The Slow Death of a Dystopia.

Last Saturday the people of Berlin had to relive a nightmare as they recalled the dark days behind the Wall, but they luckily had the liberty to rejoice that this vast man made edifice has gone. Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. The Wall was a reminder of division and oppression. When it fell this became much more than the destruction of an artefact it was a signal that this symbol of an evil ideology has disappeared for eternity.

Socialism and communism were crude human experiments which simply did not work. On the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain a system of social engineering was enacted. The folly of these regimes were only revealed when the Wall collapsed. Capitalism is by no means the perfect social and economic system but at least it allows ingenuity and enterprise to flourish. Artistry is allowed to flower under this system but under socialism it simply stagnates. Socialism in its purest form seems humane but once it is put into practice it becomes a sinister behemoth which denies individuality.

The State just strips away all luxury, including free thought and free speech. Socialist states just serve to crush dreams and destroy aspiration. The GDR hemmed in an entire people for decades. However by the 1980s subversive elements were creeping in, and in the most unexpected quarters. Martin Cruz-Smith`s 1989 novel “Polar Star” is ostensibly a murder mystery focussing upon the unexplained death of a young woman from the East. However it is a book containing a rich seam of intrigue, as within this story there is a florid and memorable description of a smuggling operation. The contraband is not hard drugs or diamonds but cassette tapes of Western pop.

Life mirrors fiction as one of the most influential and popular bands to cross the divide in Germany is Depeche Mode. Their music is a characteristically stark palette of alienation and isolation. This sense of bleakness spoke to a city of people where life became a daily struggle. When the band returned to Berlin in 2013 it became the subject of a documentary film. The film was appropriately enough in Gothic monochrome recalling a much more forbidding time. The film is a tribute to the courage of a scarred nation.

We must always remember the hopes and dreams of a generation of East Germans and salute their bravery. We need to recognise that after the Second World War ended the allies destroyed fascism and Nazism and the entire world was thankful. Now that the Cold War has finished we must ensure that socialism and communism should never ever return.

Remember, remember….

“The Whore Of Babylon”-Illustration.

From Alan Moore`s “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-Black Dossier” (DC Comics 2018).

Tonight the people of Lewes remember the scandal of Guy Fawkes and the foiled Gunpowder Plot with the biggest Bonfire celebration in the UK. However Lewes also remembers the fate of 17 of their citizens who were burned at the stake for professing their Protestant faith. These were 17 Protestants out of an estimated 300 who were put to death during a murderous five year spree of religiously motivated killings under the Catholic monarch “Bloody” Queen Mary I.

A cursory observation of the Lewes Bonfire would suggest that very few people have forgotten or forgiven the actions of the Catholic Queen who hounded and then murdered Protestants. However historical context should be applied. Some participants appear to lampoon “Popery” with scarlet robes and vestments, but it is ridiculing the Catholic excesses of Mary Tudor, not the more benevolent actions employed by the Catholic church of today. Overt anti-Catholic prejudices rarely feature nowadays.

Nonetheless there have been a few occasions when high profile figures have appeared ready to stoke the flames once more. In 1981 the late firebrand cleric Rev. Ian Paisley arrived in Lewes with his “anti-Popery” leaflets. Such overtly flagrant bigotry was unwelcome and the following year an effigy of him was summarily burned.

Rev. Paisley`s attempts to expunge the Catholic religion from the British Isles were regarded as provocative and foolhardy. His fiery sermons from the pulpit were lionised by his community but condemned by his detractors as the utterances of a prejudiced and ignorant man. However in later life his stance towards Catholics mellowed.

His metamorphosis now seems extraordinary. While he was growing up in the isolated Protestant backwaters of County Armagh, his Preacher father instilled in him a harsh and uncompromising version of Biblical scripture. His father`s example lead him to believe that the King James Bible was to be read literally and was there to revive a more authentic Christianity. He believed that the Word was truth.

A similar uncompromising view of the Bible and Christianity imbued itself into the consciousness of Queen Mary, and later into the minds of Guy Fawkes and his plotters. We need to remember that religious extremism of any kind is morally wrong. The fact that there have been people throughout history prepared to murder others for professing another faith should serve a warning for us all.

Denial and Defamation: The ITN-LM Libel Trial Revisited (I) — Quillette

PART ONE: THE CAMPS Intro: From Phnom Pehn to Srebrenica In 1977, Noam Chomsky and his co-author, the late Edward S. Herman, wrote an essay for the Nation entitled “Distortions at Fourth Hand,” in which they scorned reports that the Khmer Rouge were turning Cambodia into a charnel house. Stories of genocide, they suggested, were […]
Denial and Defamation: The ITN-LM Libel Trial Revisited (I) — Quillette

Wick – A Folk Horror short. — Folk Horror Revival

Wick – The protector of a Witch is just as bad as a Witch. In August I had the tremendous honour of being invited to the wonderful Genesis cinema in Whitechapel for the premier screening of the new Folk Horror short film `The Wick’. Written, produced by and staring the clearly very talented Michelle Coverley […]
Wick – A Folk Horror short. — Folk Horror Revival

Usborne’s Ghosts, Christopher Maynard and Bosworth Hall Hotel

The Haunted Generation

I can remember exactly where I was sitting when the Spectre of Newby Church first froze the blood in my unsuspecting eight-year-old veins. I was in my tiny, North-Eastern home town of Yarm, in the corner of Levendale Primary School library: a makeshift enclave of plastic shelving units between ‘Middle Band’ and ‘Upper Band’; an educational liminal space packed with Target paperbacks, encyclopaedias that fell suspiciously open at the ‘human reproduction’ pages, and an unseemly collection of Willard Price novellas.

“Look,” said Christopher Herbert, his customary aroma of guinea pigs and acute flatulence filling the room with a wafting, beige haze. “It’s a ghost”.

I peered at the book that lay open on his bony knees, and every vital fluid in my body instantly evaporated. My limbs felt cold and lifeless, my senses numbed in a split-second of sheer terror. It was a ghost. Unmistakeably. A towering spectral monk, thin…

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Pulselovers, Mat Handley and Cotswold Stone — The Haunted Generation

I’m aware that my childhood memories are fading. Once razor-sharp recollections of sun-drenched (and, indeed, rain-soaked) escapades – the grubby friends, the mud-spattered tanktops, the lolly sticks on bicycle spokes – have become thin and hazy; drifting together into a cloud of indistinct vagueness… so that day, that day when that thing happened? Was it 1978 or 1979? Or was I even older than that? I can’t remember any more. The relentless march of middle-age erodes detail, yet magnifies longing… not just for the specific places and people of our youth, but for our distinct memories of them. Memories that we know we once had, but have now left… oh, over there somewhere. I think. Didn’t we? I don’t know, when did you last see them?
Pulselovers, Mat Handley and Cotswold Stone — The Haunted Generation

The Future Is Female.

Literary history was made this week when two women won the Booker Prize. Female writers and female characters are central to literature. I would like to detail the most compelling female characters within literature, in no particular order-

1.Morvern Callar.

From Alan Warner`s 1995 novel of the same name. Morvern is a shy shopworker from a remote Scottish village. When she discovers that her boyfriend has killed himself just before Christmas her reaction is unexpected. The story which unravels reads like an unreal odyssey of rediscovery. Warner captures the obsessions of a young woman living in the 1990s with eerie familiarity and accuracy. I was so surprised that a man, and a man from a different generation could encapsulate the young female imagination so expertly. In Warner`s narrative we see the inner life and ambition of someone who would either be patronised or ignored by the older male literary establishment.

2. Frankie Addams.

From Carson McCullers 1946 novel “Member of the Wedding”.

Addams is a twelve year old girl from the Deep South of America. She is a lonely and shy girl who feels at odds with the people around her. She relies on her imagination to survive. It is her only escape from the isolation and hardship she faces outside. McCullers also captures a rare truth, as she illustrates the inner turmoil of an adolescent girl who is trying to find meaning and purpose in a world that she barely understands.

3. Fay Langdon

From Anita Brookner`s 1990 novel “Brief Lives”. Fay is an elderly woman who was once an actress. She is vain, pompous and self obsessed. However she is extremely witty. She turns narcissism into an art form. The denouement is unexpected as we see her kindness reveal itself.

4. Lise.

From Muriel Spark`s 1970 novella “The Driver`s Seat”.

Lise is a complex character. She is impulsive and disinhibited and on a collision course that leads to her demise. It is the most illuminating and compassionate evocation of a troubled, disturbed and mercilessly short life. Spark`s prose is masterful, as any other writer would portray her with either ridicule or pity.

5. Aunt Sylvie.

From Marilynne Robinson`s 1980 novel “Housekeeping”.

Sylvie is another troubled character who has evidently lead a peripatetic life and has never really settled anywhere. When her sister Helen dies she decides to look after her two young nieces. However she has an eccentric manner of parenting and keeping house which alienates one sister but intrigues the other. Lucille leaves but her sister Ruth stays as her aunt becomes a much needed confidant. Their fate is unknown as the book ends on a deliberate ambiguity.

All of these characters show that women can be as heroic or as dastardly as men within fiction.

In the Country of Lost Things.

We are living in the country of lost things. Modern technology has left us bereft of those things now rendered obsolete or at least partially obsolete. Things like VHS recorders and tapes, audio cassette tapes, vinyl records, paper and hard backed books, newspapers. Smartphones have swallowed all of these whole. The sentimentality attached to those things from our past cannot be overestimated. However younger people are solidly indifferent to our “stuff”. Their homes are minimal yet efficient but also bare and devoid of any meaning.

As a country we have lost far too many things of value. We used to make glorious things that were feats of engineering, like ships (below). Now Brexit has left us feeling ashamed when we used to feel so proud of the things that we made.

This country also used to be a green and pleasant land, but now our wildlife is being decimated in the name of technological “progress”. Our almost insatiable thirst for on line shopping has lead to more congestion as fleets of vehicles carrying our wares clog the roads with pollution.

Our countryside was once vibrant and alive but today we rarely see a butterfly, a bee, a cuckoo or a fieldmouse. Bird song used to fill the air on crisp autumn mornings.

We rarely see or hear nature now. Our country has lost so much. Without all of these things we will lose our character, and our soul.

Casaubon`s Key.

George Eliot published her epic novel “Middlemarch” in 1872. It is ostensibly a tale of a provincial town resisting progress and scientific and artistic innovation. However there is an inner narrative which focusses upon the complex lives of the characters, and there are implicit moral lessons to be drawn from them.

The ill fated marriage between Dorothea Brooke and the Reverend Casaubon is a particularly poignant interlude, but it becomes clear later on in the book that their doomed relationship is an allegory, or a symbol of the continual conflict between academic learning and artistic insight. Dorothea is drawn to Casaubon`s apparent wisdom and dedication to his studies. His scholarly ambition is thwarted by his inability or reluctance to learn German. It is revealed that the German language and culture is central to many academic texts.

While the Casaubons are on their honeymoon, Dorothea meets Will Ladislaw. Ladislaw is a young protege of her husband as well as a distant cousin of his, and this meeting occurs at a significant moment. Casaubon is struggling to complete his studies and is withdrawing from Dorothea emotionally. Ladislaw is a young man possessed with artistic ideals who falls instantly in love with Dorothea who is yet to fall for his charms. She is still in love with her husband in spite of the indifference that he shows towards her. Her affection even extends towards her supporting his endeavour to write his magnum opus, the “Key to All Mythologies” which he is convinced will unlock all of the mysteries of life.

In spite of Dorothea`s unwavering support, Casaubon dies before completing it. The strain of attempting to solve all of the problems in the world proved to be too onerous and too much for his heart. The implication within the novel is that such a vast subject can never be understood as it is impossible. There really is no such “key” that can unlock the mysteries of the universe.

It is true, however that people continue to search for this elusive key and spend their entire lives convinced that they have all the answers. This is simply wishful thinking as even relatively modern innovations like Google cannot unlock all of the secrets that lie behind our existence. If we really want to find meaning in our lives we should simply find something that we enjoy doing like listening to our favourite music or relaxing with a good book. These are truly universal pleasures no matter who or wherever we are.