of generosity?
Yes, very much so. When I read a wonderful
poem I feel that Ive been given a way of seeing,
feeling, remembering. Thats true of all the arts.
You feel nourished as you do with honey.
Are there words or images to which you return?
Youll find it hard to find a book of mine that
doesnt have a lot of moon in it. I like to find
metaphors for the moon as a private joke. I dont
know whether anyone has noticed that.
Your status as Poet Laureate is printed on
the front cover of your new book.
Against my wishes. Showing off, isnt it?
Are you accustomed to the role now?
I feel more joy about it than I did at the begin-
ning. Ive loved poetry since childhood, so its a
privilege to celebrate that. And Ive found a way
to be comfortable with being public. I dont have
to go on Question Time if I dont want to.
Are strong female poetic voices still rare?
When I published my first book in 1985, I was
still called a poetess there were very few
women around. It felt stuffy, depressing and
sexist. I remember doing a reading with Patricia
Beer and her sense of having to be the only
woman was such that she didnt talk to me. But
now weve got so many poets who are women:
Alice Oswald, Jo Shapcott, Gillian Clarke, Jackie
Kay you can go on for ever.
Your father was politically engaged. Are you?
It put me off more than anything. There was
this Celtic male socialist atmosphere around
my childhood, but it seemed to be quite sexist
and argumentative. If anything, it gave me an
aversion to party politics I was much more
likely to go to my bedroom and read a poem.
Do you feel more involved in politics now?
Not at all. All my political or social thinking
is done through my poems, but [about] issues
I see as moral, not political.
Can a government be guilty of immorality?
Yes. The closure of libraries and the outpricing of
education are immoral. Were slamming doors
shut to talent. My family was very ordinary.
I went to grammar school and university. I had
all my fees paid and was given 800 a year to
spend and Im really grateful for it. Someone
like me now would not be going, simple as that.
I think there should be a 50 per cent tax on
every financial transaction. That would sort it.
We need a new politics; the word doesnt have
a meaning. Which is probably why I resist it.
Would your politics be defined by morality?
Yes, a consensus of morality: what we value,
what kind of country we want to be, what we
want to encourage, treasure and enhance. I also
think that politicians should be made to qualify.
You should spend three years studying for it.
What does God mean to you?
[Long pause.] Well, nothing.
Not even in your convent days?
Up until I was about 12 I suppose I had a Christ-
massy relationship with God. Ive always felt
that the Christian story is a metaphor for under-
standing certain values, but it wasnt any more
real than Hansel and Gretel.
Do you vote?
Yes, Ive always voted Labour.
Is there anything youd like to forget?
No. I quite like remembering.
Was there a plan?
I wanted a child that was the one thing I al-
ways wanted.
Are we all doomed?
No. This is a time when we are realising there is
change afoot. Im hoping to go to St Pauls later.
I might read some poems [to the protesters]. l
Interview by Sophie Elmhirst
newstatesman.com/subjects/interviews
1955 Born in the Gorbals, Glasgow
1971 First poems published in a pamphlet
1977 BA in philosophy from Liverpool
University. Writes two plays while there
1985 Publishes her first collection of poems,
Standing Female Nude
1996 Begins teaching poetry at Manchester
Metropolitan University
2006 Receives the T S Eliot Prize for her
collection of love poems Rapture
2009Is appointed Poet Laureate
DEFINING MOMENTS
The thinker: Obamas presidency has been marred by a lack of action from a paralysed Congress. But could anyone else have fared better?
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This is an off-year in the US electoral cycle.
Some states elect their governors and legisla-
tures in odd-numbered years; most follow the
congressional and presidential election calendar:
in 2010, the Tea Party-inspired Republicans
massacred the Democrats and took control of
the House of Representatives. In 2012, they have
every chance of adding the Senate and White
House, if they can find a presidential candidate
who doesnt alienate all but the most wild-eyed
of their conservative base and if the congres-
sional Republicans can avoid being saddled with
responsibility for the economy.
Their aim is to ensure that Barack Obama car-
ries the can for a 9 per cent unemployment rate
which doesnt include those whove given up
looking for work. Obama wants the blame to fall
on the Republicans bloody-minded obstruc-
tion of all his proposals and is berating them
for failing to get people back to work. The fear
is that hes left it too late. Election results tend
to reflect the state of the economy six months
to a year earlier. Nobody expects an economic
miracle between now and next November.
Common sense remains in short supply on
the national political scene. When yet another
opinion poll announced that the US public
had fallen out of love with its politicians, no-
body was surprised. When it was reported in
October that the approval rating for Congress
had fallen to 9 per cent, there was some sur-
prise, not because the number was so low but
because it was higher than zero. Politicians are
despised by the electorate and the Republicans
are particularly disliked, despite their victories
in the 2010 midterm elections. Voters describing
themselves as independent now outnumber
those professing an allegiance. Disenchanted
wouldwin by a landslide.
The presidents approval ratings hover in the
low 40 per cent range, below what he needs
for re-election next year. But the only candidate
for the Republican nomination who runs him
close is the former governor of Massachusetts
Mitt Romney, whose own party likes him so
little that he has never got much above a 25 per
cent approval rating from Republican voters.
Polls suggest that Romney will come third place
in the upcoming Iowa caucuses.
Congress is paralysed. The Republicans re-
fuse to act on anything presented by the presi-
dent but they rarely even pass motions of their
own, knowing that they will go nowhere in the
Senate. Occasional indignant flurries of senti-
ment in favour of a balanced budget amend-
ment to the constitution result in a vote; that
there wont be any such amendment is known
to everyone. To describe this as gridlock is an
understatement. The problem is institutional
and therefore incurable, as US voters cannot
confront the obvious deficiencies of their con-
stitution the one thing all Americans wor-
ship. The constitution enjoys the same status
as the Bible and is often confused with it. They
are right to flinch at rewriting the constitution;
countries do this in the wake of war or dicta-
tors, but rarely otherwise. All the same, it is no
accident that, of the 193 members of the United
Nations, the only one that has copied the US
constitution is the Philippines.
A form of parliamentary system is much more
popular. Almost every aspect of the US consti-
tution, from the separation of powers to the
role of the Supreme Court, is a recipe for grid-
lock and the exploitation of the public by sec-
tional interests. A president who needs no help
from Congress in ordering the incineration of
the human race in his role as commander-in-
chief and who has organised the assassination
of Osama Bin Laden and the removal of Colonel
Gaddafi cannot get his modest proposals for
injecting life into an anaemic economy on to
the agenda of either house of Congress.
In the lower house, he is at the mercy of the
Republican speaker, John Boehner in the US
system not a neutral chairman but the leader of
the majority party and in the Senate, he is at
the mercy of procedural rules that result in the
Democratic majority being unable to bring up
his proposals unless it can rally 60 votes out
LETTER FROM AMERICA
With the economy in the doldrums, Barack Obamas best
chance of a second term is by breaking free of the deadening
search for consensus that blights US politics and hoping
that the Republican Party self-destructs. By Alan Ryan
Give em hell,
Barry
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and will be a pushover for an opposition chal-
lenger. Republicans remember Jimmy Carter,
the last Democrat to preside over a period of
economic depression that he couldnt fix and,
not coincidentally, the last Democrat to be a
one-term president. Ronald Reagan had no idea
how to fix it either, but he exuded an air of can-
do confidence and that was enough in 1980.
Its a high-risk strategy. Another event etched
in the memory of politicians even those who
were not born at the time is the 1948 defeat of
Thomas Dewey by Harry Truman. From 1946,
Truman governed with, or against, a Republi-
can majority in both the House and the Senate.
He had inherited the presidency when Roose -
velt died in the spring of 1945 and was thought
to be incompetent. But, running against a do-
nothing Congress, he beat the odds and broke
Republican hearts as well as embarrassing the
Chicago Daily Tribune, which went to press with
the banner headline Dewey defeats Truman
shortly before Truman defeated Dewey. The
battle cry of Give em hell, Harry shouted
at Truman by a supporter at a speech in 1948
stirs the hearts of Democrats to this day.
Obamas problem is that he isnt Truman and
in 2008 he ran for president as a candidate who
was above partisanship. Although he wrote an
autobiography entitled The Audacity of Hope,
audacity is not his style. He is a consensus-
builder, and when you are faced with uninhib-
ited hooligans determined to make you look
indecisive, thats the wrong thing to be.
Playing chicken with the US economy is not a
smart thing to do, but Congress did it in the sum-
mer, when it held hostage an increase in the gov-
ernments borrowing authority until the presi-
dent agreed to a programme for reducing the
national debt over the next decade, mostly by
cutting programmes that benefited the worse-
off. Standard & Poors lowered the US credit
rating and the public decided that the president
had no backbone and Congress had no sense.
LETTER FROM AMERICA
of 100 to overcome the minoritys obstruc-
tion. It doesnt help that Boehner is paralysed
by his inability to keep his Tea Party-backed
rank and file in line and a justified fear that his
second-in-command, Eric Cantor, is only wait-
ing for the right moment to grab his job.
The creators of the constitution 224 years
ago were sure that a government that did noth-
ing was better than a government that did too
much. Before embarking on the Louisiana Pur-
chase, which added 828,000 square miles of
French-held territory west of the Mississippi
to the original 13 states, Thomas Jefferson de-
nounced the idea of an active executive. To-
day, anyone used to the way the UK government
dominates proceedings can only stare open-
mouthed at the spectacle of the head of state
and government having to cajole not only the
opposition but members of his own party to al-
low him to progress with his agenda.
The one virtue of this sort of power-dispersing
system is that it forces everyone to search for
consensus. Winston Churchills old, unkind
joke about Americans always doing the right
thing but only after exhausting all the alter -
natives reflects how getting to a consensus can
be a very slow process. It is one reason why so
many conflicts end up in court. Where there
is intransigence, as there was in the 1950s and
1960s over the elimination of racial segregation
in the Southern states, its almost inevitable that
one side will try to break the logjam by seeking
a ruling that the other is acting unconstitu -
tionally, such as getting separate but equal
schools declared to be a violation of the rights of
black students, or as several states are arguing
now over some of the provisions of the health-
care reforms. The Supreme Court has agreed to
hear their arguments in 2012, which will liven
up the presidential race.
The mess were in
Progress hangs on the willingness of politicians
to cut deals in the interests of getting a compro-
mise that everyone can live with and that is
arguably in the interests of the population at
large. Among the current problems is the lack
of anything like a consensus on the best way to
wake up the housing market, clean up the fi-
nancial mess and get people back to work. The
greater problem is that the Republican Party
has committed itself to a scorched-earth policy
of opposing anything proposed by President
Obama. The leader of the Republicans in the
Senate, the egregious Mitch McConnell, an-
nounced in 2010 that the overriding objec-
tive of Senate Republicans was to ensure that
Obama would be a one-term president.
The strategy is simple. The president is the
only focus of national political attention. Most
Americans can just about identify their own
member of Congress and cannot name most
members of the cabinet but they do know who
is supposed to be in overall command. If the
president can be frustrated in everything he at-
tempts, he will be seen as weak and ineffectual
The problem for Obama is that Republicans
play chicken more deftly. If you want to per-
suade the driver of the car racing towards you
that you are not going to change course, the
ultimate strategy is to throw the steering wheel
out of the window. The Republican version
was to sign a declaration that under no circum-
stances would they raise taxes. Any reduction
in the governments deficit must come by cut-
ting expenditure, and as the Republicans wont
touch the Pentagons budget, that entails cut-
ting the deficit by cutting programmes that
benefit the worse-off.
The author of the anti-tax declaration is a lob-
byist and activist called Grover Norquist, whose
professed ambition is to shrink government
until its small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Politicians routinely break their campaign prom-
ises, and so one might think that its no big deal
to have signed Norquists piece of paper. This
overlooks the realities. Because almost every
seat in Congress is safe for one or the other
party, the real threat to an incumbent comes
from inside his own party. When the ideologi-
cal temperature rises, small numbers of enthu-
siasts, if well funded and given access to local
television channels to run negative ads, can turf
out an incumbent in a primary election. It hap-
pened in 2010, notably in Alaska, Florida and
Delaware. In Delaware, the Tea Party managed
to reject Mike Castle, a competent former gov-
ernor and congressman, in favour of Christine
ODonnell, whose financial problems and all-
round flakiness ensured that she lost the actual
election by a landslide. Castle would have won.
Obamas supporters have always hoped that
he would call the Republicans bluff. He has a
powerful weapon ready to hand. Many of the
countrys economic problems the size of its
national debt and continuing budget deficits
stem from George W Bushs reckless reductions
in income-tax rates in 2001 and 2003; they were
due to expire at the end of 2010 if Obama did
nothing. He wanted to preserve the lower tax
rates for the worse-off and let them expire for
the better-off. When the Republicans insisted
on keeping the lower rates for the best-off, he
blinked. Offered the chance to explain to the
country that everyone was going to be worse
off because the Republican Party had been
bought lock, stock and barrel by the less than
1 per cent of the population that makes more
than half a million dollars a year, he turned it
down. If anything stiffens his backbone between
now and November 2012, it will be the success
of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Obamas most enthusiastic supporters are the
most disillusioned. He hasnt closed Guantan -
amo Bay and he has continued Bushs foreign
policies and made no progress on a Palestinian
peace deal. He has bailed out bankers, failed
to pursue the malefactors who brought down
the banking system and allowed the cost of
sorting out the mortgage mess to fall on hard-
up homeowners, not the mortgage companies.
Public intellectuals such as the philosopher
Anyone but: Mitt Romney on the campaign trail
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IMMIGRANT NATIONS
Paul Scheffer
An important, ambitious book...and a damn good read too.
Financial Times
Arguably the best study in many years of the effects that mass immigration has had on the countries and
cities of western Europe and north America.
European Voice
13 May 2011 300 pages
978-0-7456-4962-7 paperback 19.99
THE LOST MICHELANGELOS
Antonio Forcellino
As much a story about the intransigence of the art establishment and the gaps in its tradition-bound
methods for considering authentication claims as it is about the ultimate fate of the painting itself.
New York Times
An unlikely and rather miraculous piece of art history.
Bay Area Reporter
27 May 2011 180 pages
978-0-7456-5203-0 hardback 18.99
THE STRANGE NON-DEATH OF NEOLIBERALISM
Colin Crouch
A highly approachable and illuminating argument in political economy.
The Guardian
The most important work on the political economy of modern capitalism since Keynes, Kalecki and
Schoneld.
Philippe C. Schmitter, European University Institute
24 June 2011 224 pages
978-0-7456-5221-4 paperback 14.99
CULTURE IN A LIQUID MODERN WORLD
Zygmunt Bauman
Acerbic interpretations of a long-contested word.
Steven Poole, The Guardian
One of the most brilliant and inuential social thinkers of our time retraces the peregrinations of the
concept of culture and examines its fate in a world marked by the powerful new forces of globalization,
migration and the intermingling of populations.
14 June 2011 144 pages
978-0-7456-5355-6 12.99
new from polity
Available now from all good bookshops
politybooks.com
LETTER FROM AMERICA
Cornel West who thought that Obama would
usher in an era of prophetic politics, giving
a fresh impetus to the fight for social justice,
feel betrayed; West has spent two nights in jail
recently for protesting with the Occupy Wall
Street movement.
All of which makes it very odd that next years
elections, both presidential and congressional,
cant be taken for granted. This autumns poli-
tics has been enlivened by the Republicans
search for a plausible candidate. The consensus
is that they will end up nominating Romney
but that they would prefer almost anyone else;
the trouble is that everyone else rises briefly to
the top of the polls and then self-destructs.
The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, came to
the front with a reputation for political savvy,
then stumbled on questions about Pakistan at
a debate and revealed that he thought that the
voting age was 21. It has been 18 for two decades.
Herman Cain, boss of the Godfather pizza
chain, who leaped ahead of Romney with a
mixture of folksy charm and simple economic
nostrums, found former employees coming
out of the woodwork to accuse him of sexual
harassment, and suspended his campaign. Now
Newt Gingrich is occupying the anyone but
Romney slot. How a serial adulterer who led
the Republicans to catastrophic defeats came
to appeal to socially conservative evangelical
Christians is a mystery that baffles all. Nobody
supposes the Gingrich bounce can last.
This leaves Romney, who sets records for
smooth mendacity surprising even in US poli-
tics. He advertises himself as a businessman but
the business was the management consultancy
Bain, where he made a lot of money by showing
clients how to make firms private with lever-
aged buyouts that seem to have done Bain more
good than the firms and the owners far more
good than their workers. Far from creating jobs
in the US, Bains speciality was outsourcing.
In any case, Romney has been a full-time pro-
fessional politician for the past 15 years. Being
governor of the liberal state of Massachusetts
doesnt rate highly as a job qualification with
members of the Tea Party and he has been en-
gaged in a wholesale reinvention exercise.
Being a Mormon may help anyone who can
believe what members of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints are supposed to be-
lieve should find it simple to entertain contra-
dictory views on just about anything.
Formerly in favour of same-sex marriage and
pro-choice on abortion, he is now against
both. He created a health-care system in Massa -
chusetts that was the model for Obamacare;
he now says either that it was a mistake or that
its not like what Obama did. It has emerged
that when he left office he spent $100,000 de-
stroying documents. You can see why anyone
but Romney might appeal to voters with even
a modest liking for honesty and consistency.
The one glimmer of political intelligence this
autumn has come from the Occupy Wall Street
movement. Its positive views are inscrutable;
but it has done what the respectable media and
organisations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts
have failed to do: make the public aware of the
extent to which the economic growth of the past
30 years has gone to the wealthiest 1 per cent of
the population. It may even have given Obama
the confidence to go after the Republicans for
being ready to sacrifice the 99 per cent to their
multimillionaire paymasters.
There is still a long way to go. A Pew report
showed that self-delusion is alive and well:
Americans believe that the US is uniquely open
to talent and hard work and that social mobility
is greater in the US than anywhere in the world.
The truth is that the US and the UK have lower
social mobility than almost all other advanced
industrial societies. Yet almost 40 per cent of the
population also believe that they are, or within
a year will be, part of the top 1 per cent. Like
any other religious conviction, faith in the great
American myth is impervious to mere facts. l
Alan Ryan is a lecturer at Princeton University
and a former warden of New College, Oxford
The one glimmer of
intelligence has come from
Occupy Wall Street
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Science occasionally uncovers truths that are
too counterintuitive or unpalatable for us to ac-
cept. The solution to the problem of free will
is a truth of this kind. That many scientists still
consider the question open has nothing to do
with the limits of our knowledge: rather, it rep-
resents a collective failure of intellectual nerve.
Free will is an illusion. The conscious self
is not the origin of its thoughts, perceptions,
emotions and intentions. In each moment, we
simply do not know why we think or behave
as we do. Our wills are not of our own making.
We have known this for the better part of a cen-
tury, and yet many scientists continue to speak
as though human thought and behaviour were
primordial mysteries around which the laws of
nature must bend.
The reticence of scientists on this subject
is understandable: if we were to dispense fully
with the idea of free will, it would precipitate
a culture war far more belligerent than has been
waged on the topic of evolution. Unlike many
other academic questions, free will is central to
most peoples conception of themselves and
touches almost everything that they value
personal relationships, moral responsibility,
law, politics, religion, public policy, and so on.
Abandoning this notion seems to destabilise
our thinking in all these areas at once.
Without freedom of will, sinners and crimi-
nals would be just poorly calibrated clockwork,
and any conception of justice that emphasised
their punishment (rather than their deterrence,
rehabilitation, or mere containment) would
seem deeply incongruous. And those of us
who work hard and follow the rules would not
deserve our success in any deep sense. People
tend to find these conclusions intellectually and
ethically abhorrent.
But, in fact, free will is more than an illusion
(or less), in that it cannot even be rendered co-
herent conceptually. Either our wills are deter-
mined by prior causes, and we are not responsi-
ble for them, or they are the product of chance,
and we are not responsible for them. If a mans
choice to shoot the president is determined
by a certain pattern of neural activity, and this
neural activity is in turn the product of prior
causes perhaps an unfortunate coincidence
of bad genes, an unhappy childhood and bom-
bardment by cosmic rays what can it possibly
mean to say that his will is free? No one has
ever described a manner in which mental and
physical events could arise that would attest to
the existence of such freedom. Most illusions
are made of sterner stuff than this.
In physical terms, every human action is re-
ducible to a totality of impersonal events merely
propagating their influence; genes are tran-
scribed, neurotransmitters bind to their recep-
tors, muscle fibres contract, and John Doe pulls
the trigger on his gun. But, for our common-
sense notions of human agency to hold, our ac-
tions cannot be merely lawful products of our
biology, our conditioning, or anything else that
might lead others to predict them.
Quantum leap
Consequently, some scientists and philoso-
phers insist that the indeterminacy of quantum
processes, at the level of the neuron or its con-
stituents, could yield a form of mental life that
would stand free of the causal order. Yet such
speculation is pointless for an indeterminate
world, governed by chance or quantum proba-
bilities, would grant no more autonomy to hu-
man beings than a roulette wheel would, if one
could be installed inside the brain. In the face
of any real independence from prior patterns,
every gesture would seem to merit the state-
ment, I dont know what came over me.
Chance events are precisely those for which we
can claim no responsibility.
And yet, even though we can find no room
for it in the causal order, the notion of free
will is still accorded a remarkable deference in
the scientific and philosophical literature, even
by those who believe that the mind is entirely
dependent on the workings of the brain. How-
ever, the truth is that free will doesnt even cor-
respond to any subjective fact about us, for in-
trospection soon grows as hostile to the idea as
the equations of physics have. Apparent acts of
volition merely arise, spontaneously (whether
caused, uncaused or probabilistically inclined,
it makes no difference), and cannot be traced to
FIRST PERSON
All of our behaviour can be traced to biological
events about which we have no conscious
knowledge. By Sam Harris
The free will
delusion
Left, or right, or centre? We seduce ourselves into
thinking that we make firm, rational choices
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a point of origin in the stream of consciousness.
A moment or two of serious self-scrutiny, and
you might observe that you decide the next
thought you think no more than you decide the
next thought I write.
All of our behaviour can be traced to biologi-
cal events about which we have no conscious
knowledge. In the 1980s the neurophysiologist
Benjamin Libet demonstrated that activity in
the brains motor regions can be detected some
300 milliseconds before a person feels that he
has decided to move. Another lab recently used
functional magnetic resonance imaging data to
show that some conscious decisions can be
predicted up to ten seconds before they enter
awareness (long before the preparatory motor
activity detected by Libet). Clearly, findings of
this kind are difficult to reconcile with the
sense that one is the conscious source of ones
thoughts and actions.
For better or worse, these truths about hu-
man psychology have political implications,
because liberals and conservatives are not
equally confused about them. Liberals usually
understand that every person represents a con-
fluence of forces that he did not will into being
and we can be lucky or very unlucky in this re-
spect. Conservatives, however, have made a re-
ligious fetish of individualism.
Many seem to have absolutely no awareness
of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything
in life, no matter how hard one works. One
must be lucky to be able to work. One must be
lucky to be intelligent and physically healthy
and not to have been bankrupted in middle age
by the illness of a spouse.
The disparities in human luck are both
morally relevant and harrowing to contem-
plate. If I had been born with the brain, body
and experience of Ted Bundy, I would have
been Ted Bundy a serial killer put to death for
his crimes. There is no extra part of me that
could have resisted taking his path in life. Even
if there is an immortal soul lurking in my brain,
my will would acquire no more autonomy in
the presence of ectoplasm. Any man who
comes into this world with the soul of a serial
killer is unlucky indeed.
Consider the biography of any self-made
man, and you will find that his success was
entirely dependent on background conditions
that he did not make, and of which he was
merely a beneficiary. There is not a person on
earth who chose his genome, or the country of
his birth, or the political and economic condi-
tions that prevailed at moments crucial to his
progress. And yet, living in America, I get the
distinct sense that if I asked the average con -
servative why he wasnt born with club feet,
or why he wasnt orphaned before the age of
five, he would not hesitate to take credit for
these accomplishments.
If you have struggled to make the most of
what nature gave you, you must still admit
your ability and inclination to struggle is part
of your inheritance. How much credit does a
person deserve for not being lazy? None at all.
Laziness, like diligence, is a neurological condi-
tion. Of course, conservatives are right to think
that we must encourage people to work to the
best of their abilities and discourage free riders
wherever we can. And it is wise to hold people
responsible for their actions when treating
them this way influences their behaviour and
brings benefit to society.
But this does not require that we endorse the
cognitive illusion of free will. We need only
acknowledge that efforts matter and that peo-
ple can change. We cannot change ourselves,
precisely, but we continually influence, and are
influenced by, the world around us.
Choices, choices
The illusoriness of free will doesnt render
the choices we make in life any less important.
As my friend Daniel Dennett has pointed out,
many people confuse determinism with fatal-
ism. This gives rise to questions such as, If
everything is determined, why should I do any-
thing? Why not just sit back and see what hap-
pens? That our choices depend on prior causes
does not mean that they do not matter. If I had
not decided to write this article, it wouldnt
have written itself. My choice to write it was
unquestionably the primary cause of its coming
into being. Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals
and willpower are causal states of the brain,
leading to specific behaviours, and behaviours
lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice,
therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will
believe. But the next choice you make will, nev-
ertheless, come out of the darkness of prior
causes that you, the conscious witness of your
experience, did not bring into being.
It seems only decent at this moment of per-
vasive economic hardship and inequality to
concede how much luck is required to succeed
in this world. Those who have been especially
lucky the smart, healthy, well connected and
rich should count their blessings, and then
share some of these blessings with the rest of
society. Unfortunately, a belief in free will of-
ten stands in their way. l
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and the author of
The Moral Landscape (Bantam Press, 20)
newstatesman.com/subjects/philosophy
THE CHRISTMAS ESSAY
What do debutante balls, the Japanese
tea ceremony, Ponzi schemes and doubting
clergy all have in common?
The social cell
By Daniel Dennett
THE CHRISTMAS ESSAY
A
single cell, such as a bacterium,
is the simplest thing that can be
alive. In addition to the materials
from which it is constructed, it
needs three features: a way of cap-
turing energy (a metabolism), a
way of reproducing (genes or something like
genes) and a membrane that lets in what needs
to come in and keeps out the rest.
Converging lines of research from various
schools in biology agree on these three necessi-
ties, but there is substantial unresolved contro-
versy about the order in which they must have
emerged at the origin of life. If the history
of evolutionary biology continues along the
paths it has followed so far, it is likely that the
solution to this problem will prove to be some
ingenious and indirect process of chance com-
binations and gradual refinements, in which
metabolism-like cycles and reproduction-like
processes joined forces with non-living mem-
branes that were already floating around, objets
trouvs that could be appropriated and ex-
ploited. Whatever their origins, the resulting
designs have now been refined and optimised
for more than three billion years and have
proven remarkably hardy. Not only are such
single cells the most abundant form of life on
the planet, but all living things, from trees to
fish to human beings, are constructed of them,
harnessed by the trillions into co-operating
multicellular teams.
Cells may be the simplest life forms on the
planet even the simplest possible life forms
but their inner workings, at the molecular level,
are breathtakingly complex, composed of thou-
sands of molecular machines, all of them inter-
acting to provide the cell with the energy it
needs to build offspring and maintain its mem-
brane. Echoes of the design wisdom embodied
in this very effective machinery can be found in
human culture, which is dazzlingly complex,
too, composed as it is of about seven billion
interacting people, with their traditions, lan-
guages, institutions, occupations, values and
economies. Some cultural phenomena bear a
striking resemblance to the cells of cell biology,
actively preserving themselves in their social
environments, finding the nutrients they need
and fending off the causes of their dissolution.
Consider four unrelated species of social cell
that share some interesting features. What do
the Japanese tea ceremony, debutante parties,
Ponzi schemes and many Christian churches
have in common? They are all variations of an
insidiously effective social mechanism that:
1) thrives on human innocence, and
2) nobody had to design, and
3) is threatened with extinction by the rising
tide of accessibility to information.
Like bacteria, as we shall see, they have and
need metabolisms, methods of reproducing,
and membranes, yet there is no need to suppose
that these shared features arose from a common
ancestor, nor even that the features of one of
them inspired copying by the other. Wherever
there is a design that is highly successful in a
broad range of similar environments, it is apt
to emerge again and again, independently the
phenomenon known in biology as convergent
evolution. I call these designs good tricks.
For instance, flight has evolved independently
at least four times, in insects, birds, pterosaurs
and mammals, and vision has evolved more of-
ten than that.
Seeing and flying are very good tricks, for ob-
vious reasons. It is also obvious that human cul-
ture has its own roster of good tricks: bows and
arrows, boats, writing and the wheel, to name
a few. (It is not known if the wheel has been in-
vented many times or just once, with all later
wheels being copies of some original wheel, the
brainchild of the mythic inventor of the wheel
and it doesnt matter! Almost certainly wheels
would have appeared eventually one place or
another.) The typical if tacit assumption is that
these good tricks were independently rein-
vented by intelligent designers among our an-
cestors, and although this may sometimes have
been true we will probably never know it is
quite possible that they arose in the same way
the good tricks of biology did: by mindless
processes of differential reproduction in which
understanding of what was going on was at a
minimum, if not zero.
Let us consider the four cultural phenomena,
chosen for their relative simplicity and vivid-
ness from a much larger array of possibilities, to
see how this might have happened.
The Japanese tea ceremony is a set of traditions
that has accrued over at least a millennium, and
now consists of a considerable range of formal
ceremonies, varying with the season and with
the station of the participants, composed of
highly elaborate and scrupulously observed
rituals of greeting, preparation, serving, clean-
ing of the utensils, formulaic comments on the
quality of the tea and so forth, all conducted
either in a tea-house built for that purpose or in
a specially furnished tearoom.
The neophyte participant in a tea ceremony
dutifully complies, silent and respectful, like
a visitor at a religious service, though the cere-
mony is not specifically religious unless you
define religion in such a way that ceremoniously
eating foie gras or caviar also counts as a sacra-
ment of sorts. Some people, after all, are said to
worship fine wine.
A quick glance at biology invites us to ask the
following question: why hasnt the Japanese tea
ceremony become extinct? What has sustained
it over so many centuries? The system must in
some sense keep reproducing itself, ensuring
a supply of new officiants to serve as hosts and
new participants to serve as guests, and main-
taining and replacing all the exquisite equip-
ment used. It requires a lot of energy to keep
going. What is its metabolism and how does it
work? The Japanese tea ceremony exploits the
human desire for status and influence in order
to raise the money to capture the energy, and has
evolved an elaborate developmental programme
for enlisting and training new hosts who can
eventually reproduce their own schools (with
mutations) for training yet another generation
of hosts, and so on, all of this within the kind of
protective shell that can readily be constructed
and defended in a stratified society.
Young girls and some boys as well from
financially comfortable families are readily in-
duced to enrol, at considerable expense, in
circles that train them to perform the rituals.
It is or has been for a long time a path to
high status. The cultural virtues of obedience
and respect for ones elders, together with a
standard helping of youthful naivety, tend to
ensure a ready supply of ideally compliant and
attentive initiates allowed inside the gates.
At first, as apprentices, they watch quietly,
memorising the rituals, inculcating in them-
selves the ideals, while their parents pay for the
operating expenses. Some of them graduate
to higher stages, each tier of students educating
the lower tier, with the prospect held out of
rising to the status of teacher, at which point
the energy flow the money turns around.
Teachers earn a living, but only a few climb that
high up the pyramid. And teachers have their
own pyramid to climb: associations of circles
that in effect compete for prestige with other
circles. Once youre enrolled in the system,
there is a strong incentive not to criticise or
rebel: were all in this boat together dont
rock it. It doesnt matter that much whether
the initiates continue to believe in the tea cere-
mony as an important part of life. They are all
committed to a trajectory with high costs of
leaving and some promise of future benefits.
Cultural phenomena bear
a striking resemblance
to cell biology
Go forth and multiply: bacteria thrive by replication
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THE CHRISTMAS ESSAY
No doubt many of the participants including
the parents paying the bills feel trapped, but
keep their feelings to themselves. Do you want
to be an insider or an outsider? The difficulty
in answering that question creates the semi-
permeable membrane that preserves the ma-
chinery. As Japanese society becomes less
stratified, more homogenised, the contrast has
become less effective.
Notice that this account remains silent about
the value of the Japanese tea ceremony. It may,
like university education, be helping both soci-
ety and the individual in all manner of ways.
It may be nurturing the arts, instilling virtues,
preserving knowledge and wisdom, stabilising
the mores of society or it may have had, but
lost, these roles over time. It may survive today
as a sort of self-perpetuating parasitical growth
that reproduces itself because it can. It seems on
the face of it, however, to be a benign mutual-
ist, not parasitic element of society.
C
an the same be said for the debu-
tante ball or cotillion, which has
occupied much the same niche in
the US, especially in the South? If
you are rich enough, and arriviste,
you want your daughters to come
out to society, and expend considerable effort
and sums of money manoeuvring into position
to accomplish this initiation. If your family
arrived generations ago, you may still feel the
pressure to preserve your position in society
by participating in the prolonged and expen-
sive rituals, something you might think you
owed to your daughters, however ungratefully
they respond to the pressure.
A look at the website of the National League
of Junior Cotillions (nljc.com) shows much the
same structure as the Japanese tea ceremony:
chapters in place of circles, a hierarchy of
volunteers, assistants and (paid) instructors,
and most interestingly a strong emphasis
on volunteerism, patriotism and involvement
in community activities. Biologists know
that you can infer much about the dangers in
an organisms environment by studying its
defences, which have been crafted to protect
it from the most salient challenges. The entire
debutante tradition is threatened by the spread-
ing opinion that it is a superannuated cultural
parasite, so it is sporting its good-works over-
coat, instead of a mink stole, to protect its high
status, on which its life depends.
It is important to remember that there is very
little inertia in culture; an art form or practice
(or language or institution) can become extinct
in a generation if its elements arent assidu-
ously reproduced and reproduced. Not so
many years ago, most city newspapers in the
US devoted an entire section to Society and
covered the ceremonies of debutantes with the
same respectful care still accorded weddings
and funerals. Todays coverage tends to make
note of the diminishing numbers of debutantes
taking part, and often has the same snarky tone
of amusement and withheld approval that dis-
tinguishes Hollywood gossip except that
the people named are not celebrities. Farewell,
debutantes, except in Texas, where they will no
doubt hold out for another decade or two.
Ponzi schemes share the pyramidal entry
structure. They are obviously parasitic invad -
ers, benefiting neither the individuals entrapped
nor the society in general. Charles Ponzi (1882-
1949) did not invent the scheme (and neither
did Charles Dickens, who describes one in
Martin Chuzzlewit), but Ponzi may have added
a few wrinkles and hence, to some degree, may
deserve the authorial recognition.
How does a Ponzi scheme get started? It
doesnt have to be born in villainy, though it
always ends up there. An eager and sincere
entrepreneur with what he takes to be a good
idea raises the initial capital in good faith and
then finds his project running into unantici-
pated snags. But there is an informational lag
that lets the investors keep coming in, and this
provides fresh energy money to expend in
protecting the whole project by providing a
dividend to the early investors. The rules forbid
this, but . . . cant we bend them just a bit to get
through the storm and keep this wonderful
project afloat?
A gradual and unalarming entry on to a slip-
pery slope is often a good trick, found in nature
and in culture. It is relied on by the pitcher plant
and other insectivorous plants, which do not
have to comprehend the rationale of their de-
sign to benefit from it. Ponzi schemes, and even
their proprietors, can also take advantage of
this design feature without understanding it.
Those schemes that have it thrive; the others
do not. Ponzi schemes do, however, have to
be composed, unlike plants, of parts human
agents which understand quite a lot. All these
social cells depend critically on language-using,
comprehending people. Language is the main
medium of interaction, but also of reproduc-
tion. Words play a foundational role rather
like that of genes and, like genes, they are
highly effective transmitters of information
that similarly evolved without a helping hand
from any intelligent designers. (Words are the
pre-eminent vehicles of cultural transmission
and evolution.)
So language and comprehension are an es-
sential part of the workings of social cells, but
here is a surprising twist: it is very important
in each case that the participants not under-
stand too much. It is not just that the invention
and refinement of these social cells do not
depend on any intelligent designer; it is that
the cells effective operation depends on the
relative cluelessness or innocence of the par-
ticipants. The membrane that restricts infor-
mation flow is just as important as the mem-
brane that restricts entry of outsiders, precisely
because inside the barrier there are participants
who are capable of understanding that infor-
mation, information that can quickly trans-
form them into outsiders. Bacteria dont have
to worry about the disillusionment of their
motor proteins, willing slaves that do so much
of the heavy lifting. For social cells, this is a big
ecological challenge.
Money, not social prestige, is the bait that at-
tracts people to Ponzi schemes, but once youre
caught, you encounter the same pressure not
to blow the whistle, because it would destroy
the gains you have accumulated. And perhaps
the anticipated shame of becoming known as
a dupe is more motivating than the prospect of
financial loss, or the dishonour of being consid-
ered a philistine or a social outcast, in the case
of the Japanese tea ceremony or the debutante
cotillion. These are all strong inducements. The
extended success of Bernie Madoff shows that
it is still possible for a Ponzi scheme to thrive
for some time, in large measure because it ex-
ploits networks of trust a fine feature of a soci-
ety and politeness a fine endowment of in-
dividuals to circumvent the requirements of
due diligence that would otherwise expose the
fraud. It is no accident that it is typically good,
honest people (a bit greedy, maybe, but other-
wise trustworthy and trusting) who are lured
into Ponzi schemes.
N
ow what about religions? They,
too, thrive on the goodness of
people. For the past few years,
Linda LaScola, a clinical social
worker, qualitative researcher
and psychotherapist, and I have
been investigating the curious, sad phenome-
non of closeted non-believing clergy well-
meaning, hard-working pastors who find they
do not believe the creed of their denomination,
but also find that they cannot just blow the
whistle and abandon the pulpit. We knew that
many churchgoers have lost whatever faith
they had but continue their membership for
social and psychological reasons, and surmised
that there might be clergy who were similarly
attached to their church. What is it like to be a
non-believing pastor? We found some exam-
ples who were willing to tell us, and are now
completing a second survey of volunteers.
We want to know, ultimately, how this hap-
pens, and how common it is. It is apparently
not rare nobody knows what percentage of
clergy fall into this category, not surprisingly.
Our first study reported on five pastors in dif-
ferent Protestant denominations, who were in-
terviewed in depth and in strict confidence by
LaScola. Because it was published electronically
(on the website On Faith) and under the head-
line Preachers who are not believers (Evolu-
tionary Psychology, volume eight, issue one),
this first pilot study has received considerable
attention and brought us a host of new volun-
teers for our ongoing research.
There are many paths into this predicament,
we find, but a common thread runs through
most of them: a certain sort of innocence and
a powerful desire, not for social prestige or
riches, but rather the desire to lead a good life, t
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THE CHRISTMAS ESSAY
to help other people as much as possible. The
tragic trap is baited with goodness itself.
Here is how it often works: teenagers glow-
ing with enthusiasm decide to devote their
lives to a career of helping others and, looking
around in their rather sheltered communities,
they see no better, purer option than going into
the clergy. When they get to seminary they
find themselves being taught things that no-
body told them in Sunday school. The more
they learn of theology and the history of the
composition of the Bible, the less believable
they find their creed. Eventually they cease to
believe altogether. But, alas, they have already
made a substantial commitment in social capi-
tal telling their families and communities
about their goals so the pressure is strong to
find an accommodation, or at least to imagine
that if they hang in there they will find one.
Only a lucky few find either the energy or the
right moment to break free. Those who dont
break free then learn the tricks of the trade, the
difference between what you can say from the
pulpit and what you can say in the sanctum of
the seminary, or in your heart. Some, of course,
are unfazed by this.
One can be initiated into a conspiracy with-
out a single word exchanged or without a secret
handshake; all it takes is the dawning realisation,
beginning in seminary, that you and the others
are privy to a secret, and that they know that
you know, and you know that they know that
you know. This is what is known to philoso-
phers and linguists as mutual knowledge, and
it plays a potent role in many social circum-
stances. Without any explicit agreement, mu-
tual knowledge seals the deal; you have no right
to betray this bond by unilaterally divulging it,
or even discussing it. A social membrane is made
of such stuff, and it can make a prison for any-
body inside who wishes to get out.
Like reluctant debutantes or privately suspi-
cious Ponzi victims, they button their lip for an
abundance of good reasons. (Redundancy is al-
ways a good trick; it allows a collection of indi-
vidually porous defences to overlap into a nearly
impregnable shield.) Historically, pastors have
had slender economic resources, and if they live
in a parsonage they build up no equity in real
estate. Hanging on until the kids are out of col-
lege and one can collect ones meagre pension is
an option that can look better than making an
honest dash for the door. But a tentative finding
of our study so far is that the economic incen-
tive to hang on is sometimes of less importance
than the social and psychological factors. As
one of our pastors says, Im thinking if I leave
the church first of all, whats that going to do
to my family? And I dont know. Secondly is,
I have zero friends outside the church. Im kind
of a loner. And what about telling his wife?
Its going to turn her life upside down.
So pastors tend to stay put and search for ways
of protecting their conscience from the pangs
of hypocrisy. Redoubling ones efforts to take
good care of ones flock is probably a frequent
effect, and hence it could be one of the side
benefits of this system, a bonus that could al-
most pay for itself by turning its shepherds
into goodness slaves. Guilt is a potent enzyme
in many social arrangements, and has been es-
pecially promoted in religions.
Religions changed more in the past century
than they changed in the previous two millen-
nia, and probably will change more in the next
decade or two than in the past century. The
main environmental change, as many have
suggested, is the sudden increase in informa-
tional transparency. Religions were beautifully
designed over millennia to work in circum-
stances in which the people within them could
be assumed to be largely ignorant of much that
was outside the membrane.
Now that mobile phones and the internet have
altered the epistemic selective landscape in a
revolutionary way, every religious organisation
must scramble to evolve defences or become
extinct. Much has been made of the growing
attention to religion in the world, and this has
often been interpreted as a revival, an era of ex-
panding religiosity, but all the evidence points
away from that interpretation. The fastest-
growing religious category worldwide is no re-
ligion at all, and the increasing noise we hear is
apparently due to the heightened expenditure
of energy by all the threatened varieties in their
desperate attempts to fend off extinction.
What will the various religions evolve into?
That is hard to say, because evolution is a pro -
cess that amplifies unpredictable accidents into
trends and then novel structures. But there are
patterns in how this plays out, and if we examine
the good tricks that religions have evolved over
the millennia, we may be able to see what new
applications are in the offing.
Are these biologically inspired reflections
on religion offensive? They discuss topics that
many people would rather leave unexamined,
but, unlike most earlier criticisms of religion,
they do not point a finger of blame. It doesnt
take conniving priests to invent these cultural
contraptions, any more than it took a devious
social engineer to create the Japanese tea cere-
mony, or debutante cotillions, no matter how
resentful and trapped some of the participants
in those traditions may feel. Just as there is no
Intelligent Designer to be the proper recipient
of our gratitude for the magnificent biosphere
we live in, there need be no intelligent design-
ers to be the proper targets of our anger when
we find ourselves victimised by social cells.
There are, to be sure, plenty of greedy and
deceitful people, who often rise to power in any
of these organisations, but if we concentrate on
hunting the villains down, we misdirect our
energies. The structures can arise quite inno-
cently out of good intentions and gradually
evolve into social mechanisms that perpetuate
themselves quite independently of the inten-
tions and values of their constituent parts, the
agents who bustle about inside them executing
the tasks that keep the whole going.
We need to look dispassionately at possibili-
ties that can illuminate and might eventually
eliminate some serious sources of suffering
in the world. Once we appreciate the necessity
of metabolism, reproduction and protective
membranes for social cells as much as for pro-
tein-based cells, we can see more clearly the ef-
fects that novel environmental factors are likely
to have on the prospects for these phenomena.
Will the Japanese tea ceremony morph into
something different in order to stay alive, or will
the recent destratifications of Japanese society
lead to the disintegration of the membrane that
has protected the ceremony for a millennium?
What will replace debutante balls, and will the
niche be taken over by a descendant species of
social cell, or by another phenomenon entirely?
Ponzi schemes are probably harder to sustain
now, and a few minor changes in the flow of in-
formation around such phenomena may make
them all but impossible though who knows
what entity will invade that niche.
The parallels I have noted do not suggest any-
thing like a Law of Nature, nor is there any good
reason to believe that all social phenomena are
reducible to social cells. Societies are complex in
more ways than colonies of bacteria are. What
does shine through is a principle of good design.
Darwin showed us that the secret of life is the
differential reproduction of effective designs for
fending off dissolution. When we approach so-
cial phenomena with the same spirit of reverse
engineering, we find a bounty of insights that
can help us plan intelligently for the future. l
Daniel Dennett is a philosopher and cognitive
scientist and a professor at Tufts University
One can be initiated into
a conspiracy without
a word being exchanged
No question of faith: observant against the odds
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THE NS ESSAY
Our strange need for dividing lines, black-and-white answers
and absolute definitions leads to unhelpful distortions of reality.
If we could accept lifes natural grey areas we would be far better able
to calculate risk and comprehend the world we inhabit
The tyranny of the
discontinuous mind
By Richard Dawkins
Photography by Maja Daniels
What percentage of the British population
lives below the poverty line? When I call that
a silly question, a question that doesnt deserve
an answer, Im not being callous or unfeeling
about poverty. I care very much if children
starve or pensioners shiver with cold. My ob-
jection and this is just one of many examples
is to the very idea of a line: a gratuitously manu-
factured discontinuity in a continuous reality.
Who decides how poor is poor enough to
qualify as below the poverty line? What is
to stop us moving the line and thereby chang-
ing the score? Poverty/wealth is a continuously
distributed quantity, which might be measured
as, say, income per week.
Why throw away most of the information
by splitting a continuous variable into two dis-
continuous categories, above and below the
line? How many of us lie below the stupidity
line? How many runners exceed the fast line?
How many Oxford undergraduates lie above
the first-class line?
Yes, we in universities do it, too. Examina-
tion performance, like most measures of hu-
man ability or achievement, is a continuous
variable, whose frequency distribution is bell-
shaped. Yet British universities insist on pub-
lishing a class list in which a small number of
students receive first-class degrees, a lot obtain
Seconds (sometimes divided into Upper and
Lower Seconds) and a few get Thirds.
That might make sense if the distribution
had three or four peaks with deep valleys be-
tween, but it doesnt. Anybody who has ever
marked an exam knows that the bottom of one
class is separated from the top of the class be-
low by a small fraction of the distance that sep-
arates it from the top of its own class. This fact
alone points to a deep unfairness in the system
of discontinuous classification.
Examiners go to great trouble to assign a score,
perhaps out of 100, to each exam script. Scripts
are double- or even triple-marked by various
examiners, who may then argue the nuances
of whether an answer deserves 55 or 52 marks.
Marks are scrupulously added up, normalised,
transformed, juggled and fought over. The final
marks that emerge, and the rank orders of stu-
dents, are as richly informative as conscientious
examiners can achieve. But then what happens
to all that richness of information? Most of it is
thrown away, in reckless disregard for all the
labour and nuanced deliberation and adjusting
that went into the great addition sum. The stu-
dents are bundled into three or four discrete
classes, and that is all the information that pen-
etrates outside the examiners room. t
Danse macabre: for those who argue that life begins at conception, identical twins present a problem. When the fertilised egg splits, which half gets the soul?
THE NS ESSAY
Cambridge mathematicians, as one might
expect, finesse the discontinuity and leak the
rank order. It became informally known that
Jacob Bronowski was Senior Wrangler in his
year, Bertrand Russell the Seventh Wrangler
in his year, and so on. At other universities, too,
tutors testimonials may say such things as,
Not only did she get a First: I can tell you in con-
fidence that the examiners ranked her number 3
of her entire class of 106 in the university. That
is the kind of information that counts in a letter
of recommendation. And it is that very informa-
tion that is wantonly thrown away in the offi-
cially published class list.
First-class mind
Perhaps such wastage of information is inevit -
able, a necessary evil. I dont want to make too
much of it. What is more serious is that there
are some educators dare I say especially in
non-scientific subjects who fool themselves
into believing that there is a kind of Platonic
ideal called the first-class mind or alpha
mind, a qualitatively distinct category, as dis-
tinct as female is from male, or sheep from goat.
This is an extreme form of what I am calling the
discontinuous mind. It can probably be traced
to the essentialism of Plato one of the most
pernicious ideas in all history.
For legal purposes, say, in deciding who can
vote in elections, we need to draw a line be-
tween adult and non-adult. We may dispute
the rival merits of 18 versus 21 or 16, but every-
body accepts that there has to be a line, and the
line must be a birthday. Few would deny that
some 15-year-olds are better qualified to vote
than some 40-year-olds. But we recoil from the
voting equivalent of a driving test, so we accept
the age line as a necessary evil. Yet perhaps
there are other examples where we should be
less willing to do so. Are there cases where the
tyranny of the discontinuous mind leads to ac-
tual harm, cases where we should actively rebel
against it? Yes.
There are those who cannot distinguish a
16-cell embryo from a baby. They call abortion
murder and feel righteously justified in com-
mitting real murder against a doctor a think-
ing, feeling, sentient adult, with a loving family
to mourn him. The discontinuous mind is blind
to intermediates. An embryo is either human or
it isnt. Everything is this or that, yes or no, black
or white. But reality isnt like that.
For purposes of legal clarity, just as the 18th
birthday is defined as the moment of getting the
vote, it may be necessary to draw a line at some
arbitrary moment in embryonic development
after which abortion is prohibited. But person-
hood doesnt spring into existence at any one
moment: it matures gradually, and it goes on
maturing through childhood and beyond.
To the discontinuous mind, an entity either
is or is not a person. The discontinuous mind
cannot grasp the idea of half a person, or three-
quarters of a person. Some absolutists go right
back to conception as the moment when the
person comes into existence the instant the
soul is injected and so they believe that all
abortion is murder by definition. The instruc-
tion Donum Vitae from the Catholic Congre-
gation for the Doctrine of the Faith says:
From the time that the ovum is fertilised, a
new life is begun which is neither that of the
father nor of the mother; it is rather the life
of a new human being with his own growth.
It would never be made human if it were not
human already. To this perpetual evidence . . .
modern genetic science brings valuable
confirmation. It has demonstrated that,
from the first instant, the programme is fixed
as to what this living being will be: a man,
this individual-man with his characteristic
aspects already well determined. Right
from fertilisation is begun the adventure
of a human life . . .
It is amusing to tease such absolutists by
confronting them with a pair of identical twins
(they split after fertilisation, of course) and
asking which twin got the soul, which twin is
the non-person, the zombie. A puerile taunt?
Maybe. But it hits home because the belief that
it destroys is puerile, and ignorant.
It would never be made human if it were
not human already. Really? Are you serious?
Nothing can become something if it is not that
something already? Is an acorn an oak tree?
Is a hurricane the barely perceptible zephyr
that seeds it? Would you apply your doctrine
to evolution, too? Do you suppose there was a
moment in evolutionary history when a non-
person gave birth to the first person?
If a time machine could serve up to you your
200 million greats grandfather, you would eat
him with sauce tartare and a slice of lemon. He
was a fish. Yet you are connected to him by an
unbroken line of intermediate ancestors, every
one of whom belonged to the same species as
its parents and its children. Ive danced with a
man/Whos danced with a girl/Whos danced
with the Prince of Wales, as the song goes.
I could mate with a woman, who could mate
with a man, who could mate with a woman
who . . . after a sufficient number of steps into
the past . . . could mate with ancestral fish and
produce fertile offspring.
To invoke our time machine again, you prob-
ably could not mate with Australopithecus (at
least not produce fertile offspring) but you are
connected to Australopithecus by an unbroken
chain of intermediates who could interbreed
with their neighbours in the chain every step
of the way. And the chain goes on backwards,
unbroken, to that Devonian fish and beyond.
On the way, about six million years into the
past, we would encounter the ancestor we share
with modern chimpanzees. It so happens that
the intermediates, like the common ancestor
itself, are all extinct. But for that (perhaps fortu-
nate) fact, we would be connected to modern
chimpanzees by an unbroken chain of inter-
marrying links, and not just intermarrying
but interbreeding producing fertile offspring.
There would be no clear separation between
Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes. The only
way to maintain our human-privileging laws
and morals would be to set up courts to decide
whether particular individuals could pass for
human, like the ludicrous courts with which
apartheid South Africa decided who could
pass for white.
And naturally the argument extends to any
pair of species you care to name. But for the
extinction of the intermediates that connect
human beings to the ancestor we share with
pigs (it pursued its shrew-like existence 85 mil-
lion years ago in the shadow of the dinosaurs),
and but for the extinction of the intermediates
that connect the same ancestor to modern pigs,
there would be no clear separation between
Homo sapiens and Sus scrofa. You could breed
with X who could breed with Y who could
breed with (. . . fill in several thousand interme-
diates . . .) who could produce fertile offspring
by mating with a sow.
Fixing Florida
Human beings are clearly separable from chim-
panzees and pigs and fish and lemons only be-
cause the intermediates that would otherwise
link them in interbreeding chains happen to be
extinct. This is not to deny that we are different
from other species.
We certainly are different and the differences
are important important enough to justify eat-
ing them (vegetables are our cousins, too). But
it is a reason for scepticism of any philosophy or
theology (or morality or jurisprudence or poli-
tics) that treats humanness, or personhood, as
some kind of essentialist absolute, which you
either definitely have or definitely dont have.
Youwouldeat your
ancestor with sauce
tartare. He was a fish
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False lines: why is Colin Powell described as black?
THE NS ESSAY
If your theology tells you that human beings
should receive special respect and moral privi-
lege as the only species that possesses a soul,
you have to face up to the awkward question of
when, in human evolution, the first ensouled
baby was born. Was it when the first Homo
sapiens baby was born to parents belonging to
whatever species is considered to be our imme-
diate predecessor (erectus, ergaster, heidelber-
gensis, rhodesiensis, no matter, the argument
stands regardless)? There was no such baby.
There never was a first Homo sapiens.
It is only the discontinuous mind that insists
on drawing a hard and fast line between a
species and the ancestral species that birthed it.
Evolutionary change is gradual there never
was a line, never a line between any species and
its evolutionary precursor.
In a few cases the intermediates have failed to
go extinct, and the discontinuous mind is faced
with the stark reality of the problem. Herring
gulls (Larus argentatus) and lesser black-backed
gulls (Larus fuscus) breed in mixed colonies in
western Europe and dont interbreed. This de-
fines them as good, separate species. But if you
travel in a westerly direction around the north-
ern hemisphere and sample the gulls as you go,
you find that the local gulls vary from the light
grey of the herring gull, getting gradually
darker as you progress around the North Pole
until, when you go all the way round to western
Europe again, they have darkened so far that
they become lesser black-backed gulls.
Whats more, the neighbouring populations
interbreed with each other all the way around
the ring, even though the ends of the ring, the
two species we see in Britain, dont interbreed.
Are they distinct species or not? Only those
tyrannised by the discontinuous mind feel
obliged to answer that question. If it were not
for the accidental extinction of evolutionary
intermediates, every species would be linked
to every other by interbreeding chains.
Where else do we see the tyranny of the
discontinuous mind? Colin Powell and Barack
Obama are described as black. They do have
black ancestors, but they also have white ances-
tors, so why dont we call them white?
The complication here is the weird conven-
tion that the descriptor black behaves as the
cultural equivalent of a genetic dominant. Gre-
gor Mendel, the father of genetics, crossed wrin-
kled and smooth peas and the offspring were
all smooth: smoothness is dominant. When
a white person breeds with a black person their
child is intermediate but is often described as
black; the cultural label is transmitted down
the generations like a dominant gene. This per-
sists even to cases where, say, one out of eight
great-grandparents was black and it may not
show in skin colour. It is the racist contamina-
tion metaphor of the touch of the tarbrush.
Our language is ill-equipped to deal with
a continuum of intermediates. Just as people
must lie above or below the poverty line, so
we classify people as black even if they are
intermediate. When an official form invites us
to tick a race or ethnicity box, I recommend
crossing it out and writing human.
In US presidential elections, every state (ex-
cept Maine and Nebraska) has to end up labelled
either Democrat or Republican, no matter how
evenly divided the voters in that state might be.
Each state sends to the Electoral College a num-
ber of delegates which is proportional to the
population of the state. So far, so good. But the
discontinuous mind insists that all the delegates
from a given state have to vote the same way.
This winner takes all system was shown
up in all its fatuousness in the 2000 election
when there was a dead heat in Florida. Al Gore
and George Bush received the same number
of votes as each other, the tiny, disputed differ-
ence being well within the margin of error.
Florida sends 25 delegates to the Electoral Col-
lege. The Supreme Court was asked to decide
which candidate should receive all 25 votes (and
therefore the presidency). Given that it was a
dead heat, it might have seemed reasonable
to allot 13 votes to one candidate and 12 to the
other. It would have made no difference whether
Bush or Gore received the 13 votes: either way,
Gore would have been president.
I am not saying the Supreme Court should
have decided to split the Florida delegates.
They had to abide by the rules, no matter how
idiotic. I would say that, given the lamentable
constitutional rule that the 25 votes had to be
bound together as a one-party block, natural
justice should have led the court to allocate the
25 votes to the candidate who would have won
the election if the Florida delegates had been
divided pro rata, namely Gore.
Reds and blues
Yet that is not the point I am making here. My
point here is that the winner-takes-all idea of an
electoral college in which each state has an indi-
visible block of members, either all Democrats
or Republicans, no matter how close the vote,
is a shockingly undemocratic manifestation of
the tyranny of the discontinuous mind. Why is
it so hard to admit that there are intermediates,
as Maine and Nebraska do? Most states are nei-
ther red nor blue but a complex mixture.
Scientists are called upon by governments, by
courts of law, and by the public at large, to give a
definite, absolute, yes-or-no answer to impor-
tant questions such as those involving risk.
Whether its a new medicine, a new weedkiller,
a new power station or a new airliner, the scien-
tific expert is peremptorily asked: Is it safe?
Answer the question! Yes or no?
In vain the scientist tries to explain that safety
and risk are not absolutes. Some things are safer
than others, and nothing is perfectly safe. There
is a sliding scale of intermediates and probabili-
ties, not hard-and-fast discontinuities between
safe and unsafe. That is another story and I have
run out of space. But I hope I have said enough
to suggest that the summary demand for an ab-
solute yes-or-no answer, so beloved of journal-
ists, politicians and finger-wagging, hectoring
lawyers, is yet another unreasonable expres-
sion of a particular kind of tyranny, the tyranny
of the discontinuous mind. l
Read our guest editor Richard Dawkinss
leader column on page 3
newstatesman.com/subjects/science
When asked to tick an
ethnicity box, cross it
out and write human
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What is the point of science? It is a question
that gets asked in many contexts, from students
struggling through science A-levels to govern-
ments struggling with decisions on where to
spend limited public funds. Science is the dis-
covery of knowledge about ourselves and the
world around us. It is about improving health
and the quality of life, securing sustainability
and protection of the environment, contribut-
ing to culture and enhancing our civilisation.
It should be at the heart of society.
All of this sounds high-minded and such
arguments would probably not convince the
Treasury in a time of austerity. Yet science has
fared better than other areas when it comes to
public spending, and for good reason it is a
driver for the economy. Should UK science
breathe a sigh of relief and be thankful that cuts
were not deeper? No, because the sector is the
best bet for fuelling economic growth.
Britains science sector is one of the worlds
best, providing the base to promote innovation
and commercialisation here, giving us a sounder
economy built on high-end manufacturing and
design, rather than just on financial services.
The government seems to understand this,
but lacks the courage of its convictions. In his re-
cent autumn statement, George Osborne made
repeated reference to the importance of science
and engineering in rebalancing the economy
towards sustainable, innovation-based growth.
But this is stifled by the short-term thinking
that is so often the obsession of governments
aware of a forthcoming election. We spend
roughly 1.8 per cent of our GDP on science. The
Americans spend about 2.7 per cent; the South
Koreans spend 3 per cent. Between 1989 and
2009 the UK went from being fifth in terms of
producing patents in the US to eighth South
Korea went from nowhere to third.
A flat-cash settlement for funding the work
of our scientists in the last spending review, in-
creases in tax credits on research and develop-
ment and occasional one-off injections of capital
spending, including 200m in the Chancellors
autumn statement (though still not replacing
the 360m a year that was cut from the science
capital budget in the Comprehensive Spending
Review), are all OK. But what about some real
vision? We cannot hope to compete in the long
term if our competitors are investing more than
we do in research and development.
The government spent 76bn on shares in
RBS and Lloyds, more than ten times the an-
nual science budget. Surely we would be better
served by making strategic investment decisions
with such money look at what we are good at
and invest heavily in it. What would it cost to
fund the work of the 100 best scientists in Britain
and give them the freedom to innovate?
Cash cow
Its not just about the money. The UK has not
always been great at turning ideas into cash. In
the early 1950s British companies such as Fer-
ranti were at the forefront of developing com-
puters, in the 1960s we made the first pocket
calculator, and many peoples first experience of
home computing was with the Sinclair ZX80
in the 1980s but where is our IBM or Apple?
Go further back, however, and you find one of
Britains greatest success stories. It was when
scientists, engineers, industrialists, social re-
formers and others got together to share and
discuss ideas that we had the Industrial Revolu-
tion. It is that same interactive atmosphere that
will help drive innovation and growth today.
We need to shed our straitjackets. We need
greater teamwork, covering not only more sci-
entific disciplines but also activities outside
science that are important for innovation and
commercialisation, including finance, market
analysis and the law. It requires effort to get in-
dividuals from diverse backgrounds to work
well together. We have too many barriers that
encourage suspicion between the very people
who need to be working closely together. And
where are the scientists and engineers on the
boards of our big companies or in government?
Lets promote greater permeability, starting
with the young. Lets give them wider intellec-
tual exposure during higher education and their
research training. They need a wider range of
placements early in their career, with easy ex-
changes between sectors at all career stages.
We also need to make sure that we have the
raw materials: the brains. Science is riding a
wave of popularity at present but the wave is
still small. For instance, the sciences are becom-
ing more popular at A-level those studying bi-
ology, chemistry and physics are up 5, 10 and 13
per cent, respectively, over the past five years
yet still too many students turn away. We need
an education system that inspires wonder, prac-
tical science in labs or outdoors, and we need
specialist science teachers in every school.
The UK has scientific strength. To maintain
and capitalise on this will require better educa-
tion, with science ingrained into other walks
of life and both the government and industry
showing that they are brave enough to step up
their investment. Rather than writing to Father
Christmas this year, Im sending my wish-list
to David Cameron and George Osborne. l
Paul Nurse is a Nobel Prize-winning biologist
and the current president of the Royal Society
COMMENTARY
Science could drive growth in Britain, but it
needs more support to succeed, says Paul Nurse
The vision
thing
A sense of wonder: pupils in Alperton, north-west London, learn about gases by trying to catch bubbles
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Politics
1 Theresa May made the
false claim that an illegal
immigrant had been
allowed to stay in the UK
based on the ownership
of which animal?
a Rabbit
bDog
c Cat
dRacehorse
2 Jack Straw was accused
of stereotyping after
suggesting that some men
of Pakistani origin saw
white girls as what?
a Complete idiots
bEasy meat
c There for the taking
dCaucasian temptresses
3 What did Christine
Hemming steal from the
house of her Lib Dem MP
husband Johns mistress?
a A DVD player
bA pot plant
c A kitten
dLingerie
4David Cameron
told which MP,
Calm down, dear?
a Angela Eagle
bHarriet Harman
c Nadine Dorries
dDiane Abbott
5 Oliver Letwin was caught
disposing of government
documents in a bin in
which London park?
a Green Park
bHyde Park
c St Jamess Park
dRegents Park
6The former council
candidates Bill and Star
Etheridge resigned from
the Conservative Party
after posing on Facebook
doing what?
a Kissing an English
Defence League poster
bMaking fun of the
disabled
c Wearing matching
Nazi armbands
dHolding golliwog dolls
7 Which minister said
feminism has trumped
egalitarianism and
led to middle-class
women holding back
working-class men?
a Michael Gove
bEd Vaizey
c Iain Duncan Smith
dDavid Willetts
8Alan Johnson resigned
as shadow chancellor
over what?
a A lack of the right
know-how
bMy growing dislike
of Labours direction
c Personal issues
dTo attend to my
constituency
International affairs
1 What was the reason
reportedly given by the
North Korean dictator,
Kim Jong-il, for not
choosing his middle
son, Kim Jong-chol,
as his successor?
a Too short
bToo western
c Too effeminate
dToo stupid
2 Which single word
appeared to have sunk
the bid of the Texas
governor, Rick Perry,
for the Republican
presidential nomination?
a Dang
bOops
c Yikes
dSugar
3 What was the code
name of the US navy Seals
operation that resulted in
Osama Bin Ladens death?
a Apache
bNeptune Spear
c Mermaid Dawn
dIndigo
4What is the stage
name of the belly dancer
Karima el-Mahroug,
the heart stealer at the
centre of underage sex
allegations concerning
Silvio Berlusconi?
a Myra
bCassandra
c Ruby
dSalome
5 Norway took China
to the World Trade
Organisation over its
boycott allegedly
in retaliation for Liu
Xiaobos Nobel Peace
Prize of which
Norwegian export?
a Christmas trees
bKnitwear
c Ski equipment
dSalmon
6Denmarks first female
prime minister, Helle
Thorning-Schmidt, is the
daughter-in-law of which
British politician?
a Neil Kinnock
bJohn Prescott
c David Steel
dPaddy Ashdown
7 Michael Sata, the new
president of Zambia,
previously worked
in which job at Victoria
train station in London?
a Ticket vendor
bPlatform cleaner
c Burger King worker
dSecurity guard
8In November, US
Congress defied logic
when it declared which
of the following to be
a vegetable?
a Pepper-flavoured nachos
bFried mozzarella sticks
c Canned spaghetti
dFrozen pizza
THE NS QUIZ
From Cheryl Cole to Steve
Jobs via Tahrir Square: have
you kept up with the years
events? Test yourself here . . .
Question
time
Compiled by
Olav Bjortomt
Illustration by Henrik Pettersson
9Who assumed office
as the first president of
South Sudan?
a John Garang
bRiek Machar
c Salva Kiir
dMusa Hilal
10Tahrir Square became
a magnet for protests in
Egypt. What does its
name mean?
a Victory
bBattle
c Patriot
dLiberation
11 Who was spotted
wearing a burkini on
Bondi Beach, Sydney,
in April?
a Liz Hurley
bNigella Lawson
c Sophie Dahl
dKate Winslet
Home affairs
1 Which philosopher
founded and became
the first master of the
18,000-a-year New
College of the Humanities
in London?
a A C Grayling
bJohn Gray
c Simon Blackburn
dDerek Parfit
2 A cheese shop in Lyme
Regis produced two
Cheddars to mark the
royal wedding. One was
called Congratulations
Wills and Kate. What
was the name of the
other, which sold eight
times faster?
a Sod the Wedding
Its a Day Off
bStinking Archbishop
of Canterbury
c Id Rather Feign
Nonchalance and
Wash My Hair
dBetter Tasting Than the
Royal Wedding Cake
3 According to the Women
on Boards inquiry, led by
Lord Davies of Abersoch,
approximately what
percentage of FTSE-250
companies have no female
directors on their board?
a 15 per cent
b35 per cent
c 50 per cent
d60 per cent
4Which son
of rock royalty
was sentenced
to 16 months in
prison for violent
disorder during
the student riots in
London in 2010?
a Charlie Gilmour
bOtis Ferry
c Marlon
Richards
dJames Page, Jr
5 A Freedom
of Information
request made
by the Labour MP
David Lammy revealed
that which Oxford
college had not admitted
a single black student
in five years?
a Hertford
bOriel
c Merton
dWorcester
6What was the estimated
total cost of this years
UK census?
a 66m
b482m
c 903m
d2.35bn
7 What is the name of
the DIY paternity testing
kit that Boots started
selling for 30 a pop?
a AssureDNA
bUtheDaddy?
c CertainX
dPaterPura
8Which of these
universities announced
that it would not be
charging the maximum
amount (9,000) for
tuition fees?
a Aston
bLancaster
c Leeds Metropolitan
dSurrey
9Which creature was the
victim of an air-rifle killing
spree in Somerset?
a Red squirrel
bBadger
c Cat
dSwan
10What is the average
property value of Victoria
Road, Kensington the
most expensive street in
England and Wales?
a 2.1m
b4.9m
c 6.4m
d7.3m
11 Which 144-year-old
furniture store in Croydon
was burned down in the
riots in August?
a House of Reeves
bHeals
c Maples
dSCP
Online
1 Which of these events
led to a record-breaking
8,868 tweets per second?
aOsama Bin Ladens death
bJapanese tsunami
c Beyoncs pregnancy
dFinal Harry Potter film
2 What did the Narrative
Tracker software used
by the Global Language
Monitor show to be
the most used word in
English on the internet
and in print during 2011?
a Occupy
bDeficit
c Spring
dWedding
3 Can-a muh fukkasay
fuck on here? Whose
debut tweet?
a Quentin Tarantino
bSpike Lee
c Samuel L Jackson
dIce Cube
4In April, what percentage
of British nine-to-12-year-
olds was said to have a
profile on a social
networking website?
a 28 per cent
b43 per cent
c 51 per cent
d75 per cent
5 Who became the first
celebrity to amass ten
million Twitter followers?
a Justin Bieber
bBarack Obama
c Ashton Kutcher
dLady Gaga
Arts
1 Which film director was
banned from the Cannes
festival for his apparently
pro-Nazi remarks?
a Roman Polanski
bLars von Trier
c Werner Herzog
dOliver Stone
2 New York magazine
described which Broadway
show as confusing,
distracted, ridiculously
slick, shockingly
clumsy, unmistakably
monomaniacal and
clinically bipolar?
a Ghost the Musical
bWar Horse
c The Motherf**ker
With a Hat
dSpider-Man: Turn
Off the Dark
3 Which Egyptian
artist was shot dead
by security forces
in Cairo in the early days
of the Arab spring?
a Ahmed Basiony
bNader Sedek
c Adam Henein
dKhaled Hafez
4Which Monty Python
member revealed that he
turned down a Lib Dem
peerage in 1999 because
living in England through
winter was too much
of a price to pay?
a John Cleese
bTerry Gilliam
c Michael Palin
dTerry Jones
5 What was the global
box-office take of the
video game Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare 3 on its
first day of release?
a $50m
b$100m
c $200m
d$400m
Television
1 Which TV show topped
a government-compiled
list of healthy childrens
programmes because
the characters are always
walking on short
journeys?
a The Flintstones
bTeletubbies
c Scooby-Doo
dIn the Night Garden
2 David Dimbleby was
accused of being a prima
donna for refusing to
attend weekly Question
Time production meetings
in which city?
a Cardiff
bSalford
c Glasgow
dLeeds
3 The Dalai Lama appeared
on which countrys version
of Masterchef but refused
to judge any of the dishes
he was served because it
was against his principles?
a Australia
bUK
c US
dIndia t
Discover more Routledge Politics journals at:
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Canadian Foreign
Policy Journal
Editor:
David Carment, The Norman Paterson School of
International Affairs (NPSIA), Canada

The Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ)
is a fully peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal
published three times a year by the Norman
Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA)
at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada.
Established in 1992, CFPJ is now Canadas
leading journal of international affairs. The
journal features case studies, original articles,
reports, and analyses on such issues as global
governance, human security, the history of
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For FREE access to
Volume 15 Issue 3 visit:
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International
Critical Thought
Editors-in-Chief:
Cheng Enfu, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
(CASS), China
David Schweickart, Loyola University Chicago, USA
Tony Andreani, Paris 8 University, France
International Critical Thought aims
to cultivate, encourage and facilitate the
development and dissemination of thinking
and scholarship responding to the profound
social, political, cultural and economic
changes taking place in the world today. It
aims to provide a multi-disciplinary forum
for reection upon and insight into the
major problems facing humanity; energy,
environment, poverty, war, etc.

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Journal of Policing,
Intelligence and
Counter Terrorism
Editor-in-Chief:
Colin Wastell, Macquarie University, Australia

The Journal of Policing, Intelligence
and Counter Terrorism (JPICT) is a fully
refereed journal, produced by the Centre for
Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism
at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
The Journal offers national, regional and
international perspectives on important areas
of debate such as; Security Studies, Terrorism,
Intelligence, Political Violence, while addressing
the practical and theoretical issues and
considerations that surround them.
For FREE access to
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NEW TO ROUTLEDGE IN 2011
FREE
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4Downton Abbeyhas
turned which country
house into a tourist
attraction?
a Rufford Abbey
bHighclere Castle
c Stratfield Saye
dChastleton House
5 Which Jamies Dream
School teacher was told,
Youre a prick, mate by
a member of his GCSE
class named Angelique?
a Alastair Campbell
bSimon Callow
c David Starkey
dDaley Thompson
6How long did Cheryl
Cole last as an X Factor
USAjudge before she
was dumped for Nicole
Scherzinger?
a Six days
bA fortnight
c Three weeks
dOne month
Media
1 What did Sally Bercow
wear for a photo shoot
that accompanied the
Evening Standard feature
Sex and the city?
a Bedsheet
bDressing gown
c Labour Party T-shirt
dImitation Speakers cloak
2 In a letter to Richard
Desmond, proprietor
of the Daily Star, the
reporter Richard Peppiatt
resigned in protest over
which problem with
the newspaper?
a Obsession with
Big Brother
bAnti-Muslim
propaganda
c Only one in
three stories he
wrote was true
dIncreasing
nudity
3 Which magazine
named George
Osborne Politician
of the Year, only
for the Chancellor
to make a wanker
joke that the host
David Mitchell said
lowered the tone
of the awards ceremony?
a Esquire
bMonocle
c FHM
dGQ
4In late April, who spoke
of his embarrassment
at using a superinjunction
to protect his familys
privacy and suppress
details of an affair?
a Jeremy Clarkson
bAndrew Marr
c Fred Goodwin
dRyan Giggs
5 Rupert Murdoch shut
down News of the World
after it had enjoyed how
many years of publication?
a 102
b129
c 147
d168
6Who was ridiculed
for writing a column
entitled The caring
professions? They just
dont seem to care at all,
after the NHS failed to
give her the right jabs
for a trip to Somalia?
a Sandra Parsons
bLiz Jones
c Suzanne Moore
dJan Moir
Books
1 Whose crime novel
Death Comes to
Pemberleyused the
characters of Pride
and Prejudice six
years after the
conclusion of Jane
Austens book?
a Ruth Rendell
bFrances Fyfield
c P D James
dVal McDermid
2 A study revealed
that the average
British household
has up to how many
unread books, with
Pride and Prejudice
among the most popular
but not read titles?
a 20
b40
c 60
d80
3 Which author described
the royal family as a bunch
of philistines before
moving to New York?
a Martin Amis
bV S Naipaul
c Alan Hollinghurst
dIan McEwan
4David and Victoria
Beckham named their
first daughter in honour
of which novelist?
a Virginia Woolf
bHarper Lee
c Jane Austen
dLouisa May Alcott
Sport
1 Why was the England
rugby player Manu
Tuilagi fined 3,000,
following the World
Cup defeat by France?
a He was filmed cavorting
with strippers
bHe started a training-
ground brawl
c He jumped off a ferry
in Auckland
dHe disrespected a
chambermaid
2 After being named the
man of the tournament
at the cricket World Cup,
which Indian left-hander
lent his voice to the
superhero in the
computer-animated
film Captain India?
a Sachin Tendulkar
bM S Dhoni
c Virender Sehwag
dYuvraj Singh
3 Which organisation
was described by the
reporter Andrew
Jennings as nothing
but an organised
crime family?
a Fifa
bInternational
Olympic Committee
c London 2012
committee
dUefa
Who said what?
1 Who did Nick
Hewer of The
Apprentice say
has the weakest
handshake in western
Europe?
a Nick Clegg
bEd Miliband
c David Cameron
dAlan Sugar
2 Cherie Blair said that
Tony still excites her
but how?
a With his commitment
to Middle East peace
bIn all possible ways
c By surprising me
with his energy
dPretending hes still
prime minister
3 To whom did David
Cameronapologise, after
saying that their campaign
was like a blind man,
in a dark room, looking
for a black cat?
a The McCanns
bHillsborough
victims relatives
c 38 Degrees organisers
dKeep Britain Tidy
4Writing in this
magazine, who said:
We are being committed
to radical, long-term
policies for which no
one voted?
a Rowan Williams
bKen Livingstone
c Gordon Brown
dCharles Kennedy
5 Whose last words
were: Oh, wow.
Oh, wow. Oh, wow?
a Elizabeth Taylor
bJoe Frazier
c Jimmy Savile
dSteve Jobs l
Answers on page 92
newstatesman.com
THE NS QUIZ
19 DECEMBER 2011 | NEW STATESMAN | 63
Perspectives on Energy
Can we get off carbon by 2040?
We have limited reserves of fossil fuels.
In principle at least, there is international
agreement that we need to move off carbon
and on to renewable energy sources. Yet there
is still great debate about how this can be
achieved. Although they provide 18 per cent of
electricity generation worldwide, renewables
share of electricity has struggled to keep pace
with overall demand growth for power.
The term renewables refers to electricity
that comes from naturally replenished
resources such as sunlight, wind and
geothermal heat. It can also refer to biofuels
and hydrogen. In theory, if methods of turning
these into energy are perfected, we need never
face another fuel crisis.
So, whats the problem? One criticism often
levelled at wind and solar power is that they
are variable or intermittent. There are also not
in my backyard concerns relating to the visual
impact of wind turbines. In the UK, planning
laws can be a hindrance to increasing the use
of wind turbines. On the other hand, there are
benefits to local generation, as it contributes to
the flexibility of the system and its resistance
to central shocks.
Methods of storage are still expensive,
and in these austere times there is a risk that
investment in improving the technology
around renewable energy will not be given
priority. However, there is a strong argument
in favour of boosting what Nick Clegg has
called the green economy as a way to tackle
climate change and to create jobs.
Renewable energy usually gets cheaper
with time, even as we see fossil fuels getting
more expensive. A report by the International
Energy Agency this year was optimistic
about this cost-reduction trend for the
sector continuing, arguing that, increasingly,
renewable energy presents investment
opportunities without the need for specific
economic support.
It would benefit the planet, and not just the
world economy, if effort were put into making
renewables viable for the future. l
For more information on Perspectives go to:
newstatesman.com/energy
It would benefit the
planet, not just the world
economy, if renewables
became viable
Renewables
THE EXPERT
We have to move
from talk to walk
Jeremy Rifkin, economist, writer,

political adviser and activist
Supported by
How urgent is climate change?
Scientists say we could see a 70 per cent wipe-
out of all life on this planet by the end of the
century. Climate change is the energy bill for
two centuries of industrial-based carbon activ-
ity. We need a new economic vision and game
plan. We have to get off carbon by 2040.
How could this be achieved?
If renewable energies are distributed in every
square inch of the world, why are we only col-
lecting them at a few points? The goal is to con-
vert every single existing building in the Euro-
pean Union into a personal, clean micro power
plant. So you can collect solar off your roof, wind
off your side wall.
How would that translate into wider change?
We take internet technology and transform the
power grid of the world into an energy internet.
So when millions of us are producing our own
green energy on site, storing it in hydrogen, our
energy internet will allow us to sell and share
any extra. We become our own energy produc-
ers. We then collaborate and share that energy
in the same way as we share information on so-
cial media spaces on the internet.
Do you see this vision becoming a reality?
Young people now favour lateral and side-by-
side power. Thats the new politics, and its
favourable to a third industrial revolution.
[They] grew up empowered on the internet to
C
O
R
B
I
S
create its own information and share it freely.
They now need to create their own green en-
ergy that they share in vast continental spaces.
Is this only possible during an economic boom?
The exact opposite. The second industrial
revolution is on life support; its dying. Why
would you mend a 20th-century infrastruc-
ture that gives you no multiplier effect? The
European Union has made a formal commit-
ment to a plan to upgrade its infrastructure.
That could create millions of jobs.
Which country is leading?
They are testing this smart grid in six major
regions of Germany today. They are converting
homes, factories and offices all over Germany.
The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands,
Europe overall, will move quickly.
Which countries are behind?
The United States is an outlier country. I grew
up in the heartlands of America. I know that
once America gets the story, no one can move
quicker. But were lost right now, were off
track. Those countries that cant find the imagi-
nation and the will and the entrepreneurial
spirit are going to fall behind really quickly.
Where does the developing world fit in?
The third industrial revolution will move faster
in the developing world. It has no infrastruc-
ture. They can leapfrog straight into this and
create a sustainable future.
What are the barriers?
The biggest barrier is imagination. There is
growing denial about climate change. People
dont want to recognise it because it is terrify-
ing. Its overwhelming. It is also a moment of
great opportunity. The third industrial revolu-
tion is a practical plan; its not utopian. We have
to get on to renewables and get off carbon.
Is the UK taking sufficient action?
I was approached by the Cameron people
before the election. Certainly there are people
in this administration that understand what
needs to be done, but that doesnt mean it is
being done. We have to move from talk to walk.
They have a long way to go here and if they
really want a third industrial revolution, as they
said to me at the beginning of the administra-
tion, they have yet to prove it.
Should we be more worried about not having
enough, or not having the right kind of energy?
Energies like coal, gas and uranium are found
only in a few places in the world and they require
huge military investment to secure them. Dis-
tributive energies are everywhere in the world.
The sun shines all over the world every day, and
the wind blows. We have enough distributed
renewable green energy to provide for our
species until kingdom come.
Where does the main responsibility
lie for cutting carbon: with consumers,
business or government?
We need political mobilisation. We need to
have the narrative spread and we need to en-
gage every community with business, society
and government to make this happen.
During your work have you had your
assumptions proved wrong or revised
your opinion?
Back in 1972 I organised a protest. It was the
first protest against the oil industry in history.
Its been a long road from 1972 to 2011. During
that period, I underestimated the speed of cli-
mate change, even though I wrote one of the
first books on it. It is moving very aggressively.
The urgency of this goes beyond the global
economy. This is an urgency for our species and
for life on this planet.
Are we all doomed?
The question is not Are we all doomed?,
but What can we do?. We have a game plan,
a third industrial revolution. It can get us to a
post-carbon future in 30 years.
I absolutely know this can be done. Whether
it will be done is the question.
Interview by Samira Shackle
Facts and figures
To watch a video
of this interview
and other energy
perspectives go to:
newstatesman.
com/energy/
perspectives-
on-energy
1967 Graduates from Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania
1973 Organises mass protest at Boston
Harbour following Opec oil embargo
1988 Co-ordinates first meeting of Global
Greenhouse Network in Washington
1994 Becomes senior lecturer on Whartons
executive education programme
2007 Third industrial revolution
formally endorsed by European Parliament
2009-2010 Develops master plans for San
Antonio (Texas), Rome and Monaco
The Third Industrial
Revolution: How Lateral
Power Is Transforming Energy,
the Economy and the World
is published by Palgrave
Macmillan (16.99)
THE CV
This is part four of an eight-part series
of Perspectives on Energy. To read other
responses from business and academia visit:
newstatesman.com/energy/
perspectives-on-energy
The number of households that
would have to spend more than
5,000to make their homes more
energy-efficient before they could
be eligible for solar panel subsidies
under new government rules.
Rifkins Five Pillars of the Third
Industrial Revolution
Electricity generationfrom
renewable sources increased
by roughly 2 per cent between
2009 and 2010 to reach 25.7TWh.
Capacity grew by 15 per cent to
9.2GW over the same period.
9
10
Growth in electricity generation
from renewable sources
Shifting to renewable energy
Converting buildings into
. power plants
Hydrogen and other energy
. storage technology
Smart-grid technology
Plug-in, electric, hybrid and
. fuel-cell-based transportation
2000 2005 2010
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This weeks best talks and lectures
HOT TICKET
A Hint of Danger
19 December, with Rebecca Swift
Whats the event?
The Literary
Consultancy is
delighted to be
hosting the Tamesis Quartet and
Edie Campbell for an evening
celebrating passion and love
with a hint of danger.
Why are you involved?
The Literary Consultancy is my
company. We think great art
inspires great art, and want to
inspire audiences to challenge
themselves creatively as well as
enjoy a magnificent experience.
Why should we come?
Therell be music, words, wine
perhaps even mince pies. Also
come and find out more about
the Free Word Centre.
What questions should we ask?
What are the Intimate Letters?
Who is Kamila Stsslov?
What homework should we do?
Read Tolstoys novella The
Kreutzer Sonata, and listen
to Beethovens Kreutzer Sonata,
from where it took its title. l
For more details of the event
see our listings
DECEMBER
Monday 19th
lA Hint of Danger
The performance artist Edie
Campbell reads from writings
by Ted Hughes, Leo Jancek and
Leo Tolstoy (Kreutzer Sonata) to
put in context a live performance
by the Tamesis String Quartet
of its own Kreutzer Sonata also
inspired by Beethovens Violin
Sonata No 9.
Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon
Road, London EC1.
6.30pm. 12/8. 020 7324 2570.
freewordonline.com
lHip Joint Failure
Ruined My Life
For the Caf Scientifique
discussion group, Tom Joyce,
a biomedical engineer at
Newcastle University, explains
how surgeons in the north-east
are leading the design of medical
implant technology.
Urban Caf, Dance City, Temple
Street, Newcastle.
7pm. Free. 0191 208 3251.
ncl.ac.uk
lEveryone Is Living in the
Wrong Place
Tony Davies of the Bath and Avon
Family History Society takes a
long-term look at the fluctuating
world population.
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific
Institution, Queen Square, Bath.
7.30pm. 4/2. 01225 312 084.
bafhs.org.uk
lThe Night Sky in January
The astronomer Russell Eberst
looks forward to a new year of
stargazing and offers suggestions
of what to look for in 2012.
Royal Observatory Visitor
Centre, Blackford Hill,
Edinburgh.
7.30pm. 4/3. 0131 668 8404.
roe.ac.uk
Tuesday 20th
lRegenerative Medicine
for Ageing: Can It Be
Comprehensive enough?
For the Leicester Secular Societys
Skeptics in the Pub series, the
biomedical scientist Aubrey
de Grey considers the potential
of health therapies in delaying
the natural ageing process.
Square Bar, 5-9 Hotel Street,
Leicester.
7.30pm. 2.
leicester.skepticsinthepub.org
lBookshop Barnie Xmas Bash
Balloon Debate
Join academics and journalists as
they discuss a quirky variety of
authors, including Shiv Malik on
Norman Mailer, Humphrey
Hawksley on Voltaire and Cosmo
Landesman on himself.
6pm. Free. Email:
futurecitiesproject@gmail.com.
Gallery, Foyles, Charing Cross
Road, London WC2.
futurecities.org.uk
Wednesday 21st
lChristmas Ghost Stories
Julie Gamble reads from the
winter tales of the Victorian
author Elizabeth Gaskell, a close
friend of the Nightingales. Free
admission with museum entry.
Florence Nightingale Museum,
Gassiot House, 2 Lambeth Palace
Road, London SE1.
3pm. 5.80/4.80.
020 7620 0374.
florence-nightingale.co.uk
lCoins at Christmas
Barrie Cook, British Museum
curator, gives this seasonal
themed talk in the medieval and
early modern coinage rooms.
Room 46, British Museum, Great
Russell Street, London WC1.
1.15pm. Free. 020 7323 8181.
britishmuseum.org
Wednesday 28th
lExplore Barbican
Last chance to learn about the
history of the Barbican Centre and
Housing Estate site and its early
design plans on this dedicated
architecture walking tour.
Barbican Centre, Silk Street,
London EC2.
2pm/4pm. 8/6. 020 7638 8891.
barbican.org.uk
Thursday 29th
lHidden Spaces and History . . .
Discover the Enlightenment and
naval history on a guided tour
around this labyrinthine mansion.
Somerset House, Strand,
London WC2.
1.15pm/2.45pm. Free.
020 7845 4600.
somersethouse.org.uk
Friday 30th
lGrace and Playfulness
of Rococo Style
A gallery talk on the interior
design and architecture typified
by the late baroque period.
Ashmolean Museum of Art
and Archaeology, Beaumont
Street, Oxford.
1.15pm. Free. 01865 278 002.
ashmolean.org
To list your event, email
pressoffice@newstatesman.co.uk
The Critics
Art
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Books
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Music
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Film
|
TV
|
Radio
Other worlds: Philip Pullman on the power of fairy tales. 68
FICTION
Kate
Atkinson
darktime, a sinister
tale of disaster
and apocalypse. 72
COMMENTARY
Nicholas
Clee
In the new world of the
ebook, big advances are
a thing of the past. 78
BOOKS
Julie
Myerson
Brian Sewells honesty
about his sex life is
infectious. 83 G
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19 DECEMBER 2011 | NEW STATESMAN | 67
The Critics
And in that day they shall roar against
them like the roaring of the sea: and
if one look unto the land, behold darkness
and sorrow, and the light is darkened in
the heavens thereof.
Isaiah 5:30
In the beginning was the Void. Then came the
Word and with the Word the World began.
Then one day, to everyones surprise, the Void
returned and Darkness rolled over the land.
Tuesday 15 May 2012, to be precise. On Moun-
tain Standard Time in Cochise County it was
6am and Phil Beckett was still asleep. He usu-
ally beat the sun to rising but not today and
when he woke a few minutes later, feeling
thick-headed and grouchy, he remembered
with regret the booze hed drunk the previous
evening. Hed thrown a barbecue in the back-
yard to celebrate the arrival of his first grand-
child a boy (a bonus, but he knew he couldnt
say that to either his daughter or his wife).
Preston, he was called. Odd kind of name,
in Phils opinion. Hed hoped for Philip.
He usually stuck to beer but last night he had
wetted the babys head with an 18-year-old
single-barrel bourbon hed been saving for
this very occasion. His daughter, Melissa, his
only child, was an ambitious attorney with a
law firm in Tucson and the occasion had been
a long time coming.
Thanks to last nights Elijah Craig, he rolled
out of bed like a much older man. His wife
had been on Cuba libres all night and was
still asleep. She wasnt a drinker by nature
and Phil didnt much want to be around when
she woke. He shambled into the kitchen and
switched on the Keurig Elite their son-in-law
had bought them for their wedding anniver-
sary last month. Phil preferred the old alu-
minium stove-top pot but it seemed to have
disappeared. The Keurigs convenient, his wife
said, and Blake would be upset if he thought we
didnt use it. How would he know? Phil asked.
Blake had been to the Double Diamond exactly
three times in five years. He has a hidden cam-
era or something?
He drank his coffee on the porch. The morn-
ing was hotter than usual. And quieter. He
looked out over his land and thanked God for
His bounty in giving his grandfather this little
corner of south-east Arizona. Phil ran a four
thousand deeded acre spread, the best watered
in the county, three hundred head of cattle out
there, prime beef on the hoof. And not one of
them was making a sound this morning.
He looked for the big skinny tom that he ad-
mired and disliked in equal measure. It usually
came out to greet Phil as soon as it heard him
moving about, slinking out of the barn where
it slept at night. If Phil was feeling benevolent
he shared the cream from his coffee with it.
No cat this morning. No birds either. The dog
was here, though, ambling out of the house
with the same hungover gait as Phil instead
of bounding around enthusiastically. Mitch, a
retriever-cross, a big puppy-dog really, not
a ranchers dog. Phil rubbed the top of its head
with his knuckles. Sure is quiet this morning,
he said to the dog. He was spooked by the
sound of his own voice. He glanced up and felt
weirdly relieved to see a buzzard high in the
sky, revolving slowly on a lazy thermal.
Come on, buddy, he said to Mitch, draining
his coffee cup. Lets go for a drive.
FICTION
Nobody expected the apocalypse,
but once the Void opened, life on earth
would never be the same again
darktime
By Kate Atkinson
Artwork by Josh Poehlein
t
The Critics
The Critics
The dog liked sitting up front in the cab of
the heavy-duty Silverado with its head out
the window, grinning like a dope as its ears
fluttered in the breeze. This morning, however,
it sat up straight, scouting through the wind-
shield as if it were riding shotgun in Indian
country.
T
hey followed the dirt track up to
the ridge, from where there was
a good view of the creek and the
low pasture below. It took a mo-
ment for Phil to understand. What
the heck? he said, glancing over at
Mitch as if the dog might confirm what he was
looking at. The dogs ears twitched but other-
wise it remained impassive.
The cattle were lying on the ground forty
or so of them as if they had been pushed over
by a giant hand. When he was a boy Phil had
played with an old wooden Noahs Ark that
had been his fathers and he had an unexpected
memory of the pleasure he had taken in lining
up all the animals and then knocking them
over, like dominoes, all the way from elephant
down to cat. The smaller species mice, insects
were lost long before Phil was born. He won-
dered if the Noahs Ark was still in the attic and
if Preston would like it.
He crashed the Silverado into reverse and
accelerated back down the track and across the
rough terrain towards the pasture. When he
clambered out of the cab he could feel his heart
jittery in his chest.
He counted thirty-eight. All dead. He grabbed
for his cell, dialled Ken Traub over at the Dou-
ble E. Ken answered immediately, said he was
standing in the middle of a corral of twenty
yearling steers. All dead.
Next, Phil tried Shane Hollander at the Bar K.
He was a strict Lutheran, Phil had never heard
him swear, but today he surprised him by an-
swering the phone, saying, What the fuck, Phil?
Dead cattle? Phil said.
No, Phil. Dead people. Dead people every-
where. All dead.
1pm on the other side of the world. Greenwich
Mean Time in the Waitrose on Morningside
Road where Genevieve was sheltering from
the rain that had suddenly turned heavy and
winterish for May. Since being made redundant
from an architectural practice three months
ago she found herself lingering, loitering even,
in places that she would normally have
speeded through.
She was reflecting on the whiteness,
some might say pastiness, of the well-fed
faces around her. Not at all like the Chesser
Asda where she usually shopped and which,
as well as being a haven for the tired, the
poor and the huddled masses, was also, unlike
Waitrose, populated with people of every na-
tionality and colour.
But not green, Gus said. Or blue, or red or
purple or
Enough, Genevieve said. He was a very lit-
eral child. He was six, in school. She had lied
to get him into his (good) primary, said they
lived with her mother in the Grange. (Youre
moving back in with me? Genevieves mother
said, keeping her face admirably neutral.) Now,
with all this time on her hands, Genevieve
found herself frequenting the schools catch-
ment area shops, cafs, the library mildly
paranoid that anonymous authority figures
were spying on her, trying to catch her out in
the lie. (They are, Genevieves mother said.)
As an economy measure, she had recently
sold her car, so here she was, taking refuge from
the lunchtime rain in a clean, well-lighted place
where it was reassuring (or possibly not) to
know that there were so many different brands
of balsamic vinegar in the world, something
not apparent in the Chesser Asda.
Genevieve picked up a mini watermelon,
hefty and round like a cannonball, before wan-
dering aimlessly over to the flower-stand
where she plucked a slender sheaf of gladioli
from a galvanised bucket. She should probably
get a basket even though both items seemed
too unwieldy to be confined to one. She would
not normally have bought either watermelon
or gladioli. She wasnt even sure she wanted
them (and, more to the point, could she afford
them?). Fetching a basket would be a commit-
ment. She began to experience the usual kind
of low-grade existential angst she associated
these days with decision-making.
From her post at the flower-stand, Gene -
vieve had a clear view of the supermarkets
glass entrance doors. It was still raining heavily.
Should she make a run for it? She could hardly
stay in Waitrose all afternoon. (Or could she?)
She watched as the automatic doors, obedient
to an invisible will, swished politely apart to
admit a middle-aged woman, the hearty, out-
doors type, suitably dressed, top-to-toe, for
the rain. Beyond the woman, Genevieve could
see an elderly man, stooped and crooked, who
was snailing heroically towards the doors. He
was what her mother would have called dap-
per good tweed overcoat, a cap on his head, a
cane in one hand, an umbrella held awkwardly
aloft in the other. He was once a little boy like
Gus. Bruised knees, filthy hands (always), a
stoic yet hopeful demeanour. Small on the out-
side, vast on the inside. Gus would one day be
an old man like him. Genevieves heart came
suddenly untethered.
A draught of damp air from the open doors
made her shiver. The chill brought with it
an odd animal-like premonition. She was still
holding the watermelon in one hand and the
gladioli like a spear, as if she were about to
pike something, in the other. Fruit and flowers,
offerings at the temple. She returned the flow-
ers to the galvanised bucket and watched as the
old man stopped to close his umbrella, shaking
the rain off it. The doors closed again before he
reached them.
A
nd then the world went dark.
Completely, as if someone had
flicked the switch on the sun.
Pulled the plug, too, for there
were none of the tiny jewels
of coloured light, the humming
and thrumming, that indicated electronic
life. Smoke alarms and cash registers, freezers,
fridges and sprinklers, were all lifeless. No
emergency lights, nothing glowing with faint
comfort. No daylight coming in through the
automatic doors either. Dark inside and out.
For a moment Genevieve had the Damascene
thought that she had been struck blind.
She groped in her bag for her iPhone. Also
dead.
After what seemed like a long silence, as com-
plete and absolute as the darkness, people be-
gan to voice their bafflement. A quiet, poignant
Hello? from somewhere near her right shoul-
der. Who turned the lights out then? from a
would-be joker and then the voice of a small
child, inquisitive rather than frightened, but
nonetheless distressing to Genevieve, saying,
Mummy?
Is there anyone there? someone asked, as
though they were partaking in a seance. A hand
brushed Genevieves hair and she was re-
minded of the ghost train at the seaside of
her childhood. It was as if they were playing
a sombre game of blind mans buff, governed
by rules of extreme bourgeois rectitude. A
raised managerial voice advised everyone to
keep calm, although as far as Genevieve could
tell no one was panicking. Someone bumped
against her (Sorry, sorry), knocking the water-
melon from her hands. Genevieve heard it land
with a thud and roll away, a planet discarded by
a careless child-god.
She was not the only one, it seemed, who
thought they had suddenly lost their sight.
Blind? someone said, as if trying out the t
t
The Critics
word for size. Genevieve thought of The Day
of the Triffids. It seemed improbable. What was
more likely an invasion from outer space
by killer alien plants or a total eclipse of the
sun and its electronic cohorts? But then surely
eclipses were foreseen, charted events, not sud-
den biblical calamities?
The pulse. She had read about it in a news-
paper a few months ago. It was something to
do with solar flares. An increase in sunspot
activity was due and was going to cause geo-
magnetic storms, knocking out satellite com-
munications and causing blackouts on earth.
Catastrophe and chaos were predicted
across the globe (it was an article in the Daily
Mail, she remembered now). She wished that
she had paid more attention. She wasnt sure
what a geomagnetic storm was but it certainly
didnt soundgood.
But then, just as suddenly as it had been
turned off, the power was snapped on again.
People blinked at the sudden assault on their
retinas from the overhead lights and looked
about in confusion as if they were expecting
something to have changed during their un -
expected daytime journey into night. Every-
thing was just as it had been. Daylight had
returned outside. A blink, that was all. The uni-
verse blinked.
Waitrose rebooted itself and the air was filled
once more with the low whining and buzzing
noises of robotic insect life as the big fridges
and the cash registers came back to life. The
automatic doors began dutifully opening and
closing again. Several people headed straight
for the outside but the majority of customers,
after some hesitation, recommenced shopping.
A babel of mobile-phone ringtones started
to fill the air. Genevieve supposed everyone
wanted to share their own experience of the
dark. Once they would have written laborious
letters and the event would be forgotten by the
time the letter was delivered into another hand.
Her iPhone vibrated in her own hand. It was
Genevieves mother asking if she was all right.
Yes, she said. (Was she?)
Look outside, Genevieves mother said.
T
he customers who had already
left Waitrose were still standing
in a little huddle near the doors,
looking aghast. Genevieve saw
the dapper old man, lying supine
on the concrete, his cap tilted
rakishly, a peaceful expression on his face,
even though the hard rain was falling steadily
on it. She hurried towards him, crouching
down and feeling for a pulse. None. Standing
up, she found herself next to the woman who
was dressed so well for the rain.
Has someone phoned for an ambulance?
Genevieve asked and the woman who was
dressed for rain (but who would never leave
her house again, no matter the weather) simply
lifted her arm and pointed like a mute seer
at the length of Morningside Road. That was
when Genevieve realised that the crowds dis-
tress was not on account of the dapper old man
but for a much wider horror.
Everywhere that she looked there were peo-
ple lying on the ground as though they had
been struck by a narcoleptic spell. The Big Issue
seller who hung around the entrance to Wait-
rose was curled up like a baby next to the ranks
of wire trolleys. A young woman who was
sprawled in the middle of the pelican crossing
was still grasping the handle of a pushchair.
The baby inside the pushchair looked like the
dapper old man as if it were taking a much-
needed nap. The old Romanian beggar woman
who sat every day outside the hospice shop had
keeled over, her hand still outstretched for coins.
One man and his dog were bedded down on the
pavement together. It was a new Pompeii.
Cars had crashed into each other, others were
slewed across the road, passengers and drivers
lying insensible, half in and out of the doors.
A bus standing at a nearby stop had opened to
admit passengers into its belly. Everyone inside
the bus looked as though they had fallen asleep
in their seat. The people waiting in the queue
had dropped where they stood in a tidy fash-
ion. The bus driver remained at the bridge, pi-
loting a ghost bus, his head lolling forward
as if were taking forty winks while waiting for
his tardy passengers to board. The automatic
doors kept trying to close but were foiled by the
inert body of a woman draped across the plat-
form, her bus pass still clutched in her hand.
No one was waking up. No one was climbing
to their feet and shaking their head in bewil -
derment at the sudden enchantment that had
overtaken them. They were dead, Genevieve
thought. All of them. Dead.
From what? Gas? A terrorist attack (in Morn-
ingside?). An acoustic device the kind they
had on ships to repel pirates (again Morning-
side?). Or had they all simply drunk the
Kool-Aid, obedient to some bizarre order,
while Genevieve was debating whether to buy
a watermelon?
But not everyone was dead. No one who
had been locked in Waitrose was dead, for
example, and when Genevieve looked around
she could see people in cars, in shops, on buses,
who were definitely alive. People who had
stayed inside. Behind closed doors. Whereas
everyone who had been outside
Jesus Christ the school playground! Gus.
Genevieve reeled from the thought as if she
taken a physical blow, staggered, and almost
tripped over the body of the dapper old man.
She set off at a run, pushing her way past the
living and dodging the dead with the adroitness
of the counties hockey player she had once been.
So, Genevieve said tentatively, not wishing
to rekindle any alarming memories. What
happened at school?
The little kids were scared, Gus said.
Youre a little kid.
He made a face. Not really.
Thank God for the rain, which had meant that
the whole school had spent their lunchtime
indoors. There were a few peripheral casual-
ties. The crossing-man on duty, a classroom as-
sistant. Genevieve had to skirt the body of the
deputy head lying just outside the school gates.
A smoker, paying the price of her habit.
Im never letting you out of my sight again,
she said to Gus.
Never?
Never.
He shrugged. OK.
Glancing out of the window, Genevieve saw
a sparrow land on the bird table in the shared
garden of the block of flats. It began to peck
nervously at the toast crumbs that one of
Genevieves elderly neighbours put out each
morning. It was the first bird that Genevieve
had seen all day. The elderly neighbour herself
was spreadeagled on the path. Her fat ginger
cat who spent most of his day asleep inside
was sniffing the old ladys body with greedy
curiosity. Burying the dead was going to be a
problem, Genevieve thought.
What? Gus said.
Nothing.
Now wash your hands.
O
n the television, newsreaders
and pundits were wallowing in
the apocalypse. It had been
worldwide and had lasted exactly
five minutes. A cataclysmic event
more overwhelming in its awful-
ness than anything previously experienced on
the planet half a million Krakatoas, a hundred
thousand Hiroshimas.
The commentators were talking in Cretan
terms The end of civilisation as we know it.
The greatest disaster since the dinosaurs were
wiped out. The Black Death had killed a third
of the worlds population but it had taken only
people (only!) but the Dark (as it was appar-
ently now called) seemed indiscriminate in its
choice of prey.
Billions of farm animals in the fields had
gone but the battery hens and the veal calves
survived. Children in playgrounds and streets
all laid out but the worst kind of paedophiles
and murderers in jail were spared. Diamond
miners survived, trawlermen died. Swaths of
the poor were scythed down workers in the
fields, the homeless, the drunks and the whores
on the street.
In the great shanty towns of Karachi, Lagos
and Cape Town, corpses were scooped up
by bulldozers. Two-thirds of the population
of Africa wiped out. All the animals of the
Serengeti, of the Antarctic, of the Malaysian
rainforests.
t
The Critics
Planes plummeted like game birds from the
sky, although some miraculously survived,
coasting silently through the blackout before
regaining power. Cyclists, dog walkers, cricket
teams, sunbathers, tourists on the Grand
Canal. Princess Anne. The Prime Minister.
All gone. In the Far East, moving into night
at the time of the disaster, there were slightly
fewer casualties although it seemed that all
it took was an open window a crack for the
Dark to get in.
The population of New Zealand fared best,
not so the forty million sheep that lived there.
There were myriad theories. In order of pop-
ularity these were: a shock-and-awe alien at-
tack; a new kind of plague; a cull by God; a hole
in the space-time continuum (this, of course,
would evolve into the Void theory); an increase
in the earths magnetism or a sudden decrease;
a poisonous miasma emanating from Venus;
the revenge of Gaia. A terrible harrowing, the
Archbishop of York said, and was condemned
for being overly biblical.
Across the globe people rioted and looted
and stockpiled. As you would. Genevieve
thought of all the useful things she might
have bought in Waitrose when she had the
opportunity. The shelves would be cleared
now, even the balsamic vinegar would have
been snatched.
Not only the birds but also the bees survived.
No one understood why, but they were grateful
(pollination and so on). Many scientists, shut
away in their labs, had also survived and would
soon be set to work on the reason for the illogi-
cal staying power of the birds and bees (no one
foresaw what a problem they would become).
The plump, newly elevated Deputy Prime
Minister appeared on television, basking in the
seriousness of his position. He exhorted every-
one to stay calm and not panic. He sounded
like a supermarket manager. The spirit of the
Blitz was invoked. Genevieve turned the tele-
vision off.
Will it happen again? Gus asked.
I hope not, Genevieve said.
But it did. At 1.05pm the following day the
universe blinked once more. A lot of the casual-
ties were people who were burying the dead
from the first time.
I
t lasted for five minutes and came
five minutes later every day. Like clock-
work. People were thankful for this
regularity. You can set your watch by it,
but at the same time, as it were, the im-
plications of this machine-like precision
were disturbing.
The people who remained adapted. Dying
embers of church congregations were fanned
into life as many turned to religion. Others
sank into apathy. Genevieves mother said she
wished shed had shares in one of the artificial
meat corporations.
Genevieve wondered what they would do
if one day the Dark came and didnt go away
again.
Phil Beckett never did make sense of what hap-
pened to his daughter and grandson. Five years
after the first Dark, when anyone with any
sense knew to the exact second when it was
coming, knew to take all necessary precau-
tions, she broke down on I-8.
Every couple of miles along the interstate
there were billboards saying Avoid the Void!
and Dont Let the Dark In!. Did she not
see them? She was so smart. Why had she been
so dumb?
She was found on the hard shoulder, Preston
by her side, holding her hand. Hed just started
elementary school. They had got out of the
car and had started walking in eighty-five-
degree heat. Why? Why hadnt she just waited
for a breakdown truck? A passing motorist
saw them running back to the car but the Dark
overtook them.
That was three months ago. His wife had
turned to God and pills. Phil had given up on
God, didnt believe in pills.
Blake came round all the time. He hadnt had
a job since the first Dark. Phil felt a coldness to-
wards him that was maybe unfair. Maybe not.
They had been doing OK. After the cattle
went, Phil had transformed the Double Dia-
mond into a dude ranch. We never take you
out in the Dark. That all stopped with Melissas
death. The horses were up for sale now.
Midday. The Dark was due at twenty past
the hour.
Going out to settle the horses, Phil shouted
to his wife.
The horses were always skittish beforehand.
His wife was watching TV in the living room,
reruns of crap The Bold and the Beautiful, All
My Children shows that were cancelled years
ago. His wife didnt reply.
Come on, Phil said to the dog.
A shadow passed over them. One of the giant
flocks of Arizona grasshopper-sparrows flying
overhead. Once on the most endangered list,
a darned nuisance now.
I
n the barn, Phil checked the windows,
searched everywhere for cracks and
pinholes, all the time talking soothingly
to the horses. At 12.18 he stepped out-
side and shut the door behind him,
leaving the dog inside with the horses,
but Mitch started scratching at the door, whin-
ing sadly. His wife treated Mitch with amiable
indifference. Phil tried to put himself inside
the dogs head. What would Mitch want?
Pretty much the same as he wanted himself,
he guessed.
Come on then, buddy, Phil said, opening
the barn door, shutting it carefully again after
Mitch came out.
The dog stood sentinel by his side, waiting
patiently for whatever was going to happen.
Phil put out his hand and rubbed the dogs head.
His watch was slow and the Dark surprised
them both when it came. l
Kate Atkinsons latest book is the Jackson Brodie
detective novel Started Early, Took My Dog
(Black Swan, 7.99). She is the author of the
1995 Whitbread Book of the Year, Behind the
Scenes at the Museum, and When Will There
Be Good News? (both Black Swan, 7.99)
newstatesman.com/culture
The Critics
Richard Dawkinss new book, The Magic of Re-
ality, is a tour de force in which he tells a num-
ber of myths (about, for instance, the creation
of the earth, or rainbows, or where animals
came from) and then gives a scientific account
of the phenomenon in question, showing how
thrilling knowledge and scientific inquiry can
be and what a profound sense of wonder they
can give us. Its a book that I shall certainly give
to my grandchildren in a year or two. I have
never seen a better introduction to science for
young readers.
But it reminded me of Dawkinss misgivings,
expressed in a TV news interview two or three
years ago, about such things as fairy tales in
which frogs turn into princes. He said he would
like to know of any evidence about the results
of telling children stories like that: did it have a
pernicious effect? In particular, he worried that
it might lead to an anti-scientific cast of mind,
in which people were prepared to believe that
things could change into other things. And
because I have been working on the tales of the
Brothers Grimm recently, the matter of fairy
tales and the way we read them has been much
on my mind. So, what evidence might there be
to settle this question?
We believe different things in different ways
and for different reasons. Theres the rock-hard
certainty of personal experience (I put my fin-
ger in the fire and it hurt), which is probably
the earliest kind we learn. Then theres the log-
ically convincing, which we probably come to
through the maths we learn at school, in the
context of Pythagorass theorem or something
similar, and which, if we first encounter it at
the right moment, bursts on our minds like
sunrise, with the whole universe playing a
great chord of C major.
However, there are other ways of believing
that things are true, such as the testimony of
trusted friends (I know him and hes not a
liar), the plausibility of likelihood based on
experience (Its exactly the sort of thing youd
expect to happen), the blind conviction of
the religious zealot (It must be true, because
God says so and His holy book doesnt lie), the
placid assent of those who like a quiet life (If
you say so, dear), and so on. Some of these
carry within them the possibility of quiet scep-
ticism (I know him and hes not a liar but he
might be mistaken).
Theres not just one way of believing in things
but a whole spectrum. We dont demand or
require scientific proof of everything we be-
lieve, not only because it would be impossible
to provide but because, in a lot of cases, it isnt
necessary or appropriate.
How could we examine childrens experience
of fairy tales? Are there any models for examin-
ing childrens experience of story in a reason-
ably objective way? As it happens, there are.
A very interesting study was carried out some
years ago by a team led by Gordon Wells and
his colleagues at Bristol University and was
described in a book called The Meaning Makers:
Children Learning Language and Using Lan-
guage to Learn(1986).
Wells and his team wanted to find out how
childrens language was influenced by what
they heard around them. They selected a large
number of families with children who were
two or three years old, whom they followed
right up to the end of their primary education,
giving the children unobtrusive, lightweight
radio microphones, to be worn under their
clothes, which could pick up not only what the
children said but also what was being said by
parents or others nearby. The microphones were
switched on at random intervals for 90 seconds
CRITIC AT LARGE
Imaginary
friends
We must not deprive our children of fairy tales learning that there are
different ways of believing is one of the most important lessons of all
By Philip Pullman
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Scandinavian delight: the Moomins bring pleasure
The Critics
To dream the impossible dream: Snow White and her
Seven Dwarves provide a compelling fantasy tale
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at a time, the results were recorded and tran-
scribed and then an enormous amount of ana -
lysis was done on the results.
In brief, they discovered that the more in-
cluded children were in the conversation and
chatter going on around them, the quicker
and more fully they picked up every kind of
language skill. One interesting discovery was
that the most enriching experience of all was
the open-ended exploratory talk that arises
from the reading of stories. In Language and
Learning: an Interactional Perspective (1985),
Wells and his colleague John Nicholls write:
Several investigators have noted how much
more complex, semantically and syntactically,
is the language that occurs in this context . . .
Furthermore, the frequency with which chil-
dren are read to has been found to be a powerful
predictor of later success at school.
So, its not impossible to set up experiments
to test how children acquire various forms of
understanding and to learn interesting things
from them. But to go back to Dawkins and his
question, how on earth would we set up an ex-
periment to test the effect of fairy tales?
It would have to go on much longer than the
Bristol study: it would have to last as long as
childhood itself. And it would have to differ
from that study in an important way, because it
would need a control group. Whereas the schol-
ars at Bristol were concerned with finding out
what happens in the natural course of a childs
life, this study would depend on having some
children who were allowed fairy tales, fantasy
and so on, and another group that wasnt.
To make it absolutely beyond question, it
would have to be policed pretty rigorously. No
Harry Potter under the bedclothes. No nursery
rhymes either, which are full of impossible
things such as cows jumping over the moon.
And we would follow the children all the way
through their schooling, right up to leaving age,
to see whether the ones who were kept away
from magic and spells were thereby advantaged
in their understanding of science.
Of course, we wouldnt do it. It would amount
to child abuse. To make sure that our subjects
never encountered fairy tales of any kind, we
would have to keep them in a sort of prison
camp. Dawkins knows this; he wouldnt ask
for the unreasonable, or the impossible, or the
cruel. When he says that he would like to see
some evidence, I assume that he is prepared to
be a little generous in his view of what evidence
there could be. We dont demand scientific
proof of everything we need to know about,
not only because it would be impossible to
provide but because, in a lot of cases, it isnt
necessary or appropriate.
Matters of trust
The only way we can know what is going on
in the mind of someone who reads a story is
to believe them when they tell us about it and
compare it with our own experience of reading
and see what we have in common. When it
comes to the matter that Dawkins is concerned
about, namely the question of childrens belief
in fairy tales and magic and spells, all we have
to go by is belief and trust. Its that sort of evi-
dence, and thats the only sort weve got but
then, we get by pretty well with that in most
of our dealings with other people.
So, do children believe what they read in sto-
ries, or dont they? And if they do, in what way
do they believe it? Well, this is what I think
about it. I think that childhood reading is
more like play than like anything else. Like t
pretending. When I was a boy of eight or
nine, in Australia, we pretended to be figures
from comics or films and we acted out stories
based on the adventures wed seen. Davy Crock-
ett was very big at that time; every little boy
in the western world had a Davy Crockett hat.
I knew I wasnt really Davy Crockett but, at the
same time, I liked imitating things that Id seen
Davy Crockett do on the cinema screen say,
at the Siege of the Alamo.
We fought with passion, and when we died
we did so with heroic extravagance. My body
was doing all that an eight-year-old body could
do to run out from behind a wall, fire a musket,
clutch my chest, stagger, crumple to the ground,
slowly drag a revolver from a holster with
a trembling hand and kill six Mexicans as I
breathed my last.
Those were the things my body was doing.
What was my mind doing? I think it was feel-
ing a little scrap a tiny, fluttering, tattered,
cheaply printed, torn-off scrap of heroism.
I felt what it was like to be brave and to die
facing overwhelming odds. That intensity of
feeling is what both fuels and rewards child-
hood play and reading alike. When we children
play at being characters we admire doing things
we value, we discover in doing so areas and
depths of feeling it would be hard to reach
otherwise. Exhilaration, heroism, despair, res-
olution, triumph, noble renunciation, sacrifice:
in acting these out, we experience them in
miniature or, as it were, in safety.
Yet at no time during the endless hours of
play I spent as a child did I believe that I was
anyone other than myself. Sometimes I was me
and sometimes I was me pretending to be Davy
Crockett. But now that I think about it care-
fully, I realise that it was a little more compli-
cated than that. When I was playing with my
brother and my friends, I was almost entirely
Crockett, or Batman, or Dick Tracy, or whoever
it was (and I remember games when there were
about six different Batmans racing through the
neighbourhood gardens). It was when I played
alone that I found it possible to be myself, but
a different myself, a myself who was Davy
Crocketts close and valued friend, who sat with
him beside a campfire in the wilderness or
hunted bears in the trackless forests of subur-
ban Adelaide. Sometimes I rescued him from
danger and sometimes he rescued me, but we
were both pretty laconic about it. In some
ways, I was more myself at those times than at
any other, a stronger and more certain myself,
wittier, more clearly defined, a myself of accom-
plishment and renown, someone Davy Crock-
ett could rely on in a tight spot.
Whats more, he seemed to value me more
than my friends and family did. He saw the
qualities in me that their duller eyes failed
to perceive. Davy Crockett wasnt alone in
this superior perception; I remember that King
Arthur had a high opinion of me, and so did
Superman.
The Critics
I think that childhood
reading is more like play
than anything else
Now I think that those experiences were an
important part of my moral education as well as
the development of my imagination. By acting
out stories of heroism and sacrifice and (to use
a fine phrase that has become a clich) grace
under pressure, I was building patterns of be-
haviour and expectation into my moral under-
standing. I might fall short if ever I were really
called on but at least Id know what was the
right thing to do.
And that sort of play, the solitary play, per-
haps, even more than the communal play, seems
to me very similar to what we do when we
read at least when we read for no other pur-
pose than our enjoyment and especially when
we read as children. Im conscious that the way
I read as an adult is a little different, because
theres a part of my reading mind now that
looks with critical attention at the way the story
is told as well as at the events it relates.
What I thought mostly when I was a child
was, I want to be in this story with them. It
was like the sort of game where I was by myself
with Davy Crockett in the wilderness, because
in a story I was able to be both myself here and
myself there.
I didnt want to stop being myself; I didnt
want to be them; I wanted to put myself into
the story and enjoy things happening to me.
And in the sort of private, secret, inviolable
space that opened out miraculously between
the printed page and my young mind, that sort
of thing happened all the time.
I remember it happening especially power-
fully with the Moomins. Little creatures who
looked like miniature hippopotamuses and
lived on an island in the Baltic Sea? Absurd.
What I felt for the Moomin family and all their
friends, however, was nothing less than love.
In fact, I loved them so much that I would never
have said to my friends, Lets pretend were
Moomins. That would have been inconceiv-
able. I would have had to make public some-
thing I felt private and secret about, something
I could hardly voice even to myself, something
if, were it ever discovered, I would have felt
embarrassed by; and the shame of discovery,
Im sure, would have been followed quickly
by the even greater and longer-lasting shame
of betrayal. To save face, Id have felt obliged to
mock and scoff at those dear friends of mine,
and at any kid who was so stupid and babyish
as to like stories about them.
But when I was alone, with a Moomin book
open in front of me and that great, secret space
opening up between my mind and the pages,
I could revel in their company and sail off in
their floating theatre or travel to the mountains
to see the great comet or rescue the Snork
Maiden from the Groke and no one could pos-
sibly have told, from looking at me, what my
mind was doing.
Here comes the test: did I believe that the
Moomins were real? No, of course I didnt. I T
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Suspend your disbelief: stories carry us into imaginative worlds where we become bigger than ourselves
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knew that they were made up. I was pretending
they were real in order to enjoy being with
them in imagination. I wasnt in the slightest
danger of confusing them with real life. The
delight of being with the Moomins was a com-
plex kind of delight, made up partly of the
sweetness of their characters, partly of the deli-
cate, simple precision of the drawings, partly of
the endless inventiveness of Tove Jansson, their
creator, partly from the fascination I felt with
the northern landscape in which they lived:
a whole bundle of things, none of which de-
pended on their being true or real.
Nor did I believe for a second that elephants
trunks were long because one of their ancestors
had played a desperate tug of war with a croco-
dile, as Rudyard Kipling told me in the Just So
Stories. If someone had asked me, in a serious
kind of way, why I thought elephants had long
trunks, Id have scratched my head and said,
I dunno. I knew, even when I was very young,
that Because the crocodile got hold of the ele-
phants childs nose and pulled and pulled was
the wrong sort of answer.
I would have been just as fascinated, in a
different kind of way, to hear the real answer;
but that wouldnt have diminished my pleas-
ure in the story, including the delight that I felt
in murmuring the sounds of the words: the
satiable curtiosity of the elephants child,
The Critics
wicked people dont believe it. Children really
do learn quite early on that there are different
ways of believing in different kinds of story.
And when it comes to evidence, I think theres
nothing for it: we just have to trust what people
tell us and check it against our own experience.
If what they say is that stories of every kind,
from the most realistic to the most fanciful, have
nourished their imagination and helped shape
their moral understanding, then we have to ac-
cept the truth of that. My guess is that the kind
of stories children are offered has far less effect
on their development than whether they are
given stories at all; and that children whose par-
ents take the trouble to sit and read with them
and talk about the stories, not in a lecturing sort
of way but genuinely conversing, in the way that
Wells describes will grow up to be much more
fluent and confident not only with language
but with pretty well any kind of intellectual
activity, including science. And children who
are deprived of this contact, this interaction, the
world of stories, are not likely to flourish at all.
What sort of evidence that is, I dont know,
but I believe it. l
Philip Pullmans latest book is The Good Man
Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Canongate,
7.99). The trilogy His Dark Materials
is published by Scholastic (30/6.99 each)
newstatesman.com/culture
the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River,
all set about with fever trees.
I knew these story things, these play things,
werent real, but that didnt matter, because I
didnt want them to be real, I wanted them to
be funny. Or delightful. Or exciting. Or mov-
ing. And they could be all those things and real
as well, as some things were, or all those things
and imaginary and I could tell the difference, and
it didnt matter.
Life cycle of a frog
I agree that it would be a different question
entirely if parents actually brought their chil-
dren up to believe that frogs could change into
princes. And some parents do bring their chil-
dren up to believe that things can change into
other things bread into flesh and wine into
blood, to be specific, and that theyll go to hell
if they dont believe it. Some parents also bring
their children up to believe that the world was
created 6,000 years ago and that scientists
are wrong when they tell us about evolution
and shouldnt be allowed to teach it in schools.
I fully agree with Dawkins when he says that
this is pernicious and damaging.
Yet theres a world of difference between that
sort of thing and offering a child a fairy tale.
No one says, You must believe that the frog
changed into a prince, because its true and only
The Critics
The book industry believes we are about to
enjoy an ebook Christmas. One thing is for
sure: it will not be a print-book Christmas.
Gloom about the economy, plus a general per-
ception that publishers are offering us more of
the same, only worse (uninteresting celebri-
ties, chefs reheating the usual ingredients),
have depressed the market. But, in compensa-
tion to a certain extent, there is a new vogue
for ebooks. In the US, ebooks are accounting for
20 per cent of leading publishers revenues, and
rising; in the UK, the figure is about 10 per cent
and rising. These figures will leap in the new
year as people who unwrapped e-readers on
25 December play with their new gadgets.
Amazon is pushing its Kindle reader and WH-
Smith is selling the Kobo, which is attached to a
Canada-based retailer. Ebooks for the iPad and
other tablets are also gaining in popularity.
These developments give publishers a mod-
est satisfaction, offset by a great deal of fear. The
focus of that fear at present is Amazon. The in-
ternet giant is by far the most aggressive book
retailer they have ever dealt with, and, thanks
to its dominance of ebook sales through the
Kindle, it is also becoming the most powerful
retailer that publishers have ever dealt with.
Amazon uses its power largely to depress
prices. Should we, as readers, be delighted that
books, already widely discounted, are getting
cheaper still as the digital revolution spreads?
Or is the enthusiasm of giant retailers for price-
cutting a mixed blessing at best, as it has been
with food?
For my new Kobo e-reader, kindly sent to
me by a PR firm, I have bought A D Millers
Booker-shortlisted novel, Snowdrops, for 4.31
and Robert Harriss thriller The Fear Index
for 5.49. In print, Millers novel is available in
paperback at a recommended retail price (RRP)
of 7.99. The Fear Index is a hardback with an
RRP of 18.99. So I have saved more than 17 on
two books. Ive also downloaded free ebook edi-
tions of David Copperfieldand Mansfield Park.
Buying ebooks affects the way you look at
print books. Browsing in the Piccadilly branch
of Waterstones the other day, I was chastened
to find myself seeing the books at this vast,
five-floor shop as pricey items, of the kind one
might buy if one wanted to indulge oneself, or
if one were looking for gifts.
I am shocked at myself, because I have always
been dismayed when people say as they so
often do that books are expensive. They are
not expensive, I have insisted, by comparison
with cinema or theatre tickets. A new paper-
back is cheaper than a round of drinks. Peoples
attitudes, not book prices, needed to change,
I thought.
I have also tried many times to explain why
so many books appear first in expensive hard-
back editions, which only a minority of even
committed book buyers want to pay for. It is
hard to get publicity for paperbacks, I say; if you
produce 10,000 paperback copies of a literary
first novel, you may not sell any more copies
than you would have done if you had produced
1,500 hardbacks, and youll earn a good deal
less. Moreover, books by established authors
P D James, say, or Ian McEwan or Claire Toma-
lin sell in huge quantities in hardback, and no
publisher will happily forgo this income.
Ebooks are destroying this economic model.
Julian Barnes, whose novel The Sense of an End-
ing won the most recent Man Booker Prize, is
one of those established authors who can sell
a lot of hardbacks. Indeed, as I write, he is the
fourth-bestselling author at independent book-
shops, which are mostly selling his novel at the
RRP of 12.99. But in the weeks following the
Booker, Amazon decided that the correct price
for The Sense of an Ending in ebook was 3.59
(the price has since gone up to 4.79).
Some publishers have attempted to hold the
line by introducing agency pricing, through
which they set the retail prices and give retail-
ers a cut of the revenue. Amazon hates taking
anyone elses orders about what it should
charge, and is suspected of having had some in-
fluence on the decision by the European Com-
mission to investigate the agency model.
The evidence is that ebook buyers are with
Amazon on this issue, and believe that digital
editions should be cheap. Amazons customers
have blitzed the site with one-star reviews of
books, by Ken Follett and others, that they con-
sider to be too expensive, and its Kindle best-
seller list at present shows titles priced at less
than 1 occupying seven of the top ten slots. Will
99p become the optimum price for an ebook?
If so, who is going to make any money out of
publishing or writing books for such a market?
It turns out that a few people are doing very
well out of selling cheap ebooks. In the US,
Amanda Hocking and John Locke, two genre
authors who self-published their novels, have
Easy reader: the arrival of the Kindle is transforming the way we consume books
BOOKS
The sense of
an ending
Sales of ebooks will reach a new high this Christmas.
Yet the outlook for publishers and authors is grim they
need to sell many more to survive. By Nicholas Clee
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The Critics
each sold more than one million ebooks through
the Kindle store. Some publishers have used
ebooks to turn the conventional publishing
model on its head: instead of going to market
first with expensive hardbacks, they have found
substantial audiences by promoting authors
with cheap ebooks. Myriad Editions, a small
publisher based in Brighton, has sold 70,000
copies in print and ebook of Into the Darkest
Corner, a crime novel by the newcomer Eliza-
beth Haynes; the novel has 445 customer re-
views on Amazon and was the sites editors
pick as the best book of 2011.
These successes lead one to wonder if the
complainers were right all along, and books
really were too expensive. Surveys suggest that
owners of ereading devices are buying books in
greater numbers than they did previously. At
the Kindle store, Amazon and self-publishers
are able to adjust their pricing until they reach
a sweet spot at which readers will buy, even
if the authors are unfamiliar. As ebooks take a
greater share of the market, book sales overall
may increase.
This will be a happy development, except as it
affects shops selling print books, and publishers
and authors cash flows. In place of the social
experience of browsing in bookshops, we will
have the social media experience of sharing
our tastes through Facebook and Twitter. As for
the financial implications on the Me and My
Big Mouth blog, the novelist Ian Hocking (no
relation to Amanda, above) has confided his
sales figures and revenues from self-publishing
ebooks with Amazon. Two of them have sold
more than 8,000 copies. This is a figure that
many conventionally published novelists would
envy. But Hockings profit to date is only just
over 300 (his revenue is just over 2,000).
Had Hocking chosen a conventional pub-
lisher, he might well have sold fewer copies,
but he would have earned more, thanks to the
publishers advance. It is not only the likes of
Julian Assange, Jeffrey Eugenides (500,000
each) and Pippa Middleton (400,000, for a
book about parties) who get unrecoverable
sums of money upfront from publishers. Most
authors, right down to those whose sales are in
four figures, depend on such handouts. But it
is hard to see how, in the new world of cheap
books, downloaded one by one rather than
bought in bulk by stockholding booksellers,
publishers will be able to afford them.
An industry that paid unrecoverable advances
for books, and then published them in formats
that the public thought too expensive, had its
eccentricities. Still, it served readers and liter-
ary culture pretty well. Most writing careers
have depended on the subsidies that publishers
have been able to provide. In the digital world,
authors, whether they self-publish or not, will
have to sell to survive. l
Nicholas Clee is a joint editor of BookBrunch,
a book industry newsletter
THE BOOKS INTERVIEW
Peter Englund
You have described
The Beauty and the
Sorrow, your new
book about the First
World War, as a work of
anti-history. What
do you mean by that?
I mean it in the
sense that history
is usually about
taking experiences, documents and sources
and collating them, putting them together
to make a larger construct called history.
But this book is about going the other way,
going back to the single component of
history, which is the individual experience.
In my other work as a professional
historian I specialise in the 17th century
I go by the book, and its a good formula. You
have a grand narrative and then you use the
individuals as a splash of colour or as an
example, but the grand narrative is the thing.
Would it be fair to describe your method
here as novelistic?
Yes, in the sense that the form and the
language used will remind readers more of
those used by a novelist rather than the kind
used by a historian writing a textbook.
But the main difference between the
novelist and historian is not about form.
Its about what we can and cant know.
The historian, when he reaches a gap in the
sources, must say firmly, We dont know.
If you are a novelist, when you reach that
gap, you can really do your job and fantasise
about what may have happened.
You worked as a war correspondent in
Bosnia in the 1990s. Did that experience
affect the way this book was composed?
I could never have written it without it.
In fact, Ive been to four wars as a
correspondent. The experience of being
smack bang in the middle of events yet
not understanding a thing that was
very important.
Do you see the First World War as the
critical event of the 20th century?
Yes. I would agree with those historians
who say that the Great War is probably the
most important event in European history
since the fall of Rome in 476. It defines the
20th century.
One of the most striking things about the
book is its emphasis on the global scale
of the war. This is about much more
than the Western Front.
That was quite deliberate. When I was
teaching, that was one of the points I
would make again and again to my students.
The impact of the war in Africa showed
for the first time the cracks in the monolith
of colonialism.
How did you find the people whose war
stories you tell in the book?
Because there are so many eyewitness
accounts, the problem was not finding,
but choosing. I ended up with 20 people
in this book but I had enough material for
at least a hundred.
In your day job you are permanent secretary
of the Swedish Academy, the body that
awards the Nobel Prize in Literature. What
does that involve?
I spend a lot of time reading. Im also the
CEO of the Academy. The Academy meets
once a week on a Thursday, which it has been
doing since 1786, and I prepare the agenda
and write the minutes.
The prize this year was awarded to a Swede,
the poet Tomas Transtrmer. What was the
reaction in Sweden to his award?
The reaction in Sweden was one of elation.
There had been speculation here since the
Nineties that Transtrmer would get the
award. Also, if you know your poetry
well, youll know that he is the second most
translated poet in the United States.
One American writer, Philip Roth, has
been spoken about as a likely winner for
some years now.
Yes. But I can, of course, never comment on
individual cases. There are secrecy clauses
governing the deliberations of the Academy.
Perhaps it looks very secretive from the
outside, but it at least shields the process.
Having a completely open judging process
would lead to more furore and debate.
It can be a bit frustrating, as we can only
hand out one prize and are not allowed
to divulge the names of the others on the
shortlist. But I think its good for writers
mental stability that they shouldnt know
that they are on the shortlist. It also means
we the judges can work in peace. l
Interview by Jonathan Derbyshire
Peter Englunds The Beauty and the Sorrow:
an Intimate History of the First World War
is published by Profile Books (25)
The Critics
The killing
machine
Richard J Evans
Heinrich Himmler: a Life
Peter Longerich
Oxford University Press, 1,072pp, 25
There have been many attempts to describe
the life and opinions of Heinrich Himmler, but
this one, by the German historian Peter Lon-
gerich, is the first thorough scholarly biography
to appear. It makes excellent use of the volumi-
nous source materials available to historians,
including many that originated through the
meticulous SS leader himself, such as his ap-
pointments diary and the log he kept of his
telephone conversations. The result is a major
work that breaks ground by linking Himmlers
political career convincingly to his personal life
and experiences.
The son of a schoolmaster and some-time tu-
tor to the Bavarian royal family, Himmler was
too young to fight in the First World War and,
like many of his generation, sought solace for
having missed the action in drilling himself
into a state of ruthless efficiency, so as to ensure
that the inevitable next war was won by Ger-
many. For Himmler, this had the added advan-
tage for compensating for his early feelings of
physical, social and emotional inadequacy. In-
terfering in the private lives of others provided
another form of compensation for the emo-
tional poverty of his own. So did his attraction
to the violent subculture of the far-right para-
military movements that flourished in Bavaria
after their brutal suppression of communist
revolutionaries early in 1919.
Incapable of inflicting physical violence, he
enjoyed experiencing its employment vicari-
ously. Politics for him was a continuation of
war by other means. Soon he was in charge of
Hitlers personal protection squad (the Schutz -
staffel, or SS), which he built up into an elite
corps, distinguished by its discipline and un-
conditional loyalty to the Nazi leader from
the storm-trooper militia Sturmabteilung(SA),
led by his nominal boss, Ernst Rhm. When
the storm troopers started kicking over the
traces, it was Himmlers SS to which Hitler
turned. Himmler delivered, liquidating their
entire leadership in the bloody Night of the
Long Knives in 1934.
By this time, some of Himmlers main char-
acter traits had emerged: his persistence in the
pursuit of power and his flexibility in the means
he chose to achieve it, his ever-expanding ambi-
tion that grew with each Nazi success, and his
determination to integrate the many and varied
institutions he came to control in a single, func-
tioning whole. From his Bavarian base, he took
The Critics
PICTURE BOOK OF THE WEEK
A minke whale surfaces in a
small opening in pack ice in the
Ross Sea. This image is taken from
Frozen Planet: a World Beyond
Imagination by Alastair Fothergill
and Vanessa Berlowitz (BBC
Books, 25; ebook 9.99). The
book accompanies the BBC
television series of the same name
presented by David Attenborough,
who provides a foreword. No
part of the earth is more hostile
to life, Attenborough writes,
than the snow- and ice-covered
regions that lie around its two
poles. However, those species
that do survive there flourish in
dramatic numbers
The lives of others: Himmler had a need to control G
E
T
T
Y
I
M
A
G
E
S
over the police forces in one part of the Reich
after another, adding to them the concentration
camps, the mobilisation of forced labour and
then the organisation of ethnic purification,
resettlement and mass murder. At the outset
of the war he combined all of these and more
in the Reich Security Head Office. On the back
of this grew a large economic empire, a bur-
geoning educational and research apparatus
and, as the war progressed, a rapidly expanding
military force, the Waffen-SS.
Himmler used the enormous power this gave
him to put into effect the first stages in a huge
plan for the total racial reordering of Europe.
Ethnic Germans were moved into the Reich
from the east; Poles were liquidated in huge
numbers as a first step towards the extermina-
tion of up to 45 million Slavs and their replace-
ment by German settlers; Germanic popula-
tions in occupied countries such as Holland
and Denmark were to be brought into the fold.
In the summer of 1942 it seemed possible to
Himmler that his ambition of creating an eth-
nically pure Greater Germanic Reich covering
most of Europe was within reach.
Power such as this allowed him to indulge
his whims, too, though even these were ex-
crescences of his ideological tenets. In pursuit
of his notion of decency and self-control in
the SS, he issued individual bans on hunting,
smoking and drinking. He consigned those of-
ficers who did not feed their men properly to
a House of Poor Nourishment, which he de-
signed, in person, down to the last detail, and
where inadequate food (Tinned food with no
fresh vegetables. Badly prepared) was served,
interspersed with the occasional proper meal
to show how it should be done.
In an effort to ensure that the SS stayed a
true racial elite, he required its men and their
prospective spouses to be racially examined
before getting married, forcing them to provide
family trees dating back to 1800. Group solidar-
ity was to be cemented by the creation of a
non-Christian pseudo-religious cult, to which
all SS men had to belong. Building on what he
imagined to be the practices of Germanic tribes
in the Dark Ages, he set up cultic sites and in-
troduced runic inscriptions and rituals based
on the cycles of the sun. The marriage cere-
mony for SS men was to include readings from
Nietzsche and Hitler instead of the Bible.
Himmler linked this pseudo-religion to his
idiosyncratic view of world history, in which
the Aryan race originated in Tibet and, further
back still, in the lost continent of Atlantis,
whose disappearance he ascribed to the history
of the cosmos through the world-ice theory,
according to which the earths development
was determined by the appearance and disap-
pearance of moons and ice planets over geo-
logical time.
Such bizarre theories might have remained
harmless eccentricities, had Himmler not had
a great deal of power and money and had he not
been able to found research institutes or spon-
sor expeditions in order to prove his ideas. Yet
his attempt to foist them on universities came
to nothing; his other enterprises began to fall
apart from 1942 onwards as Germanys war
fortunes began to decline. It proved impossible
to enforce his requirements for Aryan racial
purity in the SS. Germanys economic empire
never achieved any coherence. Resettlement
plans were put on hold as its territorial grip
on Europe weakened. Resistance and partisan
groups became impossible to defeat. Himmlers
growing power was exercised within a steadily
shrinking Reich.
In two of his main aims, however, he suc-
ceeded. It was Himmler who intensified terror
and repression within the Reich to such a de-
gree in the final phases of the war that the Ger-
mans fought on to the end. And it was Himmler
who drove on and radicalised the extermina-
tion of Europes Jews, convinced no doubt
correctly that he was putting Hitlers wishes
into effect, and saw it through to the last.
Longerich sets the mass murder in its proper
context of Himmlers wider plans for the racial
restructuring of Europe. Not everyone will
agree with his view that a final decision on the
extermination was not reached until as late as
the early summer of 1942. But this book does
succeed in showing convincingly how his cruel
ambitions increased over time, rather than re-
flecting a firmly preconceived set of ideas. The
extermination of six million Jews, Himmler
told his subordinates, was a page of glory in
our history that can never be written. He
knew, therefore, that it was a crime, and one
of gigantic proportions. Nothing showed more
clearly the amorality that lay at the heart of
the great machine of terror and extermination
which he had created. l
Richard J Evans is Regius Professor of History
and president of Wolfson College at Cambridge
and is the author of The Third Reich at War
(Penguin, 12.99)
www.newstatesman.com/link/arg
Subscribe today!
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The Critics
Only the
lonely
Julie Myerson
Outsider: Always Almost:
Never Quite
Brian Sewell
Quartet, 338pp, 25
Explaining why at last he feels able to put his
own life in print, the art critic and historian
Brian Sewell writes that, approaching my 80th
year and old enough to be neither embarrassed
nor ashamed, I no longer feel the need for reti-
cence. It is perhaps graceless to point it out,
but there are other advantages to waiting until
youre 80. Total freedom, no libel and the glee
of having the last word so many of the people
you might want to write about are dead. And
yet, to be fair, one of the most attractive aspects
of this occasionally dry and unwieldy but ulti-
mately courageous memoir is that its author
seems deliciously aware of that advantage.
Sewell may make his living by being rebar -
batively outspoken, but here he turns the
critical glare on himself. He begins with an ac-
count of his emotionally uneven, nomadic
childhood: the father whose identity he did
not discover until late in life; the beautiful and
loving but chaotic mother who had as much
sexual restraint as an alley cat; and the well-
meaning (but, as it turns out, bigamous) step-
father who gave the young Brian his surname
and an intense interest in sex (he would fre-
quently come into the young boys bedroom
to masturbate, apparently unaware that he was
being watched).
Sewell was convinced from an early age
that he was irrevocably queer, and he details
the various inappropriate encounters with
teachers at school and the all-too-familiar, pre-
dictable experimentation at public school. Af-
ter that came National Service, during which
in a chilling episode told entirely without
melodrama or self-pity Sewell was painfully
raped in his own bed.
Increasingly aware that his wayward sexu-
ality was something to protect and hide, he
embarked on a lengthy period of self-imposed
celibacy, even toying with the priesthood. But
after he returned to the Courtauld to continue
his degree in art history he found that student
life was far too enticing. From there, he went to
work at Christies, where he encountered the
bullying and dishonest office politics that form
the frequently turgid heart of this book.
Sewells brusque honesty is nothing if not
infectious, and so I will be honest in return.
This is a memoir and, for that matter, a life
with two principal strands: the world of art his-
tory and the world of homosexual sex.
The sex is cleverly, roguishly, even artfully
depicted. I was fascinated and frequently moved
to read about the authors slow but brave pro-
gression from guilty, self-denying queer
to promiscuous and unapologetic hedonist.
As for the first strand, the anecdotage from
the Courtauld and Christies may seem just as
fascinating to those who trade in high art, yet
there is little authorial attempt to explain or to
evoke its atmosphere, its humanity. And hav-
ing heard of few of the people Sewell con-
stantly and gossipily namechecks (with the
notable exception of Anthony Blunt), I repeat-
edly found myself guiltily longing for the next
bit of sex. Naturally it crossed my mind that
Im not Sewells ideal reader but then, with
the exception of all of his (mostly deceased) co-
horts, who is?
Then theres the prose. What do you do with
a sentence such as, With Jill this English year
had forced a parting of the ways, for she had
chosen to study the centuries before 1550 to en-
sure a firm grounding for the Gothic art and ar-
chitecture that was to be her special period?
Yet Sewell also offers consolation. A joyously
naughty passage describes Robin, who aston-
ished us with his beauty and unconscious ele-
gance, the immaculate suit of fine greenish
tweed marred only by the urine drippings of
a man wearing boxer shorts and careless when
emptying his bladder.
Even so, these vignettes rarely bring us closer
to the people. Sewell tells us what they were
like but rarely makes them spring off the page.
As I tramped on through the Christies mire,
I increasingly wondered: where are the emo-
tional highs and passions of Sewells life (art
and art history apart)? A seven-year relation-
ship with a man called Claudio is referred
to only glancingly, and despite all the explicit
self-scrutiny, the reader gets little sense of a
personal life. Is this, I began to wonder, a book
about loneliness?
The most chilling and perceptive insight
comes when the author, leaving the Courtauld
one evening, is picked up by a smelly-breathed
man with egg on his tie who insists that he
come for a milkshake. Contemplating and
smelling him, Sewell has an appalling, pre-
monitory flash-forward: Were seedy clubs,
food droppings and slopping on my clothes,
the empty chattering of seduction and mephi -
tic breath, what I in middle age would inflict
on pretty boys?
The man turned out to be Guy Burgess. But
I found myself by now caring only about this
memoirs honest, kind and likeably straight -
forward protagonist hoping fervently that
the young Sewells glimpse of a future would
prove untrue. l
Julie Myersons most recent novel is Then
(Jonathan Cape, 12.99). Read more by her for
the New Statesman at:
newstatesman.com/writers/julie_myerson
In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word
was God. As a literal
opening to this column,
that line has never made
more sense. This week, the word is God.
The big one. I thought it was time.
However, I am neither equipped nor
inclined to offer a sophisticated analysis
of deism. I know thats what you were
hoping for, but hell (whoops), its not
going to happen. This is about the word.
Not the word when it was being God:
I never understood how the word did that.
Also couldnt John just have written, In
the beginning was God, and God was with
God, and God was God? Too repetitive?
Anyway, the word is Germanic, from
guthan, linked to the Proto-Indo-European
ghutm, from the root ghew, meaning
to call or invoke. I like the way it unravels
not to a tangible being, but to something
summoned or imagined. It makes sense
of our frequent declamations for
Gods sake, in the name of God, God,
Boris Johnson is a plonker. God the word
is invoked for emphasis, to make a point.
It helps that it is concise. If wed stuck
with Yahweh, Im not sure the idea would
have caught on. But God is neat, elemental.
Good for rhyming. Also, it turns out, good
for book titles. Heres a selection for your
delectation . . . The God Delusion(by our
esteemed guest editor); The Pursuit of God
(Ill stick with love, thanks); God, No!: Signs
You May Already Be an Atheist and Other
Magical Tales; When God Spoke to Me.
Theyre all at it, you see, the atheists and
the believers, wheeling out the big guy as
they battle it out on the bookshelves. My
own favourites are God According to God
(pretty bold from the author, that one) and
Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts.
But if you really want to get to grips with
God, forget the tomes. Forget the Bible. I
dug out a couple of childrens books which,
judging by their titles, claim to answer
some pretty fundamental questions
Where Does God Live? and What Is God
Like? (both a snip on Amazon for less than
a tenner). This is stuff that people have
been trying to figure out for years! And
the answers, who knew, are nestled in
a couple of 32-page picture books in the
four-to-eight age range. Ah well, better late
than never. l
WORD GAMES
God
Sophie Elmhirst
The Critics
FILM
Known
unknown
A chilling fable of city life
asks more questions than it
answers, says Ryan Gilbey
Dreams of a Life (12A)
dir: Carol Morley
Joyce Carol Vincent died alone, at the age of 38,
in her north London flat above an unlovely
retail complex called Shopping City. That was
in December 2003. She was eventually discov-
ered two and a half years later. A pile of presents
stood guard beside her remains: she had been
wrapping them in front of the television at the
time of her death. I do hope that detail hasnt
ruined your Christmas.
When bailiffs broke down Joyces front door
in 2006, there wasnt much of a body to speak
of. As in death, so in life: what sort of impres-
sion can a person have made on the world
for no one to seek her out for almost three
years? The film-maker Carol Morley tries to
answer that poser. The story hit the nationals
and became a momentary marmalade-dropper
but no one turned up much trace of Joyces
history until Morley placed ads (Did you
know Joyce Vincent?) and rounded up some
of Joyces old friends, landlords and lovers to
be interviewed on camera. The result, Dreams
of a Life, represents a new kind of film: the spec-
ulative documentary.
The Vincent family declined to participate,
as did Joyces former fianc. Their absence is
regrettable but not devastating. Dreams of a
Life is more about what isnt there and what
cant be known than what is and what can; hard
facts might weigh it down. For every detail that
seems to bring Joyce sharply into focus, there
is a clutch of contradictions that reduces her
again to a blur. Someone refers to her as a
chameleon and there is a Zelig-like quality
about her meetings with remarkable men. Gil
Scott-Heron! Isaac Hayes! Nelson Mandela! Er,
Captain Sensible! One of Joyces former house-
mates, an ageing barrow-boy type with the
hots for her (Sexy, wasnt she? She was
sexy), says it feels now like she is a figment of
everyones imagination like theyve all made
her up. Morley must have given a little inward
cheer when she heard that.
Rudiments of Joyces life emerge from the
haze. She was born in west London. Her four
older sisters helped their Grenadian father raise
her after the death of their Indian mother. She
was, someone remarks in the Caribbean parl-
ance, broughtupsy she had manners. She
worked, she had friends, she liked to sing, she
moved around. Dont we all? Inconsistencies
crop up, each one a gift to a picture so averse
to the forensic or definitive. An ex-lover insists:
She had no great dreams, no ambitions.
Cut to another voice: She had so many ambi-
tions. Its like reading an obituary written
on a Mbius strip.
Zawe Ashton plays Joyce in the largely word-
less reconstructions and imaginative digres-
sions, which are sprinkled among the inter-
views. Most haunting are the attempts to cast
her as an eavesdropper at her own memorial.
She gazes inscrutably at the television (which
was still yapping away in the corner when she
was found) while the testimonies of those who
knew her play on its flickering screen.
Ashton has the sloping, queenly face of
Cathy Tyson in Mona Lisa, a likeness that
brings a helpful transfusion of that films grimy
London noir, particularly when Joyce is driven
around the city, all dolled up in the back of a
black cab. Plastered on the vehicles side is
Morleys original appeal for information, lend-
ing the passenger the air of a soul being ferried
across the Styx.
It gradually becomes apparent that it isnt
the intangible Joyce who is the subject of the
picture so much as her friends, and London,
and the grinding hubbub of city life in general.
The chief witness is Martin, an ex-boyfriend,
who is as jolly and moon-faced as a giant baby.
(Its a running joke that no one could believe it
when the sultry Joyce appeared on his arm.)
Martin uses laughter the way other people
use full stops or ellipses, until finally he stops
laughing and holds his big, bald head in his
hands and sobs: I wish shed rung me. Cos
I wouldve helped. Cos I love you. Thats
right: I love you.
We never do find out what those Christmas
presents were, or whom they were for. They
stand in for all the details about Joyce Vincent
that we have no right to know. l
Ryan Gilbey blogs on film every Tuesday at:
newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital
Ghostly presence: Joyce (Zawe Ashton) I
M
A
G
E
N
E
T
TELEVISION
Bubbles with
your Bubl
From Downtonto the
Doctor, Rachel Cooke
rounds up Christmas TV
For anyone foolhardy enough not to know by
20 December what theyll be cooking for Christ-
mas lunch, this years TV schedules will come
as a real boon. Rick Steins Spanish Christmas
(BBC2, 21 December, 9pm), Lorraines Last-
Minute Christmas (BBC2, 22 December, 8pm),
Nigels Simple Christmas (BBC1, 21 December,
7.30pm), Raymond Blancs Christmas Feast
(BBC2, 23 December, 8pm) . . . On and on, the
list of cookery programmes goes, the BBCs
commissioning editors apparently having no
idea how hard it is to book an Ocado delivery in
late December, much less get ones hands on
the last pack of jamn ibricoat Sainsburys (we
can take it for granted that none of these shows
features a creative use of frozen peas, fish fin-
gers or white sliced bread and that Lorraine Pas-
cale, pretty as a picture in her fun Christmas
sweater, is unlikely to recommend dashing to
Iceland for a bag of mixed vol-au-vents).
All thats missing is a pithy Michael Mosley
medical investigation into indigestion. The BBC
could have screened it at 5pm on Christmas
Day, when no one in Britain is any less than 22
miles away from the nearest open chemist.
But enough with this Grinching! There is lots
to watch on telly this Christmas, so long as you
are selective: by which I mean you will give
Young James Herriot (BBC1, 18 December, 9pm)
does what it says on the tin a wide berth and
ignore altogether Lapland (BBC1, Christmas
Eve, 10pm), a comedy drama starring Sue John-
ston as a put-upon matriarch who wants to give
her family ugh! the Christmas of a lifetime.
I will be kicking off with Rev (BBC2, 22 De-
cember, 9pm), in which Adams father-in-law
comes to stay. Forgive me if I repeat myself but I
think Rev is the comedy of our time, touching
and brave in equal measure. Top of my list
thereafter is BBC1s heavenly sounding new
adaptation of Great Expectations (27 Decem-
ber, 9pm), starring Gillian Anderson as Miss
Havisham, Ray Winstone as Magwitch and
Douglas Booth as Pip; a new version of Mary
Nortons novel about tiny people The Borrow-
ers (BBC1, Boxing Day, 7.30pm), childhood
nostalgia triumphing over any trepidation I feel
at the thought of the ubiquitous Stephen Fry
playing Professor Mildeye; and Downton
Abbey (ITV1, Christmas Day, 9pm), because
the tree will be huge and there will roast pheas-
ant and a suitably batty plotline for dinner. t
The data centre strategy of some of the worlds largest
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own Data Centre is particularly pertinent at a time
when reducing cost whilst still delivering a high level
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critical I.T. infrastructure and want to understand the
implications this has on your organisation visit
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Data Centre Ownership: the Big Cloud Debate
The Critics
You may want to watch Outnumbered
(BBC1, Christmas Eve, 9.30pm) but I will not
be joining you. For one thing, its so bloody irri-
tating. For another, I am child-free and thus have
no need to console myself with the sight of
sprogs even less well behaved than my own.
What else? For those who miss Val Dooni-
can and who doesnt? ITV1 is screening the
schmaltz-fest Michael Bubl: Home for Christ-
mas (18 December, 9pm). Special guest star:
Gary Barlow. Lets hope there will also be chest-
nuts roasting over an open fire. Channel 5 has a
new adaptation of Lew Wallaces epic novel of
first-century Palestine, Ben Hur (28 December,
9pm), with Hugh Bonneville putting in a cameo
as Pontius Pilate (this could be fun after three or
four large Baileys). Channel 4 has a new sitcom,
Felix and Murdo (28 December, 10.35pm) by
Simon Nye, starring Alexander Armstrong and
Ben Miller as Edwardian toffs, which has the
potential to be hysterical; and Absolutely Fabu-
lous returns to BBC1 (Christmas Day, 10pm), if
you still feel up to jokes about Bolly, Issy and
Mossy in these austere times. Im not sure I do.
Finally, shows for those who worry about
Christmas brain rot. I like the sound of The Art of
the Night on BBC4 (21 December, 9pm), starring
Waldemar Januszczak and paintings by Rem-
brandt, Hopper and others and I will be unable
to resist The Many Lovers of Jane Austen (BBC2,
23 December, 9pm), in which Amanda Vickery
meets the fans (the bonnet-wearers of Texas
sound like fun) and Jane Austen: the Unseen Por-
trait (BBC2, Boxing Day, 9pm), in which Paula
Byrne tries to discover whether she has found
an unknown likeness of the novelist. University
Challenge runs on eight nights over the holidays
on BBC2 (from 19 December, 7.30pm) though
rumours that Jeremy Paxman will front it with
foam antlers on his head are sadly unfounded.
Now, I think my work here is done. Whats that?
Doctor Who? Yes, of course its on: Christmas
Day at 7pm on BBC1. Its set in 1938, guest stars
Clare Skinner and Alexander Armstrong and the
doctor arrives by climbing down a chimney. l
t
Robert Rowand
Andersons magnificent
Scottish National Portrait
Gallery (SNPG), which
opened in 1889, is a
Victorian arts and
crafts interloper amid the neoclassical,
Georgian rigour of Edinburghs New
Town. The SNPGs deep red sandstone
exterior interrupts the otherwise uniform
palette of George Street, one of the New
Towns main arteries.
Give or take the odd bout of remedial
scrubbing, the face that the SNPG presents
to this grand thoroughfare hasnt changed
much in over 120 years. But inside, the
gallery has recently undergone a major
transformation overseen by the Glasgow-
based architectural practice Page\Park.
Relocating the SNPGs previous
co-tenant, the National Museum of
Antiquities, to the nearby National
Museum of Scotland has allowed the
creation of a continuous suite of galleries
on the upper floor, all of them top-lit and
flooded with natural light. But perhaps the
most striking interventions of all have
occurred in the great hall, which visitors to
the SNPG in its previous incarnation
remember as a somewhat gloomy,
unwelcoming vestibule.
The vaulted ceiling of this triple-height
space, the first-floor murals and mosaic
floor-tiles have all been cleaned, and a
processional frieze depicting figures from
Scottish history restored to something like
its former glory. The SNPGs chief curator
and deputy director, Nicola Kalinsky,
describes the frieze as a great pageant of
[Scottish] history. Much the same might
be said of the collection itself, which now
comprises nearly 900 works (almost
double the number on display before
the renovation).
For all her and her colleagues attempts to
rethink the meaning of a potrait gallery in
the 21st century, the hang is, Kalinsky
admits, basically chronological. Its what
the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond,
describes in the gallerys press release as a
celebration of well-known Scots from
throughout the ages, from Robert Burns
to Susan Boyle. Not especially ambitious
but appropriate, perhaps, for a country
anxious to assert its distinctive identity. l
Jonathan Derbyshire
For more information, visit:
nationalgalleries.org/portraitgallery
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
Great Scots
No turkey: Olivia Colman and Tom Hollander in Rev
THEATRE
Farce
poetica
Andrew Billenrevels
in a high-spirited
Ealing comedy revival
The Ladykillers
Gielgud Theatre, London W1
Graham Linehan, who has turned Alexander
Mackendricks 1955 film The Ladykillers into a
West End farce, is the saviour of studio-based
situation comedy on television. As laughter
tracks went out of fashion and the mock docu-
mentary style took over, the creator of Father
Ted ploughed on and kept making studio audi-
ences laugh with Black Books and The IT Crowd.
It is fitting that he should seek to liberate on to
the stage an old Ealing comedy about a group of
bank robbers brought down by a sweet old
woman from unwatched box sets and exagger-
ated cineaste deference.
His resuscitation is about eight-tenths suc-
cessful and if the laughs from his latest live
audiences never quite reach hysteria, this La-
dykillers certainly creates enough goodwill in
the theatre to make the evening appear a gen-
uine treat. The film is surprisingly unfocused
its writer, William Rose, literally dreamed the
plot and Linehan has done much to tighten its
shots. Gone are the outside diversions: no
Frankie Howerd, no horse, no apple cart. In-
stead, the action is confined to the good widow
Wilberforces rambling Kings Cross house. It
is, more than in the film, propelled by charac-
ter. The gangs personalities are much more
fleshed out; the major, for instance, is no longer
just a coward but a coward who would like, but
does not dare, to wear womens dresses.
Farce, however, relies on the tension be-
tween a controlling personality and anarchy
and Linehans insight was to realise that Profes-
sor Marcus, the brains of the heist, played in the
movie by Alec Guinness, is the supreme con-
trol freak, a man who compares his plans for the
heist to art. For him, using Mrs Wilberforce as
the crooks unwitting bagman and alibi is the
final flourish of genius. Peter Capaldi, garbed in
an intellectuals overlong scarf which is, of
course, his noose is exceptional as the profes-
sor, throwing himself over the stage in an effort
to preserve his masterpiece. He is mad and bad.
His words pour like honey but from a mouth
fixed in a grimace. Everything he does is in-
fused with menace, even his tea, which he
takes with a suspicion of sugar. Capaldis
professor is a man who has won the battle to
suppress his own nature and now fights a war
against everyone elses. B
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But the war cannot be won, for his lieutenants
are hopeless: not just the lovely James Fleets
major but an idiot bruiser who cannot even re-
member his alias (Clive Rowe, not on form), a
cockney lad addicted to pills (a more than ade-
quate Stephen Wright) and a cynical Italian (Ben
Miller, gamely refusing to upstage Capaldi)
with poor idiomatic English and a reluctance
to generate the necessary lies. Taxed with find-
ing an excuse for his thievery, Lou announces:
I run an orphanage in Romania. Hows that?
The profs foil, however, is the widow and Mar-
cia Warren replicates Katie Johnsons perform-
ance exactly. The old lady is a controlling per-
sonality also, outraged when her good opinion
of the genteel lodger, who has persuaded her
his friends are members of an amateur string
quintet, needs a major overhaul.
The play reaches a glorious climax just before
the intermission, when the gang is forced to
play for Mrs Wilberforces elderly friends. In a
scene of Linehans devising, the professor man-
ufactures a brilliant excuse for their inevitable
cacophony. As the bands conductor and com-
poser, he intones before they begin, his audi-
ence must appreciate that he is a controversial
figure in modern music and the following
work will be difficult.
The evening never gets as funny as this again
and, in part, that is a structural weakness of
the story, for one by one the gangsters immo-
late themselves, leaving the stage barer and
barer. The second act systematically does away
with the elements the professor is so needy to
control so there is less and less to enjoy.
In the film, this is no problem, for the deaths
above the railway station are scary and vivid.
Onstage, they go for little.
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Michael Taylors revolving set is wonderful
to scrutinise, even if, on press night, a door
knob fell off, providing so many opportunities
for ad libs that I bet they keep it unscrewed.
Taylors solution for showing the robbery
little cars running up the outside of the house
is, however, unnecessary and Mrs Wilber-
forces caged and unseen parrot repeatedly
fails to amuse.
A final ingenuity depicting the profs end
makes up for this. The director Sean Foley had
not quite yet drilled his company into the pre-
cision-timing that farce requires but when that
comes, the design faults will matter less. It is, in
any case, a delight to see Capaldi enjoying him-
self so much. If only it were not too late for us to
see Alec Guinnesss take on Malcolm Tucker. l
Andrew Billen is a staff writer at the Times
newstatesman.com/writers/andrew_billen
RADIO
Magic
moments
Antonia Quirke on the best
of Christmas listening,
from the dull to the daft
Last years BBC Christmas cosy was Colin Firth
editing Today and a documentary about the
Morris Minor. This year, its David Jason pre-
senting classic moments from an array of
British Christmas radio programmes past and
present (David Jasons Comedy Christmas,
Radio 2, Christmas Day, 6pm), leaning rather
too predictably on Morecambe and Wise.
Those less keen to probe the outer limits of
tedium might welcome the following alterna-
tives: a long edition of Words and Music (Radio
3, Christmas Day, 6.30pm) on the theme of
bells, with music from Rachmaninov, Pete
Seeger, Philip Feeney, Grieg and readings from
Tennyson (Ring Out, Wild Bells) and
Charles Dickens (The Chimes).
We will all be completely under the influ-
ence of Dickens until the arrival of his bicente-
nary in February but one of the most powerful
programmes about the man thus far is The Tale
of A Tale of Two Cities (Radio 4, 29 December,
11.30am), in which the crime writer Frances Fy-
field looks at original manuscript pages held by
the Victoria and Albert Museum and contem-
plates his frantic handwriting and ferocious
self-editing. Its a show that comprehends the
distilled lyricism of Dickenss common speech
(and the despair expressed through both sense
and a sense of beauty in it).
Classic FM keenly attempts to recreate a sort
of Fezziwigs dance with the Parliament Choir
Concert (Christmas Eve, 6pm). From lords
and ladies to MPs and staff, goes the blurb,
they put aside all their differences for a night to
be united in musical harmony! The Parliament
Choirs first carol concert to be aired in public
promises readings by the Labour leader, Ed
Miliband, and the Speaker of the House, John
Bercow. Time, doubtless, to switch to Planet
Rock for a comforting scan of its seasonal
rolling-rock stories (A second Metallica track
leaks! Hate Train was also seemingly recorded
during the Death Magnetic sessions!)
Only a fool would miss Keith Arthur on
TalkSport with a particularly Fungus the Bo-
geyman edition of his peerless, live, tales from
the riverbank call-in show Fishermans Blues
(Christmas Day, 6am). I always plan for the
worst, Arthur told me recently, ber-Fun-
gusly. No callers, no texters, no emailers and
Im usually surprised to find a plethora of
all three. Still, I'll take some angling-related
Pulling strings: Peter Capaldi (right) in The Ladykillers
The Critics
material to read. Or angling-related music,
anyway. Its about time the fish had a voice.
Even if its mine.
Final cast-iron tip: for nightmare-minimisa-
tion purposes, tune in at any moment to Net
Station, Snow Hill Island, Antarctica (Anetsta-
tion.com) a non-commercial internet outfit
with a lovely, perpetually low-level air of the
dumpee. (I've met someone else. His name
is Shackleton and hes a script consultant at
the penguin rookery). Here, guitar music
solos stop and after a long, long pause, you
realise that someones been playing live in the
studio all this time.
Things get said on this station that perilously
skirt hippiedom but divert joyously from what
a drag everything is: Emotions are creatures of
the jungle, people. Panic, and they devour. But
remember: sometimes, when its least ex-
pected, we get a little help, a little extra, a little
surprise, that makes us give thanks. Makes
everything magical. l
newstatesman.com/writers/antonia_quirke
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REAL MEALS
Fast for Christmas; it might do you good
Will Self
Well, here we all are this is the last Real
Meals of 2011 and I for one would like to go
out with a bang, rather than a whimper. My
charming editor at the Statesmansuggested
that I might like to write something
Christmassy but why would I want to do
that? I made my feelings about Christmas
dinner perfectly clear in this column at about
this time two years ago and they havent
changed one jot during the intervening
months. Frankly, Im about as likely to set
out on the highways and byways of Albion as
a sannyasin as I am to begin at the age of 50
rhapsodising about a meal Ive never ever
enjoyed or even seen the point of.
Actually, Im a good deal more likely to
become a mendicant, because if theres one
thing writing about food confirms me in, its
my ever-lurking manorexia. I like to review
fast food outlets rather than fancy restaurants
because if theres one virtue they have, its
that they exist to satisfy the hunger of the
masses, rather than to stimulate the jaded
palates of the privileged few its an axiom of
gastronomy that the hungrier you are, the
better something will taste and, when youre
starving, any old shit will do, so long as it has
US food aid programme stencilled on it.
Up the sprout
My late stepmother once served up a
Christmas dinner at the picnic site on the
shores of Lake Burley Griffin. I want you to
picture the scene: the lake is an artificial one
in the middle of the Australian federal
capital, Canberra, and on the far shore, the
parliament building rises up, a queer
pre-postmodernist spaceship of a structure
surmounted by what appears to be a giant
hypodermic syringe. Possibly the architects
idea was to suggest that the legislature
needed injecting with a hefty dose of
common sense, or irony, or both.
In 44 degree heat, my stepmother doled
out turkey, bread sauce, roast potatoes,
sprouts . . . God love her, you might well say,
and with the benefit of 20 years hindsight, I
do feel that I cruelly misjudged her on that
occasion. What aroused my scorn was
the small charity collecting envelope
she had put beside our plates that
featured if my memory serves me
a photograph of some Somali
starvelings. Nothing, I
withered at her, could
be more calculated to
ruin a feast than the
presence even as representations of these
ghosts! Now I see that her reasoning
whether conscious or not was perfect:
Christmas dinner is a meal fit only for
ruining, so why not cut to the chase. And if it
offends you to think of all the bellies swollen
with air, then I suggest you look away now
and get back to pickling your nuts.
Roly poly
According to the UN Food and Agriculture
Organisations statistics, there were in 2010
925 million people in the world suffering
from innutrition. Innutrition is the preferred
term for starving nowadays since the ambit
of malnutrition has been expanded to
include the obese as well as the meagre.
Actually, I think we can all benefit from
this new form of usage over the festive
season. When roly-poly Uncle Henry, or
blubbery Auntie Roberta wallows along,
why not greet them at the door saying, My,
you look awfully malnourished, youd better
come in . . . The facts are that, despite all the
love-bombing of Bono, Sir Bob, Tony
Granita Blair and the rest, world innutrition
levels have increased substantially since the
mid-1990s. The reasons for this are obvious:
the neglect of appropriate sufficiency
agriculture by governments, the current
world economic crisis and rising food prices.
But as ever, the most significant
impediment to Tiny Tim gorging himself on
goose are the Scrooges of this world, who
girdle the earth with the political equivalent
of a gastric band so that not enough food
reaches southern bellies. Theres more food
being produced worldwide than a decade ago;
unfortunately there is also more inequality,
instability and in the past three years a huge
upsurge in refugees, which is why around
one-in-seven of the human family will be
tucking into bugger-all on 25 December.
Why not join them? I hold no brief for
tokenistic charity efforts designed to make
the moneyed feel better about their status
but fasting is another matter: it clears the
mind and concentrates the thoughts on
both the spiritual verities and the hard
realities of life. No wonder all serious
religions include it as a key part
of their practice. Its very effective
against malnutrition as well
at least, the sort we get
down my way. l
newstatesman.com/
writers/will_self
Madam
By Christopher Logue
(1926-2011)
Madam
I have sold you
an electric plug
an electric torch
an electric blanket
an electric bell
an electric cooker
an electric kettle
an electric fan
an electric iron
an electric drier
an electric mixer
an electric washer
an electric knife
an electric clock
an electric fire
an electric toothbrush
an electric razor
an electric teapot
an electric eye
and electric light.
Allow me to sell you
an electric chair.
MP3 player
or a Brennan?
Ill have both
thanks says
Jools Holland
brennan
ONLY AVAILABLE DIRECT. To order visit www.brennan.co.uk Full Money-Back Guarantee
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
VOTED BEST BUY BY
GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE,
WHAT HI-FI & SUNDAY TIMES
In a recent interview Jools
reveals that, even though
he owns an MP3 player,
the ability of the Brennan
JB7 to store, browse and
play up to 5000 CDs* at
the touch of a button, as
well as record from CD,
tape or vinyl at the very
highest quality, makes it the perfect machine
for his precious and unique music collection.
Since getting my Brennan, some people have asked me why
I dont just have an MP3 player. Well I do, but Ive got
bucket loads of CDs, yards of tapes and records and I
wanted to record and listen to them at the highest quality.
If you transfer something from one medium to another and
then record it on to a CD, you dont want to then degrade it
again when you store it.
Digital break up is as irritating as dandru
An MP3 player typically records at 128 kilobits, whereas
the Brennan starts at 192, goes up to 320 and then beyond
that you can record uncompressed.
My MP3 player is very handy to take on tour or on holiday,
but if I want to archive something important Ill use the
Brennan. Downloading from the Internet isnt bad, but for
me its a little time consuming. I always want the easiest
and fastest way to do something. If I had to unlock my
piano, walk through a few hoops and put a password in
before playing, it would be rather long winded and Im not
sure I could be bothered.
Ive got drawers full of cassettes, boxes
full of CDs and 28 feet of vinyl records, so I
denitely needed a Brennan
Apart from recording quality, what I was really after from
the Brennan was being able to archive a lot of my own
music. The Brennan is a great way of distilling it all down to
be able to enjoy it.
Many of my personal recordings
in my collection are old and quite rare
For example, I made a lm about the music of the lm and
TV composer Edwin Astley. When making it his family sent
me some reel-to-reel tapes of his incidental music from
lms and dramas. Its of its time and very charming. When
making the lm about him I put all his incidental music on
to one CD. It is the sort of thing you couldnt get anywhere.
I also have things like a CD of myself and Willie Dixon, the
greatest blues composer of all time, in New York together
in the 1980s. The other day somebody sent me a CD of me
doing a solo show in Boston in 1981. Its wonderful to have
all of these memories on CD, but as we know, theyre quite
fragile and have a limited life span.
When CDs came out we all assumed you
could use them as a Frisbee, spread jam on them
and they would still work perfectly well
It turned out this was not the case. You might have noticed
that some CDs have the habit of not working, particularly
the ones that you record yourself. These are exactly the
sort of things Im recording on to the Brennan, not just as a
back up but so I can listen to them whenever I want
without having to search for them.
Im not trying to load everything in one go. Im going to
slowly enjoy transferring them piece by piece gradually
archiving my collection. On my Radio 2 show, I play a lot of
blues and roots records. I trawl through a lot of music and
Im constantly at the song face. Im looking forward to
distilling the best of these blues records on to my Brennan.
This also includes some 78 recordings I have and enjoy
listening to on shellac.
Its important for me not to forget the music
that has touched me over the years
It doesnt really matter if a piece of music is 5 minutes old
or 500 years old. When you hear it if it has the eect of
lifting your human spirit then its done its job. My Brennan
is enabling me to reconnect with a lot of my old music that
did just that.
Built-in hard drive
loading each CD takes
JUST 3 - 4 MINUTES
Album and track names are
automatically added
Combines tracks in ways
you would never dream of
One simple button
will play your entire
collection at random
Find the music you want
to hear in SECONDS
*See copyright message on
the Brennan website
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Food
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Drink
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Competitions
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Columns
Manzanilla, a big Rhne red or
a fine Armagnac are all excellent
adjuncts to Christmas and not one
of them is under 14 per cent (in
fact, the brandy will be around 40).
What with cold weather,
excessive socialising and the
prospect of a few days off, there
seems little reason, once we have
found the tipple that works for
us, to curb our thirst. Everything
in moderation, of course, but
that applies to moderation itself:
forbearance is a very Puritan
virtue, and Ive always been more
of a Cavalier.
The odd thing about
the British is not that we
drink too much; its that
we used to be so much
better at it. Henry IV
is full of unrepentant
tippling, culminating
in Falstaffs exuberant
claim that no amount
of bravery or education
is worth anything
without sherry to
fire it up, and that
Amis no slouch on the alcohol
front once said, if you cant
annoy somebody, theres little
point in writing. And the fact is,
most of us do overdo it. We go
out more, guzzle free refreshment
at office parties and then, faced
with that fearsome battalion,
the family, reach for the nearest
loaded glass.
Still, lets accentuate the
positive. This is the time
of year for goodwill and mercy
mild; shouldnt we apply them to
ourselves, too? And, while the
will must be good (I am not
advocating drinking bad booze
in any quantity), the mercy
neednt be all that mild. A good
C
hristmas a time of inviolate
traditions, when trees are
decked and carols sung,
and drink critics pontificate on
the wines that best lubricate
overcooked turkey. Youre all
awash with those suggestions;
my adding to them would be as
surplus to requirements as
another present under the tree.
So I shall turn my attention to
a matter close to my heart, and
probably to yours, although you
may not be willing to admit it: the
licence Christmas offers to drink
too much. We live in hypocritical
times, so a paean to excessive
drinking is unlikely to please
some people. But then, as Kingsley
the reason Prince Hal will become
a great king is that he drinks such
a lot of it. Pepys boasted about
the array of drink in his cellar as
being more than any of his friends
ever had of his own at one time.
In his 1920 Notes on a Cellar-Book,
George Saintsbury acknowledges
that beer with breakfast is a bad
idea, but adds that, just after,
strongish beer . . . is probatum
of many choice scholars, good
sportsmen, and, in the best sense
of the term, men.
Grab your goblet
It is true that most apostles of
excessive drinking, right into
the 20th century, have been
men often men not especially
keen on women (the best-known
exception is probably Dorothy
Parker, though she didnt like
women much, either).
So I am reclaiming fine drinking,
in disproportionate quantities, for
the modern gourmand of either
sex. I am a five foot two female
with a very hard head, but those
who havent invested in my years
of intensive training need not fear:
if you become irritating, some
kind soul, aflush with Yuletide
altruism, will surely remove the
goblet from your grasp.
I, meanwhile, will start
25 December with Philipponnat
Grand Blanc 2004 champagne,
move on to Finca Allendes 2008
white Rioja with my turkey, and
will eschew Christmas pudding
(horrid stuff) in favour of a
Castelnau de Suduiraut 2009
Sauternes. Then cocktails: a good
Martini is the closest to angel song
that I am ever likely to get.
Lets be clear as vodka
here. I am not praising
drunkenness,
merely condemning
hypocrisy. We arent
mealy-mouthed in
any other sense at this
time of year. Isnt it time
to shout hosanna and raise
the 27th glass? l
Next week: Jason
Cowley on wine
DRINK
Shout hosanna and
raise the 27th glass
Nina Caplan
Wafer-thin mint not provided: this is not the time of year for moderation, particularly where tippling is concerned
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THE NS CHRISTMAS PRIZE CROSSWORD BY OTTERDEN: THREESOMES
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Solutions to the 15 clues marked
* refer to just one member of a closely
linked group of three fictitious
characters, derived from a range
including Greek mythology,
Shakespeare and Disney to name a
few. These solutions are not otherwise
defined, but all other clues are normal.
Across
1/10*Appalling parts of this scam
follow a frightener (5,2,9,4)
11 Spare parts refurbished at brand
new plant (9)
12 *Clamour to get right of reply (4)
13 *Troops on a manoeuvre (7)
14 Young bird makes easy sport
with gun (4-6)
17 Sing wordlessly sounding like
a tellytubby (2-2)
19 Examinations in choral singing(5)
20Saved again from river by
the sea (8)
23 Subtle alteration to rear
extension (6)
25 Spike with two parts projecting (5)
26 *Derisory address once
recalled (6)
27 *Motorway to South Africa has
right turn (6)
29 Grave message to cricket side
in Yorkshire (5)
31 Heading off embrace from
ones partner (6)
32 *A small thing to put up with (4,4)
35 Stopping for dinner at French city
is more pleasant (5)
37 Browns friend eats out (4)
39 *Trees move spasmodically (5,5)
43 Transport to take one into
slavery (7)
45 Sacred cow could be covered
by prize bull (4)
46*Offence got substantially reduced
after compassion expressed (5-4)
47 *Foreign derivation does not
concern editor (4)
48*Mean tricks lacked resolve (11,5)
Down
1 Moors here once but soon to
move to Salford Quays (7)
2 I have no room to study river
creature (5)
3 *Union gets drink dispenser (9)
4 Flower not confined to eastern
parts of Indonesia (7)
5 *This one or another version? (9)
6 *One is caught up in Iran
upheaval (5)
7 Met to revamp iconic image (5)
8 *He was in doubt shortly after
opening of academy (5)
9 Dead places with unfinished semi-
erected new development (10)
15 Consider 29 and Leeds for
instance (3)
16 Dump last of fertiliser in
the river (3)
18 Risk assessor rescued company
from unrestrained autocracy (7)
20*American president not having
any inauguration! (5)
21 Homers exclamation at both
ends of the scale (3)
22 He gets a role in reworking
opening (3-4)
24 Lacking pictures around at home
is unbelievable (10)
25 Implement stored in
spare room (5)
28 Pick-up language (3)
30 Broad believer in his patent
mixture (9)
31 Plan to get very large pastries
to rise (9)
33 Take deliveries for tobacco
company (3)
34 Auntie regularly sees a cuckoo (3)
36 Illness Sebastian about to have to
suffer when returning (7)
38 Almost a model village as found
at the seaside (4,3)
40Youngster in South Africa
assists divers (5)
41 Made cleaner as were many
early TV shows (5)
42 Pupil who gets trade union
support (5)
44Further blacken king under
restraint (2-3)
19
Answers to crossword of 12 December 2011
Across 1) Strauss 5) Borodin 9) Hosts 10) Record bid 11) Molotov 12) Liszt 13) Its 15) Nielsen
17) Aye-aye 18) Ski 20) Dvorak 22) Nonagon 25) Yet 26) Ravel 27) Smetana 30) Hole-in-one
31) Grieg 32) Shingle 33) Surfeit
Down 1) Schumann 2) Resolve 3) Upset 4) Stravinsky 5) Bach 6) Rural dean 7) Debussy 8) Nudity
14) Saint-Sans 16) Strolling 19) Uncaught 21) Vivaldi 23) Granite 24) Brahms 28) Elgar 29) Sole
35 34 36 37 38
39 40 41
42 43 44
45
48
46 47
Politics
1c Cat
2b Easy meat
3c A kitten
4a Angela Eagle
5c St Jamess Park
6d Holding
golliwog dolls
7d David Willetts
8c Personal
issues
International
affairs
1c Too
effeminate
2b Oops
3b Neptune
Spear
4c Ruby
5d Salmon
6a Neil Kinnock
7b Platform
cleaner
8d Frozen pizza
9c Salva Kiir
10d Liberation
11b Nigella
Lawson
Home affairs
1a A C Grayling
2a Sod the
Wedding Its
a Day Off
3c 50 per cent
4a Charlie
Gilmore
5c Merton
6b 482m
7a AssureDNA
8c Leeds
Metropolitan
9d Swan
10c 6.4m
11a House of
Reeves
Online
1c Beyoncs
pregnancy
2a Occupy
3c Samuel L
Jackson
4b 43 per cent
5d Lady Gaga
Arts
1b Lars von Trier
2d Spider-Man:
Turn Off the Dark
3a Ahmed
Basiony
4a John Cleese
5d $400m
Television
1c Scooby-Doo
2c Glasgow
3a Australia
4b Highclere
Castle
5a Alastair
Campbell
6c Three weeks
Media
1a A bedsheet
2b Anti-Muslim
propaganda
3d GQ
4b Andrew Marr
5d 168
6b Liz Jones
Books
1c P D James
2d 80
3a Martin Amis
4b Harper Lee
Sport
1c He jumped
off a ferry in
Auckland
2d Yuvraj Singh
3a Fifa
Quotes
1c Ed Miliband
2b In all
possible ways
3b Hillsborough
victims relatives
4a Rowan
Williams
5d Steve Jobs
l This weeks solutions will be published
in the next issue of the NS dated 2 January 2012
Back Pages
THE RETURNING OFFICER
Crackers
There are two Christmas islands.
One is a territory of Australia in
the Indian Ocean and for electoral
purposes is part of the Lingiari
division of the Australian
parliament, currently represented
by Labors Warren Snowdon. The
second is one of the Line Islands,
part of the Republic of Kiribati. In
2003 the presidency was won by
Anote Tong, who beat his brother
Harry by 13,556 votes to 12,457.
John Grant was MP for Islington
East/Central (1970-83) leaving
Labour for the SDP in 1981. In 1973
he kept a diary of his political year,
called Member of Parliament.
On 19 December he went to the
carol service at Highbury Grove
School, where the headmaster
was the future Tory MP Rhodes
Boyson. And on 23 December
he noted that there was a day of
adjournment debates but, because
nobody much turned up, It was
a good chance to do a spot of
belated Christmas shopping.
Jamaica goes to the polls on
29 December. Portia Simpson-
Miller (the countrys first female
prime minister in 2006-2007) of
the Peoples National Party will be
hoping to defeat the current PM,
Andrew Holness of the Jamaica
Labour Party. l
Stephen Brasher
FirstFOTL
SecondDM
CEOTThirdK
TFirstPOKHTFourth
FifthC
IOTSixthH
Seventh-DA
EighthWOTW
BNinthS
SOTenthA
ATeleventhH
THE NS CHRISTMAS PUZZLES BY OTTERDEN (SOLUTIONS ON PAGE 95)
Elevated titles
Senior politicians and other figures who are elevated to the Lords are
given titles embodying place names of their choice. Link the following
personages with the place/places in their baronial title.
PLACES (in alphabetical order)
Aldeburgh
Bedwellty
Bradford
Brighton
Brookwood
Cardiff
Easington
Elstree
Epping Forest/Telford
Firth
Foy/Hartlepool
Hillhead/Pontypool
Jevington
Kesteven
Lympne
Richmond-upon-Thames
Rievaulx/Kirklees
Sandwell
St Marylebone/Herstmonceux
Stepney
Thenford
Tonbridge
Weston-super-Mare/Mark
OTTwelfthDOC
FTThirteenth
TFourteenthOJ-BD
O-TFifteenthLOTA
AL-SixteenthAP
SOTSeventeenthD
TEighteenthAIP
SYATNineteethH
TwentiethCF
Twenty-firstBP
21 Positions
Discover a title or phrase from the initial letters and the
ordinal number given.
Dingbats
The positional make-up of the material in each box leads to a seasonal
word, phrase or message (except 4 which points to the messenger)
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
10
What do you do?
Im director of
fisheries for the
Isle of Man
government.
Where do
you live?
Laxey, a lovely village on the
east coast of the island.
Do you vote?
Always, but rarely with
any pleasure.
How long have you been
a subscriber?
Since 1996.
Is the NS bug in the family?
Ive given a couple of gift
subscriptions.
How do you read yours?
Late at night after my girls
are tucked up in bed.
What made you start?
I was looking for some political
analysis and depth that I wasnt
seeing in the broadsheets.
SUBSCRIBER OF THE WEEK
Andy Read
What pages do you flick to first?
Political columns, then the
main features.
What would you like to see
more of in the NS?
Africa and Latin America seem
to be off your radar. I am a cricket
nut more cricket please.
Whos your favourite
NS blogger?
I see quite enough of computer
screens at work, thank you.
Who would you put on the
cover of the NS?
John Smith. Labour has
forgotten that it was electable
without needing to betray its
principles and roots.
Which politicians would
you least like to be stuck in
a lift with?
Thatcher and Blair.
The New Statesman is . . .
A welcome injection of ideas
and information (usually!). l
11
12
PEERS created (from 1970 on)
Emanuel Shinwell
Quintin Hogg (Hailsham)
Laurence Olivier
George Brown
Victor Feather
Lew Grade
Bernard Delfont
Benjamin Britten
Harold Wilson
Jo Grimond
Len Murray
James Callaghan
Roy Jenkins
Margaret Thatcher
Jeffrey Archer
Richard Attenborough
Colin Cowdrey
Betty Boothroyd
Michael Heseltine
Philip Gould
Neil Kinnock
Peter Mandelson
Michael Howard
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NewStatesmanVol 140No5084, 5085
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Start your trial subscription today, go online at:
Penny is reinventing the language of dissent,
causing apoplexy among the old men in cardigans
who run the British blogosphere
Paul Mason,economics editor of the BBCs Newsnight
12WEEKS
FORJUST12
*for the first 20 subscriptions
Back Pages
THE NS COMPETITION
No 4206
Set by Brendan OByrne
We wanted lyrics from
Occupy: the Musical.
This weeks winners
Well done. Pats on backs all round!
25 to the winners, with the Tesco
vouchers going, in addition, to
Brian D Allingham for added
oomph. And finally, a very Happy
Christmas to you all and please
look out for the Top Ten winners
of 2011, which will be published
some time in January . . .
Oh, What a Beautiful Protest
Theres a bright yellow tent
on the meadow;
Theres a whole bunch of tents
on the meadow.
That guy is as high as the
archdeacons eye,
And he thinks that hes floating
clear up to the sky.
Chorus: Oh, what a beautiful
Protest.
Oh, what a left-leanin day.
Ive got a self-righteous feelin
Well change the world this way.
All the clergy are puzzled and
flurried
And the MPs are defnitely
worried.
They dont turn their heads as we
sneak home to bed;
And the Daily Mail says we are
commies and reds.
Chorus
All the papers are offring us
money.
And the Murdochs they dont
think its funny.
The brokers are bust and the
system will rust.
And what we are asking is only
whats just.
Chorus
Brian D Allingham
We Occupy, We Occupy
Camps are settin up all over
In London in New York and
in Rome
Though the politicians mutter
Want to sweep us in the gutter
We tell em we aint going home
Chorus: We occupy, we occupy
Fair shares for all, our battle cry
No more banks to save by bailin
Gravy trains we want de-railin
Sky-high salaries will vanish
And dodgy hedge funds banish.
Chorus
Occupation all the winter
Through wind, rain, ice and sleet
and snow
Bonuses we swear to batter
Stop the fat cats getting fatter
Capitalists have got to go.
Lisbeth Rake
Squatters Song
We are the very model of the
movement you call Occupy,
We seek social improvement cos
the status quo has ossified,
Until the day the Citys shot and
Cleggeron is crossified
Well squat here in St Pauls
and behind Church of
In association with
England crosses hide.
Wed sooner squat in banks but
they wont let us on their
property
And so we sit pontificating on the
weak economy,
Weve urged the clergy to read
Marx via needle-eye and
dromedary
But they just get frocked up,
intoning yet more Deuteronomy.
Adrian Fry
The next challenge
No 4209 Set by Gavin Ross
After the outcry over Clarksons
joke, we want complaints about
famous humorists of the past, eg,
Thomas Hood, Edward Lear, Feste.
Max 125 words by 5 January
comp@newstatesman.co.uk
CAPTION OF THE WEEK
Bill Clinton to Haitis PM, Garry
Conille, as he lays the first stone of
the industrial park: Is that oil
I see down there? Prepare for an
invasion! (Peter Wilkening)
Runner-up
Clinton: OK, so thats what
happened to Papa Doc!
(Phil Lee)
Max 20 words by 29 December on a postcard, please, or email to:
comp@newstatesman.co.uk
What was the former Mr Katie Price trying to convey to the mysterious Mayor?
WINNER 05/12
Answers to puzzles from page 93
Elevated titles
Emanuel Shinwell-Easington;
Quintin Hogg-St Marylebone/
Herstmonceux; Laurence Olivier-
Brighton; George Brown-
Jevington; Victor Feather-
Bradford; Lew Grade-Elstree;
Bernard Delfont-Stepney;
Benjamin Britten-Aldeburgh;
Harold Wilson-Rievaulx/
Kirklees; Jo Grimond-Firth; Len
Murray-Epping Forest/Telford;
James Callaghan-Cardiff; Roy
Jenkins-Hillhead/Pontypool;
Margaret Thatcher-Kesteven;
Jeffrey Archer-Weston-super-
Mare/Mark; Richard
Attenborough-Richmond-upon-
Thames; Colin Cowdrey-
Tonbridge; Betty Boothroyd-
Sandwell; Michael Heseltine-
Thenford; Philip Gould-
Brookwood; Neil Kinnock-
Bedwellty; Peter Mandelson-
Foy/ Hartlepool; Michael
Howard-Lympne
Christmas Dingbats
1) Noel 2) Turkey leftovers
3) Boxing Day 4) New Statesman
5) The Seasons Greetings 6) Puss
in Boots 7) Reindeer 8) Fairy on
the tree 9) Peace on Earth 10)
Midnight Mass 11) Christmas
Broadcast 12) Opening presents
21 positions
a) First foot on the ladder,
b) Second degree murder,
c) Close Encounters of the
Third Kind,
d) The First Part of King Henry
the Fourth(first folio title),
e) Fifth column, f) Inn of the Sixth
Happiness, g) Seventh-Day
Adventist, h) Eighth Wonder of
the World, i) Beethovens Ninth
Symphony, j) Slaughter on Tenth
Avenue, k) At the eleventh hour,
l) On the Twelfth Day of
Christmas, m) Friday the
Thirteenth, n) The Fourteenth
of July-Bastille day, o) O-the
fifteenth letter of the alphabet,
p) Abraham Lincoln Sixteenth
American President, q) Summer
of the Seventeenth Doll, r) 1920-
The Eighteenth Amendment
introduced prohibition,
s) See you at the Nineteenth hole,
t) Twentieth Century Fox,
u) Twenty-first birthday party R
E
X
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
S
Feel at Home in Your NewLanguage
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language-learning solution.
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THIS ENGLAND
Backpages
THE FAN
Joking around the Christmas tree
Hunter Davies
This is the season to laugh at
football, for football is a joke,
you have to laugh. Over the
generations jokes have come in
different forms and sizes.
Period jokes
I have in front of me some
football programmes from 1907
which are full of real corkers.
* Why is a keen footballer
like a fretful child? Because he is
always ready for a bawl.
* Boy: Can I go out and play
football? Mum: Not with those
socks full of holes. Boy: No with
Harry next door, hes got
a proper football.
* Schoolboy: Wed have won
the game if our captain hadnt
lost his head. Mother: Goodness,
was it as bad as that? I heard it
was a only an ear.
Cracker jokes
* Why is a failed manager
like Santa Claus? They both
get the sack.
* What gloves can a goalie
see and smell but not wear?
Foxgloves.
* Why did the winning team
spin their trophy round and
round? It was the Whirled Cup.
* Why was Cinderella rubbish
at football? She ran away from
the ball.
* Why was the mummy no
good at football? He was too
wrapped up in himself.
* Why did the dog refuse to
play football ? Because it was
a boxer.
* What do you call the girl
who stands at the end of the
pitch and catches the ball?
Annette.
* What did the manager do
when the pitch got flooded?
Sent on a sub.
* Why did Peter Crouch?
Because he saw Darren Bent
Famous names
Jokes have always been told about
famous players and managers
some of them could even have
been true
* In the 1870s, Lord Kinnaird,
later president of the FA, was
known for getting stuck in when
he played for Old Etonians. I
worry that one day he will come
home with a broken leg, his
mother said to the team captain.
Dont worry, my lady, was the
reply, it wont be his own.
* Stanley Matthews was so
fast that he could turn the light
off at the bedroom door and be
under the blankets before the
room got dark.
* Bill Shankly was asked if
it was true he took his
wife to see Liverpool
reserves as a wedding
anniversary treat. Thats
a lie. It was her birthday.
* Brian Clough was in
bed with his wife. God,
your feet are cold, she says.
You can call me Brian in
bed, dear says Clough.
* Victoria Beckham
comes home and finds
her husband David
jumping up and down
in excitement. 43
days!, he shouts.
Ive finished this
jigsaw in 43
days! Whats so
good about that?
asks Posh. Well, says David, it
says three to six years on the box.
* Fabio Capello is wheeling his
trolley in a supermarket when he
notices a sweet old lady struggling
with her bags. Can you manage,
dear, he asks her. To which the
not so sweet old lady replies, You
got yourself into this fucking
mess, dont ask me to sort it out.
Topical jokes
* If Glenn Hoddle found God,
said Jasper Carrott, it must have
been a hell of a long pass.
* Osama bin Laden had just
released a new TV message to
prove he was still alive. In it he
said that Englands performance
in their last game had been
complete shite. British
intelligence dismissed the tape,
stating that the message could
have been recorded any time
in the past 44 years.
Malapropisms or similar
* I hate perception. Theres
too much of it in football
Sam Allardyce
* Even if the keeper
could have saved it, it would
have gone in the back of the
net Les Ferdinand
* What
Newcastle
lack is a lack of
pace Charlie
Nicholas.
* Robert
Mancinis got
that Italian
style of play,
that old joie
de vivre
Perry Groves
* When you
play midfield, you got to have
two legs Steve Lomas
* The Boss told us if we win
today, well be immortal for
the rest of our lives
Derek Johnstone
Cartoons
Hard to describe in words,
obviously,but my old fave is
still one from the 1930s, which
shows a tout selling tickets
outside Wembley. Twenty
pound for a ticket! complains a
fan, You could get a woman for
that. Yes, says the tout, but
you wont get 45 minutes each
way and a brass band playing
in the middle.
Funny facts
* Did you know that Hull City
is the only English league club
where you cant fill in any of the
letters in its name?
* You must have followed
the saga of Spurs and West Ham
arguing about moving to the
Olympic site but did you know
that West Ham United is an
anagram of The New Stadium?
Crowd chants
Most, of course, are not
repeatable but a new one
has been heard this season
whenever Brighton, currently
doing so well in the
Championship, has been
playing away, showing that all
of England is well aware of
Brightons reputation. Does
your boyfriend know youre
here, shout the home fans.
Youre too ugly to be gay,
reply the Brighton fans. l
newstatesman.com/
writers/hunter_davies
Each printed entry will receive
a 5 book token. Entries to
comp@newstatesman.co.uk or
on a postcard to This England,
address on page 3
Van gosh!
A suspect was driven a few steps
from a police station to a court in
a van that had been sent more
than 96 miles after prison
transport chiefs said it was
a human-rights issue.
The suspect, Oliver Thomas,
27, arrested for two alleged public-
order offences, said: Why they
couldnt just walk me over to the
court I dont know. Its a total
waste of taxpayers money.
Metro (Ron Rubin)
Flat fare
A student with a bus pass was
charged a full adult fare for a life-
sized cardboard cut-out. Liam
Sheridan, 17, paid an extra 1.80
to get the figure, from the Xbox
game Gears of War 3, back home.
The driver, in Milton Keynes,
said he had to charge as the cut-
out took up a seat.
A spokesman for bus
company Arriva said they would
be unable to comment until an
investigation had taken place.
Metro (Imogen Forster) G
E
T
T
Y
I
M
A
G
E
S
(
B
E
C
K
H
A
M
)
know its lovely? You wouldnt have your eyes
and ears.
. . . an incomplete but still pretty damning
dismantling of the infantile idea that we (to
quote my editor) survive our own deaths.
Violet has always been obsessed by what is
real. Figuring out what truly exists seems to
be the way she deals with her fears. Most of the
time when she asks if something is real, shes
hoping its not: trolls, dragons and witches
have all been happily relegated to the fiction
bin and she sleeps well in the knowledge that
theyre not going to crawl back out and attack
her in her bed.
And so I face a dilemma: I had sold her the
myth of Father Christmas in the spirit of allow-
ing a child a sense of wonderment, but I felt
that lying to her face when shed asked me
point blank about the veracity of my
claims was a step too far.
I fumbled around a bit before opting
for: Father Christmas is real . . . in
the imaginary world.
This didnt really satisfy her,
nor should it have. Like so
much language in theology,
philosophy and parenting, that
sentence has the odour of wis-
dom, but is a load of old bol-
locks. Quite nice as a phrase,
but pure sophistry, like a lot
of the stuff I say on stage and
like nearly everything your
preacher has ever said. It is the
stuff of obfuscation words to
divert, like the passive hand of
the magician not the clarifica-
tion Vi was seeking.
But I suppose my answer
served a function. She subse-
quently went along with the
story and I reckon she will again
this year.
By offering her the paradoxi-
cal notion of a non-real real,
I allowed her the opportunity
to just go with it and hope-
fully shell happily do so until
her friends find out its a myth,
at which point she can quietly
slip back into knowing what she
suspected all along.
In the lead-up to last Christmas, when my
daughter Violet had just turned four, she
looked me in the eye and asked, Is Father
Christmas real?
This was a problem for me. I had, up until
this point, convinced myself that telling my
kid a lie about the origins of her scooter was
part and parcel of parenting that denying a
child the idea of Santa would be Scroogian
in the extreme. The trouble is, I have no
memory of believing in the physics-defying
fattie myself.
One of our classic Minchin family tales is
of Christmas Eve 1978, when I was three and
my mum asked me in an excited voice, Whos
coming down the chimney tonight?! To which
I replied, after a brow-creased pause, Gran?
(It is also part of Minchin lore that I was a
very boring and quite dim kid.)
Regardless, our Violet had seemed
quite excited the previous year when
we had left a mince pie and a beer by
the blocked-up chimney (Violet:
But theres no hole. How will he
get down? Me: Thats the least of
his worries . . .) and Id felt great
when shed squealed with glee at
five in the (fucking) morning upon
discovering the comestibles had
been consumed and that a rein-
deer had left hoof-prints in the
icing sugar by the piano.
Beardy weirdy
But now something in the as -
sertion of the existence of this
bearded philanthropist had
given her pause, so she had come
to me for clarification.
I wasnt surprised earlier in the
year Id overheard a conversation
shed had with her friend Alice as they
sat by a lake:
Violet If you fell in there, youd
drown.
Alice Someone would come and
pull you out.
Violet Yeah, but if the grown-ups
werent around, youd die.
Alice [Pause] When you die, you go
somewhere lovely.
Violet But then how would you
Therell be no crushing blow of revelation
aged seven.
I have, on the other hand, felt no compulsion
to obscure answers to the more serious ques-
tions. Vi was very young when she asked what
happens when you die, and I told her, You just
stop. I see no problem at all with that answer.
Not only is it demonstrably true, but it also has
the wondrous quality of not eliciting a whole
lot of further annoying questions.
Story time
I was asked recently how I reconcile my reputa-
tion for championing a naturalistic world-view
with the fact that I have co-written Matilda
a musical based on a Roald Dahl novel about a
girl who is preternaturally gifted and, eventu-
ally, telekinetic.
What an odd question. Do people really think
that living a life unencumbered by superstition
necessitates the rejection of fiction?
I adore stories. Our version of Matilda, even
more so than the original Dahl, is a story about
stories. About the importance of imagination,
and of fictions ability not only to educate and
enlighten us, but to free us, to set our minds
soaring beyond reality.
My daughter will grow up reading stories
and I hope she will have a rich and lifelong
relationship with the imaginary. But I will not
try to train her out of the natural instinct to
look for truth.
I adore Christmas. The fact that I know that
Christianitys origins lie more in Paul of Tar-
suss mental illness and the emperor Constan-
tines political savvy than in the existence of
the divine has no bearing on my ability to
embrace this age-old festival of giving, family
and feasting.
Our lives would be empty without stories,
and the story of Jesus is quite a nice one. One
that, in theory and sometimes even in practice,
promotes compassion and humility and wis-
dom and peace.
Jesus is real . . . in the imaginary world. A five-
year-old could tell you that. l
Tim Minchin is a comedian. His musical
version of Matilda, co-written with
Dennis Kelly, is being performed at the
Cambridge Theatre, London WC2. Details:
cambridgetheatrelondon.org
newstatesman.com/subjects/comedy
I love Christmas, for its fictions
as much as its feasts
Tim Minchin
|
Backpages
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CHICAGO
CHICAGO
CHICAGO
CHICAGO CHICAGO
CHICAGO
Bernini
His Life and His Rome
Franco Mormando
Bernini was one artist whose life was every bit as
dramatic, sensual, and emotional as his art. Franco
Mormandos sympathetic, intimate biography moves
as fast as its hyperactive subject, taking us on a whirl-
wind ride.Ingrid Rowland,
author of Giordano Bruno
CLOTH 22.50
8bk[Dej[i_d8bWYaWdZM^_j[
Photography and Jazz
8[d`Wc_d9Wmj^hW
Benjamin Cawthra, writing with grace and a
formidable command of jazz history and American
culture, makes us see the sounds, the social relations,
and the myths of jazz.John Gennari, author of
Blowin Hot and Cool
CLOTH 29.00
<h[kZi9ekY^"IYejji8kjjeYai"
Bronts Grave
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In this witty exploration of Victorian literary tourism,
Simon Goldhill retraces the steps of his literature-loving
forebears and travels across Britain by train to see sites
such as Sir Walter Scotts baronial mansion and Words-
worths cottage in the Lake District.
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A good introduction to the works of a complex man, it
adroitly places Niebuhrs thought among the twentieth-
century intellectual milieu that Mr Diggins spent a
lifetime studying.Economist
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Hong Kongs Chungking Mansions is the most
notorious ophouse in Asia. . . . What the building
should be renowned for, argues Gordon Mathews in
his uid and enjoyable eld study, is the ingenious
way low-end globalists eke out prots from petit
arbitrage.Wall Street Journal
PAPER 12.50
FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY
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Soviet Childrens Books and Graphic Art
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Te childrens books and posters in this catalog plot
the development of a new image culture alongside the
formation of new social and cultural identities.
PAPER 8.00

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New Statesman - 19 December 2011-01 January 2012

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19 December 2011-1 January 2012/4.95 www.newstatesman.

Jeremy Rifkin, economist, writer,

, you LEARN naturally. Youre immersed in your new language as if

, you PRACTISE online with tutors who are native

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