Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, and was recognised early on as a child prodigy at the piano. Supporters in her home town started a fund to help her become the first female black concert pianist in the US, but when she applied for a scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, she was rejected, which she suspected was due to racial discrimination (and considering this was Fifties America, it’s no great stretch to go along with that).
Eunice had to get a job, and she used her skills at the piano keyboard to get a residency at the Midtown Bar & Grill, Atlantic City. To ensure her Methodist minister mother wouldn’t find out she was playing “the devil’s music”, she adopted a stage name: Nina Simone. The bar owner said she had to sing as well as play if she wanted to keep her job and thus Simone’s deliciously dolorous voice was bestowed upon the world. And what a voice! She quickly built up a repertoire and a steady following, and was snapped up by Bethlehem Records, with whom she released her first album, Little Girl Blue.
There is much that could be written about Nina Simone: her disinclination towards the recording industry and refusal to be pigeonholed; her involvement in the civil rights movement (listen to the impassioned and provocative social commentary in her song Mississippi Goddam); her itinerant life, living in Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and France; her fiery temperament and regrettable legacy of abuse towards her daughter, Lisa.
However, it’s the fusion of that silky voice with her virtuoso piano playing that we’re interested in here. I have selected this clip from French TV show Tilt Magazine in 1967, in which Simone performs I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl. She is beguiling to watch as well as to listen to. Incidentally, in 2003, just days before her death, the Curtis Institute of Music bestowed on her a belated honorary degree.
Erskine Childers’ novel, The Riddle of the Sands, has a reasonable claim to have been the first true spy novel. Published in 1903, it enjoyed huge popularity in Britain in the years leading up to the First World War. Taking its cue from the adventure tales of Rider Haggard and R M Ballantyne, Childers’ novel contains less of the derring-do of those writers but lots more realistic detail and intrigue and thus more authenticity. This formula would be used later to great effect by such espionage writers as John Buchan and Ian Fleming.
When Charles Carruthers (it had to be “Carruthers”, right?) accepts an invitation from old Oxford chum Arthur Davies, to take a yachting and duck-shooting trip to the Frisian Islands (the archipelago at the eastern edge of the North Sea), he has no idea their holiday will become a daredevil investigation into a German plot to invade Britain. The action is centred around the large area of coastal waterway that is the Schleswig fiords, characterised by hundreds of channels and inlets and ever-shifting sandbanks that lend themselves to skilled navigators only. They lend themselves to secretive plots too, as it turns out, and when Carruthers and Davies stumble upon mysterious goings-on, we are drawn into a classic spy adventure in which the German plot to invade Britain is revealed…and of course eventually foiled. The ability to use boats in this environment is a secret weapon, and Davies, despite his eccentricity, is a gifted sailor. The minutiae of sailing and navigation throughout the book is engrossing.
The novel predicted the threat of war with Germany and was so prescient in its identification of the British coast’s defensive weaknesses that it came to influence the siting of new naval bases. As an aside, the story of its author is quite remarkable. Rather than following up the novel with a host of sequels as might have been expected (a sort of nautical equivalent of Biggles perhaps?), Childers instead entered politics. Quite bizarrely, since the novel is all about patriotic struggles for king and country, its writer eventually became a fervent Irish nationalist and was considered a traitor by the British government at the time of his death. He was executed by a firing squad in 1922, by order of the Irish Free State.
However, it is the novel that Childers will be chiefly remembered for, and I have selected as an excerpt the initial letter from Davies to Carruthers inviting him out to the Frisian Islands. It gives us an intriguing flavour of the adventure to come, plus an amusing insight into Davies’ scattergun psychology. It makes me want to grab an oilskin and a pipe and a pouch of “Raven mixture” and join the machinations!
Withers demurely handed me a letter bearing a German postmark and marked ‘Urgent’. I had just finished dressing, and was collecting my money and gloves. A momentary thrill of curiosity broke in upon my depression as I sat down to open it. A corner on the reverse of the envelope bore the blotted legend: ‘Very sorry, but there’s one other thing—a pair of rigging screws from Carey and Neilson’s, size 1–3/8, galvanized.’ Here it is:
Yacht Dulcibella,
Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Sept. 21.
Dear Carruthers,—
I daresay you’ll be surprised at hearing from me, as it’s ages since we met. It is more than likely, too, that what I’m going to suggest won’t suit you, for I know nothing of your plans, and if you’re in town at all you’re probably just getting into harness again and can’t get away. So I merely write on the off chance to ask if you would care to come out here and join me in a little yachting, and, I hope, duck-shooting. I know you’re keen on shooting, and I sort of remember that you have done some yachting too, though I rather forget about that. This part of the Baltic —the Schleswig fiords — is a splendid cruising-ground — A1 scenery — and there ought to be plenty of duck about soon, if it gets cold enough. I came out here via Holland and the Frisian Islands, starting early in August. My pals have had to leave me, and I’m badly in want of another, as I don’t want to lay up yet for a bit. I needn’t say how glad I should be if you could come. If you can, send me a wire to the P.O. here. Flushing and on by Hamburg will be your best route, I think. I’m having a few repairs done here, and will have them ready sharp by the time your train arrives. Bring your gun and a good lot of No. 4’s; and would you mind calling at Lancaster’s and asking for mine, and bringing it too? Bring some oilskins. Better get the eleven-shilling sort, jacket and trousers — not the ‘yachting’ brand; and if you paint bring your gear. I know you speak German like a native, and that will be a great help. Forgive this hail of directions, but I’ve a sort of feeling that I’m in luck and that you’ll come. Anyway, I hope you and the F.O. both flourish. Good-bye.
Yours ever, Arthur H. Davies.
Would you mind bringing me out a prismatic compass, and a pound of Raven mixture?
I pulled out the letter again, and ran down its impulsive staccato sentences, affecting to ignore what a gust of fresh air, high spirits, and good fellowship this flimsy bit of paper wafted into the jaded club-room. On re-perusal, it was full of evil presage — ‘A1 scenery’ — but what of equinoctial storms and October fogs? Every sane yachtsman was paying off his crew now. ‘There ought to be duck’ — vague, very vague. ‘If it gets cold enough’ — cold and yachting seemed to be a gratuitously monstrous union. His pals had left him; why? ‘Not the “yachting” brand’; and why not? As to the size, comfort, and crew of the yacht — all cheerfully ignored; so many maddening blanks. And, by the way, why in Heaven’s name ‘a prismatic compass’?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Le déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party) wowed the critics at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882 and remains one of the greats of Impressionism. It depicts a convivial bunch of diners enjoying a summertime meal alfresco at the Maison Fournaise, overlooking the Seine on the Île de Chatou, just west of Paris. This is the heart of Impressionist leisure land, and to this day the restaurant exists, on what is now dubbed L’île des Impressionnistes.
The diners are all friends or colleagues of Renoir. In the foreground, seated lower-right, is his fellow artist Gustave Caillebotte, who is gazing at Renoir’s future wife, seamstress Aline Charigot, sitting opposite and cooing at her dog. Next to Caillebotte is actress Angèle Legault and, standing above her, Italian journalist Adrien Maggiolo. At the back, wearing a top hat, art historian and collector Charles Ephrussi speaks with poet and critic, Jules Laforgue.
Leaning against the railing are Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise, the daughter of the restaurant’s proprietor, and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise Jr, who handled the boat rentals. Rowing was the main attraction at Chatou, and Renoir’s diners wear the straw hats and blue dresses that were the fashionable boating attire of middle-class Parisian daytrippers.
Renoir spent months making numerous changes to his canvas, painting the individual figures when his models were available (there is correspondence from Renoir moaning about models failing to turn up). Nonetheless, Renoir captures the freshness of his vision splendidly, and we can allow ourselves to be fooled that he has spontaneously captured a moment in time. It is a vibrant work of art celebrating good company and good dining, and it certainly gives us the impression of a very pleasant and carefree afternoon.
Many a comedy double act or group cut its teeth as members of the Cambridge Footlights, the amateur theatrical club run by students of Cambridge University (and which has been going since 1883) – Beyond the Fringe, Monty Python, the Goodies, and a surprising number of media personalities active on our television screens today. One pair of former Footlighters pursue their careers individually these days but for a long time throughout the 1980s and 90s their obvious comedic chemistry was exploited to great effect as a double act. I’m talking about Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, who collaborated in such programmes as the Black Adder series, Jeeves and Wooster, and four series of A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
A Bit of Fry and Laurie was a sketch show cast for a post-Alternative comedy audience, in which elaborate wordplay and innuendo were staples of its material. Both performers brought great characterisation to the sketches, and were equally funny, though Fry’s well-known intellectual heft was clearly present throughout the series.
My favourites of the series’ characters were John (Fry) and Peter (Laurie), who are high-powered, hard-drinking business execs, engaged in backs-to-the-wall, boardroom hard talk, the joke being that their location, unlike London or New York, is completely nondescript (Uttoxeter) and their business distinctly underwhelming (a health club). The characters are of course a parody of hard-driving businessmen of the time, drawing inspiration from such boardroom soap operas as Man at the Top and Howards’ Way, in which characters’ bombast is delivered with such complete seriousness, and as if the fate of the free world depended on it, about matters that the viewers know are of no real consequence.
John and Peter’s loud catchphrase was “Damn!” and several increasingly ridiculous variations on this theme (“Three pints of Damn and a chaser of Hell-blast!”), as they uncover some new business-critical twist or plot engineered by arch-rival Marjorie, John’s ex-wife. This marvellous premise is summed up thus:
“Dammit John, I’m talking about the big idea. The dream that you and I shared. The dream of a health club that would put Uttoxeter on the goddamned map once and for all”
A nocturne is a musical composition intended to be evocative of the night and thus quite wistful and dreamy in nature. Although the term goes back a long way in musical history, its genesis as a distinct musical genre didn’t come about until the 19th century when Irish composer John Field wrote several pieces under this specific title of “nocturne”. He in turn heavily influenced one Frédéric Chopin who wrote a perfect set of 21 nocturnes that became the romantic period’s best-known exemplar of the form (to the detriment of Field’s legacy, since Field’s piano work is practically unheard these days when compared to Chopin’s piano repertoire).
Arguably Chopin’s most famous piece is the subject of today’s blog, his Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2, written around 1830 when Chopin was in his early twenties and his creative juices were in full flow. It has been a permanent fixture of the Classic FM Hall of Fame ever since it started in 1996. Its beguiling melody haunts from start to finish. As the song progresses, the main melody is repeated three times, and each time includes more and more ornamentation, a classic Chopin technique. It’s played in andante and espress dolce, meaning moderately slow and expressively sweet.
Pianists live and die today by their ability to tackle Chopin’s repertoire of hardy perennials, and the Nocturnes are no exception — the list of great pianists that have committed their interpretations to record is extensive and includes Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alfred Cortot, and Maurizio Pollini. I have chosen a recording by Polish pianist Arthur Rubinstein, regarded by many as the greatest Chopin interpreter of his time. He played in public for eight decades so you can be sure we’re in safe hands. Listen to this masterpiece; it’s pure tenderness.
What’s your favourite dish? If you were asked to choose your “last supper”, what would it be? For me, I would likely choose that classic Provençal seafood stew, bouillabaisse. I still keep, tucked into a Roux Brothers cookery book (that I see from the inner leaf came from my mum in Christmas 1988), a cut-out recipe for bouillabaisse that I have returned to many times over the years. My version is probably not authentic (to be so, it must apparently contain what the French call “rascasse” – i.e. scorpionfish – which tends not to be available at the Morrisons fish counter) but they say that recipes vary from family to family in Marseille anyway. At any rate, it’s a deeply rich and satisfying dish, and it goes down a treat. Like many a classic French dish (think pot au feu, cassoulet, bœuf bourguignon…) bouillabaisse has a noble charm to it and there’s a giant of 19th century literature, William Makepeace Thackeray, who agrees with me.
You may know of William Thackeray from his classic novel, Vanity Fair, but he was also responsible for many an amusing verse. He was, by all accounts, a really funny guy; Trollope said of him: “he rarely uttered a word, either with his pen or his mouth, in which there was not an intention to reach our sense of humour”. This poem, The Ballad of the Bouillabaisse, from his 1855 collection of verse, Ballads, is typical: a wonderfully crafted and charming tribute to the noble dish, of which Thackeray was clearly a fan from his many years residing in Paris.
When one day I am next in Paris, or Marseille, I’d like to think I might find an establishment suitably similar to that conjured up in Thackeray’s poem, find a table in a nook, and order a steaming bowl of bouillabaisse and a bottle of “the Chambertin with yellow seal”. For, as Thackeray says, “true philosophers…should love good victuals and good drinks”. Failing the realisation of that dream, however, I still have my trusty old recipe.
Read the poem below as you (here’s a treat!) listen to your blogger reciting the poem whilst backed by some glorious French accordion music. Best enjoyed when hungry…
A street there is in Paris famous, For which no rhyme our language yields, Rue Neuve des petits Champs its name is— The New Street of the Little Fields; And here ’s an inn, not rich and splendid, But still in comfortable case— The which in youth I oft attended, To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.
This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is— A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terrés tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.
Indeed, a rich and savory stew ’t is; And true philosophers, methinks, Who love all sorts of natural beauties, Should love good victuals and good drinks. And Cordelier or Benedictine Might gladly, sure, his lot embrace, Nor find a fast-day too afflicting, Which served him up a Bouillabaisse.
I wonder if the house still there is? Yes, here the lamp is as before; The smiling, red-cheeked écaillère is Still opening oysters at the door. Is Terré still alive and able? I recollect his droll grimace He’d come and smile before your table, And hop’d you lik’d your Bouillabaisse.
We enter; nothing’s changed or older. “How’s Monsieur Terré, waiter, pray?” The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder;— “Monsieur is dead this many a day.” “It is the lot of saint and sinner. So honest Terré ’s run his race!” “What will Monsieur require for dinner?” “Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse?
“Oh, oui, Monsieur,” ’s the waiter’s answer; “Quel vin Monsieur désire-t-il?” “Tell me a good one.” “That I can, sir; The Chambertin with yellow seal.” “So Terré’s gone,” I say and sink in My old accustom’d corner-place; “He’s done with feasting and with drinking, With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse.”
My old accustom’d corner here is— The table still is in the nook; Ah! vanish’d many a busy year is, This well-known chair since last I took. When first I saw ye, Cari luoghi, I’d scarce a beard upon my face, And now a grizzled, grim old fogy, I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse.
Where are you, old companions trusty Of early days, here met to dine? Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty— I’ll pledge them in the good old wine. The kind old voices and old faces My memory can quick retrace; Around the board they take their places, And share the wine and Bouillabaisse.
There’s Jack has made a wondrous marriage; There’s laughing Tom is laughing yet; There’s brave Augustus drives his carriage; There’s poor old Fred in the Gazette; On James’s head the grass is growing: Good Lord! the world has wagg’d apace Since here we set the Claret flowing, And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse.
Ah me! how quick the days are flitting! I mind me of a time that’s gone, When here I’d sit, as now I’m sitting, In this same place—but not alone. A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face look’d fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smil’d to cheer me. —There’s no one now to share my cup.
I drink it as the Fates ordain it. Come, fill it, and have done with rhymes; Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it In memory of dear old times. Welcome the wine, whate’er the seal is; And sit you down and say your grace With thankful heart, whate’er the meal is. —Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse!
A bouillabaisse I made!William Makepeace Thackeray
I discovered Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch-22 way back in my early twenties and went on to re-read it in that decade at least once, maybe twice. It is placed squarely on that literary pedestal known as “the great American novel” and with some justification, since it regularly tops polls and even the BBC’s Big Read survey in 2003 (the biggest single test of public reading taste to date) had it ranked number 11 in the UK’s best-loved books. It is a darkly humorous and absurdist satire, that excoriates the illogical nihilism of war, and it does it masterfully.
I won’t attempt a plot summary, so let me just briefly frame the story. The novel follows the exploits of the fictional American 256th fighter squadron, stationed on the island of Pianosa in Italy’s Tuscan archipelago, during the height of World War II. With a huge cast of characters and a narrative that switches viewpoints and chronology on a regular basis, Heller creates a delicious mix of absurdity and hilarity.
Chief lunatic in the asylum is Captain John Yossarian, bomber pilot, whose main ambition in life is to stay alive (“live forever or die in the attempt”). Yossarian doesn’t distinguish between the “enemy” and his superiors; as far as he’s concerned, the enemy is anybody who’s going to get him killed, no matter which side they’re on, and he concocts a series of ingenious, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, methods for avoiding the suicidal bombing missions. In so doing, the Yossarian character acts as the conscience of the story; his is the voice of reason and righteous anger against the war and the faceless bureaucracy that pulls its strings. It is that Kafkaesque bureaucracy that thwarts his and others’ attempts to avoid dangerous situations, most notably with the infamous Catch-22.
A catch-22, of course, is a paradoxical situation from which a person cannot escape due to its contradictory rules. It is perhaps notable that the phrase, coined by Heller, has become part of the lexicon; life is indeed full of such situations (“how do I gain experience in a job if I am always turned down for not having any experience?”). In the book it is used in a variety of different formulations to justify some military requirement or other. Incidentally, Heller’s original title was Catch-18 but for reasons of euphony (and the release of another book, Leon Uris’s Mila 18) it was changed to Catch-22. Here’s an example of how the catch works.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
When I was growing up in the seventies, after a decade of mainly black and white television, there was a plethora of new, colourful, exciting TV dramas: Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Champions, The Persuaders, Kojak…the list goes on.
Most of these of course were American-produced and the industry churned them out to a public hungry for entertainment. A little-known name outside of the TV industry is Iranian director Reza Badiyi, but he deserves recognition from those of us who devoured hours of the aforementioned shows, for Badiyi helmed literally hundreds of hours of episodic TV. He directed more than 430 episodes of television, including multiple episodes of Mission: Impossible, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five‑O, The Incredible Hulk, T.J. Hooker, and Cagney and Lacey.
Badiyi began his American career as a cinematographer, having moved from Iran in 1955 and graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in film-making. He worked with directors such as Sam Peckinpah and Robert Altman before moving increasingly into television. No-one would claim Badiyi’s work in the seventies as great works of art but, with their breakthrough visual effects, they were certainly culturally significant for young viewers like myself.
To represent Badiyi’s oeuvre I have chosen the title visualisation (i.e. the opening and closing credits) for Hawaii Five‑0. If you were alive in the seventies, there’s a very high probability these images will be very familiar to you. Backed by an irresistible score by Richard Shores, Badiyi used dynamic, zooming photography, copious imagery from Hawaii (the 50th State — Five‑0 — get it?), with cool quick-cuts and freeze-frames to set the viewer up nicely for the upcoming crime-defeating drama. Who can forget the fast zoom-in to the top balcony of the Ilikai Hotel, with Jack Lord’s Steve McGarrett turning to face the camera?
For the closing credits, Badiyi chose to use these iconic outrigger canoeists battling the surf (anyone remember sitting in a line of like-minded plonkers on a dance floor, paddling like crazy and singing duh-duh-duh-duh duhhhh duhhhh…?)
All in all, a bravura title visualisation by one of the most prolific directors of episodic series television in the history of the medium. Book him, Danno!
J M W Turner is famed for his mastery of light and colour. For him, as for Monet, light was a miraculous phenomenon — it produced colour, it sculpted form and mood and it revealed the beauty of nature. He was also remarkably prolific, leaving some 550 oil paintings and 2,000 watercolours (as well as about 30,000 sketches), so you don’t have to go out of your way in this country to find a Turner. He was a keen traveller, and I love the fact that he came to Yorkshire and painted such familiar landmarks (to us) as Hardraw Force, Malham Cove, and Harewood House. Indeed, the Tate holds six full sketchbooks from Turner’s tour of Yorkshire in 1816.
However, the subject of this blog is set not in Yorkshire but on the Thames river. This painting by Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, on display in the National Gallery, depicts the last journey of the HMS Temeraire. The Temeraire had been a celebrated gunship that had fought valiantly in Lord Nelson’s fleet at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Indeed, prior to that battle, she had been merely the Temeraire; it was afterwards she was honoured with the “Fighting” sobriquet. Thirty three years later, however, decaying and well past her glory days, she was towed up the Thames from Sheerness to be broken up in a Rotherhithe shipyard.
Turner’s painting pays tribute to the Temeraire’s heroic past. The glorious sunset is a fanfare of colour in her honour. Paint is laid on thickly to render the sun’s rays striking the clouds, whilst by contrast, the ship’s rigging is meticulously painted. It can be seen as a symbol of the end of an era, even the decline of Britain’s naval power, with the sun setting on the days of elegant, tall-masted warships. The Temeraire is already phantasmal, behind the more solid form of the squat little steam tug that pulls her along to her fate.
Turner was in his sixties when he painted The Fighting Temeraire; perhaps this was behind his thinking in terms of the end of an era. In any event, the painting is an arresting piece of work and, distinct from Turner’s many strictly-landscape paintings, it tells a story. I love it.
There’s been a lot of talk in the media recently about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Facebook uses it for targeted advertising, photo tagging, and news feeds. Microsoft and Apple use it to power their digital assistants, Cortana and Siri, and Google’s search engine has utilised AI from the beginning. There appears to be something of a chase to create flexible, self-teaching AI that will mirror human learning and apparently transform our lives.
There have been some big-name doom-mongers on this subject, however. Elon Musk thinks AI is probably humanity’s “biggest existential threat”. Stephen Hawking fears that AI may “replace humans altogether”. Bill Gates agrees with both of them. Me, I’m not so sure; surely you can always turn a machine off?…(on the other hand, have you ever tried closing Skype?)
This concept of computers/machines gone bad is a well-worn theme in science fiction, with the Terminator series of films an obvious example, but it was back in 1968, in Stanley Kubrik and Arthur C Clarke’s seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey, that we were introduced to our first electronic wrong ‘un, HAL 9000. HAL (from Heuristically programmed ALgorithm, apparently, though some have conjectured an easily-decrypted code version of IBM) is a sentient computer controlling the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft on its mission to Jupiter.
HAL is initially regarded as another member of the crew, engaging genially with its human colleagues, playing chess with them and so on. However, he begins to malfunction in subtle ways. As the malfunctioning deteriorates, the crew members discuss the possibility of disconnecting HAL’s cognitive circuits. Unfortunately, HAL can read lips and discerns their plan, and his programmed directives to protect the mission lead him to reason that he must kill the astronauts. In this classic scene, crew member Dave Bowman is outside the main craft in a “pod” and is seeking re-entry, asking HAL to open the pod bay doors. HAL (voiced chillingly by Douglas Rain) isn’t playing ball…
Commentaries on excellence in art, music, film, and literature
