Tomorrow: A Conservationist's View of the Future by Oswald Barraclough

The Conservation Society

This pamphlet published in 1977 begins with a depressingly contemporary air "The world, or at least the Western World, is in crisis; this, at least, is certain.  The Financial system is in disarray... Economically, we are in the middle of the worst depression for 40 years, and there is little sign of any end to it... So bad have things become that in most industrial countries groups of individuals, desparing of getting any sort of satisfaction out of our present society, are trying to opt out of modern life..."

However most of the predictions that follow have not been lived out - the whole account is based on the eminent crippling of 'modern' society due to the rises in fuel costs limiting transport of goods and people - and yet while fuel prices have continued to rise over the last 30 years they have not resulted in the changes Barraclough expected.  While food prices have risen in the last year or two they are still relatively lower than 1977, industry has become increasingly globalised rather than localised, and every aspect of consumption has become yet more "throw out". It is not Barraclough's long life goods leading to a 'Chippendale in every home' but Ikea and Primark than have won the nations hearts. 

It is an interesting account but not only is it unfulfilled it is also perhaps misguided (even for a treehugger like me) as the road to the 'Conservation Economy' is paved with massive state intervention and a heavy tax regime, and some ideas that seem simply crazy - like the replacement over the course of a century of the entire 'historic' housing stock of the UK with new energy efficient homes, on the belief that this would not only be achievable be would also unlock a net saving in energy and resources.

 

Sixteen Shades of Crazy

Sixteen Shades of Crazy

This is a really impressive piece of writing which takes you deep into the lives and the world of the characters.  It is also a troubling vision, a world of disappointment and moral ambiguity made painful because of its pathos and realism.

Set in a small post-industiral community in the Welsh valleys it captures the lives of a group who but for the hand of fate could have been the cast of 'Friends'.  It is in particular the story of three women - they are each an archetype, one a mother, one a business women, and one a creative idealist.

The character Sian is perhaps the most tragic, as the picture of devoted motherhood becomes the annihilation of any sense of self, her existence defined only by the care she gives to the children and to her husband.  When that care goes into self destruct the destruction is total.  There may be many with a "post-feminist" lookout who are troubled by this part of the story, who would want to claim to be a mother (and even a wife) is a source of fulfilment rather than the prison cage of Sian's life. Sian reminded me on the winner of this year's "Great British Bake-Off" who had married young and raised a brood of men - core to her identity was her ability to provide for her family - to feed them well - and so her success (or failure) in the bake-off seemed to cut more deeply into her identity than any other contestant. There is perhaps some middle-class guilt as we try not to pity those who are happy with, in our eyes, such limited horizons. 

The other two women both break this mould, rejecting family life or domestic roles - however as both  find 'success' in their own terms off the back of drugs money they are hardly ones to be held up as role-models for "the Sisterhood".  They are attractive, in a kind of hypnotic way, but it is hard to see either of them as truly 'likeable'.

I Spy by Joan Peake

I-Spy

This fairly short story is told through the eyes of Myra, a school girl in Cardiff during the Blitz, and is interesting because it shows that even in wartime most of the drama is of an 'ordinary' domestic nature.

One aspect I found powerful was that the descriptions of the air raids because they were evocative of both the boredom of time spent in a shelter and the terror and helplessness when the raids were actually close at hand.

There is an air of Enid Blyton about the story when the gang of children think that they are on to a spy - but I wouldn't see that as essentially a criticism, and even if that worries you it should be noted that the plot is surrounded by complex and messy family life giving a mark of realism that Blyton would never of allowed to muddy her work. 

Where Eagles Dare by Alistair Maclean

Where Eagles Dare

I am a big fan of the film and so picked up the "Companion Book Club" edition of the book at the local Oxfam shop because I think it is interesting to see where the iconic nature of the film came from, how much Maclean's original story, how much the film's Director, and how much the clearly stella performances of Burton and Eastwood. 

Reading it however much credit is due Maclean you can not ignore the power of Burton and Eastwood in the those central roles Smith and Schaffer.  The Smith and Schaffer of the book never quite manage the same intense relationship, but in other ways the book does have greater power in the story.  The film is unashamedly all action and so it is full of explosions, and great as they are in the judgement of an action movie they at time that masks the true tension of the story. I have watched the film at least a dozen times and still found reading the book a part of me wasn't sure it Smith and Schaffer would make it out alive. 

The biggest difference from the film is the great value that the book's characters place on human life.  In the film, as in all action movies, dozen of unnamed foot soldiers find themselves either blown-up or mowed down. Yet in the book these same soldiers are tied up rather than shot, and at one point Smith risks has own life to go back an untie a soldier who would otherwise have victim to a later diversionary fire the heroes have started.  This results in a clear message, the deeply honourable nature of the mission, and particularly of the otherwise cold and ruthlessly calculating Smith, and the contrasting deep dishonour of the traitors who Smith kills or allows to die without a second thought.  Smith will not kill the 'honest' German Soldier in cold blood despite them being enemy combatants but clearly he views the double agents as no longer residing in the land of honourable men.  This is not just the difference in the medium of story telling, it is positively part of the characters Maclean has written, part those who made the film either missed or choose to ignore.      

The Late Medieval English College Edited by Clive Burgess and Martinn Heale

The Late Medieval English College and its Context

Ever since reading Edmon Duffy's the magisterial  The Stripping of the Altars I have been increasingly interested in the character of religious life in the run up to the Reformation, and this collection of essays is a valuable contribution to our understanding.

The "College", in its various expressions, sits between the familiar monasteries of the great religious orders  and the 'parish' church.  It seems to have often been overlooked, despite being the origin of many institutions which continued through the reformation, and particularly in the case of the educational Colleges, to endure even to the present day.

In common with most collections, the different writers take different perspectives and some will engage you more than others depending on your own personal interests. One of the essays I found most fascinating was the final one, which narrated the final few years of the Collegiate Church at Fotheringhay, and how despite the earlier suppression of the monasteries it was far from clear that the Colleges would meet the same fate.  There were attempts by the Master at Fotheringhay to show them embracing the theology of the Reformation and to make the most of the connection the College had with the Royal Family to try and secure its future.  Yet with the coming of the boy King and the dominance of the Puritan party these efforts came, in the end, to nothing.

Overall this collection further proves that religious life in pre-Reformation England a very rich tapestry, in places in dire need of radical reform but elsewhere full of holiness and of colour that was perhaps needlesly sacrificed to the fervour of the age.

Jesus Mass by The Experience of Worship Project

I attended a Jesus Mass, in Latin according to the late Medieval Use of Salisbury at Salisbury Cathedral on 6th October.  It was organised as part of the The Experience of Worship in Late Medieval Cathedral and Parish Church research project at Bangor University.

They asked us to provide thoughts on the service and so I thought that I would share my here too.

While not a regular worshipper at cathedral I have on a number of occasions while staying for courses at Sarum college between to early morning Eucharist in the Trinty Chapel - it is a space that I am familiar with and which I love (for me it is Salisbury Cathedral - I think I have only once been to a service at the cathedral anywhere else but the trinity chapel) and there were a number of familiar faces in the congregation.  What this did was make it very easy to encounter the mass as worship - it was in a space I have worshipped in before and I was with people I had worshipped with before.

Before the service as we were all sat around the edge the space felt quiet empty, but the moment we were told to stand up we spread out and filled the space and I think that you were perhaps more aware of the other members of the congregation than you are safely separated from one another by rows of chairs.

There were a few people who moved around but most, including myself, seemed to stay put - I guess this is partly because the service was a one off and held our attention in a way that at the time an ordinary daily mass wouldn't. If it was your daily fare you would have been able to wonder off for a bit knowing how long to be away and yet still get back in time for the consecration or the peace etc.

There were a few bits of the service that I recognised from the choral use of Latin texts in contemporary services but mostly I had no idea what the actual words mean - however except in a couple of places I was able to follow the structure from the order in the booklet and so while not being able to tie down particular words knew what that bit of the service was about.

It was interesting that for the most part the focus was on the singers not the altar or priest - and in most cases when the priest said/sung anything it was in dialogue with the singers - so overall it was much less priest-centric than I expected.

It was also a lot more understated than I expected even for a Low Mass - there were no more and perhaps less ritual actions than in a contemporary Eucharist.

The silent Canon was interesting - given that I didn't really understand the words being sung I had to concentrate was hard to pick out the different parts of the service - but this part which had no sound at all stood in clear contrast so I knew 'this bit is significant'.

The peace was interesting - I felt very self-conscious - what kind of kiss do you give it? Should it be a kiss like that on the cheek of maiden aunt or on the lips of girlfriend or what? Also I was aware of how new the Pax was - it lacked the patina than they must have got from a thousand kisses.  This was also true of the Pyx - as it was brought in the bit of brain that always trys to put you off thought - "oh look a little Christmas cake" it was so crisp and white. 

Kneeling for such a long period was no more uncomfortable than sitting for the same period on the average church pew, (and many pews seem to have been built to cripple anyone above 5foot who trys to kneel in them so it was more comfortable than I often find myself when kneeling for shorter periods in church)

I kissed the ground in last gospel almost on instinct on the cue of the singers doing the same - without any context for why we were doing it at that moment - but it seemed a meaningful action and I wasn't worried that I didn't know what the meaning was.

Why God won't go away by Alister McGrath

Why God Won't Go Away: Engaging with the New Atheism

This book's title is prehaps a little misleading as it is not really about God at all, it is about "New Atheism", and in particular the reasons why "New Atheism's" arguments against God and against religion fail.

McGrath is careful to draw a distinction between "New Atheism", which is made up of polemical attacks on religion, such as Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion', and more classical Atheist and Agnostic formulas, and so while the book concludes in favour of the probability of a God it does not deny the coherence of the classical Atheist position. McGrath tries very hard to avoid falling into the trap of becoming polemical in his own unpicking of Dawkins et al's standpoint - however he often fails and the overall argument of the book is thus diminished (this is especially true whenever he refers to New Atheist "foot soldiers" of the bloggisphere).


The core argument is that the New Atheists conflate empirical science with rationality - they deny that you can rationally assert anything that can not be proved through empirical scientific observation. McGrath methodically shows this depends not only a misunderstanding of rationality but also on pretty poor science.  He also rejoices in the great irony is the perhaps in the last decade, when New Atheist writers have found fame, "science" has become much more disposed to the possibility of 'God' than at any time in the last century.

The other key area of weakness McGrath focuses on is the New Atheists failure to show a positive case for human society without God and/or religion, they are defined by their attacks on religion not the offering of an alternative.  The fact that all the examples of 'officially' atheist societies, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and China under the Cultural Revolution, were characterised by far greater levels of violence and cruelty than most societies with religions and Gods is explained away by classifying Communism and Nazism as religions.  While this might be a fair assessment we are left without an example of a religionless society.  The evidence points to human beings being inherently religious creatures and so the burden of proof must be on the New Atheists to show humanity can exist in a state recognisable as 'humanity' without being religious about something - and so far they have failed to come up with the goods.

Pigsties and Paradise by Liz Pitman

Pigsties and Paradise - Lady Diarists and the Tour of Wales, 1795-1860

This slim volume (less than 150 pages) manages to give a really rich encounter with early 'tourists' to Wales.  Liz Pitman manages to balance the extracts and snippets from the diaries with bridging narratives that give the contaxt while allowing the women's voices to come through - and the more of the women's own words you got the better the story became.

It is mostly an education in the lives of 19th Century Women but it also reveals a Wales that was more 'foreign' to these travellers than almost anywhere you would visit on holiday today - in journeys that took longer, by necessity, than my recent tour of China.  There is also the clear evolution of the tourist industry, as the women often visit the same place and each finds it slightly more accommodating than the last.  The story leaves off with the coming of the railway and the revolution of mass travel, a sensible breaking point. 

While the Wales we hear about is interesting the real interest is the women themselves, and while one mustn't forget that they are privileged individuals they still tell a story of women in society that is very different from much of the feminist critique of the past.  This may largely be due to the fact that these women for the most part lived before Victorian moralism, and particularly its expression in larbour laws, divided 'work' and 'home' or 'public' and 'private' and firmly confined women to the private home. These are gung-ho and zesty characters, who are being endlessly rain on (it is Wales they are visiting) but who hardly ever let themselves get down hearten and are ready for the next ruin to admire or mountain to climb. It makes me feel embarrassed about the amount of time we spent in Welsh tea shops whenever the sky was slightly grey!