I recently heard the track below on Radio 3, and it rooted me to the spot. A few days later, I held in my hands the album from which it is taken – The Sound of Light, pieces by Rameau played by Musica Aeterna under the wunderkind conductor Teodor Currentzis. I've been playing it repeatedly, and when you listen to this, the Entrée pour les Muses, les Zéphyrs, les Saisons, les Heures et les Arts from Les Boréades, I think you'll understand why. Here are charm, delight and wonder in concentrated form...
Tuesday, 30 June 2020
Cue Music
In times like these, I'm sure we all must feel the need from time to time to (in Patrick Kurp's words) 'address the charm, delight and wonder deficit'. For me, the shortest way to charm, delight and wonder is through music – a medium that can be put to programmatic and descriptive uses, but in its purest from is an end in itself; it is 'about' nothing else. As a result music communicates directly, without mediation, straight to the nerve ends, in a way that marks it out from other art forms.
I recently heard the track below on Radio 3, and it rooted me to the spot. A few days later, I held in my hands the album from which it is taken – The Sound of Light, pieces by Rameau played by Musica Aeterna under the wunderkind conductor Teodor Currentzis. I've been playing it repeatedly, and when you listen to this, the Entrée pour les Muses, les Zéphyrs, les Saisons, les Heures et les Arts from Les Boréades, I think you'll understand why. Here are charm, delight and wonder in concentrated form...
I recently heard the track below on Radio 3, and it rooted me to the spot. A few days later, I held in my hands the album from which it is taken – The Sound of Light, pieces by Rameau played by Musica Aeterna under the wunderkind conductor Teodor Currentzis. I've been playing it repeatedly, and when you listen to this, the Entrée pour les Muses, les Zéphyrs, les Saisons, les Heures et les Arts from Les Boréades, I think you'll understand why. Here are charm, delight and wonder in concentrated form...
Sowell's Principle
I'm not planning to make 'Quote of the Day' a daily feature, but I couldn't resist this from the great American economist (and wonderfully lucid writer) Thomas Sowell, who turns 90 today:
'I write only when I have something to say. The big disadvantage of this is that it can mean a lot of down time.'
This can also, of course, be seen as a big advantage, for those not obliged to earn their living by writing...
There are all too many writers – perhaps a majority – who clearly don't live by Sowell's principle.
'I write only when I have something to say. The big disadvantage of this is that it can mean a lot of down time.'
This can also, of course, be seen as a big advantage, for those not obliged to earn their living by writing...
There are all too many writers – perhaps a majority – who clearly don't live by Sowell's principle.
Monday, 29 June 2020
Quote of the Day
'Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.'
Giacomo Leopardi, born on this day in 1798.
Anyone who has spent time with very young children will know the truth of this. We adults can take steps to guard ourselves against falling into the latter category, chiefly by giving thanks and paying attention.
Giacomo Leopardi, born on this day in 1798.
Anyone who has spent time with very young children will know the truth of this. We adults can take steps to guard ourselves against falling into the latter category, chiefly by giving thanks and paying attention.
Sunday, 28 June 2020
Shandy Hall
Wading through 'my papers', I am reminded of how many of England's literary shrines I visited in the course of my hack work – so many that at one time I envisaged making a book of them. Just now I came across a piece I wrote (I think with that book in mind) about one of the least known of those literary shrines: Shandy Hall, in the delightful stone-built village of Coxwold, near Thirsk, in North Yorkshire. The name is doubly apt: in Yorkshire dialect 'shandy' means 'slightly crazy, eccentric, off-kilter' – a fair description of the house itself, which proceeds erratically from a huge ancient stone chimney at one end to a correct Georgian façade at the other – and Shandy Hall was the home, from 1760 to 1768, of Laurence Sterne, the vicar of Coxwold, who wrote his comic masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, within its shandy walls.
The house, which is not large, was rescued from a state of dereliction bordering on collapse by the late Kenneth Monkman, a Sterne enthusiast and scholar, and his wife Julia. Monkman founded a trust, launched an appeal, set about restoring the house, and, in 1973, finally opened it to the public. Nothing that was in the house when Sterne lived there had survived, but a few items came back, and the house's prize exhibit, the great Nollekens bust of Sterne (the twin of the bust in the National Portrait Gallery), was, by a fine stroke of luck, picked up in an antique shop. Sterne's own books were virtually impossible to trace, as – unusually for his time – he never put his name in them. However, Monkman assembled a splendid collection of early editions of Sterne's works and titles known to have been in his library, and now they line the walls of Sterne's 'philosophical hut', the little study by the front door where he wrote Tristram Shandy.
It's more than thirty years since I visited Shandy Hall, but I remember it as one of my more enjoyable literary pilgrimages, not least because I was shown round by Kenneth Monkman himself. Since then the library has grown into the world's largest collection of editions of Sterne's works, and the gardens of Shandy Hall, restored and developed by Julia Monkman, have become a major attraction in themselves. Most visitors to this corner of Yorkshire are attracted not by the name of Laurence Sterne but by that of 'James Herriot', the pen name of Jim Wight, the Thirsk vet who wrote All Creatures Great and Small and sold many millions of books. This is 'Herriot Country' and will never be 'Sterne Country' – but if you ever find yourself in the vicinity, do visit Coxwold and its quirky literary shrine. And, while you're there, drop in on the parish church, where Sterne preached (until his health broke), and where his remains are buried – well, they are very probably his remains: I've told that story before.
The house, which is not large, was rescued from a state of dereliction bordering on collapse by the late Kenneth Monkman, a Sterne enthusiast and scholar, and his wife Julia. Monkman founded a trust, launched an appeal, set about restoring the house, and, in 1973, finally opened it to the public. Nothing that was in the house when Sterne lived there had survived, but a few items came back, and the house's prize exhibit, the great Nollekens bust of Sterne (the twin of the bust in the National Portrait Gallery), was, by a fine stroke of luck, picked up in an antique shop. Sterne's own books were virtually impossible to trace, as – unusually for his time – he never put his name in them. However, Monkman assembled a splendid collection of early editions of Sterne's works and titles known to have been in his library, and now they line the walls of Sterne's 'philosophical hut', the little study by the front door where he wrote Tristram Shandy.
It's more than thirty years since I visited Shandy Hall, but I remember it as one of my more enjoyable literary pilgrimages, not least because I was shown round by Kenneth Monkman himself. Since then the library has grown into the world's largest collection of editions of Sterne's works, and the gardens of Shandy Hall, restored and developed by Julia Monkman, have become a major attraction in themselves. Most visitors to this corner of Yorkshire are attracted not by the name of Laurence Sterne but by that of 'James Herriot', the pen name of Jim Wight, the Thirsk vet who wrote All Creatures Great and Small and sold many millions of books. This is 'Herriot Country' and will never be 'Sterne Country' – but if you ever find yourself in the vicinity, do visit Coxwold and its quirky literary shrine. And, while you're there, drop in on the parish church, where Sterne preached (until his health broke), and where his remains are buried – well, they are very probably his remains: I've told that story before.
From the Mad World
Shopping in Sainsburys just now, I was delighted to see that the Argos outlet there is now hung with rainbow-coloured bunting declaring that 'Argos proudly supports the LGBT+ Community'. This was timely, as I'd been agonising for some while over just where Argos stood in relation to the LGBT+ Community, and was quite prepared to take my custom elsewhere if their support was anything less than proud. Now I know just where they stand, I can enjoy their uniquely dehumanised shopping experience with a clear conscience.
Elsewhere in the mad world – to be precise, on a back street of the suburban demiparadise that is my home – three youngish (white) people were standing by the roadside yesterday afternoon, bearing placards stating that 'Black Lives Matter' (and here was me thinking they don't! Thanks for putting me right, guys). They made a rather forlorn spectacle, reminiscent of Father Ted and Father Dougal protesting outside the Craggie Island cinema ('Down with This Sort of Thing'). Mrs Nige, who is more vocal than I am, shouted across at them that they should check out Zuby. I helpfully spelt it out for them, letter by letter. In the unlikely event that they do check him out, they will discover, to their horror, that the very personable Zuby is a rapper and podcaster who, despite his pigmentation, takes an extremely dim view of the Black Lives Matter movement. Can such things be?
Elsewhere in the mad world – to be precise, on a back street of the suburban demiparadise that is my home – three youngish (white) people were standing by the roadside yesterday afternoon, bearing placards stating that 'Black Lives Matter' (and here was me thinking they don't! Thanks for putting me right, guys). They made a rather forlorn spectacle, reminiscent of Father Ted and Father Dougal protesting outside the Craggie Island cinema ('Down with This Sort of Thing'). Mrs Nige, who is more vocal than I am, shouted across at them that they should check out Zuby. I helpfully spelt it out for them, letter by letter. In the unlikely event that they do check him out, they will discover, to their horror, that the very personable Zuby is a rapper and podcaster who, despite his pigmentation, takes an extremely dim view of the Black Lives Matter movement. Can such things be?
Thursday, 25 June 2020
Encouraging the Mob
In the light of what's been going on lately on both sides of the Atlantic, it's instructive to read, in Jenny Uglow's excellent The Lunar Men, about certain events that took place in Birmingham in 1791. Here Joseph Priestley, brilliant scientist, Dissenting preacher and outspoken radical, formed a Constitutional Society, whose first act was to hold a public dinner 'for any Friend of Freedom' on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. (Priestley, naively but genuinely, believed that the revolution in France was going to create Paradise on Earth.) Predictably enough, the dinner, in a Birmingham hotel, drew various hecklers, and some of the guests were pelted with mud and stones as they left. However, the real action began some hours later, when a much more threatening mob descended, only to find that they'd missed the dinner by several hours. So they vented their anger by breaking the windows of the hotel, then set about smashing up Priestley's New Meeting House, tearing out and burning the furnishings, then putting the building to the torch.
The mob then moved on to Priestley's house, a mile away at Fair Hill, from which Priestley and his wife were persuaded to fly. After fending off the rioters for a while, those defending the house also fled in a hail of stones, and the mob moved in and set about destroying the house and its contents, smashing up everything in Priestley's laboratory, not to mention his wine cellar, before finally setting fire to the house and getting to work on destroying the gardens.
The rampage continued, with the mob attacking various houses of supposed Dissenters, then descending on the home of John Ryland, a banker and merchant, which they burnt down. Seven men, drinking in his cellar, were killed when the blazing roof fell in on them. And so it went on, with a total of 27 houses and four meeting houses being attacked by the mob, and at least eight rioters and one special constable being killed. And yet nothing serious was done about it until the rioters started opening the prisons and freeing the inmates. Special constables were hurriedly sworn in, and eventually dragoons arrived and things quietened down.
Why had so little effective action been taken against the rioters? Because the establishment was essentially behind them, regarding them as sturdy defenders of Church and Crown, and had no strong desire to curb their actions, so long as they stayed within certain bounds. The King and others, including even Burke, expressed themselves delighted that Priestley had suffered for his seditious preaching. However, the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas, saw the clear danger in encouraging rioting: that a mob can easily shift its alliance. The pro-Government mob could well become an anti-Government mob – as indeed happened a couple of years later, when the Birmingham mob was crying 'Tom Paine for ever!'. For this reason, among others, the violent and destructive urges that lie not far below the surface of civilised society should never be encouraged. And, by extension, it is never a good idea to stand back and allow the perceived 'good guys' to silence and 'cancel' those they don't approve of; one day, the 'bad guys' might want to do the same thing, and the 'good guys' will discover they have destroyed their own defences.
(Incidentally, it is also instructive to note the remarkably high incidence of 'extreme weather' events in the years covered by The Lunar Men, despite the fact that the industrial revolution had not yet got under way...)
The mob then moved on to Priestley's house, a mile away at Fair Hill, from which Priestley and his wife were persuaded to fly. After fending off the rioters for a while, those defending the house also fled in a hail of stones, and the mob moved in and set about destroying the house and its contents, smashing up everything in Priestley's laboratory, not to mention his wine cellar, before finally setting fire to the house and getting to work on destroying the gardens.
The rampage continued, with the mob attacking various houses of supposed Dissenters, then descending on the home of John Ryland, a banker and merchant, which they burnt down. Seven men, drinking in his cellar, were killed when the blazing roof fell in on them. And so it went on, with a total of 27 houses and four meeting houses being attacked by the mob, and at least eight rioters and one special constable being killed. And yet nothing serious was done about it until the rioters started opening the prisons and freeing the inmates. Special constables were hurriedly sworn in, and eventually dragoons arrived and things quietened down.
Why had so little effective action been taken against the rioters? Because the establishment was essentially behind them, regarding them as sturdy defenders of Church and Crown, and had no strong desire to curb their actions, so long as they stayed within certain bounds. The King and others, including even Burke, expressed themselves delighted that Priestley had suffered for his seditious preaching. However, the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas, saw the clear danger in encouraging rioting: that a mob can easily shift its alliance. The pro-Government mob could well become an anti-Government mob – as indeed happened a couple of years later, when the Birmingham mob was crying 'Tom Paine for ever!'. For this reason, among others, the violent and destructive urges that lie not far below the surface of civilised society should never be encouraged. And, by extension, it is never a good idea to stand back and allow the perceived 'good guys' to silence and 'cancel' those they don't approve of; one day, the 'bad guys' might want to do the same thing, and the 'good guys' will discover they have destroyed their own defences.
(Incidentally, it is also instructive to note the remarkably high incidence of 'extreme weather' events in the years covered by The Lunar Men, despite the fact that the industrial revolution had not yet got under way...)
Wednesday, 24 June 2020
To the Common
To celebrate National Liberation Day – that happy day when the hygienists who now run the country decreed that, if we're very very good and obey all their rules, there is a chance that, at some date in the future, we might, just possibly, be allowed to resume living as human beings – I... Actually I wasn't celebrating anything except the gloriously sunny weather when I set out this morning to take a stroll around Ashtead common. I was greeted immediately by a fresh, bright Red Admiral – there seems to have been quite a big emergence of these beauties – and then, as I crossed the open land of Wood Field, large numbers of lovely Marbled Whites, Small Skippers and the inevitable Meadow Browns, with Small Heaths, Large Skippers and the odd Common Blue thrown in. In the woods, I was hoping to see Silver-Washed Fritillaries and White Admirals – spectacular species both – but for a while it looked as though I was going to be disappointed. Then, after some while, a SWF sailed majestically towards me, before pausing, wings closed, on a conveniently head-high leaf, allowing me to enjoy the subtle beauty of his underwings. Soon after that, several more crossed my path, along with the first White Admiral, gliding through alternating sunlight and shadow – now you see it, now you don't. More admirals and more fritillaries appeared as I walked along the ride – eight or ten of each, maybe more of the fritillaries (I wasn't counting). They alone would have made it a magical morning, but I also saw, close up, my first pair of another (much commoner) favourite, the Ringlet – and, as I headed back towards the station, I had a glimpse of what I think might well have been a Purple Emperor in flight, near the top of an oak tree. But it disappeared before I could get a proper look, so I will have to put a query by that famous name.
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