Twelve Films At Christmas - 1 & 2

I know I tend to repeat myself but, hey, there's only so many prejudices one man can inflict on the world. Don't worry I'm still staying clear of letting Trump get under my skin and I'm not even going to start as the world accelerates towards Hell in a handcart - have you seen the state of France and South Korea? It can make a man glad to be living in the People's Republic of Starmer. Steady on there Pig, you might end up contradicting yourself.

No, no, no, it's that time of year for watching even more films than I normally do. And let's start with a worthy repeat. The original 1947 Miracle on 34th Street is succinct and sweet. I see no reason to deviate from my earlier ranking of it. You'll have to look that up - the hit-count massages my ego.  

A very different kettle of fish is Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, Oh! What a Lovely War. This well-mounted succession of tableaux works from a Len Deighton expansion of the hit stage musical. Does it work as cinema? Critics have had doubts but I tend to think that this is an estimable piece of work which deals with tragedy without having to show any gore. My father (a martial man who held the Queen's commission) admired this film. So do I. 79/100. 

Tommy

I try to keep at least one non-fiction book going at any one time, alongside a couple of fictions. In this, as in so much else, I find myself inadequately mimicking the learning habits of my late father. I have just finished Richard Holmes's Tommy: the British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918. I have just noticed that Dad had written a Christmas message inside the cover when he and Mum gave it to me. How he would have loved Helen's wedding last weekend.

I commend Tommy to you. It is compendious, seven-hundred plus pages, but never tedious. It is impossible to read of WW1 without wondering just how you might have responded if you had been called to arms. One-hundred-and-twenty-three of the Aston Old Edwardians who went to war would never return. To this day we play our rugby on the ground bought in their memory. My generation has been spared.

Holmes quotes C.E. Montague whose war memoir was tellingly titled Disenchantment, but the power of the quoted words is not in that disaffection but rather in that agnosticism that is a necessary shield for all but the most gifted/afflicted:

But the war had to be won: that was flat. It was like putting out houses on fire, or not letting children be killed; it did not even need to be proved; that we had got to win was now the one quite certain thing left in a world of shaken certainties. 

Some Do Not

Some Do Not ... is the first of the tetralogy known by the collective title Parade's End. It is an arresting though difficult read, at times brutally modernist. In my current reading blitz I enjoyed it but you really have to concentrate as you read this one. Maybe it's just me but there are some books to which you can get away with not giving your full commitment - this is not one of them.

The author is the magnificently named English novelist Ford Madox Ford - though even that nomenclature conceals a story - he changed his surname from the germanic Hueffer in the wake of the Great War. The shadow of that conflict leers over the text even though the trenches are not described. Instead we have an obliquely described and poignant love story woven in and around a world undergoing seismic change. A beautifully crafted novel.

I Suspect I Must Be Middlebrow

You see it's like this - on Friday we went to the Symphony Hall (a piece of civic architecture I love - am I wrong to like the fact that the weight-lifting is set to be held there when Birmingham hosts the Commonwealth Games?) but not for one of your full-on classical concerts. No this was the CBSO playing film music with an announcer introducing each piece to the assembled masses. I'm searching for the right words - yes I know, it was bloody brilliant. And to prove the point was the sight of the happy throng of fellow middlebrows at the conclusion. We had been for a McDonald's before the concert - I can't decide whether we were being ironic in doing this. I enjoyed it.

civic architecture

More culture on Saturday evening: this time to the King Edward's School/King Edward's High School joint production of Oh What A Lovely War. This was held in the rather magnificent Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, a building which serves to remind you of the privileges that can be attached to private education. A good production even if some of the dialogue was inaudible. As for the piece itself, which I had only previously witnessed in its filmed version, it retains its power to affect. A good programme note by the Head of History at KES which quite properly posed questions about the way the conflict has been culturally appropriated. Just as the British perhaps learn their middle history (unwarrantedly) from Shakespeare, so they also tend to rely a tad too heavily on Blackadder and Oh What A Lovely War (I make no denial of the brilliance of both texts) for their understanding of the Great War.

Two hundred and forty-five KES boys died in the Great War. Their names were projected above the darkened stage at the conclusion of the drama. Chilling.

more civic architecture

Talking of civic architecture (which I was three paragraphs ago) Lord Digby Jones was sitting two seats in front of me at the Symphony Hall. In my cynical middle-age I'm afraid I used to regard Jones as something of a charlatan (something to do with my own self-loathing attitude to the profession that spawned us both and the fact that he went to UCL) but I've grown out of that phase. His oft-repeated defence of business as the principal engine for societal wealth, is a tune far too few are singing.

Local Hero

I took my dear old dad on a little pilgrimage today. Dad was the centenary historian for our alma mater, King Edward VI Aston School. In that capacity he added to his existing store of admiration for martial Aston Old Edwardians - prime amongst them Robert Edwin Phillips. He died in retirement in Cornwall after a career as a tax inspector, having cheated death in the Great War. This is the citation for his Victoria Cross, earned in battle in Kut, Mesopotamia in January 1917:

After his commanding officer had been mortally wounded while leading a counter-attack, Temporary Lieutenant Phillips went out under most intense fire to his assistance and eventually succeeded in bringing him back to our own lines. Captain Phillips showed sustained courage in its very highest form and throughout he had little chance of ever getting back alive.

This son of Aston was born and brought up in West Bromwich and a little delving (this internet thingy really ought to catch on) taught me that his home town has of late doubly honoured him. At his modest boyhood phone there is a blue plaque and nearby on a pleasant newish estate there is a road named for him. Behind this second tribute lies a tale of modern bureacracy - they got his name wrong (using his middle name rather than the first by which he was always known) and when the local residents were consulted about correcting the error, the majority refused on account of the inconvenience it would cause them. On balance anyone who has ever dealt with utility companies will see their pont of view. There is a happy ending however - the incorrect designation remains but the gallant Phillips has a unique street sign explaining his valour.

A happy ending to a tale of modern maladministration

We completed our little expedition with a carvery lunch and a pint and a half of mild at the Dovecote public house - change from thirteen quid for the two of us.

Sometimes life has more to offer than fulminating at the latest obscenity from the vile gobshite Trump. I know, I know, I shouldn't watch the news but old habits die hard,

Toodle-oo.