ON 11 July 2008, I participated in a debate at Tate Modern, organised as part of the London Festival of Architecture, and connected to Soundings from the Estuary», a multi-media project by the photographer Frank Watson, Germander Speedwell (words) and Dave Lawrence (sounds). The  conversation emphasised the importance of defending the Thames estuary against the helicopter-eyed view that this far from pastoral landscape is merely one vast ‘brownfield’ site.  The exhibition of Soundings from the Estuary continues at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre in Southwark Bridge Road until 20 July.

Aware that the ‘leader as performer’ has been around since antiquity, Miller was nevertheless convinced that the rise of television had recently transformed the situation. Watching the US presidential election of 2000, with its ‘relentless daily diet of crafted, acted emotions and canned ideas’, he sensed a deterioration in ‘our democratic ways’ that raised doubts about ‘our claim to the right to instruct lesser countries on how to conduct fair elections’.

Though since exploited by Bush and Blair over Iraq, this glassy convergence was pioneered by the actor-president Ronald Reagan. According to Miller, ‘the Gipper’ was unrivalled in his ability to confuse events in films with things that had actually happened: a habit that represented a ‘Stanislavskian triumph, the very consummation of the actor’s ability to incorporate reality into the fantasy of his role’. Reagan gave us ‘the leader as leading man’, hauling policies, including the Strategic Defense Initiative (‘Star Wars’), out of the drive-in at the back of his mind. As for the print journalists who might have insisted on distinguishing between fact and artfully presented fiction, Miller reckoned that ‘the American press is made up of disguised theatre critics; substance counts for next to nothing compared with style and inventive characterisation.’ (more…)

The Ming Tombs, 1954 (D. Mathews)

At 16.00 on Wednesday 2 July, I will be speaking at  ‘Memory Maps: Image, Place and Story’, a three day conference organised by Marina Warner through the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities in Cambridge. Details here»

   Screapadal, Raasay

After the screening I will be discussing Maclean’s legacy and influence with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, who lived on Raasay in the 1970s. Birtwistle’s new string quartet, ‘The Tree of Strings’, receives its British premiere performance by the Arditti Quartet later that evening. It is named after a poem by Maclean. Find details here»

Read article here»

1. ‘A Museum of Embryos’: The Great Exhibition and London’s Chinese Junk. Read here»

2. Limehouse Chinatown: The Opium Wars Brought Home.

3. ‘Dumb-Walking-Man’: Chiang Yee becomes The Silent Traveller.

 4. ‘China Stands Up’: Maoist Peasant or English Leveller?

For details of the programmes, each of which can be heard for a week after first transmission,  see the BBC website»

Vernon Lee at Sestri, 1914 (Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine. Photo: Margery Taylor)

I was at the Temple on Christmas Eve for Bach’s Music. The shimmering double church was full of old and elderly men, of women of all ages, with a sprinkling of soldier-lads, brought along, on what may be their last Christmas in this world, by their mothers and sisters and sweethearts. Everyone – but it was perhaps that my own eyes and heart were opened – everyone seemed so altered from other perfunctory times, grave, sincere, aware of all it meant.

With the first rasping notes of the organ, tearing the veil of silent prayer, there came before my mind, as when a cloud-rent suddenly shows depths of solemn moonlit sky, the fact that There also, There beyond the sea and the war chasm, in hundreds of churches of Bach’s own country (I can see the Thomas-Kirche at Leipzig, where he was Cantor, and the church of his birthplace, Eisenach), There, at this very moment, were crowds like this one at the Temple, listening to this self-same Christmas Music. There also, elderly men, stay-behinds, and many, many women, old and young, and a sprinkling of soldier-lads brought for that, maybe last Christmas at home and on Earth. Praying like these silently kneeling around me, and praying for the same mercies: Give us, O God, strength to live through these evil times, or, if so be, die to some purpose; suffer not, O Lord, who seest our hearts, that we be crushed in this war not of our making: teach us to forgive the cruel folk who hate us; give us such peace as will never be broken. Forgive us, deliver us; remember, O Father, the peace and good-will which were promised with Thy Son. (more…)