Obama’s dreadful
error about the
‘Polish death camps’
John Cameron
I will always remember 2011 with delight as the year my daughter was married but for most people it turned out to be a pretty depressing and frustrating year. On the other hand, all punditry and long-term weather forecasts were wide of the mark with Wall Street, the western currencies and even sea levels ending where they started.
No geopolitical or intelligence agency foresaw the Arab Spring or the replacement of the Greek and Italian leaders by personal representatives of the German chancellor.
My recollection is that they predicted an Israeli attack on Iran, another banking crisis, the collapse of the US dollar, the Japanese bond market and British house prices. As it turned out, the Anglo-French finally got an excuse to bomb Gaddafi and Islamicists everywhere attacked their minorities, which is deplorable – but it could have been worse.
The year’s non-event occurred at the Fukushima nuclear plant following an earthquake-driven tsunami: 20,000 people died in the real (natural) disaster – nobody at the plant. We said a sad farewell to icons like Seve Ballesteros, Steve Jobs and Václav Havel but some not-so-sad farewells to the likes of Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-il.
British golf had its best year ever with Rory McIlroy in the US Open, Darren Clarke in our Open and the progress of that ultimate touring professional Luke Donald. Mark Cavendish was rightly British sport personality of 2011 but it was Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara on the 90-foot Portuguese monster that will live in my memory.
It was an appalling year for popular music and films but ‘All Hell Let Loose’, Max Hastings’ magisterial history of the second world war, redeemed the literary scene.
Looking to 2012, the only truth I know is: ‘Don’t bet against America’, and since China’s approach to macroeconomic management is much the same, don’t bet against it either. We are too close to the EU to avoid another year of stagnation and the best we can hope for is the eurozone forging a single nation or arranging an orderly break-up.
Finally, 21 December 2012 marks the end of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar but Mayan scholars dismiss apocalyptic scenarios, leaving that field to the doomster Al Gore.
If I reach the age of 90,
I intend to take up
drinking seriously
Walter Humes
II
My current academic project also encourages thoughts of mortality. I am working on a revised version of a substantial book (it runs to more than 1,000 pages) that was first published in 1999, with updated editions appearing in 2003 and 2008. These three editions were co-edited with a colleague at Strathclyde University, Professor Tom Bryce. Tom and I are now both in our mid-60s and when we embarked on the latest revision we were conscious of the fact that ill-health (or worse) could upset our plans. Accordingly we invited two younger academics, whose work we admire, to join us in the task of preparing the text for publication. Should either or both of us fall off the perch, our new co-editors will see the project through to completion.
In his memoir and meditation on death, ‘Nothing to be Frightened Of’, the writer Julian Barnes observes, ‘When we let the mind roam to the circumstances of our own death, there is usually a magnetic pull towards the worst case or the best case’. For Barnes, the worst case involves enclosure and water, ‘and a period of time in which to endure the certainty of extinction’.
His best case is a medical diagnosis which gives him sufficient time and lucidity to write his last book. He recognises, however, that for many people the process of dying may be accompanied not only by pain and fear, but also by limited awareness of what is going on and an inability to express thoughts and feelings. He poses the disturbing question: ‘How successfully can we imagine dying – and the long lead-up to the event itself – in a state of incoherence and misunderstanding?’.
We are, of course, in territory where there are no guarantees. Or rather, as Barnes reminds us, only one guarantee: ‘the death rate for the human race is not a jot lower than one hundred per cent’. Dwelling on the inevitability of death is, however, not a profitable occupation. The only sensible course, as one of Barnes’s friends puts it, is to engage in ‘the acquisition of worthwhile short-term worries’, such as those that beset editors.
III
I do not subscribe to satellite or cable TV channels so the sheer awfulness of BBC and ITV offerings over Christmas – endless ‘celebrity’ trash and dispiriting ‘reviews of the year’ – encouraged me to revisit my DVD collection. Having recently watched, and greatly enjoyed, the film version of John le Carre’s ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, with Gary Oldman in the lead role as George Smiley, I decided to look again at the original TV productions of both ‘Tinker, Tailor’ and its sequel ‘Smiley’s People’.
Running to six episodes each, and featuring a long list of superb actors (Alec Guinness, Ian Richardson, Bernard Hepton, Beryl Reid, Patrick Stewart, Barry Foster, Sian Phillips, Hywel Bennett), they reminded me of what, with few exceptions, is now absent from mainstream television – acting of the highest quality, intelligent dialogue (unspoilt by oppressive background music), and wonderful narrative pacing. Both series also show moral subtlety in their treatment of the murky politics of espionage, in contrast to the crude relativism that is now the default stance of so much film and TV output.
From time to time I contemplate giving up television altogether. I would certainly miss news programmes, though radio and the internet offer alternative sources of information and analysis. What holds me back, however, is the prospect of years of frustrating correspondence with the TV licensing authority, which is notorious for its refusal to believe anyone who claims to find life quite tolerable without the mind-numbing junk that now constitutes some 80% of programmes. As a modest alternative, I may start a campaign to encourage viewers to switch off their sets entirely for at least one day a week. The predictable squeals of advertisers, facing reduced access to their victims, would not cause me any distress.
Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland and is now a visiting professor of education at the University of Stirling
