A Don's Life

Funerals and remembering

Today I went to the funeral of my friend John House, an art historian who worked on Monet (inter alios). I had met him sometime in the early 1980s, at a party given by a couple of friends in London (him and her) -- one of those parties you still vividly remember a few decades later, even if you cant remember exactly what year it was. If you'd have told us then that, all these years down the line, we'd end up shedding a tear at each other funerals, we wouldn't have believed you.

John was only 66 (and yes, if you'd have told us then that one day we would be saying "only 66" we wouldn't have believed you either). He apparently had a heart attack while taking the cat to the vet -- which for him, I guess, must have been as good a way to go as you could hope for. For anyone close to him, it was a complete knockout, a bolt from the blue. (Everyone was talking about when they last saw him -- for me it was at the opening of the Hockney exhibition, and indeed he was one of the people I met who had the most caustic things to say about 'late Hockney').

Anyway, especially in the circumstances, it was a brilliantly choreographed and very moving farewell... a cremation first, followed directly by a thanksgiving in a stunningly restored Victorian church, St Stephen's, near Belsize Park tube station. A church, but there was no God (instead of the Lord's prayer, there was a passage of the younger Seneca). And the wine didn't only follow, it also accompanied the proceedings -- so thay everyone could toast John from their chairs as we finished the formal proceedings (this was actually a bit of a bummer for me and the husband as we have given up the demon drink for our non-religious Lent... and we dont get an indulgence on day 2, even for a funeral).

Les Ebdon and Million+

I suspect that no one quite knows what Les Ebdon (above in academic rig) will do as the head of OFFA. In the run up to his appointment I have been torn between distaste, on the one hand, for the vested interests of fee-paying schools and their parents (gosh, what are we paying for if some bloke is going to come along and take away the privilege) and, on the other, for the apparent lack of concern by Ebdon and co for subjects that I suspect they don't really understand (if you wnat Classics or Music to survive as high level, international subjects in this country, you'll have to do something to schools as well as to Uni admissions offices). Honestly, there's something vulgar about both sides.

I did, however, decide to take a look at the website of Million+, the think tank backed by a group of new univesities of which Ebdon is the chair. First let me say that it must be right that universities come in many shapes and sizes. I dont want every university to teach Latin, any more than I want every university to teach Sports Science (worthy as both those subjects are or may be).

That said, alarm bells rang looking at the stuff Million+ has just put out.

Germany in charge of Greece...the history

To vary the diet of misery stories about Greece and Germany, newspapers have turned an occasional backward glance to World War II. It's hardly surprising, so the argument goes, that the Greeks -- particularly the elderly ones -- don't have much time for the Germans. Look at what the Germans did in the war. One intrepid Telegraph reporter made it all the way up the motorway from Athens, to the village of Distomo (near the monastery of Hosios Loukas), where one of the most notorious German massacres took place. More than 200 civilians were killed in terrible reprisals for the murder of three German soldiers. . .  and reparation claims are still on-going (the bleak memorial is above).

There the reporter dug out an octogenarian survivor of the massacre, fourteen years old at the time, who dutifully -- and poignantly, to be honest -- talked about "a German knife held to our throats" (he was actually talking about now not then... but the point was made).

What's odd is that there hasn't been such interest in the first time, more than a hundred years before World War II, that Greece was quite literally under German rule.

Do I have any favourite apps? Well three...

I confess to being a bit too fond of my smart phone. Yes, I check my email with embarrassing frequency, and I tweet a bit too often (@wmarybeard). But I have never really got into apps, as such... or at least not into the ones that go beyond the very basics. I am awfully impressed by their cleverness, but I am never quite sure why I'd want them.

So, for example, I really dont want to go round a museum looking at my phone, rather than the stuff (and actually I dont observe many people doing that, awesome as some of the museum phone guides are cracked up to be). And further down the food chain I am baffled why anyone would want to buy themselves a hypochondriacs phone guide to medical symptoms.. or even a free app calculator for dividing a restaurant bill (err pencil and paper??).

But I have got three firm app friends, two old and one more recent.

Hatchet Job Announced

Last night was the Hatchet awards at the Coach and Horses in Greek St, sponsored by the Omnivore. I'd been shortlisted for my (mildly donnish, finger wagging) review of Robert Hughes' Rome. But wasnt remotely expecting to win against the illustrious competition... which made the evening all the more enjoyable, as there were none of those anxieties of anticipation,  or of "what am I going to say if I win" (or, more to the point, of 'if I have another glass of wine I wont be able to say anything if I win").

The well-deserved winner was Adam Mars Jones for his review of Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall (who was presented with a gilded hatchet, a cake in the shape of a book (into which the hatchet went) and a years supply of potted shrimp, that well known omnivore (supplied by the Fish Society.. who also did the food all evening).

But the highlight of the evening for me was the dramatised reading of the cautionary tale of contemporary reviewing ... a "boy who cried wolf" riff -- performed by the young ladies of omnivore (in my wobbly photo above).

You can probably guess the plot . . .young reviewer starts out on his trade, he has a book which he doesn't much like but has got all kinds of connections with the author, so says that it is dazzling etc... his reviewing career goes on and he's always saying the books are dazzling...then he gets a book to review that he really does think is dazzling, but by then no one believes him.. it sells 70 copies, the author kills himself and the publisher goes bust, and....

(That hardly captures the hilarious cleverness, but you get the message....hope the omnivore will podcast a rendering on their website...?)

In truth a good time was had by all. As you can see from the pics. Spot Lachlan Mackinnon, one of the others on the shortlist.

And as so often, I cam away with a classical puzzle. If you were opening a motorbike and moped shop (mostly maintence not sales) and wanted a nice classical name for it... but not too abstruse, one that might resonate widely...what would you go for?

 

Cicero's words still hit the spot: Hungary 2012

A few years ago, I spent some innocent hours checking out how often Cicero's words, at the beginning of his first speech against Catiline, had been re-used in modern political debate. Cicero, as you'll remember, is trying to drum Catiline, the internal terrorist, out of Rome in 63 BC .. he gets up in the senate, where Catiline himself is sitting, and off he goes...

How long will you abuse our patience, O Catiline...?

Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?

There turned out to be literally hundreds of re-applications of this neat little slogan, from the Congo to Brazil, in protests public and private and intellectual (Camille Paglia claimed to have based her campaign against Foucault on Cicero's campaign against Catiline).

I hadn't picked up too many of them recently. But then I saw this picture (at the top) in the latest issue of THE.

A couple of the guys protesting in Budapest against the Fidesz party's attempts to rewrite the constitution were carrying a banner reading "Quousque tandem . . .".

So there is life in the old dog yet (though maybe I'm doing them an injustice, but I wasnt sure that the caption writers on THE had a clue what the banner meant . . .  I suspect they thought it was Hungarian).

 But the odd thing about Cicero's slogan is the way here (as almost always in recent years) its political "direction" has changed. When Cicero first spoke this, he was the voice of authority, attacking the revolutionary counter culture in the shape of Catiline. In Hungary, his words are being used by the opposition in their struggle against authority . . . I wonder whose side Cicero would have been on.

Equality and Diversity Training: Cambridge University's Own Goal

I have just scored 100% on the most worthless exam I have ever sat -- the Cambridge University "Equality and Diversity Essentials" test online.

I have had some experience of the futility of online tests from the USA, and had always rather boasted that the Brits hadn't gone down this silly route. So when I was notified that I would not be able to be on my Faculty Appointments Committee or my Faculty REF Committee (of which currently I am the Chair) unless I took the Uni online training course, I felt I would pass on the opportunity...

Look, if I don't do the training and the test, just think how many days I save by NOT being on the Appointments Committee or chairing the REF (probably, if you take into account writing the REF statememts,  a good 21 days.. attractive eh?). But, in the end, I thought of my mates who are trying to run the Faculty and how difficult it would be for them if I didnt do it (we havent got enough senior women, after all).. so I gave in.

And I suppose I thought that, resistant as I was, I might learn something .. like I had learned somethimg from the Speed Awareness Course I did a few years ago.

No such luck. This was a very bad way of spending 90 minutes.

What's the problem? Nail technology or league tables?

I've heard quite enough about 'Mickey Mouse' qualifications today -- and what Mr Gove and his friends are doing to clean this little mess up. No longer will schools be able to count a BTEC in Fish Husbandry as the equivalent of 2 GCSEs. And you won't be able to count a Horse Care diploma, or Health and Social Care, as equal to 4 GCSEs. The same goes for Nail Technology . . . . I have to confess, I'm not quite sure what this is, how many kids ever took the subject, or how many GCSEs it counted as. Certainly not one of my own specialist subjects, as anyone who has ever looked at my nails will confirm.

The argument is clear. Schools were using these non-academic qualifications to scoop up GCSE equivalents, and so creep up the league tables . . . which was fine, except the pupils soon found that, when they went on the job market, fish husbandry didnt have quite the same selling value as History and French, or Physics and Chemistry.

True, I'm sure. But isn't the problem the league tables, not the subjects.

Which academics have turned down honours?

It's a dilemma which most of us aren't going to have to face. But I'm sure many of have enjoyed this particular "what if...." question.

"What if I was awarded an 'honour'...MBE? CBE? Knighthood? .... would I accept it?"

 Yes, because I would be dead chuffed, and an hour or two at Buckingham Palace would be fun (and it wold be nice to have something to put on instead of my Mum's old headgirl badge when the posh invite says "honours will be worn" ? Yes, because it is really a tribute to those I work with and my whole institution? (Never quite sure how much I believe that one?) No, because the whole parade is just a hangover from the days when we really did have the empire that most of these medals proclaim? No, because just look at the company I'd be keeping? And so on.

And then of course there is the question of Which Honour. I dont imagine that the OM has ever been turned down (only 25 of them at a time, and nicely discreet, with no imperial undertones)... But what about "Dame"? Useful presumably for getting upgraded on an airplane, but fancy actually living with a silly title like that. Imagine how embarrassing it would be coming over the tannoy at the dentists.

Anyway, when there was the razzmattazz earlier in the week about the celebs, writers and artists who had turned them down between 1951 and 1999 (Lucian Freud, Grahame Greene and co), I found myself wondering which academics had done the same.

The newspapers hadn't been quite as interested in the university refuseniks. But when I managed to get hold of the full list, it actually sprung a few surprises.

What's the price of cheap filming in Greece?

One piece of apparently good news is that the Greek authorities intend to reduce the price of filming on major Greek archaeological sites. You'll now be able to film on the Acropolis for a mere €1600 a day (down from €4000 in 2005, and a whole lot cheaper than the equivalent in (say) Italy).

This may be a false bargain for the film crews. I doubt if they can provide much practical support for that amount of money (the electricity, the guy with the keys etc.), and I strongly suspect that you won't get an exclusive on the Acropolis at that price. Go and try and make your movie and I bet you'll find another couple of film crews also on the job.

But there's worse. The Greeks are presumably aiming at 'big motion pictures'  or adverts (see the joke above) -- but for documentary filming there is more to these prices than just the cash.

Is Hockney any good?

Sometimes there are advantages to being married to an art historian. On Tuesday, it was going to the opening of the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy -- and exhibition of his recent landscapes (mostly of Yorkshire).

There had been loads of publicity, advance reviews and tv programmes about these pictures, and I hadn't much liked what I saw. Quick big stuff, I thought. And not actually very interesting (even if you are a fan of Yorkshire). In the event, I thought the show WAS much more impressive than I had expected (not sure if it was interesting). . . but that's another story.

The really amazing thing was the crowds of people. This was the opening (usually at the Royal Academy a fun, well-oiled but relatively demure occasion) and there were people queuing to get in right across the courtyard. When you got inside there were loads of photographers lined up the stairs, waiting for the celebs and ostentatiously not lifting their cameras for the likes of us (thank god).

So why the interest?

Leveson and Camillagate

I've just been reviewing a few books about the Queen (it being her diamond jubilee and a diamond quantity of books appearing to celebrate); and, as always, I've done way too much reading -- beyond and behind -- to get into the piece. In particular, I've been wondering how come we've all forgotten the Camillagate and the Squidgygate tapes.

Maybe these causes célèbres of the 1990s are now hardly a memory, but it's a bit odd that these bits of royal phone interception (if they were genuine) haven't played their parts in the Leveson Inquiry (unless I've missed it). Maybe that it because the conversations (between Di and J Gilbey, and Charles and Camilla) were apparently taped by amateur hackers -- or alternatively by the security services -- not by professional tabloid journalists (in this game, remember, "amateur" is always a bit of an alibi). Maybe it is all so long ago that most of us have forgotten.

I haven't forgotten.

Hatchet job of the year

I was chuffed earlier this week to find myself (or rather my review of Robert Hughes' book on Rome) on the shortlist for the "Hatchet job of the year" prize. Actually the name of the prize is a bit misleading. OK it's a good headline grabber -- and got hundreds more column inches than if it had been called "2011 Prize for Critical Journalism". But, as its manifesto makes clear, it's not actually a prize for skewering . . . it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade.

As far as my Rome review goes, I think I was just doing my job. I made it pretty clear that I am quite an admirer of Hughes, and loved his The Shock of the New. But the chapters of Rome that cover the ancient world (the bit I really know about) are so riddled with dreadful errors -- howler after howler -- that I had to speak up. The point of a review, after all, is that an informed critic should give an honest, professional evaluation of the . Many other books on the Hatchet shortlist are poetry or fiction, and there the nature of that evaluation is rather different. But in the case of Rome, it was facts pure and simple... mixing up BCE and CE, wrong dates, wrong names, all tumbling out one after the other...

I have never met Hughes, but if I were to have the pleasure, I would say just what I wrote to his face. And that has always been the ethical touchstone of a review. If you couldn't say it to the author, then it's a skewering, so don't.

King Georges leave the University Library

I have been in the University Library for the first time in weeks - and, when you have a day there (cuts or no cuts) you do still feel wonderfully grateful for the books they have -- mad though some of them may be. In fact I have spent a very happy day reading some really loony and interesting stuff on Cicero's De Haruspicum Responso, none of it available on line -- so thank you, book librarians one and all.

But it was only on the way out that I noticed that something was going on in the front hall. There were barriers round one of the King Georges -- the statues that stand in the entrance way, and look down upon you as you return your books. These guys have become my very favourite statues in Cambridge, George  the first and the second (one by Rysbrack, the other by Wilton): not just because they have observed me payimg my library fines for many a year -- but also because they are some of the best "English monarchs as Roman emperors" statues that there are. And they got walk on parts in my Washington DC lectures last year.

Anyway, I soon discovered that the barrier were not there because these things were about to be cleaned (first assumption), but because they were about to be moved out.

No longer will the Georges survey my library fines. They are, I am told, going to the Fitzwilliam Museum.

And I am bloody sad.

A Roman brothel token?

I was hoping to keep out of the story about the "Roman brothel token" found by a metal detectorist near Putney Bridge and now on display at the Museum of London. But I think someone had better give a different version from the torrent of lurid stuff now pouring out about the sex-life of Roman London.

The object in question is a small bronze "coin" -- with a scene of sex on one side and a the Roman numeral XIIII on the other. Assuming that it is genuine (and there are quite a few fakes of these circulating and this one was not actually found in an archaeological context), then it is what archaeologists term a "spintria". This is a Latin word for male prostitute... but it is an entirely modern practice to apply it to these little objects; we haven't got the foggiest clue what the Romans called them... or (despite what you read) what they used them for. Quite a few have been found across the Roman world (there's another on the right).

The favourite idea circulating about this recent discovery is that it was part of the highly developed Roman brothel economy. Perhaps you handed over 14 asses (the coin not the animal, I mean), got the token and then went and redeemed it at one of the local brothels (a bit like a book token). Or maybe the sexual position depicted on the token was what you had paid your 14 asses for (shades here of the tour guides' explanations for the paintings of the different sexual positions depicted on the walls of the brothel at Pompeii ... a kind of visual menu for those who couldnt ask for it in Latin. Errr.. come again?)

Now, as there is no evidence for these things at all, no-one could actually disprove that. But remember that there is no Roman mention of such things, none have been found in any place that has been identified as a "brothel" . . .  and just think of the kind of infrastructure of the ancient "brothel industry" that this kind of internal currency would imply. (Let's face it, most sex for money in the ancient world  -- like now --happened at street corners, under bridges, after closing time at the bar... NOT in designated "brothels" . . . )

So what is a more likely explanation?

Five thoughts on getting to 57

I am in a couple of hours 57 years old. My rather elderly  (aged 40) mother gave birth, old-style, in Much Wenlock Cottage Hospital on 1 January 1955...with a midwife and the local GP, who (as he and Mum always used to joke, for years after) only got there when everything was more or less over. (This isn't just self obsession -- it's a story I heard repeated at the said GP's Xmas party for years and years in my childhood and adolescence... with greater or lesser shades of embarrassment, on my part)

So my birthday has always been (for me) a New Year occasion. And always bound up with New Year's Eve... everybody is pissed and enjoying the 'rite of passage' and at some point after midnight I nerve myself to say (or not to say) "and..errr.. excuse me..it's my birthday.

Anyway, at 57, happily and very very gratefully married for more than quarter of a century .. five thoughts on birthdays as you get old(er).

1) Bloody lucky (version 1). I am still alive, 57 years on. I've survived 2 children and various bits of medical intervention (including a benign breast lump/aka clot of milk, when I was breast feeding, and that seemed like imminent death at the time). Most of the people I work on (the Romans) were dead or dying by their late 50s. So thank the Lord, and modern medicine.

Truth, Kim Jong-il and Prince Philip

Truth, as everyone knows, is the first casualty of war. But it doesnt fare too well when monarchs and/or dictators die . . .  or even, I suspect, when royals are taken into hospital.

For a start, the authorities never want to announce the death until they have got the transmission of power sorted. So when exactly Kim Jong-il finally fell off his perch, I suspect we will never know -- but it could have been some time before we were all told (the intervening hours being spent in getting Kim Jong-un briefed, and his lines learnt -- and in dealing with any of the other relatives who might have made trouble).

And we can't be certain about where he died either. Do we believe the story that he was on a train, going on one of his hard-working visits to his people? Or do believe the South Korean spies who say that the train never left the station (and that the train story was invented to conceal a much more mundane, less public-service, death at home in bed)? Or do we think that the spies were simply trying to discredit the enemy, by alleging a lie about the death location . . . Bluff and double-bluff.

And this kind of thing isn't just a problem across the "axis of evil". Remember that in 1936 King George V's doctor famously gave him a fatal dose of morphine (somewhere between euthanasia and convenience killing). It was not only to relieve his suffering and give him a more dignified end, but also (as the doctor himself apparently admitted)  to make sure that the death and succession happened early enough to be announced in the morning Times, not in the far less prestigious and proper evening papers.

I couldn't help having some of this in the back of my mind when I was reading about Prince Philip's recent stay in hospital.

Christmas tradition -- and innovation

"Tradition always incorporates innovation" insisted the daughter (an anthropologist-cum-historian) on Christmas Eve. The reason for her insistence on this great anthropological truth was her desire that this year we should try roasting rather than boiling the sprouts for Christmas dinner.

Predictably enough, we chose to follow that other anthropological model: namely, "accretion". The husband had liked our encounter with roast sprouts in the USA, but rather doubted our ability to do them well enough on our first try (and anyway, he is still quite partial to boiled ones). So -- as we had laid in well more sprouts than we needed -- we decided to roast half and boil half, just to be on the safe side. (I expect that we will now do this sprouting double act as long as we have Christmas together.)

At this point, I rather pretensiously observed that our decision followed the model of our Christmas tree... it was growing tradition, a bit like the way we put new decorations on the tree each year, without throwing away the old ones. To be precise: a rather jolly hart (above), vaguely taken from the Wilton diptych joined the line up this year, as did a shining ship (on the right, supposedly based -- though I dont think you'd know just to look at it -- on Turner's Fighting Temeraire).

Conversation, let me reassure you, doesn't usually run along these lines over our kitchen table. But it was perhaps a nice reminder of what a wonderful anthropological case study modern Christmas can be. In fact a friend of mine who taught Anthropology in Cambridge often used to ask candidates at their interviews to comment anthropologically on Christmas. She was never very impressed by those who went on about the terrible 'commercialism' of it all; she was looking for a bit of analysis of our nostalgia, and the way the celebration (for many, no matter what religion -- if any) still acts as a re-affirmation of ties of friendship, a focus of remembrance, not to mention gift exchange.

Sadly, for me, it now acts as a focus of remembrance of her. She died a few years ago, but Sue's question to her candidates (as well as her whole-hearted, exuberantly atheistic investment in all the festivities of the season) is now always part of what I think when I "think Christmas". Exactly, she would have said. For that's the way that Christmas comes to mean more, the older you get...generating and preserving an ever increasing number of things to remember. (And I'm sure that's how she used to press her interview candidates.)

But Christmas isn't just a great case study for the anthropologically inclined. Classicists get a toe-hold in there too.

Is the Christmas card on its last legs

I rather like getting Christmas cards, which I put up lovingly all over the house -- on the mantlepiece, blu-tacked to the picture rail, under the tree. But I suspect that they are on their last legs, even more a thing of the past than a book.

That's to say, my tally of "e-cards" now almost exceeds my "card-cards". Some of these are wonderful. I just received a great Sophoclean Xmas card ("best wishes for a cathartic Christmas"), all beautifully drawn and scanned by one of my students (thank you, Sam). And some e-cards do include messages really targetted at me, with or without an appropriate image (thanks Gillian and Jan); or are sent from abroad, nicely timed for Xmas (and it was much better to get Estelle's up to date news from Australia, than have the old news of a month ago chugging its way across the world by ship).

What I hate are those e-cards sent by people or firms who just click "send to all" on their e-mail, and hey presto... you've got your Christmas message. It is one step on from the xeroxed "Christmas message" (nauseatlnglycelebrating young Quentin's 15 A*s at GCSE, or Tamsin's starring role in The Importance of Being Earnest).

Juliet's balcony

Tourist hot-spots come in many different guises. Only a couple of weeks ago the queue to get into the Colosseum was about an hour and a half in length -- and all to see the rather depressing ruins inside the building which are nothing compared with the splendid outside. (Tip: if you really want to see the Colosseum, go to one of the entrances to the Forum and buy the ticket there.. the queue is never so long.)

In Verona, where we finished our stint of filmimg yesterday (not the amphitheatre, in case you are wondering), the place to go is the "House of Juliet", complete with balcony, as in Romeo and Juliet. There were no actual queues, but a tremendous, polyglot crush, even in mid December -- made all the more democratic by the fact the view of the balcony and other bric-a-brac is free. You only have to pay if you want actually to go and stand on it, and to see the other Juliet memorabilia in the 'museum'.... pride of place going to the bed that starred in Zefferellis version of Shakespeare's play.

Of course, the place has nothing to do with the non-existent Juliet at all, and was a clever invention of the 19th century, turned into a veritable tourist attraction in the 1930s.  But overall it is as odd as the Colosseum, with the added tinge of slightly off-putting, slightly leering, slightly touching "romance".