Stations of the Cross
(by Hans Holbein)
‘We quiver here for fear, a badly shaven lot, Leaderless and clear in fractured polyglot, Take a very long line and see it moves apace; It is the time of fishes, ticket punched another place. Sun-treader, comb your morning hair, sweep this private road in anger. What of other highways? Go tell King Mwanga, The royal house is empty, the servants all abroad, Scattered to the corners, a tuneless monochord. Their hearts a lute for strumming, diseased the ebb and flow, Sad cypress and unfulfilled watercress, What do you know?’
Continue Reading →Stuck in the Middle with You
Reservoir Dogs (Dir. Quentin Tarantino) (1991) Pound for pound, Tarantino’s first film is easily his best, a tight, hip and brutal slice of underworld life, as a diamond robbery goes awry and the question is whether there’s a rat in the ranks. Full of flash-backs and flash-forwards, it fills out the back stories with real wit and fervour. And the performances crackle. Lawrence Tierney as the crime boss is scotch over gravel. Harvey Keitel, stoic as Mr White, is perhaps the central character, along with rookie Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). Steve Buscemi as the snakey Mr. Pink is terrific – so is…
Continue Reading →Mendeleev, Vodka, Peas and Quizzes
Dmitri Mendeleev (born on this day in 1834) was real good at chemistry. Mendeleev neatened up the nascent Periodic Table and so facilitated the discovery and proper classification of further elements. He saw it all in a dream which may, or may not, have owed something to 40% vodka. I was not real good at chemistry. I had Mendeleev with his Hydrogen and Helium confused with Gregor Mendel with his flies and peas. But I did learn this one thing which has held me in surprisingly good stead in quizzes. It is a mnemonic for the first twenty elements – two scientists who worked together late…
Continue Reading →Vietnam / Iraq
South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places, June 8, 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. The terrified girl had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The children from left to right are: Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. Behind them are soldiers of the Vietnam Army 25th Division. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
While recently reviewing The Deer Hunter, we strayed In Country, a tangled thicket where the eternal skirmish over Vietnam carries on. Now it is held-up as a mirror to military madness, and as a parable for the incursion / invasion of Iraq. But whereas the strategic argument for Gulf War II remains opaque to this day despite inquiry after inquiry, I suggest that the escalation in Vietnam, as at 1965, is different to the events of 2003 by a substantial degree, rendering most modern comparisons between the two erroneous. The late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s formed the middle age of the Cold War (a…
Continue Reading →My History: A Memoir of Growing Up
Dragon School, Oxford. Not my alma mater.
(by Lady Antonia Fraser) It would be unfair for me to compare Lady Antonia Fraser’s first volume of memoirs with that of her cousin, Ferdinand Mount because in many aspects Fraser had the (early) life and has had the career that I wanted, whereas I felt only the vaguest envy for Mount’s connections and have never aspired to working for Margaret Thatcher. While growing up in the hideous new lower-middle-class outer suburb of Dust in South Australia, attending Dust Primary and High Schools, I knew that I really belonged in a large nook-filled house in Oxford, attending a private school, learning Latin and Greek in preparation for Oxford, in its turn a preparation…
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