The GOOD DOCTOR

The term “The Good Doctor” seems to be applied widely to anyone who can claim the title of doctor and does not belong to any doctor in particular. St Thomas Aquinas is sometimes thus named, in honour of his saintly life and profound theological writings, so influential in the medieval Catholic Church though much disputed elsewhere. My preferred Good Doctor is Dr Samuel Johnson, whose trenchant opinions (“Sir, I tell you the first Whig was the Devil”) and highly competitive conversation (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, but to make money”) enliven Boswell’s pages, even though initially he had a curiously dim view of Scotsmen! (“Oats: A grain used in England to feed horses: in Scotland it supports the people”)

Doctors come in all shapes and sizes, fact and fiction, good and bad. Dr Faustus, burnished by Marlowe’s memorable poetry, made his fatal bargain with the Devil, just as in real life Dr Josef Goebbels made his Faustian pact with Hitler, living and dying with his hero. In Germany anyone with a post-grad degree can call himself doctor and thus we have a procession of Chancellors, Dr Adenauer, Dr Erhard, Dr Kiesinger, Dr Schmidt etc, although Angela Merkel, also a doctor, does not normally use the title

Doctors in British politics are rarer, but I recall Dr Charles Hill, the one time Radio Doctor, whose plumy bass tones used to warn of constipation or offer remedies for lumbago, who became a Tory minister and Cameron now favours Dr Liam Fox, currently trying to run Defence on a shoestring. Ulster provided a platform for Dr Ian Paisley. I have always had a soft spot for Big Ian, despite his 17^th century opinions, who, with his family once sat down beside me and mine at London Airport at the height of the Troubles in the 1970s, he genially drinking tea, while I glanced uneasily around for machine-gunners.

The United States is fond of doctors. Dr Strangelove, the chilling amalgam of several military advisers in the nuclear-obsessed 1960s, was portrayed brilliantly by Peter Sellers in Kubrick’s movie. Nixon’s eminence grise Dr Henry Kissinger pulled off diplomatic coups in Vietnam and China and I recall taking the Circle Line boat trip around Manhattan and the guide broadcasting a cheery “Hi, Hank!” as we passed the Kissinger apartment on the Upper East Side. Jimmy Carter used distinguished but unpronounceable Dr Zbigniew Brzezinsky as his geostrategist, to rather less positive effect.

Trouble often arises when doctors potter about in their laboratories, swallow some bubbling phial and upset the laws of Nature. A case in point is conventional Dr Jekyll, whose potion made his face age horribly, sprout hair, grow fangs and claws, making his alter ego Mr Hyde rather tiresomely homicidal. Dr Frankenstein was another meddler, creating a monster whose only merit was that he could not run fast, so you could evade his fearful clutches, if you were not rooted to the spot. Dr Who time-travels happily enough in his Tardis as long as those scary Daleks keep out of sight. Dr Dolittle needed no lab and merely had to master the language of animals and preferred the company of parrots, pigs and ducks, quite understandably.

The criminal world is replete with doctors. Dr Fu Manchu was the Yellow Peril incarnate, with his sinister drooping moustaches: during the war Hollywood was asked to drop its film series as the Chinese were important allies and must not be offended. Earlier The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was the first silent horror film; where the protagonist used his hypnotised sleepwalking slave as an assassin – the more far-fetched the story, the better. As for Professor Moriarty “The Napoleon of Crime” (he must have had a doctorate too!), it took a desperate struggle at the Reichenbach Falls to put paid to him and, as first thought, to Sherlock Holmes too, but he reappeared at those Baker Street lodgings to the great relief of his faithful friend Dr Watson and the entire British reading public.

Real life villainous medics are not unknown. Dr Crippen’s actual 1910 murder was not so remarkable, but his capture through use of the new-fangled Marconi wireless was. Dr John Bodkin Adams was never convicted of anything other than failure to keep a proper poisons’ register, although suspected of 160 unusual deaths in Eastbourne between 1946 and 1956. The recent 2000 horrifying case of cold-hearted Dr Harold Shipman – probably at least 215 victims – emphasises that bearded doctors in single practice are a danger to the community. His suicide in Wakefield jail was one of his few decent acts.

But surely there are doctor-heroes. Who can forget Omar Sharif as Dr Zhivago gazing raptly with those glistening dark eyes at lovely Julie Christie as Lara? Then there was the real commanding figure of Dr Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, ministering selflessly (if paternalistically) to the African in his hospital in Lambarene, Gabon, wearing his distinctive solar topee. His penetrating theological work The Quest for the Historical Jesus and his organ building and playing of Bach and Widor would have singled him out as remarkable, let alone his attempts to preach brotherhood and peace.

My final glimpse of doctors is from the world of fiction. Dr Finlay’s Casebook entranced 1960s Sunday TV audiences. Straight talking and idealistic Dr Finlay (Bill Simpson) practiced in the Scottish country town of Tannochbrae in the late 1920s: his enthusiasms had sometimes to be restrained by his older partner, wheezing, avuncular and wise Dr Cameron (Andrew Cruickshank). They grappled together with the contemporary scourges of diphtheria, rickets, ignorance and poverty. They were fussed over by their receptionist-cum-housekeeper at Arden House, Janet (Barbara Mullen) - “Oh doctor, you’ve nae eaten up your porridge!” Each episode was well-scripted and literate, the period detail was faultless and the outcomes spoke well of the competence and humanity of doctors, which is what we always want to hear but do not always get.

SMD

12.8.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

I have always enjoyed nicknames, as do most people, as long as they are good-natured and in no way malicious or insulting. The kind I mean are those encountered on the matchless pages of P G Wodehouse – Pongo Twistleton, Tuppy Glossop, Bingo Little or Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, usually denizens of the Drones Club, members of Bertie Wooster’s social circle, and “up to a lark as a rule” in Betjeman’s phrase. Somehow their names are appropriate to their genial adventures in love and confrontations with an array of formidable aunts.

These names are, alas, fictional and when harsh reality butts in, the good-natured nickname tends to fade away. History has a full house of nicknames. The Emperor Gaius Caligula (Little Boot) acquired his nickname as a young boy, but he grew up to be a very naughty boy indeed, and so atrocious were his atrocities that the moment he shuffled off this mortal coil had to be accelerated by his Praetorian Guard in 41 AD.

At least the church hierarch St John Chrysostom (Golden-mouthed) had a complimentary nickname in honour of his alleged eloquence, but his talent was often used in anathematising Jews and alleged heretics. On his death in 407 AD he left behind hundreds of homilies and many treatises. These, together with his ascetic lifestyle, make it unlikely that St John, despite his nickname, was a fun person to my shallow tastes and indeed all the furiously disputing early church fathers were a rum bunch, getting into a lather about Arianism, homoousios and the True Essence, when they should have been taking a relaxing dip in the Med.

The Byzantine historians dished out nicknames, often posthumously. Justinian II The Slit-Nosed earned his moniker by being restored to the throne after suffering the unlovely Byzantine custom of mutilation by his enemies. Later Leo The Iconoclast started a controversy that bedevilled the Empire for over a century. His even more enthusiastically iconoclastic son Constantine V Copronymos (The Dung-Named) allegedly excreted into his baptismal font, but this is perhaps a later libel spread by the iconodule faction, who revered icons. Iconoclasm finally ended in the reign of Michael III The Drunkard and emperors turned to more conventional activities like Basil II The Bulgar-Slayer, who restored the empire’s fortunes for many generations and cruelly suppressed the vulgar Bulgars, once taking 15,000 prisoners and blinding 99 out of every 100. Charming!

Further west the nicknamed flourished. The Norsemen were particularly fond of them and with the likes of Thorfinn Skull-Splitter on the rampage, I have much sympathy for sad Ethelred The Unready, caught on the hop by the axe-wielding horde. I believe it is an Icelandic saga which sings of Herjolf Hrokkineista (Wrinkled-Scrotum), whose best long-boat days were probably behind him, and whose little secret evinces wry recognition from many males of a certain age.  Rather later Edward I Longshanks was far from lovable, especially towards the Scots – his unlucky son got the come-uppance his father deserved at Bannockburn in 1314.

The 18^th century gives us Turnip Townsend, the inventor of 4-crop field rotation, then usually wheat, barley, turnips and clover which greatly enhanced the productivity of British agriculture.  This useful comestible was put to less agreeable work when the red-top press unfairly vilified England football manager Graham Taylor with the sobriquet Turnip-Head after a run of dud results, complete with a mock-up misshapen face and sprouting ears. We Scots enjoy turnips too, with haggis, bashed neeps and tatties a Burns supper staple as someone recites hilarious Holy Willie’s Prayer.

Late Victorian sensibilities were offended by Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas, a nursery nickname, though Nanny would certainly not have approved of his louche lifestyle, - the notorious liaison with Oscar being one of the more respectable. In our own time Boofy Gore, 8^th Earl of Arran, was a newspaper columnist who crusaded in the Lords with bills to reduce the age of homosexual consent and to stop the culling of badgers. On his deathbed he said “I could never understand why my buggers' bill got overwhelming support in the House and my badgers’ bill hardly any” A friend remarked “Boofy, is it possible that there are not many badgers in the House of Lords?”

The current crop of nicknames would include John Two-Jags Prescott, once deputy prime minister but reduced now to displaying his boxing skills in a TV commercial for car insurance. Fred The Shred Goodwin, erstwhile infallible master of RBS, now keeps a low profile after running his bank and his own career into the ground and no doubt many other careers too on the way down.

I return to memories of boarding school nicknames and most were genial enough. I recall Busters, Barrels and Beefers (usually the better-upholstered), a Stinker – indicating caddishness rather than malodorousness- Shorty, someone tall, or Speedy. Masters acquired names like Bonkers and the more etymologically obscure Zeep or The Oincks. I do cringe at the occasional prep-school cruelty. I recall an entirely inoffensive muddy-complexioned 9-year old. This hapless lad was known ignominiously as Fart.

SMD

9.8.11

Copyright Sidney Donald 2011

THIS BLESSED PLOT

Although I make this statement through the gritted teeth of a loyal Scotsman, it has to be freely admitted that England is incomparably more beautiful than any of the other home countries in terms of its townscapes, rural estates and public buildings. Indeed England possesses some of the finest examples in Europe of cathedrals, churches, stately homes and villages and London is arguably the loveliest capital in the world.

This happy situation is the product of long years of peace and social stability. The last battle on British soil was Culloden in 1746, on English at Sedgemoor in 1685 but fundamentally England has been at peace with itself since the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660.The soil of England itself did not suffer the destructive horrors of the French Revolution, the long Napoleonic Wars, convulsions in Italy, the Prussian wars and above all the collapse of civilisations in Russia and elsewhere triggered by the Great War. Somehow a foolish Stuart dynasty gave way to an absentee or oddball Hanoverian monarchy which, allied to a complaisant Anglican church, tolerated the development of a constitutional parliamentary regime, which governed England well enough not to provoke the upheavals which stained other states with blood in the last 350 years.

My own credentials for writing about England are modest enough. I lived 3 years in Oxford, 31 years in London and 7 in the Cotswolds. As a Scotsman I always felt a guest there; I was an enthusiastic tourist and my career in investment banking enabled me to visit a large number of mainly industrial places. I tour by car and shamefully eschew unnecessary walking, so my knowledge of the Lakes, the Dales, the Pennine Way, the Downs and the West Country is sketchy and what follows refers only to places I have visited and I naturally have my favourites. As I have now lived 5 years in down-trodden, concrete-infested and dilapidated Greece, the contrast with England could hardly be more marked.

Ironically, credit for the present happy state of much of England lies with three controversial institutions – the Crown, the Aristocracy and the Church of England. Sadly the beauty of England is not nation-wide. There is little aesthetic pleasure to be derived from visiting great cities like Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle or Leicester. Birmingham is only marginally redeemed by its canals and Liverpool by its Mersey setting and sumptuous Anglican cathedral. In swathes of England, the uninspired architects and useless local authority planners of the 1950s-70s erected hideous office buildings, feeble shopping centres, gimcrack housing estates, often supplemented by an ugly heritage of tired Victorian buildings. To be fair, recent efforts at improvement have been made but a mountain remains to be climbed and eyesores abound. Yet the good triumphantly overpowers the bad.

Durham Cathedral

Taking the high road to England, as Scotsmen must, we first encounter Holy Island across its causeway, rousing the shades of Bede and Dark Age monks, wildly situated. Then the wonderful sight of Durham Cathedral, probably the finest Romanesque building in Europe, towering massively over the historic town and university, with its tremendous nave columns, deeply incised in the Norman manner, Galilee porch and colossal proportions. Yorkshire has many pleasures like Richmond and magically floating Castle Howard. York itself with its walls, Shambles and majestic (if somehow unlovable) Minster is a great city. The surprise is further South in the unpromising East Riding startling us with the fine churches at Hedon and Patrington then doubling back to unforgettable Beverley Minster, its façade the epitome of Gothic elegance without and delicate stone carved arcades within.

We enter Derbyshire graced with the elegant park, water garden and treasure-house of Chatsworth, incomparable demesne of the Dukes of Devonshire. Nearby Kedleston, with its dramatic classical atrium, displays a sequence of lovely Adam rooms and Hardwick smiles in its Tudor splendour. But best of all is Haddon Hall, the quintessential stately home, nestling in deciduous trees, edged by its river and internally magically medieval. Further east takes us to Lincolnshire and the delicious county town itself, cobbled 18^th century streets and heart-stopping Lincoln Cathedral, perhaps the finest in England, all complete with lofty tower, Angel Choir and quality stone carving everywhere. We move to Stamford, clad in its mellow stone and nearby magnificent Burghley with its Elizabethan towers, great art collection and huge park.

Haddon Hall

As we enter Norfolk from the North, we enjoy the wonderful limestone Marshland churches like Walpole St Peter and West Walton before relaxing in the pretty fishing village of Blakeney with its wide horizons and treacherous mudflats. East Anglia’s flint-stone village buildings give huge pleasure, alongside devout but flamboyant Walsingham, delicious Norwich with its cathedral and cobbled quarter and the stunning façade of the cathedral at Peterborough.

Norwich

Suffolk gives us the incomparable woodwork of the churches at Lavenham and Long Melford but turning West we soon come to the unrivalled beauties of Cambridge, its monumental colleges delighting the eye, especially fan-vaulted Kings College Chapel, supplemented by the unique watery Backs. A short trip takes us to Ely Cathedral, the first glimpse of whose lantern tower is one of life’s unforgettable moments. Entering Essex we soon encounter palatial Jacobean, Adam and Gothick Audley End and the lovely country town of Saffron Walden, before Outer London encroaches.

Skirting London westwards, we drop in on the Jacobean pile of Hatfield, wonderfully lavish, then strike out to Oxford and the ensemble of some 30 colleges in mellow Cotswold stone ranging from grandiose Christ Church, elegant Oriel to cosily domestic St Edmund Hall, great havens of civilisation. Not far off is the huge palace at Blenheim, masterpiece of Hawksmoor and Vanburgh, full of fine art, the exotic tastes of late Victorian England and a memorable park.

St Edmund Hall, Oxford

Bearing north and west we find the welcoming oasis of Lichfield, its triple spired cathedral giving warm pleasure and statues of Boswell and Johnson greeting each other politely across the market square. South again to Worcester, its lovely Cathedral, redolent of Elgar, epitomises England while overlooking the Severn and the charming county cricket ground. Then down to venerable Gloucester, whose fan-vaulted Cathedral cloisters and huge East window are heart-stopping.

On to the glorious Cotswolds, untouched by the industrial revolution, entered through the idiosyncratic main street of Burford in a jumble of period styles and its high-spired wool church. Village after lovely village follow, a favourite being Chipping Campden with its mellow stone. Down the escarpment takes us to some fine Regency terraces at Cheltenham, but for a real feast we carry on to Georgian Bath, the European jewel on the Avon, owing much to the Woods and Robert Adam who respectively gave us the gorgeous Circus and Pulteney Bridge in lovely Bath stone.

The Circus, Bath

Bristol is a great city, with its gentrified bustling port and boasts one of the largest parish churches in England, the flamboyant masterpiece St Mary Redcliffe. South brings us to charming Wells Cathedral with its distinctive figure-fronted façade, and not far away are the varied attractions of impressive Elizabethan Longleat. The West Country has holiday resorts a-plenty like charming Sidmouth and palm-fringed Torquay and the fine city of Exeter is most notable for its lierne-vaulted Cathedral.

Reader, have courage – we are heading home. The sweep east soon takes us to the perpendicular Gothic perfection of Salisbury Cathedral in its Close and beautiful precincts and nearby ravishing Wilton House of the famous Double Cube Room, created by Inigo Jones and now with William Kent and Chippendale furniture. Further east, we pass the lovely New Forest and enter historic Winchester, steeped in Arthurian legend, boasting yet another splendid Cathedral and its world-famous College. Skirting proud naval Portsmouth, we hug the coast to Sussex and gracious theatrical and ecclesiastical Chichester, the lovely race-course at Goodwood and past Catholic Arundel before reaching bubbly Brighton, with its extraordinary and idiosyncratic Royal Pavilion, fine fish restaurants and famous Lanes.

Royal Pavilion, Brighton

Swinging through the orchards of Kent we find Canterbury and its incomparable Cathedral of many periods but tangible sanctity. Kent has other opulent treasures at Hever, Leeds Castle, Penshurst and Knole, but our destination is London.

And what a destination! Coming in from the West, fabulous Syon House gives an elegant Adam welcome in unpromising Brentford and Lord Burlington’s Palladian Chiswick House is “one of the most civilised public amenities in England.”

Chiswick House

Soon we are in South Kensington bristling with world-class museums and on to the great emporia of Knightsbridge and Mayfair, with their residential squares and terraces. Royal residences abound but most of all London rejoices in extensive and cherished parks at St James’s, Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, the green lungs of the city. The historic City maintains its distinct identity, overlooked by the splendour of majestic St Paul’s but Wren was not idle elsewhere, and designed many of the City’s fine collection of churches. The joys of London are endless.

The Mall, London

The patience of my readers has already been tested and I have made many omissions as I canter through the topography of England: not a word about the pubs, the quiet walks, the gentle landscape and the unexpected tranquillity of this wonderful country.  Furthermore, what gives England its unique character is the nature of the people, phlegmatic, polite, practical and infused with a native good-humour. This character is what makes England truly “This Blessed Plot”.

SMD

5.8.11

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2011