The Varnished Culture's Thumbnail Reviews
Regularly added bite-sized reviews about Literature, Art, Music & Film.
Voltaire said the secret of being boring is to say everything.
We do not wish to say everything or see everything; life, though long is too short for that.
We hope you take these little syntheses in the spirit of shared enthusiasm.
Social Justice Fallacies
(By Thomas Sowell, 2023)
Described by economic historian Niall Ferguson as a tour de force, Social Justice Fallacies arrives, like Spiderman, just in time, the imminent end of Peak Woke (aka Peak Stupid).
Wikipedia defines Social Justice thus (footnote omitted):
“Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals’ rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.”
Whilst your reviewer’s chest tightens, from learned and lived experience, at the phrases “distribution of wealth,” “receive their due,” “breaking of barriers,” “assign[ing] of rights and duties in the institutions of society,” and last but by no means least harmful, “equal opportunity,” prima facie, there’s none who could quibble with these aims, right? Well, with profound respect, dive into Mr. Sowell’s book and get some perspective. Sowell, originally a Marxist, converted by a hefty common sense and preference for hard facts (plus the likes of Friedman, Stigler, Becker, and Hayek), painstakingly shows, via real data and wide reading and research, that social justice warriors, some of whom no doubt mean well, harm the very people they either wish, or pretend, to help. Yes, we’re looking at you Mr. Trudeau.
In 5 short but dense chapters, Sowell expertly shows us that, pace Orwell, “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others;” that folks can’t, or don’t want to be, equal in many respects; that correlation is not causation; that confirmation bias reigns among the socially just; that their myriad crusades rely on the misreading or misrepresentation of data; that the lumpenproletariat aching for salvation happen not to be inert chess pieces, moving according to bureaucratic arrangements; that there are particular types of knowledge often not in the possession of central command; that every redistributive act ever deployed in history has had unintended and often parlous consequences (e.g., forcing banks to lend to people of minority groups with low credit ratings that led to the global financial crisis of 2007/08, the raising of tax rates leading to decreased tax revenues, or legislating minimum wages above market rates as a direct cause of increased unemployment); and of course, that equity is not equality, and equality has human and natural limits. And to paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, the warriors know much about the origins of poverty but precious little about the origins of wealth.
Some quotes as examples:
“Nature- as exemplified by such things as differences in geography, climate, diseases and animals- has not been egalitarian, despite Rousseau’s claim that nature produced equality.”
“We might agree that “equal chances for all” would be desirable. But that in no way guarantees that we have either the knowledge or the power required to make that goal attainable, without ruinous sacrifices of other desirable goals, ranging from freedom to survival.”
[On Eugenics and its social policy ramifications] “The casual ease with which leading scholars of their time could advocate imprisoning people for life, who had committed no crime, and depriving them of a normal life, is a painfully sobering reminder of what can happen when an idea or a vision becomes a heady dogma that overwhelm all other considerations.”“...the social justice agenda…included equalized outcomes in the present and reparations for the past…[drawing on] myths presented as history, as well as assertions presented as facts- the latter in a spirit reminiscent of the certitude and heedlessness of evidence in the genetic determinism era…The central premise of affirmative action is that group “under-representation” is the problem, and proportional representation of groups is the solution. This might make sense if all segments of a society had equal capabilities in all endeavors. But neither social justice advocates, nor anyone else, seems able to come up with an example of any such society today, or in the thousands of years of recorded history.”
“The confiscation and redistribution of wealth – whether on a moderate or a comprehensive scale- is at the heart of the social justice agenda. While social justice advocates stress what they see as the desirability of such policies, the feasibility of those policies tends to receive far less attention, and the consequences of trying and failing often receive virtually no attention.” [A recent example might be the City of Los Angeles cutting $18m from the Fire Department’s budget, which began hiring under an aggressive DEI regime, instead distributing money to various LGBTIQA+ causes and events, and demolishing dams to appease first nations peoples, resulting in a lack of qualified firefighters and available water to prevent large swathes of the city and surrounds going up in flames this month].
“Among the comments from “experts” was that “sex and sexuality have become far too complex and technical to leave to the typical parent, who is either uninformed or too bashful to share useful sexual information with his child”…[But, quoting Sargent Shriver, who led the early charge for explicit sex education in schools, having an epiphany in 1978] “Just as venereal disease has skyrocketed 350% in the last 15 years when we have had more clinics, more pills and more sex education than ever in history, teen-age pregnancy has risen.”
“Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe…self-congratulatory elites, deaf to argument and immune to evidence…For many social issues, the most important decision is who makes the decision. Both social justice advocates and their critics might agree that many consequential social decisions are best made by those who have the most relevant knowledge. But they have radically different assumptions as to who in fact has the most knowledge…feasibility…depends on the distribution of relevant and consequential knowledge…Intellectual elites with outstanding achievements within their own respective specialties may give little thought to how ignorant they may be on a vast spectrum of other concerns…as an old saying expressed it: “A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can do it for him.“”
Sowell eloquently sets out an array of dangers arising from the work of today’s social-justice warriors, compounded by their disinclination to apply logic to test their faith and empirical evidence to their implemented programmes, seasoned with hostility to those who dare challenge their views. They almost invariably make things worse. Exhibit A: The Biden Administration.
A not-too recent photo of the great Thomas Sowell – he’s now 94
Paris, Texas
(Directed by Wim Wenders) (1984)
Virtually no one has seen this film, but those who have, love it to bits. We caught it in Adelaide at a special New Year’s Eve screening. It is not as good as Wings of Desire, but then, what is?
An alien film set in an alien landscape, ponderous and slow, it captures the heartbreaking loss of love between a couple, and reflects upon the nature of obsession. A child-like man (Harry Dean Stanton) stumbles out of the wilderness, is taken in and cared for by his brother (Dean Stockwell) who helps him reconnect – fleetingly – with his lost love (Natassja Kinski). Great performances and atmospherics can’t conceal the obliqueness and emptiness at its heart, which may be the point. Well worth watching on a rainy day.
Stanton, Wenders, Stockwell
Childhood
(By Shannon Burns – 2022)
Having forgotten virtually all of my childhood (relentlessly happy I imagine, thus unfit to record), I tend to spurn memoirs of early years, having confined myself to undoubted classics, such as Gorky’s My Childhood, Speak, Memory, and Unreliable Memoirs.
Childhood is a worthy addition to those classics and also stands as a bemused, relentless, almost angry monument to the power of compartmentalization (selective forgetting), and particularly, the redemptive and palliative power of great literature (Burns shares with others a love of The Brothers Karamazov). “We read to know we are not alone” (attributed to C.S. Lewis) and this record bashfully celebrates that. The vulnerability and unhappiness, that can infuse childhood, here recall some of the saddest (and funniest) passages in Dickens. For example, when the boy starts filling exercise books with a Clarissa-sized story, only to find, on review, that it is mere gobbledygook.
“And how do you escape from yourself?” Brought-up in beautiful Mansfield Park (South Australia’s Mount Druitt) and other tortuous and sinister suburbs, Shannon Burns spares nobody, least of all himself, in his hauntingly beautiful account of an ultimate release from arrested development. Scenes swing from the intense to the insouciant – A broken, impoverished home, or series of homes; an abusive and alcoholic mother who ‘works nights’; exposure to lazy racism and adolescent sexual exploration; unwholesome foster care; restless impatience with the impenetrable feelings of others; petty and grand crimes; the burgeoning awareness of class and cultural difference. And after his escape from the clutches of outrageous misfortune, the pessimist in him finds himself “dangerously contented.”
Moving seamlessly between tenses and first / third person narration, Childhood charts a path through a landscape filled with shadows, tedium, and terrors, determinism and dreams, reading often like a modern novel. One problem that arises is what has been recognised as the “experience of familiarity [having] a simple but powerful quality of ‘pastness’ that seems to indicate that it is a direct reflection of prior experience“, such quality of pastness being, naturally, an illusion.* (We wondered about that when the lad and his mate, Ryan, poked holes on the bottom of milk cartons delivered to the front porches of houses – did the milkman deliver anything but bottles?)
Some random samples from Childhood will show its heft and muscle:
“I have to strain my neck to see above the dashboard of an early model Ford or Holden, and I’m amazed that the driver simply trusts the road to keep extending beyond the darkness.”
“Are they harsh and callous to begin with, or do they become harsh and callous over time? Does the boy wear them down with his glum demeanour? Do they become the parents he remembers partly because he resented them from the beginning, because his refusals made them mean?”
“Compared with the more respectable working class, the welfare class has long been regarded as a kind of human waste…And if you make the terrible mistake of befriending or, worse, marrying or having children with one of us, we will quickly bring you down to our level.”
“We have committed to each other, I think, and I already feel a peculiar loyalty to her, as if she is my responsibility now, as if I owe her fidelity and our bond will be everlasting. From that day on, the girl is forbidden to play with me.”
“I lie sleepless on the floor in an unfamiliar room, listening to the snoring man who is my father, a stranger with the enormous body of a man.”
“I will be told, many times, that my mother ‘sleeps with men for money’, but I have no way of understanding what it means beyond the literal sense: she falls asleep with men, perhaps snuggling. I’m jealous of these men, of the comfort she brings them.”
“My mother presses the shelter’s buzzer for a long time before someone comes to let us in.”
“I spend a lot of time pestering my youngest uncle, who is shy and antisocial…When he’s not available to annoy, I bounce a tennis ball against the outside wall and dive to catch it, like a slips fielder; or I throw it at a tree stump, like an infielder; or I bowl yorkers down the driveway, pretending I’m Curtly Ambrose.”
“This is his way of contemplating escape, and escape now comes in two clear forms: leaving home, or suicide.”
“He has only one goal now: to escape his family, to live his own life, to start from scratch. His other ambitions are subservient to that one overpowering desire. He has decided to leave home as soon as he turns fifteen. That’s all he cares about, all he dares to imagine, the single thing he can control. Everything else is suspended until that moment.”
[On the anxiety of influence:] “The initial thrill of the encounter with Shakespeare, with Keats and Wordsworth, the sense of being possessed by something that made the world seem new, and alive with meaning and feeling, has been dulled by a new imperative, to convert it into writing and thereby make himself into that special thing: an artist.”
Cover design by W.H. Chong
Alexandra Coghlan, reviewing Stephen Hough’s “Enough: Scenes from Childhood”, asked “At what point did the ponderous autobiography get edged out by the slinky elliptical memoir?” We think it’s been a while, actually, but Childhood by Shannon Burns is happily emblematic of that development.
Portrait of the author as a grown man
An Obvious Disavowal
“Disclaimer” (Directed by Alfonso Cuarón Orozco from Renée Knight’s novel, 2024; Apple TV)
Prima facie, this appears to be a clever, intriguing, well-made, beautifully-performed dramatic series, with a cast headed by Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lesley Manville. A revenger’s tragedy, where a woman’s wicked past comes back to haunt her, undermine her marriage, further alienate her son, and damage her career. A series of flashbacks – the default of weak or flawed narratives, real and confected – terminates with cartoon-telescoping straight from a Warner Bros. cartoon, or Happy Tree Friends.
These scenarios, unfortunately, are not only ludicrous, but cynically so, involving plot-twist-cheating on an epic scale. At the black heart of this high-end trash, there are two cavernous black holes in particular. First, unless the revengers are metaphors for the conscience of Blanchett’s character (“Catherine Ravenscroft” – even the name seems to come from Barbara Cartland or Mills & Boon), there are insufficient objective inferences, let alone facts, such that the story, and the case against her, could never be mounted. Second, apart from an adulterous summer fling in Italy and some arguable wilful and callous blindness, one struggles to convict the woman of wickedness. I rather subscribe to L.P. Hartley’s statement: “Nothing is ever a lady’s fault.” And I know that’s old fashioned stuff, but I was vindicated at finale (which was predicted and predictable), and took no pleasure from it.
The whole mélange has not a jot of subtlety or credibility, and is psychologically weak in the extreme. Whilst there is much diverting sex, it is presented with determined bad taste and insensate boorishness. We add that the icky, creepy scene, where the young woman teases-out the boy’s sexual fantasies concerning Kylie Minogue, looks and plays false – it is a conversation that might be deployed by a perverted uncle, rather than a young mother, or imagined by a grieving older mother, IMHO.
Before the Fall (Cate Blanchett and Sacha Baron Cohen) – “Why didn’t I win for “Tar”?
All one can conclude, fairly comfortably, is that Kline’s and Manville’s characters are psychotic; that Cate (a great actress, particularly in roles where she’s coming apart) is enjoying a conceit of heroic masochism (but her younger ‘self’ looked more like a young Greta Scacchi); that boys and young men (who are inept at handling knives and forks, especially knives) are stupid, callous, selfish, and criminal; that the heroine’s husband has the resolve of a month-old damp lettuce, and that the ridiculously pompous and sanctimonious staff at Ravenscroft’s documentary studio are so stupid as to require their summary dismissal.
All at sea
Conclave
(Directed by Edward Berger, 2024) [Thanks to our Guest Reviewer, Dr. Jack White]
Last night, I attended the final night of the Italian Film Festival in Adelaide that presented “Conclave” – a papal thriller based on Robert Harris’s novel.
This is a film you must see, certain to take out many Academy Awards. Obviously, the setting is the Vatican. The Pope has died. The film explores the process by which Cardinals come together to vote for a new Pope. What is clear from the outset is that the cardinals are real people with real frailties who are driven by human motives of lust, power and control.
Playwright Peter Straughan has adapted Harris’ work in a beautifully balanced way. The acting is outstanding and includes Ralph Fiennes who plays the role of Cardinal Lawrence, the manager of the election who claims no interest in the top job. Then there are the papal contenders : Cardinal Bellini (played by Stanley Tucci) whose charter is liberal open-mindedness; Cardinal Tedesco, played by Sergio Castellitto, representing the conservative right of the church; John Lithgow plays the role of Cardinal Tremblay, obsessed with a desire for greatness; Nigerian Cardinal Adeyemi, played by Lucian Msamati, is the representative of the black people; and finally, Cardinal Benitez, played by Carlos Diehz, a surprise attendee working in Afghanistan whose background is relatively unknown.
The music and photography is exceptional. Add to this a twisting storyline and you will be hooked. Ultimately, Cardinal Lawrence finds his position more to be that of a detective who must investigate the facts from hearsay – and allow the mystery to unfold. “Conclave” is an exciting and tense thriller that will keep you guessing through to the end. A scene involving Sister Agnes (played by Isabella Rossellini) turns the film.
I am not of the Roman Catholic faith, but I found this political drama absorbing and stimulating. Not to be missed. Be assured, there is no certainty in this world.
Still Shining
(Marcia Hines at Norwood Town Hall, Adelaide, 4 October 2024)
She came from Boston to Australia on a six month gig in Hair, and 50 years later…she’s still here. And Australia is the better for it. Three times crowned as Australia’s Queen of Pop, Marcia’s lovely voice soars through all registers and her choice of material is broad but apt. At Norwood on Friday night, a packed Hall saw an enthusiastic (up in years) cohort get up and boogie, to songs such as Fire and Rain, I Want You Back, Shining, You, Disco Inferno, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, I Don’t Know How To Love Him, From the Inside, How Deep is Your Love, I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself, Hard to Breathe, and I’ve Got the Music in Me, accompanied by two excellent male singers and an amazing drummer/percussionist/guitarist, Stef Furnari.
Marcia worked the crowd with a short Q & A, during which she spontaneously belted out portions of Amazing Grace and The Age of Aquarius, also explaining her good looks at age 71 by saying “Black Don’t Crack.”
Hines is doing a national tour that, importantly, includes many regional towns. She’s touring for another couple of months, so see her if you can.
Thank you, Marcia. Your love still brings us to our knees.
Continue Reading →
Prima facie
(Our Guest Reviewer is a King’s Counsel of several decades experience, particularly in the criminal law)
Prima facie: (of first appearance) Where there is some evidence in support of an allegation made, which will stand unless it is displaced.
As it happens, I have never attended a performance by the National Theatre in London and I have not seen, or heard of, the actress Jodie Comer. That was until recently when I had the great pleasure to watch Prima facie, filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre and featuring Comer in a one-woman production occupying two hours. It is without doubt the best theatre that I have ever seen. Confronting but magnificent!
Without giving too much away, the plot centres around Tessa, a young working-class woman, who has excelled as a criminal defence barrister. She tells us the techniques that she deploys in securing acquittals for her clients, particularly those accused of sexual offences. (At this point it is worthwhile to note that these techniques are both proper and appropriate in revealing reasonable doubt).
Then things get tricky. Tessa, who doesn’t mind a drink or two (no judgment; no eyebrows raised here) has a fling with another counsel in her Chambers. However, once bitten, second try, and so a week later, after a big drink with fellow counsel, Tessa invites him back to her lodgings for enthusiastic sexual congress. Afterwards, Tessa is very unwell, naked, projectile vomiting into the toilet and counsel comes to her rescue. He collects Tessa from her squalid environs and puts her to bed.
Further encounters there occur; she says, without consent; he disagrees. Here’s the kicker; she reports her allegation to police; her colleague is charged with rape.
A trial ensues some 2 years later. I don’t need to tell you the verdict. You should be able to fathom that yourselves. The message from this powerful production, in my opinion, is twofold:
- For many it is attractive to blame perceived inadequacies of the criminal justice system and complain that the standard of proof is too high, that all complainants should be believed, and all accused convicted and imprisoned;
- The more nuanced message is: tread with care and circumspection before you engage the brutal and clunky mechanisms of the criminal courts to resolve your grievances. We have all had bad things happen – upsetting and distressing and often regretted. But move on.
I would encourage everyone to access this glorious production, to absorb the excellent performance and make up your own mind.
Continue Reading →Longlegs (2024)
(Director: Osgood Perkins, who is also the sole accredited writer. You have been warned).
Long Legs is so terrible that we advise against seeing it (if you value your time, money and/or pride).
SPOILER ALERT
In case there are any readers who might be considering seeing it, we will help dissuade you by posting some spoilers. And, perhaps some of you who have watched this rubbish could help us out with some of our queries. It starts off well enough – don’t all horror films? Perkins has just enough talent to do one good scene. Small girl, curiously alone in curiously isolated Oregon house, is confronted by a weird clown guy*. There’s a figure in black in a car in the driveway. Is the car her family’s or the weird clown guy’s? The weird clown guy is Nicolas Cage in a Witchy-Poo mask and a lot of white makeup, looking and acting every bit as stupid as Joachim Phoenix in Joker.
Cut to rookie FBI agent, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) who is wooden and socially awkward**, but has “half-psychic abilities”*** according to some obviously meaningless testing. You know the type, where the bewildered young person has to watch slides in a dark room**** and give answers to a disembodied voice#, the type of testing where the examinee turns to see behind the projector but can’t because of all the dust motes in the light@? This rookie and her arrogant male partner go looking for some serial killer called Longlegs who kills families somehow without being present. Sexist boy cop gets shot in the face because he didn’t listen to psychic girl.
Is the zombie-like rookie our kid from before, now all grown up? Of course she is. Is Longlegs the clown guy from before? Of course he is? Why is he called Longlegs when his legs are the same length as Nicholas Cage’s ordinary-length legs? Is agent Harker all retardo because of something clown guy did to her? Why does she live in a shed on the premises of her parents’ old house? Why does she make peculiar phone calls to her mother? Does she have a father? Is Longlegs her father? How does he get into her house? Why doesn’t she have curtains? What is the meaning of some kids having 9th birthdays on the 14th of the month? Why does Harker not tie her late-night crazy collage together with red string, like a normal cliché-obsessive cop? Why does it take so long to solve a simple substitution code?## Why, when she is poking about, holding a gun in shaking hands, doing her best Clarice Starling, is Harker’s scared breathing mixed up to 11 on the volume scale?@@
Don’t ask, because you will never know. Nor will you know why Harker’s mother Ruth (Alicia Witt) is getting around in a nun’s outfit, doing bad things, or why Nicholas Cage is called “The Toymaker” and is allowed to wear a disguise even while being questioned by the FBI. What’s with the creepy life-size doll that controls people, even though all it contains is an empty metal ball? Why didn’t the one, solo writer predict that some viewers might work out that the the sweet family (including a daughter who is about to turn 9 on the you-guessed- it) of Harker’s super-nice black supervisor (Blair Underwood) will become victims? Is any of this happening?
We were so confused that we turned to Wikipedia, which asserts “Longlegs has lived in the Harker basement, creating satanic dolls that Ruth, posing as a nun, delivered to families, causing them to kill each other. Lee’s doll blocked her memories of Longlegs while influencing her with her magic”. Of course. Now it makes sense.
This is an awful film. Apart from its incoherence and stupidity, it is has that worst quality common to all terrible films: It is boring.
[Editor’s note: Oh dear, Oz. What would your Dad have made of this, despite the fatuous praise being sung about it? For amateur productions with a horror aspect, try The Blair Witch Project.]Notes
[*It**The Silence of the Lambs
**** The Game
# Scream
## Zodiac
@@ Alien]
Continue Reading →Joep Beving : Hermetism
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 18 July 2024
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” That’s how one feels in reviewing Dutch minimalist pianist Joep Beving, who is obviously a very nice guy, but his work is alarmingly redolent of the kind of records Windham Hill put out in the 1980s.
We were told: “Beving’s latest endeavor, Hermetism, released in 2022, marks a return to solo piano, inspired by the ancient spiritual philosophy of Hermeticism. Through this project, Beving invites listeners into a meditative exploration of music’s ability to reflect the universal laws of nature and the interconnectedness of existence.” Rest assured we’re not being introduced to the St Anthony-kind of hermitism; rather, on a very dimly-lit stage (initially, a weak lamp only was directed at the piano keys) that was intermittently bathed in glaring light (see below), where the pianist, his back to the audience, was at times almost invisible, playing a number of noodling, dark, impressionistic and – dread word – mellow piano pieces, with a very basic structure, a simple tone accompanied by a guide one to form kinds of repetitive chords. The effect was pleasant enough, and represented an interesting departure from the standard piano recital format, but alas, tending to the soporific.
Beving’s latest endeavor, Hermetism, released in 2022, was ‘meditative’ and ‘immersive’, to use rather overworked terms, and smacked of highly competent film scores. In a recent interview with Edmund Black for In Review*, Beving remarked: “I wanted to go back to an era in which I thought things were looking more optimistic, so that’s kind of how the more romantic, fin-de-siècle vibe got into the album.” We liked “For Mark,” the therapeutic mood of “Pax,” and “Sleeping Lotus,” this last dedicated to his daughter, which came alive in the use of highly percussive notes.
Hermetism was pleasant but The Varnished Culture prefers Martha Argerich, Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein or Sergey Rachmaninov, playing less ‘wandering’ pieces, thanks.
Light installations by Boris Acket
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon Diaries Volume 1
(1918 – 1938) (Edited by Simon Heffer)
In the elusive search for historical truth, contemporary records such as diaries, even unreliable ones, can be valuable. Private diaries in particular, as they can break free of censorship, even self-censorship to a degree. Furthermore, insider diaries can give great insight into the mores of the times. Classic examples include Pepys, Boswell, Francis Kilvert, Anne Frank and Alan Clark.
Henry “Chips” Channon (the nickname came when he roomed at Christ Church College, Oxford with a friend nicknamed “Fish”) was born in 1897 in Chicago, son of a wealthy family; served with the Red Cross and as a attaché in Paris in the Great War; attended Oxford; soaked his parents for money; ‘anglicised,’ and married Honor, a daughter of the extremely wealthy family owning the Guinness company; obtained British citizenship (he despised his native America) and entered Parliament in 1935, serving as an obscure MP, obscure at least as revealed in this volume, until his death in 1958. He was notably undistinguished in his political career, but he seems to have attended every haut monde lunch, dinner, ball, party, soirée, and royal ceremony going. He knew everyone it seemed and tells us just what he thought of them. He was privy to events like the General Strike, the Abdication crisis, and the rise of international tension. The First Volume creates a vague feeling of dread, a time when Britain drank, danced, caroused and flounced about, careless and sans umbrella in the shadow of the gathering storm.
We except his feckless public service when it comes to his involvement in the Foreign Office, dealing with European difficulties in 1938. However, in relation to Continental affairs, he was wrong as he could be, and he was often wrong (we say this in hindsight). Virulently anti-Communist, slavishly attracted to royalty and the high-born, self-obsessed and obsessed with money, status and access to power, snobbishly admiring of “Strongmen” like Franco, Mussolini and You-Know-Who, he was one of Parliament’s enthusiastic advocates of appeasement, writing very waspish and derisive diary notes about anti-appeasers such as Churchill, Eden, Duff Cooper, etc.
Simon Heffer has done a superb job as editor, the exhaustive footnotes almost outdoing the Burke’s Peerage or the Almanach de Gotha, which is even more impressive when one notes there are two equally massive subsequent volumes (1938-1943 and 1943-1957). Expurgated versions came out in 1967 but are child’s play compared to these. And the footnotes are worth traversing while reading the diary entries, or afterwards: the detail is vivid and sometimes startling. Consider this footnote, for example: “Arthur Eric Rowton Gill (1882-1940) began in the Arts and Crafts movement and became a renowned sculptor and designer of typefaces. He adapted to the style of art deco in which he created three of his best-known works: Ariel, one of several sculptures at Broadcasting House; three sculptures depicting different winds, over the London Transport building at 55 Broadway in London; and seahorses at the Midland Hotel, Morecombe. Devoutly religious, he had incestuous relationships with two of his daughters and his sisters, and committed sex acts with his dog.”
Chips, ices, and Tallulah Bankhead (1926)
Here are some excerpts to get an idea of Channon’s style, wit (he was no Oscar Wilde), and (looking through the ‘high-resolution retrospectoscope‘) misjudgments, as well as times when he was ‘spot on’:
“I am susceptible to flattery, and male good looks; I hate and am uninterested in all the things men like such as sport, business, statistics, debates, speeches, war and the weather; but I am riveted by lust, bibelots, furniture and glamour, society and jewels.”
“He has a collection of some thirty or forty Hogarths as the painter was a protégé of an early Lord Lonsdale. Unfortunately, our host showed us one of ‘Lord Byron’, we did not know where to look.”
“The more I know of American civilisation, the more I realise how I despise it – and what a positive menace it is to the peace and future of the world – if it triumphs, the old civilisation that loved beauty and cruelty and lust and peace and the arts and rank and privileges – will pass from the picture. And we will have Fords, cinemas – ugh!! Give me Leninism in preference.”
“The government has chosen the ‘easiest way’ and at the eleventh hour decided to subsidise the mining industry…But is it wise to drop palliatives to the proletariat, who go on clamouring for more? – always more?”
(George VI): “He is completely uninteresting, undistinguished and a godawful bore!”
“A full, exhausting day. We had a luncheon party here, and the plot was to do a ‘politesse’ to Mrs. Simpson. She is a jolly, plain, intelligent, quiet, unpretentious and unprepossessing little woman, but as I wrote to Paul of Yugoslavia today, she has already the air of a personage who walks into a room as though she almost expected to be curtsied to. At least, she wouldn’t be too surprised. She has complete power over the Prince of Wales, who is trying to launch her socially.”
“Personally I think that they will be back in England in two years’ time living comfortably at the Fort or elsewhere.”
(George Moore): “He tells me over 200 women have written to him begging for rendezvous (mostly Americans). His dodge was always to answer and demand a photograph in the nude. This got rid of all but the most zealous, who complied.”
“I hate society at the moment: it is too fanatically anti-Hitler”.
“The morning was calm, the PM enchanting. I am in and out of his room constantly now. Early on, there were messages announcing mysterious movements of troops in Bavaria with the usual denials from Berlin. Then there was a grand luncheon party at 10 Downing Street at which, the Chamberlains entertained the Ribbentrops, the Halifaxes, Winston Churchills, etc. By then the news had reached the FO that the Germans had invaded Austria, and from 5 to 7 p.m. reports poured in. I was in Halifax’s room at 7.30 when the telephone rang ‘The Germans are in Vienna’, and five minutes later ‘The skies are black with Nazi planes’. We stood breathless in the Secretary of State’s room, wondering what would happen next. All night messages flowed in; by midnight Austria was a German province.”
“Halifax [Honor’s uncle] and Chamberlain are very great men who dwarf their colleagues; they are the greatest Englishmen alive, certainly; aside from them it is a mediocre crew; but I subscribe, I am afraid, to the totalitarian view that England is on the decline. We shall dwindle for a generation or so; we are a tired race and our genius, I believe, is dead. We produce nothing new whereas Germany and Italy are seething with vigour and life; we have only choruses of cranks! Democracy is absurd.”
“Militarism is dead in Germany: instead there is a cult for physical perfection and nakedness – there are even naked clubs. Physical exercise and homosexuality are the great modern German movements: both have taken on the proportions of a crusade.” (Berlin, 1928)
“The dreadful day has dawned coldly, and my limbs are numb and chilled. The telephone began early, Diana (and let me in parenthesis say that Duff Cooper has behaved shabbily. He was intimate with the King, he even flirted, or tried to, with Wallis, and she was eager to be with them at the Fort, at dinner parties, aboard the Nahlin and elsewhere, and now he is a Roundhead and calls Wallis to my face ‘a tenth-rate ugly old strumpet.’)”
“I had a row with that smelly, slimy Duchess of Atholl, who looks like an under-stuffed crocodile and has the manners of a downtrodden governess.”
“Ministers threaten to resign, but never do.”
“My new servant Morhan is an Irish ass, honest, sound…but a fool. Today he didn’t know where the Ritz was.”
“An unbelievable day in which two things occurred: I fell in love with the Prime Minister [Chamberlain], and Hitler took Vienna.”
