Sad Little Men, by Richard Beard

This very timely memoir is about the damage done by public schools, especially to boarding pupils separated from their parents at an impressionable age, and how that traumatic damage might explain some of what's happening in Downing Street at the moment.

As an adoptive father, I've read quite a lot of stuff to do with attachment and its lasting effects - how not having basic needs met at an early age can affect a child's physical development, their brain chemistry, their whole future. Beard's thesis is more about ideology, the institution shaping an outlook. 

First, there's the long-term damage done by hiding how upsetting it was/is to be separated from parents and home; tears - his own or his mother's - were likely to be mocked. The result is more than empathy being seen as weakness.

"Don't make a fuss about nothing, and by refusing to fuss we turned the concerns of others into nothing. Everything could be nothing, up could be down, right could be wrong. The truth could be a lie and one thing could always be another." (p. 96)

Beard refers (after Andrew Motion) to the "skin" or outer later projecting what the child thinks others want to hear: letters home saying school is "fine" and "nice", perhaps even that it is better than being at home. This is a kind of masking, and I'm aware how damaging that can be. Masking takes effort and cannot be sustained; meltdowns and explosions often follow, apparently from nowhere. By encouraging masking, you encourage the eruptions.

Beard joins that idea of the "skin" to the way he was taught. It's telling that he feels such affinity with accounts of public school by George Orwell and Roald Dahl, the same experience and culture persisting over decades, whereas my brothers and I all had different experiences of being at the same school. One explanation for this is that few of Beard's teachers had qualifications; several had been through the same system and merely passed on what had been meted out to them. And what Beard was taught was a way to project himself, with confidence and long words. He was taught rhetoric, vocabulary, the primacy of Latin:.

"Aged thirteen, my diary reads as the prime minister speaks now, in his mid-fifties." (p. 101)

The ideas being taught were just as much about posture: history lessons that saw only confidence and glory in Empire; debates that "bravely" argued in favour of racism. These boys flirted with - even embraced - such ideas, because to say the supposedly unsayable is a show of strength.

I'm struck by what happens to those who flout the rules in these strict institutions. A young David Cameron went through a rebellious phase and was caught smoking spliffs.

"With drugs, as Cameron discovered, if the school caught us first we were beyond the reach of the law. In these instances the police were rarely involved, and therefore in the bigger picture we learned that for people like us the law was negotiable." (p. 165)

Right there, the indoctrination of "us" and "them".

It's a memoir, a personal take, and Beard admits that lockdown has restricted his ability to research the subject more widely. I'd have liked a bit more thoroughness in the presentation - page references for the books and papers he cites, interviews with the current staff rather than chance encounters as he walks the grounds, and a bit more science. But I'm really taken by his idea of how to measure a good school: not (just) in examination results but in the longer term, looking at later-life breakdowns, divorces and suicide, and damage inflicted on others.

The sense, I think, is of more than sad little men. The feeling is of an institutional hollowing out. There's an abysmal emptiness here, all mask and nothing within.

Haven't You Heard?, by Marie le Conte

Subtitled, "Gossip, Power and How Politics Really Works", this is an insightful and often funny insider's account of the informal processes of Parliament, written by a political journalist. She's read widely and spoken to a lot of people involved - many of them off the record - and the result feels comprehensive and right. The informal processes are what make the formal bits of Parliament work; often what happens in the Chamber is rubber-stamping officially the deals done in the corridors and over dinner or drinks, what's called the "usual channels".

There's loads that made me laugh out loud, such as Francis Wheen's anecdote about a Christmas party held by the Special Branch protection people where they invited those they protected. That included an odd assortment of people: Salman Rushdie, Enoch Powell, various former and some largely forgotten Ministers. One old hand in protection who was about to retire took the opportunity to say something to the man he'd been protecting for years:

"When it was the harvesting season [on this guest's farm], when the pigs were giving birth, they [the protection people] would all get raked in to do basically farm labouring jobs, and it turned out that he was by far the most unpopular person they'd ever protected. They all compared notes among themselves, and he said, 'I have spoken to my colleagues about this, we have taken a vote, and you are definitely the most unpleasant person we've guarded over the years.' This is very revealing, that only the protection officers would have realised quite how awful Tom King was." (p. 78)

I'm fascinated, too, by the changing culture described here - the way gossip and exposure has made people behave better out of fear. The authorities got noticeably better in the years I worked there on issues of harassment, on wandering hands, on intimidating behaviour - though there was clearly still more to be done. At the same time, rumours of an MP being gay could until recently end a political career.

"The late nineties were a point where the wind was still just about turning on the question of homosexuality. Section 28 was still in place, and when the Guardian commissioned a poll to try and shut the Sun up, it found that 52% of people thought being openly gay was compatible with holding a Cabinet position; though 52% is a majority, it can hardly be called a landslide." (p. 250)

There's some excellent side-eye in that last clause. But Le Conte also says the day after this report was published, the Sun announced it would no longer out gay politicians without overwhelming public interest.

There's lots more, but I might use it elsewhere - once I've compared notes with some former colleagues in politics. This book is an excellent excuse to go out for drinks with them...

The Story of Rose Tyler

Here's another video entry from our book, Doctor Who - The Women Who Lived, this time telling the story of the Doctor's friend Rose Tyler. The new artwork is by Mogamoka, Cat Zhu, Tammy Taylor, Katy Shuttleworth, Natalie Smilie, Sophie Cowdry, Jo Be and Kate Holden.

The Blunders of Our Governments, by Anthony King & Ivor Crewe

On 18 July 2017, Lord Horam gave a speech in the House of Lords during a debate on the EUC report Brexit: Trade in Goods. At one point (col. 1563), the noble Lord mentioned what sounded like a good read:

“If you look at that admirable book by King and Crewe, The Blunders of Our Governments, you will find endless episodes of Governments, for internal reasons, simply taking too long to make decisions. Of course, the private sector must pick up the pieces.”

Having (finally) read it, it strikes me that Lord Horam conceivably missed something of the point. One chapter is devoted to the importance of deliberation and not rushing ahead. In another chapter – returned to repeatedly afterwards – King and Crewe explain how at least £2.5 billion and perhaps as much as £20 billion to £30 billion was wasted on the public-private partnership meant to upgrade the London underground network. They refer to the “some would say prejudices” of those behind the scheme, not least the belief that the private sector “was almost always more efficient and effective than the public” (p. 202). After a lot of time and money had been given over to this assumption, the public sector stepped in to take over the mess – and the underground has been in pretty good shape ever since. I raise this not as a pop at Lord Horam, but to show how easily instinctive bias can creep in to decisions of policy, more of which below.

PPP is just one of the many examples of blunders made by Governments between 1979 and 2010, among them the poll tax, the mis-selling of pensions, child support payments, exiting the ERM (rather abruptly), the Millennium Dome, tax credits, IT projects… The authors lay out what counts on page 4:

“We define a blunder as an episode in which a government adopts a specific course  of action in order to achieve one or more achievements and, as a result largely or wholly of its own mistakes, either fails completely to achieve those objectives, or does achieve some or all of them but at a totally disproportionate cost, or else does achieve some or all of them but contrives at the same time to cause a significant amount of ‘collateral damage’ in the form of unintended and undesired consequences.”

Then, having spent half the book detailing many, many blunders, they attempt to identify linked causes and to suggest solutions. The result is an extraordinary history of recent times, perhaps even a psychology of the nation, by turns boggling, depressing and insightful.

Along the way, they puncture common myths:

“Many Scots were subsequently to claim that English ministers had wilfully chosen to inflict the poll tax on the downtrodden people of Scotland, that the Scottish people were being used as guinea-pigs in some nefarious English experiment. But that was not so. The Conservative party’s Scottish ministers had, of their own volition, inflicted the poll tax on their fellow countrymen and women.” (p. 51)

There are plenty of fun details:

“Macmillan, whose grandchildren often played at Number 10, also caused a notice to be posted reading ‘No roller-skating on Cabinet days’.” (p. 340)

And there are pithy, witty insights from the authors and the people they spoke to:

“Someone who watched [the consultants on PPP] working on the scheme described them as ‘very bright people who know nothing’.” (p. 209)

In all, it’s a brilliant, rich and revealing book, achingly timely in our current fudge over Brexit. I hope I don’t detract from that achievement by setting out some reservations.

First, on p. xiv of the introduction, the authors say that, “As feminists, albeit male ones, we would like to have used gender-neutral language consistently throughout” – and then sadly don’t leave it there. For all the reasons given for favouring “he” throughout, I’d argue it’s more than prejudice, it’s an example of the “cultural disconnect” the book later devotes a whole chapter to, where the male authors can only imagine other people – those pursuing or affected by policy, perhaps even those reading the book – as being just like themselves. It’s most jarring when they speak of non-specific Prime Ministers as “he”, given who is now in that seat.

I also suspect some prejudice in the way the book describes heroes and villains. They say witheringly, on p. 264, that “If a man as clever as (Nigel) Lawson thought the poll tax was a batty idea, it just possibly was”, and on p. 327 refer to William Waldegrave’s “formidable intellect”. I might have overlooked similar praise for the wisdom of those from other political parties. (In fact, I don’t know the politics of the authors; these compliments could perhaps be more of that withering wit.)

They certainly don’t argue that one party is more prone to blunders than others. The book is critical of Nicholas Ridley, from the same party as Lawson and Waldegrave, for pushing ahead with full implementation of the poll tax rather than running pilots or trials. It strikes me that Ridley is not named in the acknowledgements as one of the people the authors spoke to. Neither are Gordon Brown or Shriti Vadera, who also get a hard time. (We’re twice told, on p. 260 and p. 343, that Brown would, if he could, make those who said no to him suffer in their careers, and that this prompted a culture around him with “a certain lack of incentive to tell the truth”. Even the quote is repeated.)

But the late Patrick Jenkin did speak to the authors, and his involvement in the formation of the poll tax is much more gently picked over. It’s not overt, just a feeling, a suspicion of bias in favour of those the authors spoke to in person. But given all the authors warn about bias and prejudice in coming to conclusions, I found myself wondering what methods they used to guard against it themselves.

In the second half of the book, the authors quote Irving Janis on groupthink and the ways to prevent or mitigate against it. Among the solutions is a “second-chance meeting” in which critiques are invited once a policy has been agreed. They say that Irving’s “last and (probably) unserious suggestion is that any second-chance meeting should be lubricated by alcohol” (pp. 265-6). This isn’t a new idea – they cite precedents in Herodotus and Tacitus – but again there’s a prejudice showing. What happens when your team of policy-makers includes those who find boozy debriefings awkward or impossible? They might have religious beliefs, or alcoholism, or commitments as parent or carer, or whatever else… As a manager, you wouldn’t necessarily know which team members might find it difficult, and they wouldn’t necessarily tell you. You could – I’ve seen it – end up in splitting your team into two, and favouring the lively, gossipy boozing over the “quiet” ones. It’s worse if you don’t have (or realise you have) such people in your team: your group is too homogenous anyway, and more prone to the “cultural disconnect” that also gets its own chapter.

The point is that it’s all too easy to exhibit bias, and bias can badly skew your analysis and policy – at considerable cost in both money and effectiveness. A lot of the lessons learned are transferable to other walks of life, but the authors address the closing chapters of the book to Parliament in particular.

Chapter 24, “Accountability, lack of”, explodes the myth that Ministers no longer resign on principle after blunders made on their watch; with plenty of examples, King and Crewe show that they didn’t in the past, either. “Lord Carrington’s resignation as foreign secretary for his part in failing to forestall Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982 is remembered only because it was so unusual, all but unique” (pp. 347-8).

Their point is that this lack of consequence, personally, for Ministers guilty of a blunder means there’s no incentive to consider options more carefully at an early stage. Instead, the incentives resulting from regular Cabinet reshuffling, the attentions of the media, and a host of other things listed, is for Ministers to be ambitious, hasty, ruthless, overly confident when facing questions.

They propose two linked solutions to this, a stick and a carrot. First, they suggest a review of legislation after five or ten years, assessing long-term effectiveness and value for money, naming names where blunders were made. A Minister might therefore think, when first working on a new policy, “How will this look in ten years?” They then suggest rewards and even cash prizes for those found to have down well.

It all sounds very sensible, until (on p. 359), they therefore suggest awarding £500,000 to Norman Tebbit for the changes made in the 1980s to the legislation relating to trades unions. It is just possible that such an award might meet with some negative response. Likewise, the authors nominate Margaret Beckett for her work in bringing in the minimum wage. Yet just six pages earlier, they name Beckett as one of very few examples where responsibility for a blunder can be put down to a sole individual, “in the case of the muddled payments and non-payments to English farmers”. Would the award and censure then cancel out? The authors admit they’re not being entirely serious about the proposal, but it would require a little more deliberation before being rolled out.

For all the personal failings, prejudice, and lack of accountability, and the authors’ real beef is with the structures of governance, the methods by which legislation is made. A system led on party political lines, with policy forced through by whoever has the majority of seats, with few amendments actually being made to a Bill as it passes through both Houses, “almost guarantees the passage of bad legislation” (p. 369). They encourage less partisan work, more sharing and discussion. (My feeling, after years of working in the House of Lords, is that it generally worked best when it worked on non-partisan lines, based on experience, compromise, consent.)

In the epilogue, dated July 2014, the authors address the then-current coalition Government and list what the future might look back on as blunders. What policies might have been founded on  prejudice, hurried through into law, with little deliberation or critique allowed? The reforms to the probation service, the new Personal Independence Payment, the cuts to the Armed Forces, Help to Buy, the bedroom tax, HS2, and Universal Credit have all been contentious, but it seems like a glittering golden age when that was all we had to worry about...

Hansard from before there was Parliament

Cobbett's Parliamentary
History, vol. 1 (1806)

Hansard is the official report of parliamentary debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords (I work a bit as a reporter in the Lords). So it's a bit surprising to learn that the first speech reported in its history dates from before there was even a Parliament. To explain this odd fact, we need to understand a bit about how Hansard began.

For a long time, it was against the law to publish the votes and proceedings of Parliament. That was seen as a threat to parliamentary privilege. MPs might be less likely to speak openly in debates if their words were to be shared outside the Chamber.

However, there were those prepared to risk prison to publish anyway – because they thought it would be profitable and/or because they thought it was right to hold Parliament to account. As early as 1675, there were full transcripts of debates.

Some publishers went to prison, but while individual publications were stopped others continued undaunted. Four times in the 1700s the ban was reaffirmed in law. Publishers wriggled round these strictures by printing reports months after debates had taken place or while Parliament was no longer sitting, or by inventing satirical reports from imaginary Parliaments. Even with real debates, what reporting there was could be selective and inaccurate – which didn't help win over MPs.

Finally, in 1771, after a campaign by the radical MP John Wilkes, permission was given for the publication of verbatim – word for word – reports. Such reports became a regular feature in newspapers.

William Cobbett,
National Portrait Gallery

In 1802, William Cobbett began to publish Parliamentary Debates, which compiled these accounts from different newspapers. In 1809, Cobbett employed a new printer, Thomas Curson Hansard, who took over the publication from 1812. Hansard made many improvements to the speed and accuracy of his reports, such as employing reporters directly rather than copying reports from elsewhere. In 1829, his name appeared on the reports – which is why they're known as Hansard today. Last week, Hansard published its 3,000th bound volume of debates.

But before handing his publication to Hansard, Cobbett had seen another opportunity: to collect reports of Parliament from the more distant past. This he did over 36 volumes in – to use its full title – Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England. From the Norman Conquest, in 1066, to the year, 1803. From which last-mentioned epoch it is continued downwards in the work entitled “Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates”. Since the history and the debates make up one continuous work, Hansard reaches back to 1066, before there was a Parliament.

Cobbett tells us in his own preface that he compiled his history from,

“the Records, the Rolls of Parliament, the Parliamentary or Constitutional History, and from the most reputable English Historians.”

Despite these exemplary sources, he also bemoans having had to work his way through an,

“immense load of useless matter, quite unauthentic, and very little connected with the real Proceedings of Parliament”,

which included battles, sieges and even the entire contents of pamphlets. His history is, then, a distillation of earlier reports, concentrating on what was said, by whom, where and when.

Though the title of his history claims that it begins with the Norman conquest, the first date given is 1072, where he tells us that,

“William I, at the instigation of the pope, summoned a national synod, to determine the dispute betwixt the sees of Canterbury and York about supremacy.”

We're told this happened at Windsor, but not what was said or how the matter was resolved.

Henry I
National Portrait Gallery

The next account, from 1106, is the first reported speech in Hansard. Speaking in London, William's son Henry I makes the case why he should be king and not his older brother Robert. But how accurate can that report be? Cobbett tells us the source for this account is the Benedictine monk Matthew Paris (c. 1200-59), whose Historia Anglorum – a history of England from 1070 to 1253 – is thought to have been written between 1250 and 1255, or 150 years after King Henry gave his speech.

Note that Cobbett doesn't tell us what clinched Henry's claim to the throne over that of his older brother. The English barons and the church had complained of bullying behaviour under the previous king, William II. To gain their support, Henry agreed to sign the Charter of Liberties or Coronation Charter – the first time that a king stated that his powers were subject to the law.

Admittedly, those promises were largely ignored by Henry and his descendants for the next 100 years, but it set a precedent for events to follow. Henry's great grandson, King John, also found himself forced to agree concessions to the nobles, and in 1215 he placed his seal on Magna Carta – the great charter.

Historians argue about the significance of Magna Carta, but one thing it established was a Great Council, with representatives from the counties, cities and church, that would take charge of taxation and could – if it had to – stand against the king for the benefit of the country. There had been councils of nobles before, but always subject to the king.

Having agreed to Magna Carta, John then ignored it – and the barons turned to the French Prince Louis for help. There was war – with castles besieged at Dover, Windsor and Rochester. For a brief while, it looked like the barons might win and Louis become king of England.

But John died in 1216. The barons thought they would have more control over John's nine year-old son, Henry, than over French Prince Louis. Henry III was crowned king on the condition he agreed to the great charter. He reigned until 1272, during which time his council first became known as “Parliament” – meaning “to speak”.

In addition, a rebellion in 1265 by Henry's brother-in-law Simon de Montefort led to what's often referred to as the “father or Parliaments”. For the first time, it wasn't the king who decided who sat in Parliament. Instead,

“from each county four prudent and law-worthy knights”,

were chosen by election. The right to vote was given to men who owned land with an income worth 40 shillings or more per year. For the first time, people in the country – if not a huge number of them – had some say in how it was run.

It didn't last, but we can see in that father of Parliaments – as well as in Cobbett's accounts from the reigns of Henry III and Edward I – the beginnings of Parliament as we know it today. In Cobbett's account of 13 January 1223, we have the first recorded speech of a non-royal person in Hansard, from the king's councillor William Briwere. We can see decisions being made by agreement not decree, and – as in 1279 – that the church dared not speak against decisions made by Parliament. We can see the king using Parliament to give his decisions – such as his verdict on Llewellyn – extra weight and authority. We see government referring to precedent, basing their actions on how things have been done before.

So these earliest entries from Hansard give us a sense of the changing terms of power, the early, faltering steps towards the Parliament we know today.

House of Cards vs House of Cards

For my birthday, Nimbos kindly presented me with the House of Cards trilogy. I felt some trepidation putting it on; having watched the original serial transfixed in 1990, how would it bear up?

It's a majestic bit of television, bold and thrilling and with a perfect cast. The wheeze (as I'm sure you know) is that Margaret Thatcher has just left office as Prime Minister, and the Tory party are in the midst of electing a replacement – as was happening in real life as the first episode was broadcast. The new, safe-bet leader decides not to promote his Chief Whip to ministerial office but keep him in his place. The whip, Francis Urquhart, is not best pleased and begins to take his revenge while also scheming his way to the top job.

Urquhart is written and played as a mix of Macbeth and Richard III, complete with soliloquies direct to the audience that make us complicit in his scheming. Ian Richardson is brilliantly charismatic and sinister, and Diane Fletcher makes for a cool Lady Macbeth. Colin Jeavons is a deliciously grotesque aid to Urquhart, grinning obsequiously as he helps destroy lives.

The story is gripping and twisty, though I felt that someone should have noticed sooner that Urquhart is the only candidate not to suffer calamity.

There are other things that show how much has changed: a Cabinet meeting where there are no women; a candidate for Prime Minister being asked if he's too young at 55; ace reporter Mattie Storin leaving a conference in mid-flow to find a phone box where she can call in her story.

But other things seem still very much on the nose: the stark divide in the Tory party between old money grandees and the upstart self-made men; the queasy relationship between high politics and those who run the press; the sex and drugs and scandal that lurk beneath the veneer. It's cynicism about politics still feels very now.

I was also fascinated by the use of the Palace of Westminster – or rather how the production dodged round not being able to film inside the building. As so often, Manchester Town Hall has enough passing similarity to the corridors of power that most viewers wouldn't notice (and it was conveniently near the old Commons Chamber set at Granada).

The thing that most jarred was the climactic scene. Mattie meets Francis on a secret roof garden supposedly above Central Lobby, and yet it looks out onto the clock face of Big Ben with Victoria Tower just behind. That means it was filmed on the roof of what's now Portcullis House, the other side of the road from the Palace – a realisation which, pedant that I am, rather spoiled the dramatic end.

But it's striking that what makes Urquhart so compelling is not his charm or intelligence so much as his ruthlessness. He can be wrong, he can be monstrous, but we're drawn to him by his determination despite the odds. His soliloquies - where he spells out exactly what he plans to do - make us complicit and, even when in the last episode he commits the most brutal acts, we're completely on his side. The last scene is brilliant: he won't tell us what he's thinking but we don't need him to as we've got under his skin.

The Dr and I then worked our way through the recent American reworking of House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey. It's a slick, thrilling production, again with a very good cast. As it comprises 13 episodes rather than four, it tells a much bigger, more complex story – and yet follows the same beats as the original and shares characters and even whole scenes. At one point we thought they'd abandoned the idea of Congressman Peter Russo following the plot line of Roger O'Neill from the original, but having digressed for a couple of episodes the story made its way back to the old path.

Apart from the running time, I think there are two main differences between the two shows. First, the American version has more women characters and gives them more to do. Urquhart's wife doesn't merely egg him on or make herself scarce as required. Zoe Barnes isn't the sole female journalist on screen, but the latest in a line of plucky women holding those in power to task. In fact, Janine Skorsky,  the older, more experienced reporter, is a brilliant addition: Zoe's development as a character is almost entirely defined by the changing way Janine treats her.

The other difference is that Urquhart and Stamper aren't nearly such clear-cut villains; they're ruthless, yes, but we also see moments of kindness and doubt. They're clearly conflicted about doing what they realise must be done. But it's more than that.

Where the UK show tells us baldly that Urquhart is aiming to be Prime Minister, the US version never quite tells us what he's scheming for. At first it looks like he wants revenge for not getting the job he wanted; then it seems he's merely trying to make a point. We're told about something he wants towards the end of the series – which I won't spoiler here – but the indications are that even that is only a stepping stone.

It ought to be obvious he's aiming to be President, especially if we know the UK version, but Urquhart never says so – not to his wife or mistress or us. That means we're never complicit, and our sympathies are divided between him and the other characters.

In fact, I think the series rather turns us against him in Episode 8. Until that point, we've had little evidence that his schemes and tricks aren't all part of political service – he works hard to get legislation passed that people seem to believe in, and the people he defeats or tricks are shown to be idiots or villains. Yes, he's ruthless but that's how you get things done, and we seem him help or just get on with ordinary everyday folk and that makes him okay.

But in Episode 8, we learn the backstories of Urquhart and Russo. Russo has had a hard life, became a congressman despite that and is still in touch with his roots. Urquhart – again without spoiling things – has been living a lie.

The episode shows that both men are more complex than they appear, but while it explains and almost excuses Russo's shortcomings, it makes us wonder what else we don't know about Urquhart. We learn not to trust him, and as a result the things he does over the next few episodes are done at a distance. That he seems hesitant only makes us less sure of him.

Is this doubt a conscious effort to make Urquhart less black and white? If so, I don't think it's an improvement.

Or, is this uncertainty inevitable given that the US version was devised as an ongoing series not a self-contained serial? Does such doubt lend itself to the greater screen time? The follow-up to the UK series, To Play The King, lost something from Urquhart being in power and seeming unassailable, and a whole season with Spacey as President would merely be a less feel-good West Wing...

So I'm optimistic for the second season if a bit disappointed by the first. But my disappointment is largely because I was very quickly caught up in the US version. It's more realistic, better at showing what politics is and how it affects people's lives, and the women get to be more than just furniture.

I'd not expected to like the translation at all, so how very disloyal is that?

Profumo and the origins of Doctor Who

On 2 November, I'll be at Doctor Who Day at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, talking about the beginning of Doctor Who in 1963 and the context of the times.

As homework, I've just read An English Affair - Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo by Richard  Davenport-Hines, an account of the political scandal that erupted in the summer of '63. The suggestion, which Davenport-Hines shows to be unfounded, is that in the same period that the Cuban missile crisis "brought the world to the brink of nuclear war" (p. 232), the British Minister of War was sharing a prostitute with a Russian diplomat and swapping state secrets in bed.

It's a strange book, often shocking, sometimes very funny and ultimately desperately sad. It's difficult not to read about the events - the lies, the dodgy fabrication of evidence and trial by gossip, the ruination of so many people's lives - without feeling a mix of grubbiness and despair.

Conveniently for me, the first two thirds of the book are all about the context of the times, detailing the history, position and worldview of the key players - Prime Minister Macmillan, War Minister Profumo, Lord Astor, Stephen Ward and the "good-time girls" Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies - as well as three groups of people involved in their fate (landlords, hacks and spies).

To begin with I found it hard-going: its densely packed with characters - ministers, MPs, celebrities of one kind or another, commentators and pressmen. Most are introduced fleetingly, and there's a sense we're expected to know them already as their perspectives shape events. I soon learned to let the cascade of names wash over me and just hurried on with the story.

There are occasional, brilliant portraits of people, some with only small roles in the narrative. For example, one hack gets two long paragraphs of introduction that tell us lots about the working practices of the time. We're told he's important, yet he's then only mentioned eight more times in the next 150 pages:

"Peter Earle was the News of the World journalist who did much to publicise the Profumo Affair. He had been investigating call-girl rings for some time, and was scampering ahead of the pack in 1963. Earle was a tall, gangly man who cultivated clandestine contacts with policemen and criminals. They would telephone him with tips, using codenames such as 'Grey Wolf' or 'Fiery Horseman'. He was unfailingly ceremonious with 'ladies', though he called his wife Dumbo. Office colleagues were addressed as 'old cock' or 'my old china'. Earle's speech was peppered with phrases like 'Gadzooks!' of 'By Jove!' When he agreed with someone he exclaimed: 'Great Scot, you're right!' To quell office disputes he would say: 'Let there be no more murmuring.'

Earle was the archetype  of the seedy Fleet Street drunk. He scarcely ate, but survived on oceans of whisky, which he called 'the amber liquid'. He held court in the upstairs bar of the News of the World pub, the Tipperary in Bouverie Street, or at weekends in the Printer's Pie in Fleet Street. 'Hostelry' and 'watering-hole' were his words for pubs. 'Barman, replenishment for my friends,' he would call when ordering a round. Earle had a prodigious memory for the details of old stories, talked like Samuel Johnson, and was an avid gawper at bosoms. Dressed in his Gannex raincoat, he left on investigative forays clutching a briefcase which was empty except for a whisky bottle. His doorstep technique was based on devastating effrontery; his questioning was indignant; and if rebuffed he mustered a baleful glare of wounded dignity. Either because he could not write intelligible English or because he was always drunk, his copy was unusable. He jumbled his facts and muddled their sequence. Subs had to read his incoherent copy, patiently talk him through it, and prise out a story that was fit to be printed."

Richard Davenport-Hines, An English Affair - Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo, pp. 191-2.

If the supporting cast is too numerous and indiscriminate, Davenport-Hines is good at bringing the main characters to life with rounded (and sometimes contradictory) evidence: we get a real sense of the weariness of the war veteran Macmillan, Astor's failed efforts to get his mother's approval, the flightiness of Keeler and Rice-Davies, and there's this extraordinary insight into Profumo and his marriage:

"After six years there was sparring as well as glamour in the Profumo marriage. Valerie Profumo compiled a list of reproaches which suggest how tedious her husband's roaming eye had become. She resented his assumption that all pretty women, or preferably 'girls', were 'fair game' for him. 'You will stretch any manners, at any time, to do this - not quietly and discreetly, but laughing and showing off and behaving like an adolescent,' she complained. 'The way you kiss women you hardly know "goodbye"' was another irritation. So, too, was the tailoring of his trousers ('surely there must be some way of concealing your penis')."

Ibid., pp. 60-1.

The book's at its best when using peculiar details to give a vivid sense of the period. We're reminded that National Service was just ending, so that almost all adult men had done military service, with obedience and hierarchy drummed into them. There's lots on the prevailing ignorance about and poor quality of sex, gruff attitudes to homosexuality, the pressures on women to marry well and live meek, domestic lives - in short, there's a drudging sense of bland uniformity. And then there's the odder, unconscious strangeness:

"The spirit of these times was represented by the Sexual Offences Act of 1956. This far-reaching legislation was prepared in committee, and passed unanimously without a word of debate in either the Commons or the Lords. It covered eventualities that were hard to imagine (Section 1 specified that a man committed rape if he induced a married woman to have sexual intercourse with him by impersonating her husband), and showed the hidden stresses of the period by criminalising activities that many people thought inoffensive. Section 23 (which was invoked after the arrest of Stephen Ward in 1963) created the criminal offence of procuration of a girl under twenty-one. This provision meant that if someone introduced a male to a woman who was over the age of consent (sixteen), but under the age of twenty-one, and the pair subsequently had a sexual romp, then the introducer had committed a criminal offence. Introducing a man to such a girl at a party or in a pub, or joining in his bantering chat-up, could be the prelude to a criminal offence if they later had sex together (anywhere in the world). By the early 1960s most university graduates, and much of the population under twenty-five, were criminals if the law was interpreted as it was in the charges levelled against Ward. As this law remained in force until 1994/95, many readers of this book will have committed the crime of procuration."

Ibid., pp. 109-10.

The last third of the book focuses on the exposure of the scandal in early 1963 and the trial in June. Davenport-Hines concludes that the police and press effectively colluded to stitch-up Stephen Ward, and Astor and the Macmillan Government were casualties of that offensive. But no one comes out of the book very well: Astor comes across as a coward; Profumo devoted himself after the scandal to charity, but was still propositioning young women in his 70s. Davenport-Hines says of one particular bit of legal trickstering to ensure Ward would be found guilty,

"This exceptional proceeding - this corrupt, contemptible sequence of events".

Ibid., p. 323.

But that might do for any or all of this story.

Yet Davenport-Hines seems to be on the side of Profumo and Astor, or at least sees what befell them as a terrible calamity, where the fine old order of gentlemanly oversight was deposed by a rabid, tabloid mob. His own introduction, where he places himself in the story - a child of an establishment father who moved in similar circles to Profumo and who kept a mistress - suggests that this is a tale of his own loss of innocence. He says the Profumo affair gave licence to an industry of celebrity gossip and scandal, where traducing reputations has become all that matters in the media. He doesn't mention Leveson, but there's an implicit sense that all the most dodgy and criminal practices of the press have their origin here.

And yet his own contextualisation of the events tells a different story: the forces at work had been there for some decades before Profumo even met Keeler. The tabloids had covered sex scandals and delighted in ruining lives. The police had trumped up charges against others, too. There's no mention, for example, of Alan Turing, whose treatment by the establishment (on the basis of a potential security risk due to his sex life) compares horribly with Profumo.

So what makes Profumo different? I think it's that the scandal was just the tip of the iceberg. Profumo might not have been trading secrets, but he was sleeping with Keeler, and she was receiving money from her other wealthy lovers. The more the press delved into the story, the more salacious detail they found - about Keeler, about other people.

But there was more to it than that: in July 1963, a month after Ward's trial, Kim Philby was finally named as the famous spy ring's 'third man' - a cricketing term, suggestive of the establishment and the old boy's network. In September, Lord Denning's report on the Profumo affair provided yet more juicy detail about improprieties riddling the system.

The problem was not that the press and police colluded - no matter how shocking their behaviour still seems. The establishment was more sinning than sinned against; for all the hype and circus, ministers and MPs whose authority rested on a gentlemanly traditions of paternalism were caught living a lie. Davenport-Hines says the scandal dogged the Tories until the late 70s and the Margaret Thatcher becoming leader, but I don't think the lessons were learnt. As the Tory Government of the 1980s and 90s made public pronouncements on single mothers, gay people and the way we all live our lives, MPs and ministers kept being caught out in affairs and sex scandals - undermining the rhetoric.

That's the real result of Profumo: a loss of deference to authority not because of who exposed it, but because the exposure showed it wasn't deserved. If we learnt not to trust politicians, it's because of their own actions.

I said I read the book looking for context on the origins of Doctor Who. Davenport-Hines' final paragraph neatly sums up the effect of the scandal, but might also be a mission statement for the BBC's new show:

"People's visions were distorted forever by the outlandish novelties of the summer of 1963. Afterwards everything still looked reassuringly familiar, but was weirdly twisted."

Ibid., p. 345.

The Plotters - the shooting script

By popular demand (well, Dawn Christoffersen on Twitter asked), here's the shooting script for our short film The Plotters - which got shortlisted in the 2012 Virgin Media Shorts competition, and which you can watch here:

(Full cast and crew for The Plotters at IMDB.)

ETA: and here's the first rough cut of the film:

The Plotters - First Cut from Thomas Guerrier on Vimeo.

THE PLOTTERS 

by Adrian Mackinder and Simon Guerrier 

Based on an idea by 

Adrian Mackinder and Hannah George 

(c) Adrian Mackinder and Simon Guerrier 2012


1 EXT. LONDON, 1605 - NIGHT 

Heroic CGI. The old Palace of Westminster in the background. CAPTION: London, November 1605.

2 EXT. THE TAVERN - NIGHT 

GUY FAWKES - in beard, hat with buckle, cape - hurries to the door, checks he’s not been followed, goes in. 

3 INT. THE TAVERN - NIGHT 

GUY joins a group of other PLOTTERS – all in beards, hats with buckles, capes – at a table. 

GUY FAWKES:
Gentlemen. We are in accord. Thirtysix barrels of gunpowder now sit beneath the House of Lords. When the heretic king is there tomorrow, Robert lights the powder and foom! We ignite a new world! 

The men clank tankards. GUY turns to THOMAS WINTOUR. 

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
Robert, did you want to say a few words? 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Er, Guy... I’m Thomas. He’s Robert. 

He nods at ROBERT CATESBY.

GUY FAWKES:
Oh, er, yes. Robert. Our explosives expert.

ROBERT CATESBY:
What? I’m Robert Catesby. You mean that Robert.

He points at ROBERT WINTOUR. GUY embarrassed.

GUY FAWKES:
Oh yes, we’ve got two Roberts.

ROBERT KEYES:
Er, three.

GUY FAWKES:
Who are you?

ROBERT KEYES:
Robert Keyes. Hi.

GUY FAWKES:
And you’re the explosives expert?

ROBERT KEYES:
Lord no. Horrible stuff, gun powder. Go off in your face! Very nasty.

GUY struggling to make sense of this.

GUY FAWKES:
So we’ve got three Roberts.

ROBERT CATESBY:
It is a bit confusing. Doesn’t help that we all look a bit alike. 

The plotters all glance at one another. He’s right!

ROBERT WINTOUR:
I could pop home, get another hat.

ROBERT KEYES:
You don’t have another hat.

GUY FAWKES:
We just need to know which one’s the explosives expert.

The three ROBERTS all point at one another.

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
(sigh) All we want is someone to light the powder. (BEAT) And obviously run away quick. Surely You’re not scared? 

The plotters all gruffly shake their heads. Of course not. 

ROBERT CATESBY:
I’d do it. But they know me from Devereux’s rebellion. I’d never slip past the guards.

ROBERT KEYES:
Bad knee, can’t run. It would be suicide. And that’s a mortal sin.

ROBERT WINTOUR:
Gunpowder makes me sneeze. 

GUY FAWKES:
Well, then. Someone else. Thomas? Are you man enough?

Beat. 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Sorry, which Thomas?

GUY FAWKES:
What? 

THOMAS WINTOUR:
Thomas Bates, Thomas Wintour or Thomas Percy? 

GUY FAWKES:
Oh, now really. We’ve got three Roberts and three Thomases?

JOHN WRIGHT:
And two Johns. I’d do it, but I’m driving the getaway carriage. Sorry. 

The plotters bicker. 

GUY FAWKES:
Is there anyone who doesn’t have the same name as anyone else? 

ROBERT CATESBY:
There’s Ambrose. And Everard. 

The men snigger.

EVERARD DIGBY:
Shut up! Anyway, isn’t Ambrose a girl’s name? 

More sniggering. AMBROSE is rather burly.

AMBROSE ROOKWOOD:
I’m known from Devereux’s rebellion, too. Why can’t Robert do it? 

ROBERT CATESBY:
Which Robert? 

They all start bickering again.

GUY FAWKES:
(fighting for calm) It only needs one of you. Really! I’ll do it myself if I have to!

They all fall silent, stare at him.

GUY FAWKES (CONT’D):
Fine. If you want a job doing properly... 

FADE OUT. 

4 INT. TORTURE CHAMBER 

GUY is chained up, looking miserable. POLICEMEN – in beards, hats with buckles, capes – come in, carrying instruments of torture. An INTERROGATER stands by.

INTERROGATOR:
He’s given us a description of the other conspirators.

He hands the POLICEMEN a paper. It shows a crude drawing of a man in a beard, hat with buckle.

POLICEMAN:
I see. Did he tell you their names? 

The INTERROGATOR turns the page over. There’s a list: Robert, Robert, Robert, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, John, John, Ambrose, Everard. 

GUY FAWKES:
(weak) It’s a funny sort of coincidence, but really... 

POLICEMAN:
We’ll get the truth somehow. Fetch the thumb screws. 

GUY FAWKES:
Bother.

Short breaks in Elizabethan England

I loved Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England when it was on the telly a few weeks ago and have finally made an effort to read the book, which I got for my birthday almost exactly a year ago.

Mortimer's idea is brilliantly simple: to present the past as if we can walk round it, scouring sources for details on food, accommodation, manners and everything else. He's good at detailing the smells and textures of the period as well as the dry facts, and writing it in the present tense really helps to breath new life into an age that's been well covered before.

This vivid conjuring has a slow-burn effect: you notice it long after reading the words on the page. On Sunday morning, as I wandered round my old home-town of Winchester, I found myself picking out details I'd never seen before - Tudor beams and windows above the shops in the high street, the plan of the backstreets, the medieval buildings that would have seemed old even to the Elizabethans.

A lot of the book is devoted to ordinary life - the limited flavours and colours, the wealth of ripe odours. But he's also good at making sense of the politics, too. Why, for example, did Elizabeth have such a long and successful reign?

Mortimer makes the case that, unlike her predecessors in the Middle Ages, Elizabeth had few relatives - siblings, cousins, those related by marriage - in contention for the throne. She was the last of Henry VIII's children and he was the only surviving son of Henry VII. Even so, Elizabeth had Mary, Queen of Scots, executed and Lady Catherine Grey imprisoned.

But Elizabeth was also careful to establish and underline her authority. Mortimer details her "mannish" behaviour, her progresses round the country so her subjects could see her, and the ways she dominated parliament. Parliament was, for example, banned from discussing the question of who would succeed her, and she called only 10 parliaments anyway in the 45 years of her reign (rather than the customary one a year).

"Like her grandfather Henry VII, Elizabeth has a policy of not creating any new earls, marquesses or viscounts, and she creates very few barons. The reason is to limit the power of her subjects and thus strengthen the authority of her government." 

Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (2012), p. 46.

What's more, a traditional rival to the English monarchy had been done away with by Elizabeth's father: bishops no longer served the Roman Catholic Church but answered directly to her.

"Elizabethan England is thus devoid of private armies, royal dukes and political bishops. Those considering revolt against Elizabeth have no one to turn to for leadership ... After the execution of the duke of Norfolk [in June 1572], the highest rank in the peerage is that of marquess. Never a common title, there is just one in 1600 (the marquess of Winchester), plus a dowager marchioness (the widow of the last marquess of Northampton, William Parr, who dies in 1571). Third-highest in rank are the earls; there are eighteen of these in 1600. Next come the two viscounts, Lord Montagu and Lord Howard of Bindon. The lowest rank is the baronage: there are thirty-seven barons in all. In total, just fifty-seven peers are summoned to parliament at the start of the reign and fifty-five at the end (underage heirs are not summoned)." 

Ibid., p. 47.

Given my day job, it was interesting, too, to learn that peers could not be imprisoned for debt, and other privileges included "the right to be judged by his peers, paying very little tax and freedom from torture" (p. 48) - though Mortimer explains Henry VIII got round that last one by having peers summarily executed and Elizabeth locked up some nobles for years in the Tower without trial.

The man who invented the bank holiday kept a pet wasp

Caricature of John Lubbock
from Punch, 1882,
via Wikipedia.

Heritage! The Battle for Britain's Past is available on iPlayer for a limited time and well worth catching while you can. It details the nineteenth-century heroes who realised something must be done to stop the destruction of our old buildings and green spaces, and led to the establishment of the National Trust.

Among the heroes was John Lubbock MP (1834-1913), who I'd not heard of before. A pupil of Darwin's (having grown up near Down House), Lubbock later named an insect after him. Lubbock also introduced the first bank holiday, kept a pet wasp, got insects drunk to see if they recognised each other and claimed to have taught his dog to read.

He coined the terms "neolithic" and "paleolithic" and bought the site of Avebury to save the ancient stone circle there from destruction. Many of his prehistoric finds are on show in Bromley Museum, which I shall now be making a trip to.

Later, Lubbock became the first Lord Avebury - and his grandson sits on the Liberal Democrat benches in the House of Lords.

The Psychology of Power

Prompted by wise Matthew Sweet, whose radio programme on the life of Alex Comfort, Stop Calling Me 'Doctor Sex' is still up on iPlayer, I've been reading Comfort's Authority and Delinquency (1950) - that link takes you to scans of the entire book, though I've also bought one off Abebooks.

It's packed full of interest which I shall endeavour to blog about another time, but given Eastleigh and the AAA rating this week, the following rather chimed:

"One very characteristic - indeed, defining - character of persistent criminals is their baffling ineducability by experience, which leads not only to a repetition of the crime but of the details which led to their detection and arrest. In other words, their behaviour is compulsive. There is an analogous ineducability in government, among the advocates of 'strong' policies. Experience and argument did not prevent successive British 'strong' men (not all of one party) from repeating in Palestine, Cyprus, India and Suez the identical attitudes and errors which lost them Ireland, not Marxists from repeating the aberrations of the Czars. The reasons are identical in the two cases - these are examples of stereotyped behaviour, the actions are performed for the immediate emotional satisfaction they give not for their supposed purposes; other characteristics are unjustified self-confidence, total disregard of others and the substitution of vague objectives such as prestige or revenge for concrete gain, which, even if unelevated, is at least reality-centred. Long-term objectives - national advantage or the victory of an ideology nearly always give place in the event to the overwhelming cathexis of 'strong' action for people in office - the policy is then doggedly persisted in to maintain the illusion of purpose, under the guise of maintaining law and order. To the 'strong' man, as to the persistent thief, it is pointless to argue that crime does not pay - it is the act, not the policy or the thing stolen, which is the true motive. He will 'show them', regardless of whether it pays or not."

Alex Comfort, Authority and Delinquency - A Study in the Psychology of Power (1950), pp. 29-30.

The Plotters - a new film by the Guerrier brothers

"The Plotters" is now up on the Virgin Media Shorts website. Please retweet (with "The Plotters" and the hashtag #ShortsLucky13), share, generally shout to the world...

I'll do a full making-of post when I have some time (that will likely not be until the year 2150 AD), but here is a full cast and crew:

"The Plotters"
Written by Adrian Mackinder and Simon Guerrier
Based on an idea by Adrian Mackinder and Hannah George

Directed by Thomas Guerrier

Produced by the Guerrier brothers

Adrian Mackinder - Guy Fawkes
Barnaby Edwards - Robert Keyes
Nicholas Pegg - Robert Wintour
Will Howells - Ambrose Rookwood
John Dorney - Robert Catesby
William Hughes - Thomas Wintour
Jonathan Hearn - John Wright
Anthony Keetch - Everard Digby
Dominic Fitch - The Interrogator
Simon Guerrier - Policeman

DOP: Sebastian Solberg
Gaffer: Oliver Watts

1st AD: Natasha Phelan

Art Department: Simon Aaronson and Gemma Rigg

Make-Up: Chantell Jeanetta

Visual Effects Supervisor: Alex Mallinson

Colourist: Otto Burnham

Sound Design: Matt Snowden

Music: Matthew Cochrane

Costumes supplied by Angels

Runners:

Piers Beckley
Adrian Bentley
Håvar Ellingsen
Charlotte Lungley
Jéanine Palmer

Filmed on location at the Jerusalem Tavern, London, 2012.

Books finished, October 2010

High Rise by JG Ballard is told from the point of view of three men living at different levels of a block going to war with itself.

It's set in a grim future familiar from early 70s films – people living surrounded by concrete and fab gadgets, but where women still know their place and wait for husbands to come back from the office. Like the grim futures of Escape From The Planet of the Apes or A Clockwork Orange, violence seethes barely out of sight of their thick make-up and dinner parties, and suddenly the most respectable figures – think Margot and Jerry Leadbetter – are peeing in the swimming pool, murdering dogs, and caught up in cannibalism and incest.

It's a depressingly cruel and stupid story, playing out scenes of ever more brutal, primal violence in a dispassionate tone. There's little to differentiate our three protagonists apart from the levels at which they live in the building. There's little wit, irony or insight, and a lot of mention of exposed breasts and heavy loins. And yet its easy to get caught up in the collapse, the infantile misanthropy really striking a chord as I read it squodged in among other commuting livestock.

The book also includes various snippets of review, including the following gem:

“Ballard is neither believable or unbelievable ... his characterization is merely a matter of “roles” and his situations merely a matter of “context”: he is abstract, at once totally humourless and entirely unserious...”

That sounds rather damning until the next sentence:

“The point of his visions is to provide him with imagery, with opportunities to write well, and this seems to me to be the only intelligible way of getting the hang of his fiction.”'

Martin Amis, New Statesman, quoted in JG Ballard, High Rise, p. 1.

Unbelievable, humourless, abstract... and this is him writing well.

I read Robert Rogers and Rhodri Walters' How Parliament Works (6th edition) in preparation for a job interview. It's a comprehensive, insiders' account and nicely up-to-date (to 2006), with some good thoughts on the future of the Houses and their procedures which stood me in good stead. I got the job, so woot.

“Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them; while on the other hand, to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgement upon any of them.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream, p. 329.

Galileo's Dream is a decidedly odd book. About half of it is a historical novel about Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), from his first hearing about the invention of telescopes and endeavouring to build one himself, through to his death under house arrest for daring to suggest, via the evidence of his observations, that the Earth orbits round the Sun.

Robinson is, as ever, expert at explaining the science bits and making them a vivid, thrilling part of the story. He's good at the petty jealousies and court politics that surround Galileo, his struggles with his family and commitments, his need to get funding for his work. It never quite needs be spelled out how little the practicalities of research have changed since Galileo's time.

A lot of this is especially enthralling as I'm studying GCSE Astronomy, and was making my own steady progress through the mathematics of lenses and focal lengths at roughly the same rate as the book. There's some interesting stuff about Galileo, the first man ever to gaze at the magnified moon, drawing prominent features bigger than they really are so that future observers would look out for them (p. 38). Observation, he realises in the book, is itself a level of magnification.

Robinson has a knack for getting into the heads of especially clever people. Galileo himself is a richly drawn character, brilliant and bombastic and impetuous. He makes a lot of enemies early on by winning debates rather rudely and not sparing egos. He's blind to how his actions affect others, estranged from family and former lovers. This all set up his enemies' revenge when they accuse of him of being a heretic.

“Galileo kept defending himself, in print and in person ... Whenever he was healthy he begged Cosimo, through his secretary Curzio Pecchena, to be allowed to go to Rome so that he could defend himself. He was still confident that he could demonstrate the truth of the Copernican hypothesis to anyone he spoke to in person. Picchena was not the only one who doubted this. Winning all those banquet debates had apparently caused Galileo to think that argument was how things were settled in the world. Unfortunately this is never how it happens.”

Ibid., p. 153.

Robinson is again good at teasing out the characters and global politics involved, as the new and liberal Pope finds himself undermined by the Medicis and needing to look strong. A war between two Catholic nations is deftly shown to play it's part in bringing Galileo to trial, while we hear of secret documents and meetings long before they play their part in the story.

The trial itself is, I think, a major stain on the history of the Catholic Church, but Robinson shows admirable restraint in depicting the many pressures on those involved. I expected the final judgement to make me angry; it just left me sad. The last part of the book, as Galileo struggles against infirmity and the deaths of loved ones, make this an effective tragedy. As a historical novel, it's quite a treat: clever, compelling and moving while at the same time an education.

And yet, that's only half the book. For the other half, Galileo travels epileptically (p.235) to the distant future, where humans are busy bothering alien life on Jupiter's moons – the very moons Galileo was first to see. This allows some rather po-faced future people to comment on and contextualise Galileo and his times, muttering about his treatment of women and his role as the inventor – and first martyr - of scientific method.

It's a little like the trick of Life on Mars, where adding a present-day policeman to a 1970s precinct lets you do all that fun cop stuff like out of The Sweeney while tutting at its prejudice and clichés. But I sighed inwardly every time we jumped to the future for another interminable debate about whether we ought to make contact, or if it would have been better for society had Galileo been burnt at the stake.

There's lots on the development of science after Galileo's – and our own – time. He is brought to the future by something called entanglement which is couched in scientific terms. But this made-up science and the made-up future politics do nothing but disservice to the real man and his accomplishments. The book suggests Galileo – and also Archimedes – achieved great things because of what time travellers had told him. It's an insult to the man and his work, otherwise brought so vividly to life.

We discover that the story is being narrated by the Wandering Jew, himself a traveller from the far future, and telling the story as he awaits execution during the Reign of Terror. It's all in highly questionable taste, and is less profound or insightful as it is portentous. It reminded me too often of dreary sci-fi shows in which dreary characters plod dreary corridors earnestly discussing dreary plot. It's a not very good episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, or any episode of the new Battlestar Gallactica. And this is all the more galling because the other half of the book is so good.

I found John Osborne's Look Back in Anger gruelling when I read it at sixth-form half my life ago. Now it just seems painfully arch, two well-to-do young women falling for the same frustrated loser. It reminded me most of angry tirades from my fellow writers about the world failing to provide for their needs. It's not that I don't do that myself from time to time (sorry), but it's no fun to sit through and not exactly profound. The women - and the audience - would be better off walking out.

A few things

Back from holiday and birthday shenanigans. Will write up our trip to Malta soon, and also some notes I made on The Gift by Lewis Hyde, which m'colleague Ben was kind enough to supply me. Have some rewrites to do first.

At 13.15 on Thursday 1 July, I'll be giving a free talk at the National Portrait Gallery, “Portraits in Time and Space” on 10 people in the gallery's collection that Doctor Who has met on screen.

Also, I wrote the writing bits of Houses of History, a history of the Palace of Westminster and parliamentary democracy aimed at school kids, for the Parliament website. (See also the Cimex website for more on the project.) It works best if you view it full screen and have your sound on.

And here's a sterling defence of Hansard, what I also sometimes do bits of work for.

Five exhibitions

The Dr and I have spent Christmas eating too much, drinking even more, seeing some chums and enjoying – for the Dr at least – a busman's holiday. If that busman also worked in museums.

1. Cold War Modern – Design 1945-1970
(Victoria and Albert Museum until 11 January 2009)
There's a lot of big ideas crammed into this exhibition – even for such a large space. As I've blogged before, the post-war period saw a punch-drunk sweeping away of the past in favour of big, bold ideas in art, design and ideology. Perhaps it was the horror and damage done by the Second World War, perhaps the burgeoning threat of mutually assured destruction, but the artefacts of that time spell out a bleak and awful picture of the world, with a yearning for something better.

I liked how they put astronaut and environment suits up close with the fab and groovy gear available off the peg in the Portobello Road. There's examples of revolutionary politics from all round the world; '68 and Nam and Che, both the hope and frenzied propaganda from all sides.

Into this context they squeeze clips of Ipcress, Bond and Strangelove, all featuring big, futuristic set design by Ken Adam (the sketch for the play area where Goldfinger spells out to his hoods the details of Operation Grand Slam is, marvellously, called “the Rumpus Room”). These sit beside drawings and photographs of grand housing projects on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and then plans for domes over New York or cities on the Moon. On big screens high above the space stuff, the “stargate” sequence from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey faces the arrival of Kris Kelvin on the space station above Solaris. East and West's visions of man reaching for cold, unfathomable space - opposite and yet so much the same.

In all this grandeur, there's a disturbing desperation. I wondered who they – the hopeful people who dreamt up these things – thought they were kidding. The problem with planning such a monumental new programme of building and social organisation, of so radically creating a new world, is that it assumes we've already lost this one.

(Afterwards, we had coffee and pastries while enjoying the William Morris-styled bit of the cafe, but there wasn't enough light for my camera-phone to get pictures. And the V&A shop proved very good for small trinkets and silliness for the Dr's stocking. No, she didn't just get coal and birch twigs.)

2. Darwin (a.k.a Big Idea exhibition)
Natural History Museum until 19 April 2009

“Before Darwin, the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created. Today, his theory that they undergo modification and are all descendants of pre-existing forms is accepted by everyone (or by everyone not determined to disbelive it). Most people would, if asked, find it hard to explain why.”

Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale, p. xxii.

Like Jones' book, the Natural History Museum exhibition shows how Darwin came to his radical proposition of the history of species as a family tree of connected, branching variance – and then updates the evidence. We see the specimens of birds and beetles Darwin himself caught on his boat trip round the world, and then – like Jones – how 150 years of scientific hard graft has honed and bolstered that central idea, filling in the gaps Darwin himself acknowledged.

There's stuff on why Darwin delayed publishing his findings for so long, and a glimpse of his home life. There are even real creatures to coo at – a lizard called Charlie who apparently doesn't like it if you tap the glass, and a fat, ugly toad that looks like a green and yellow cow pat.

There's sensibly no apology at all to the dissenters, and no mention of “intelligent design”. Yet, the Dr noted they kept speaking of evolution as a “theory”. Her research elsewhere has shown a strange shift in the 1980s and 90s; telly and radio before that rarely felt the need to qualify Darwin's idea as a “theory”, now it's rare that they don't.

That said, the exhibition is keen to explain that, in science, a theory isn't the same as a guess; it's a carefully worked out and tested hypothesis from evidence, one from which you can make accurate predictions. I thought that was what we called a “fact”, but apparently not. Wikipedia boasts a whole page discussing evolution as theory and fact. But why qualify Darwin like that? We don't talk of Newton's “theory of gravity” - which the work of Einstein (and Eddington) actually disproved (or, at best, radically refined).

3. Byzantium 330-1453
Royal Academy of Arts until 22 March 2009
By the time we got to this one in the mid-afternoon, London was swollen with tourists enjoying the hilarious ratio of euro to pound. They crowded the pavements and train stations, and – a bit to our surprise – the Royal Academy. Yes, let's go to England for the closing down January sales and while we're at it shell out to see some trinkets from the wrong side of Europe...

The exhibition apes the dark and churchy feel of Istanbul's grand churches and mosques, from which the objects come. Boris Johnson's surprisingly superb two-part series After Rome had important things to say about Western prejudice; not only the destruction of the city during the Crusades (and the legacy of that word in the Middle East) but also the fact that Constantinople was a second Rome, continuing the traditions and learning of the Empire long after the West has succumbed to its Dark Age. The Renaissance was less a “rebirth” as the Western powers learning to stop bashing their neighbours and instead start borrowing their books...

(I meant to post my thoughts on Seville and Cordoba ages ago, having visited in September. And then there's Boris going and saying a whole load of stuff I wish I'd thought of...)

In the exhibition, I struggled to follow particular ideas or stories. The exhibition seemed to assume a robust, academic knowledge on the part of its visitors – artefacts, for example, were described as being from Harare or Sinai without any explanation of where these were or on what terms they stood against Byzantium / Constantinople at the time. The Dr, meanwhile, muttered that it grouped different traditions all in together – Coptic (especially) and Ptolemaic with Orthodox and Islamic. It seemed less an attempt to explain or explore the history of and our relationship with the Middle East as a collection of pretty, glittery things.

Favourite artefact: a painting of monks being tempted off a ladder to heaven by spindly, sneaky devils. Weirdly they had postcards of this in the shop after – they almost never have the ones that I like.

4. Babylon – Myth and Reality
British Museum until 15 March 2009
Two years ago, the Doctor and I marvelled down the brilliant blue streets of Babylon, up to the Ishtar Gate. It's vast, it's bright blue and it was nicked by German archaeologists from what's now Iraq and reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon museum. If you can, go see that before you see this exhibition, which struggles to convey the scale of the Biblical city, squeezed as it is into the upstairs of the old Reading Room.

“Many individuals' first encounter with the name of Babylon will have come from the Old Testament. Of the momentous events that took place in the city, not the least concerned the Judaean exiles taken from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar as part of a conventional military campaign. The repercussions of the Babylonian Captivity in theology, culture and art are still with us, while our knowledge of the historical events has been enhanced by some of the world's most important cuneiform texts.”

IL Finkel and MJ Seymour (eds.), Babylon – Myth and Reality, p. 142.

The Old Testament paints Babylon as cruel conqueror and enslaver. Daniel and his pals Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are remarkable because they stand up to Nebuchadnezzar – the implication being that no one else ever dared to. Interestingly, the section on Rastafarianism linked Babylon to Western greed and commercialism, not to the West's history of enslavement.

Brilliantly, the exhibition closes with those who identify not with the oppressed but the oppressors. It is pretty out-spoken about the site today and the damage done by, first, Saddam Hussein and then the US army. For both, the ancient site is an excuse for extraordinary grand-standing, on a scale beloved by tyranny.

There's comparatively little of the actual city here: some bits of bright blue stone, some small, ancient objects. There are models of the street up to the Ishtar Gate and of the Etemenanki ziggurat – also known as the tower of Babel. Tiny little Scale Guys help suggest the mahoossive. But mostly it's about the how the city's been interpreted since it fell. It compares representations of the city in the Bible or myth (while never quite daring to suggest they're the same thing) with the evidence uncovered since the 19th century, and it discusses how Babylon continues to play a part in stories. There's a picture of a Rod Lord-designed Babel fish and the cover of Hollywood Babylon.

With the same mythic buildings and characters depicted by different art traditions over the centuries, this is an exploration of stories and cultures bleeding into one another, becoming scared as they help define – or at least shape – identity and power. The real ninth century BC Assyrian queen, Sammu-rammat, for example, ends up worshipped as the goddess Semiramas by the Greeks.

We emerged into a crowded museum, the Dr spitting feathers as a huge Biblical tour stopped for no man or woman or child. She was not incensed at their rudeness but the nonsense they were being told, provenance and context completely ignored to make chosen objects fit the pre-agreed story.

5. Taking Liberties
British Library until 1 March 2009

This one is exemplary: a collection of iconic documents brilliantly grouped and explained so that visitors are challenged on their own political ideas. There's Magna Carta, or the death warrant for Charles I, the 1832 Reform Act, a copy not just of the Beveridge report in English but in half a dozen other languages as the world looked in awe at our pioneering social wheeze. It's fascinating enough just to gaze on these things, and all of it for free. But there's more.

The documents – and explanations, associated items and illustrations – are grouped under broad headings like “Rule of law” or “Freedom of speech”. There's stuff on Lords reform and on whether referenda are actually democratic, CCTV and a national DNA database – all sorts of complex, knotty stuff. It's brilliant at simply and concisely laying out the different sides on a given issue and then getting you to do some thinking. In fact, it's a shame this isn't a permanent exhibition. It's the only one of the five discussed here I'd want to mooch round a second time.

At the end of each section you're encourage to vote on three or four questions, choosing a statement from a list. To do this, you have to scan your wristband, so the machine remembers your answers. At the end of the exhibition, you can see how you voted compared to the mass of other visitors, and where on a political graph your votes place you.

A couple of times, what I'd seen in the exhibition made me at least reconsider my natural instincts at the poll. But I also found on several occasions I didn't quite agree with any of the statements, that there were exceptions or at least things I'd want to clarify. So there was some fudging towards the statement that best exemplified by fluffy, why-can't-we-all-just-get-along sensibilities.

And that's, I think, the one thing the exhibition lacked: something about party politics, the Whip system, the way it reduces any kind of issue to a simplistic yes or no, your answer as much dependent on the will of HQ as your own insight or conscience. (I'd quote Paxman on just this point in The Political Animal, but we seem to have leant it to someone.) There's nothing on political compromise, on supporting something because that's supporting your team.

The exhibition raises an eyebrow at the Levellers and Chartists – whose ideas that were so terrifying and radical in their own day are now rights we take for granted. But it doesn't explain why that happens. It's a great strength and a great weakness that our system allows change only in a series of small, hard-negotiated steps. That's fundamental because you can't understand the liberties and law we have now without understanding how these decisions are made.