HAPPY TO BE BRITISH

As we grind through the exit payment, the transitional arrangements and edge towards a final trade treaty, the Brexit negotiations have wearied, worried and depressed us at their various stages. Yet we will be an independent nation once again on 29 March 2019 and will be free of any intrusive EU controls by 31 December 2020. That is a great prize even though we may be rather poorer for a period. We will rebuild our international relationships in an outward- looking and positive spirit, confident that our people can adapt and mightily flourish. We should be immensely re-invigorated by this prospect as we have plenty going for us as a nation and as an economy.

David Davis and Michel Barnier slug it out

Although the negotiations have been and will continue to be frustrating, with a little bit of mutual goodwill, they should be concluded with a sensible agreement protecting the integrity of the EC and recognising the importance of the services industry to the UK. The Irish border and the status of Gibraltar are knotty problems but quite capable of resolution while noisy and emotive uproar about the control of fish quotas should be relegated to the petty side-lines.

The Britain our children will inherit must rank highly among the nations of the world. Historically distinguished and influential, the UK’s constitutional monarchy system is popular as long as the revered Queen lives – expect some turmoil when graceless Charles and Camilla succeed. The crucial parliamentary institutions function efficiently, though representative reform of the Lords is overdue - wise heads are required so we do not throw out the baby with the bath-water. Democracy is dutifully respected with no need for stuffed ballot boxes à la Russe!

The security of our people, the integrity of our borders and the resources to defend them are foremost priorities among the duties of any UK government. Threats to our people have emerged from the recent Russian release of nerve agent in Salisbury and the slack open-door policy of the EU regarding illegal immigration has focused attention on the threat from porous borders in Eastern and Mediterranean Europe. Our ability to work with Europe has been underlined by the gratifying recent solidarity displayed by the EU and others in respect of Russian aggression towards the UK. British military punch is in European terms formidable, if under-funded, and our naval capabilities will revive as our two carriers are gradually brought into service. New threats from cyberspace are countered by our large national investment in GCHQ.

Domestically there is naturally a string of issues bearing down upon us. The North-South divide receives increasing attention – major investment in new energy sources, shale and wind-power, would be helpful there. Improving state education standards is a great challenge as a smarter and more productive workforce will be a post-Brexit necessity. The much-cherished, taxpayer-funded but costly National Health Service managed to weather a hard winter without collapse and fresh thinking is in train on extra ways to finance it. But it remains a uniquely appreciated national asset dispensing healthcare to the entire population free at the point of need. The US should have its own version – 70 years late.

Academic excellence attracts students from across the globe with Oxford and Cambridge Universities ranking respectively 1^st and 2nd globally with Imperial, London, in 8^th place, a tremendous achievement. No other EU institutions appear in the top 10. Many UK secondary schools, state and private, are widely admired with fierce international competition for places. The UK’s inventiveness is exemplified by the numerous Nobel prizes she still earns for scientific research and her constant investment in new industries. Our lively cultural life, not just in London, matches the best elsewhere. Perhaps most comforting of all, the rule of law holds sway and the courts are scrupulously just. The influencing or even bribery of judges, commonplace in far too many other nations, is almost unthinkable in the UK. Our police improve rapidly in their investigation of crime, making the UK safer than most comparable countries like the US, France and Germany.

Our current economy is biased towards the service sector with leadership in financial services, legal and accountancy expertise, insurance and shipping especially apparent in the City of London, a jewel in the crown. I had a career there and know the astonishing depth of competence available. The EU will do all it can to damage this asset but Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam are not a patch on London.

The priceless City of London

  My readers may be puzzled by my parade of the merits of the UK. The reason is that for far too long we have been debating Brexit and the future of the UK on the back foot, enduring a constant drip-drip of poison from Establishment figures and motley Remainers, supported by a noisily hostile media. The BBC and the Bank of England have shown no robust confidence in their own country to their lasting shame and the pronouncements and prophecies of leading Remainers have had the integrity of the actions of an Australian Test Cricket Captain.

Flag-waving aside, the UK is a fine nation by every standard, not to be disparaged by any and ready and willing to enter into friendly international relations with all, once the EU restraints are finally ended. This is a fine inheritance to pass down to our children.

The Royal Standard of the UK

 

SMD

30.03.18

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

JOHN THAW AND DAVID JASON; Celebrities of Stage and Screen (30)

The crime mystery is one of the most enduring forms of popular entertainment, from Willkie Collins to Conan Doyle and on to Agatha Christie, and my two featured actors became Britain’s favourite policemen through hugely successful TV series- John Thaw in the guises of DI Jack Regan and inspector Morse while David Jason triumphed as Inspector Jack Frost. Few actors were so recognisable and so avidly followed.

John Thaw in Inspector Morse

 

David Jason in A Touch of Frost

John Thaw (1942 – 2002) was born into a working class family in Manchester – his father was a lorry driver and his mother abandoned the family when John was 3. Educated at technical school, John somehow managed to start learning to act at RADA from the age of 16. In time he picked up small parts in both Manchester and the West End. He was a rough diamond, smoking from the age of 12 and considered a heavy drinker. Perhaps his dark-rimmed almost hooded eyes and rough expression appealed to the casting directors of the day as he was offered the plum part of confrontational Sergeant John Mann of the Special Investigations Branch of the Military Police in the crime drama Redcap which ran for 26 episodes between 1966 and 1968, which enjoyed some success.

In 1974 Thaw played DI Jack Regan in a one-off drama called Regan written by Ian Kennedy Martin. It was well received and from 1975 to 1978 a series was spawned featuring Thaw as Regan called The Sweeney. Thaw was partnered by Denis Waterman as DS Carter. The series had Thaw as a member of the Flying Squad (in rhyming Cockney slang Sweeney=Sweeney Todd=Flying Squad), the crack Metropolitan Police arrest unit. Thaw and Waterman noisily tracked down a selection of London villains amid much cockney banter (though Thaw was a Mancunian!). Ironically enough, at the same period, the real head of The Flying Squad in London was tried and imprisoned for corruption in 1977 at the Old Bailey. In all events, the TV series was wildly popular and was replayed regularly.

Denis Waterman and John Thaw tough it out in The Sweeney

Thaw was a busy actor on stage and TV from the 1960s and had married in 1973 Sheila Hancock, no mean actress herself. Sheila was (and is) an activist, taking up many a fashionable cause and she and Thaw were a power couple in the conventional Leftie territory of the acting profession. Their 28-year marriage was an enduring one.

John Thaw and Sheila Hancock

Thaw moved on to a more intellectual and more thoughtful TV police role as the lead in the Inspector Morse series, which ran from 1987 to 2000 and involved the making of 33 2-hour episodes. The Morse character was created by the writer Colin Dexter. Inspector Morse is based in Oxford and the TV series has ample opportunity to explore the beauties of the University colleges, the Thames pubs and the surrounding areas, where many an exotic crime is committed by a rich medley ranging from dons to down-and-outs. Morse himself is a rather grumpy and cantankerous bachelor, assisted by the slower but loyal DS Lewis (Kevin Whateley), with a fondness for classical music, beer and his vintage Jaguar. He often clashes with his boss, Superintendent Strange (James Grout) but usually unravels the densely plotted mystery to general admiration.

The Morse episodes were, to me anyhow, highly addictive and gave matchless armchair pleasure. They are often repeated and have given birth to the spin-offs Lewis and Endeavour, featuring a younger Morse.  John Thaw died, too early aged only 60, of oesophageal cancer in 2002 and is greatly missed.

DS Lewis and Inspector Morse in Oxford

David Jason (1940 - ) was also a police hero on TV but he made a considerable mark initially as a comic actor. Born David White in Edmonton, North London to a father who was a Billingsgate fish porter and a Welsh char-lady mother, he wanted to follow his elder brother into the acting world. Instead his father insisted he learned a trade as an electrician which David bore for 6 years. By the mid-1960s, David was a jobbing actor, impressing with his versatility in children’s shows, comedy sitcoms and one-off roles. He attracted the attention of Ronnie Barker, a great comic talent, and Jason played the part in Open all Hours of Granville, assistant to Arkwright, stuttering corner-shop proprietor in Yorkshire. The series ran from 1973 to 1985 and much fun was squeezed from Barker’s miserly ways and Jason’s genial naivety.

David Jason (as Granville) and Barker (as Arkwright) in Open All Hours 

Jason’s next substantial role made him a national institution. Only Fools and Horses, written and created by John Sullivan ran from 1981 to 2003 with 6 Christmas specials mainly after the weekly show itself had ended. The 64-episode series recorded the adventures of the Trotter family with David Jason as Derek (Del Boy), Nicholas Lyndhurst as frustrated younger brother Rodney, and Lennard Pearce as Grandad, succeeded by Buster Merryfield as Uncle Albert. The Trotters lived in a high-rise council block in Peckham, South London and eked out a precarious living as market traders and purveyors of stolen, defective or rejected goods. Del Boy was the archetypical spiv, dressed in a camel coat, drinking cocktails covered by a paper oriental umbrella and spinning unlikely stories to a bemused circle of nefarious friends like Boycie, Trigger and Denzil. Del Boy augmented our English vocabulary by regularly denouncing Rodney as a “Plonker” and expressing approval with “Cushty” and “Jubbly Bubbly”! Only Fools was a comic riot and won awards by the barrowful.

Uncle Albert, Rodney and Del Boy (David Jason) from Only Fools

During the long run of Only Fools, Jason had added further lustre to his comic reputation by playing Pop Larkin in The Darling Buds of May (1991-93) an adaptation of the 1954 H E Bates novel. The series was notable for the unveiling of Catherine Zeta-Jones as Pop’s daughter, toothsome then and gorgeous still.

DI Frost and Superintendent Mullett

Jason then took a huge gamble. Hitherto a comic star of some magnitude, he took on the entirely straight role of Inspector Frost in A Touch of Frost, a series of 2-hour police dramas, whose 42 episodes ran from 1992 to 2010. Jason’s Inspector Frost operates from Denton, a fictional town, maybe somewhere near Swindon. Frost is a widower, unlucky in his search for new love, living frugally on takeaways or tinned food, chaotically disorganised and disrespectful of authority. Frost’s sidekick is efficient DS George Toolan and a lesser helper is archivist PC Ernie Trigg (Arthur White and Jason’s real-life brother!). Frost’s boss is officious disciplinarian Superintendent Norman Mullet (Bruce Alexander) with whom Frost clashes constantly. Mullett is infuriated by Frost but admiring too, as he usually collars the culprit. The Frost series is loosely based on early thrillers of R D Wingfield and is constantly repeated, a perfect winter night’s brain-teaser.

Jason is now 78 but still works, reprising his earlier role as Granville in Still open All Hours - he refuses to retire saying he is looking for a final big role. His beloved girlfriend since 1977, actress Myfanwy Talog died in 1995; he married production assistant Gill Hinchcliffe in 2005 and has a 9-year-old daughter. David Jason was knighted in 2005 and Sir David has made an immeasurable contribution to our enjoyment.

SMD

20.03.18

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

THE MOCK-HEROIC

Our Lilliputian political struggles lend themselves to the attention of poetic satire, an almost forgotten art, but one that flourished gloriously from the mid-17^th to the mid-18^th centuries, purveyed by three masters in ascending order of brilliance, Samuel Butler, John Dryden and Alexander Pope.  What fun they would have had at the expense of May, Boris, Hammond and Moggie, diverted by Corbyn, Barnier and Juncker and a preening galère of bit-players like Tusk, Sturgeon, Soubry and Macron! They would all be skinned alive.

Samuel Butler

John Dryden

 

Alexander Pope

Samuel Butler (1613-1680) came from a quietly Anglican farming family in Worcestershire. After the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, he worked as a clerk to the gentry and briefly for the 2^nd Duke of Buckingham but was not received at court.  Like all England he had wearied of Puritan zealotry and he expressed his dislike in the epic mock heroic poem Hudibras, which became highly popular.

Such as do build their Faith upon
The holy Text of Pike and Gun;
Decide all Controversies by
Infallible Artillery;
And prove their Doctrine Orthodox
By Apostolic Blows and Knocks;
Call Fire and Sword and Desolation,
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done:
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.

This broadside against sectarianism and the futility of religious wars still resonates in our world defaced by Irish intransigence, Syrian blood-lust and Islamic extremism.

A more commanding figure than Butler is John Dryden (1631-1700), a man of many parts, poet, dramatist, translator and critic. In the genre of political satire none surpasses his mock-heroic epic Absalom and Achitophel of 1681. Outwardly a biblical narrative, in fact it is an allegory of the perilous intrigues surrounding Charles II. David is Charles II, Absalom is his illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth, Achitophel the devious Earl of Shaftsbury and Zimri is the erratic rake the 2^nd Duke of Buckingham. Dryden’s portrait of Shaftsbury is devastating.

Of these the false Achitophel was first: 

A name to all succeeding ages curst. 

For close designs, and crooked counsels fit; 

Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit: 

Restless, unfixt in principles and place; 

In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace. 

A fiery soul, which working out its way, 

Fretted the pigmy-body to decay: 

And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay. 

A daring pilot in extremity; 

Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high 

He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit, 

Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. 

Dryden had already made an enemy of Buckingham and meted out a strikingly hostile appraisal of that gentleman’s character:

A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.

Dryden’s own loyalties were erratic: reared a Puritan, he became influenced by High Anglicanism, switching from support of the Commonwealth to enthusiasm for monarchy. He became the first Poet Laureate in 1668, a royal appointment, and eventually became a Catholic, welcoming James II. Expelled from Court on the accession of Protestant William and Mary in 1688, Dryden still made an honourable living as a writer and he was accorded full funereal privileges on his death in 1700, being eventually interred at Westminster Abbey.

How much we miss a poet of Dryden’s calibre to prick the bubble of the political classes in Britain and Europe in the Brexit battle!

Our third poet is Alexander Pope (1688-1744) a central figure in the Augustan Age and a poet of surpassing genius. Pope was the son of a London linen merchant and suffered various handicaps. He was born and remained a Catholic, subjected to discrimination under the Test Acts, unable to live in his own London and barred from many employments. He suffered from Pott’s Disease, tuberculosis of the spine, and was hunchbacked and of stunted growth, only reaching 4ft 6in. Unable to attend university, he was largely self-taught and absorbed a profound knowledge of ancient literature. He had the gift of friendship and came to know many people in literary circles; he was an excellent letter-writer and he charmed and delighted his various correspondents, many of them female.

Poetry was very different in those days. The poet was an upholder of standards, often those of the ancients, and his output was openly didactic. Thus Pope in his Essay on Criticism stated:

A little learning is a dang’rous thing,

Drink deep or drink not of the Pierian Spring.

Similarly in Pope’s An Essay on Man he declared:

Know then thyself: presume not God to scan

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

No modern poet would involve himself in such subjects. To us poetry is not now a narrative media, nor a handbook on morals or good taste. We most associate poetry with the untamed ego, our passionate or violent senses, with our inner struggles or self-conscious descriptions of natural beauty. But all of that did not really come in until the late 18^th century, with Scott, Wordsworth and Byron.

Pope’s mastery of the heroic couplet was most evident in his astonishingly ambitious translations of Homer, not at all like the atmosphere of the ancient Greeks, but redolent of the civilised drawing rooms of Augustan England.

The most accessible and the most popular of Pope’s works is his mock-heroic The Rape of the Lock of 1712 making a drama of the unconsented snipping of a lock of hair from Belinda’s mane by an ardent admirer.

Aubrey Beardsley's illustration in 1892 of The Rape of the Lock

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 

What mighty contests rise from trivial things, 

I sing—This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: 

This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: 

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 

If she inspire, and he approve my lays. 

He sets the scene with humour and wit: His mastery of the heroic couplet, his exquisite choice of words and the easy sophistication of his narrative recommends Pope to his readers. The satire is gentle but Pope could be cutting in his derision – see The Dunciad – and not for nothing was Pope known as The Wasp of Twickenham. But allow him to close in a relatively mellow vein.’

Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 

Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, 

There stands a structure of majestic frame, 

Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. 

Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 

Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; 

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, 

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea. 

SMD

10.03.2018

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018