SCOTTISH DIVINES

It may astonish my friends who know me for my sometimes abrasive atheism, but a fact is a fact. In my final school year in Edinburgh, aged 17, I carried away the prestigious Rogerson Prize for Divinity, for which an essay on a religious subject was required. My essay was on Presbyterianism, the main form of church government in Scotland, and my effort was the usual mishmash of prejudice, expatiating on the merits of the Scottish way with many an unecumenical dig at Anglicans and Catholics. I did not move on to take holy orders – The Church of Scotland rather lacks the requisite pomp and while I hardly qualified as an embryo Cardinal, I would have enjoyed lolling on the red cushioned benches of the House of Lords as a mitred Anglican Bishop with lawn sleeves – but, alas, it was not to be. Yet I retain an interest in ghostly matters and my native Scotland has produced over the centuries a talented bunch of divines, some of whom I here recall.

My first divine is certainly obscure: William Kethe (died 1594) was a Scots Protestant clergyman, of unknown provenance, who lived for many years in exile in Germany and Geneva. His fame rests on his translation of the Psalms into English; he is credited with the words of the famed Old Hundredth (Psalm 100), to the tune by Louis Bourgeois, later updated by Ralph Vaughan Williams:

All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell;

Come ye before Him and rejoice.

The long-enduring Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1650

Calvin’s Geneva church introduced the idea of congregational hymn-singing, hitherto the preserve of chanting clergymen. Kethe also translated Psalm 104 but his version was adapted and popularised in the 1830s by another Scotsman Sir Robert Grant, (1779-1838) a prolific hymn-writer and member of the evangelical Clapham Sect who became Governor of Bombay. His hymn is thought by many to be the very finest;

O worship the King all-glorious above,
O gratefully sing his power and his love:
our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
pavilioned in splendour and girded with praise.

O tell of his might and sing of his grace,
whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
and dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

A more intellectually challenging Scottish Divine was Thomas Reid (1710- 1796). He was born in Strachan (pronounced “Strawn”), near Banchory, Deeside and, (like me!) attended Aberdeen Grammar School. He became a Church of Scotland minister and taught philosophy at Aberdeen University. He succeeded Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1764. His Inquiry into the Human Mind and the Principles of Common Sense was a major contribution to the remarkable 18^th century Scottish Enlightenment and he was the founder of The Scottish School of Common Sense. This philosophic school remained influential, especially in the United States, throughout the 19^th Century.  

Thomas Reid, looking pinched

Reid was impatient with the paradoxes of Locke, Berkeley and Hume; he did not accept Locke’s notion of “ideas”, no more than Berkeley’s idealism and rejection of the familiar world and Hume would dispute his distinction between sensation and perception. Reid was technically “an epistemological externalist” accepting the reality of the world as generally perceived. He was later attacked by Kant and most European philosophers turned their backs on him though Schopenhauer praised him and he enjoyed a revival in the writings of G E Moore. He saw no contradiction between debating the finer points of perception and a craggy belief in the Christian God.

A decidedly odd religious enthusiast was Alexander Cruden (1699-1770). Born into a well-to-do merchant family in Aberdeen, he was yet another alumnus of Aberdeen Grammar School and graduate of Marischal College, Aberdeen. Cruden published his famed Concordance in 1737. The Concordance cross-references every word in the Bible (there are 777,746 words in the King James Version). The amazing fact is that Cruden completed this task in less than 2 years, working entirely alone without patron or financial support. To produce such a work has been described as scaling “a Himalaya of tedium” and in medieval times would have employed some 50 monks but Cruden was an obsessive type and applied himself entirely to this task. His work has never been out-of-print and still graces many a clerical library.

Obsessive Alexander Cruden

Sadly Cruden was unbalanced and was confined to asylums on four occasions. He paid wholly unsolicited addresses to several unmarried ladies or widows, in a manner we would now call “stalking”. His Sabbatarian beliefs were fanatical and he carried a sponge about him to erase graffiti he found offensive. He was litigious and wanted to stand for Parliament – a sure sign of madness! Although often a figure of fun, he was honoured by his old university and endowed a modest bursary there, which happily is still awarded.

The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
  He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
  The quiet waters by.

I end with everyone’s favourite Psalm, the 23^rd. It is usually sung to the tune “Crimond” and it is attributed to Jesse Seymour Irvine (1836-83) whose father was a Church of Scotland minister flitting between the parishes of Peterhead, Dunottar and Crimond-the-Town, all in my native North-East of Scotland. How the memories flood back at this great psalm!

SMD

28.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

OUR FRACTURED WORLD

While Christmas is supposedly a time of peace and harmony, our feeble old world has not received this message, or if it has, fails to act upon it. Conflict and discord are much in evidence; we need to be happy within our own skins and that is as true of political as it is of personal matters. A patient and civilised approach could resolve many of the clashes which so bedevil us and usher in that elusive time of sweetness and light.

We Britons have been beset by regional discontents and yet now once ultra-violent Northern Ireland has been relatively peaceful for 10 years. Scotland demonstrated that it wants more independence and this has been in large part granted. The SNP professes to be dissatisfied but I believe most Scots are happy with the autonomous arrangements.

The emerging 2016 controversy is Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. About half the UK wants the country to stay a member, the rest favour “Brexit”. I belong at present to this latter camp. The EU direction of travel, with more integration leading to common economic, foreign and defence policies is not in Britain’s interest. Britain is far from perfect but our open economy with its global market is unlike those on the continent, our parliamentary institutions are well respected, our judiciary is almost too independent and our executive is uncorrupt. Proud and jealous of our sovereignty, we do not need some Brussels overview of our affairs nor strait-jackets manufactured by Paris or Berlin.

                            

                                            

Juncker and Cameron: seldom a meeting of mind

As for the Euro, we remember Nicholas Ridley’s prophetic words in 1990 (before being forced to resign from Thatcher’s cabinet): A German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe. The impoverishment of Mediterranean Europe to the benefit of Northern countries duly followed and the failed dogma of Austerity was rammed down the throats of weaker states. The banking crisis in 2008, the near-collapse of Greece and the crass mismanagement of the migrant crisis undermined any residual confidence in the good sense of the bloc. Cameron, with his very limited and irrelevant “re-negotiation” has missed the depth of feeling engendered by European claims of supranational rights. The mischief of Europe is not simply a matter that can be resolved by opt-outs, sleight of hand or modifications in procedure. Only substantive repatriation of powers will meet the bill: we wish no less than to reclaim our birth-right.  I earnestly hope Britain votes for exit and then negotiates an amicable divorce from the European Union.

We wish Europe well, but we simply do not fit in. A centralised Europe with common fiscal, banking and political institutions may well prosper and overcome her present stagnation. Inevitably the constituent nations will steadily lose sovereignty as decisions are taken on a majority basis and economies of scale make their demands. Britain’s presence would be desirable for Europe at one level but disruptive at another and we are mutually better out of it.

ISIL on the march

The highly destructive war in Syria defies much hope of a rationally negotiated solution. Assad is a blood-stained dictator (like most Arab leaders) and deserves to fall but ISIL is even worse and it must be eliminated or emasculated. Only Syrians and Iraqis can achieve this; the West belongs on the military side-lines and cannot become more deeply committed. Russia, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia should concentrate on active diplomacy with the other powers. The Muslim world used to be relatively tolerant and certainly Sunni and Shia lived alongside each other. In recent years there has been a wholly unnecessary polarisation of the confessional divide which has existed 1,400 years. Only Muslims can resolve this. More ominously for Christian minorities, only yesterday the Sultan of Brunei announced criminal penalties on those observing their faith, a most retrograde step but a straw in the Islamic wind.

It takes a tragically long time for enmities to be overcome. Israel and Palestine are still at daggers drawn, India and Pakistan are not reconciled, Korea is still divided, China and Japan view each other with visceral suspicion. Yet France and Germany embrace, the US moves towards Cuba and South Africa bravely aspires to be The Rainbow Nation. I believe Obama will be succeeded by a Republican President (not Trump, I pray!) and the Republicans tend to be more pro-active in foreign affairs. Let them use US influence for the promotion of international cooperation and may 2016 herald a safer and more free world.

SMD

23.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

JOHN "SPANISH" PHILLIP, ARTIST

The fleeting nature of fame is well illustrated by the fate of Victorian painters. Prolific and talented, held in public esteem, many are disparaged or quite forgotten now. This neglect is undeserved and I here celebrate John Phillip whom no less than Queen Victoria rated as the finest portrait painter in the land and whose wide-ranging works found an admiring public.

John Phillip, self-portrait

John Phillip (1817-67) was born in my home-town of Aberdeen, the son of a poor retired soldier turned shoemaker. He showed early promise as an artist and he found a patron in Dundee-based Lord Panmure, who generously sent him to learn portraiture under Thomas Musgrave Joy and paid for his artistic education at the Royal Academy in London. In the late 1830s Phillip joined The Clique, a group of artists who were critical of Classical academic art. The Clique was led by Richard Dadd, the painter of supernatural subjects who was committed to Bedlam in 1843 and then Broadmoor after murdering his father whom he believed to be the Devil. Unwisely in 1844 Phillip married Dadd’s sister Maria, who also went mad after a few years (trying to strangle their infant son) and she was confined from 1855, comfortably enough, in an Aberdeen asylum until her death in 1893.

Phillip soon earned a good living as an artist, initially of Scottish subjects;

Presbyterian Catechising

Baptism in Scotland

By 1850 Phillip had come to the attention of Queen Victoria and he started to receive royal commissions – about 50 – and the Queen also bought some of his paintings. Albert was patriotically portrayed in a rather lurid kilt (dig that sporran!) and royal weddings had to be commemorated.

Albert, Prince Consort by John Phillip

     

These commissions made Phillip rich but he was not artistically fulfilled and he needed to escape his matrimonial troubles.  In 1851 he made the first of many visits to Spain whose vibrant colours and outside life-style enchanted him. The contrast with solid but grey Aberdeen or misty if imposing London must have been striking. Over the years he travelled in Seville, Cadiz, Murcia and Valencia, often depicting low-lifers, gypsies and busy street scenes. He soon became known as “Spanish” Phillip and his fame burgeoned.

Life among the Gypsies in Seville

The Dying Contrabandista

La Bomba

La Gloria (a Wake for a Dead Child)

Phillip considered La Gloria his finest work and his Spanish works were received with great enthusiasm at the Royal Academy exhibitions. Phillip died, aged 50, of a stroke while visiting a friend’s Kensington studio in 1867.

One of Phillip’s friends in The Clique was Augustus Egg. Evelyn Waugh, who collected Victorian paintings, thought Egg was a supreme painter: I’d put him among the highest. Who today has heard of Egg? Phillip is equally neglected and his works are obscurely hung in provincial galleries. Waugh reckoned that there was no “real” painting after 1870 but Waugh was famously reactionary. Yet there is no doubt that the artistic community began to lose its popular following by the late 19^th century – a tragedy for national culture, which should never be elitist and must always seek to touch the heart of every citizen.

SMD

15.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

PETROL-HEADS

OMG, he’s not going to write about cars is he?  John Betjeman’s caustic 1937 lines, referring to clerks, in Slough summed up the social stigma involved with devastating accuracy.

It’s not their fault that they don’t know

The bird-song from the radio

It’s not their fault they often go

To Maidenhead, and talk of sport and makes of cars

In various bogus-Tudor bars

And daren’t look up and see the stars

But belch instead.

Accordingly I hesitate to talk of makes of car as I know I will stray into the territory of the vulgar and the banal; but the fact remains that the car often exerts a powerful, almost intoxicating, spell over our family and no doubt many other families in the land.

I totted up the grand totals; in my time I have run 24 cars (although 10 were generously provided by my grateful employer) and my 3 sons have had a further 16 cars financed by me. Although I began with a Mini and end currently with a Smart, in between there has been a glittering parade including Rovers, BMWs, a Range Rover and a selection of Jeeps. The high-spot was my two swish Bentleys from which I traded down (sic!) to an Aston Martin Virage. My sons have had Fiats and Golfs but a clutch of glamorous TVRs and Jaguars too. The family is gently divided into the petrol-head group comprising my lovely wife and my two car-mad younger sons ranged against dourly rational me (though I had a rush of blood with the Bentleys!) and my supremely sensible eldest son. I freely acknowledge that owning cars is a matchless way to waste money.

A Bentley Brooklands - my pride and joy

But let’s talk of the pleasures of motoring. Observe the sleek lines of the impeccable machine: smell the dizzying aroma of the polished leather: enjoy the satisfying click as the door closes true: hear the warming-up ritual, sometimes a fearsome roar but better a quiet purr like that of an alert panther. Then we are off! 0 to 60 in 5 seconds, passing dodderers in their jalopies, cutting up Sunday drivers, tooting the horn aggressively, taking on the boy-racers, terrorising pedestrians, arch-enemies of adrenalin-saturated motorists! We may indeed have a prang, we may do a ton on the M1, but for sure we get our kicks on Route 66. I may exaggerate a tad but what a wonderful macho experience!

There are also profound psychological factors at work. You are not just keeping up with, but effortlessly eclipsing, the Joneses: I recall driving through Hyde Park in my first Bentley and receiving yearning and admiring glances: yes, a fine car is a penis extension, a honey-pot, a statement of rampant masculinity. Vanity is flattered too: how ready was the Savoy Hotel in London to allow my sparkling, bright red, white-wall-tired Bentley to park in front of their main entrance as we patronised the Oyster Bar, and how easy it was to park for polo at Windsor and racing at Ascot. Swollen self-esteem is the delightful product of all this. I fear I may be a late re-incarnation of Peter Simple’s J. Bonnington Jagworth, leader of the Motorists’ Liberation Front, driving his Boggs Super-Oaf at alarming speed and quaffing champagne from his gold-plated hub-cap!

All good things come to an end and my current car is as modest as they come. I see that single car ownership is rather anti-social, putting pressure on global resources, polluting the environment and that I really ought just to take a bus. Maybe after my time “Beam me up, Scottie” will become a reality and motorways, traffic lights and street furniture will be a distant memory. Until that day dawns, discreetly enjoy a reliable, functional, comfortable and economical car and do not allow the manifold excitements to tempt you over the top. Good motoring!

My modest but trusty Smart

SMD

7.12.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

WILLIAM DYCE, ARTIST

                                       

My cherished home-town of Aberdeen in the North-East of Scotland is the birth-place of several artistic figures – James Gibbs, the Hanoverian architect, Annie Lennox, the contemporary singer-songwriter of Eurhythmics fame – and I here celebrate the widely accomplished Victorian painter William Dyce.

Maria Summerhayes as Dyce's Beatrice

William Dyce (1806 – 64) was the son of an eminent local physician who lectured in medicine at Aberdeen University. A bright pupil, William won a university prize in 1828 for an essay on animal magnetism. Expected to enter the medical profession, he was instead attracted to the graphic arts. He studied at the Royal Academy schools and in the 1820s made two lengthy visits to Rome and fell under the historic spell of the Early Florentine School. Returning to Edinburgh, he earned a living as a portrait painter although his range was much wider.

William Dyce

                                          

                                                  

In 1837 Dyce took an appointment at the Government School of Design (much later The Royal College of Art). He became an important art administrator and studied the teaching systems on the continent, especially in Germany. He is credited with the South Kensington schools system which held sway for many years. His own painting advanced and he was well recognised as one of the leading painters in Britain. His subjects were widely spread: many were biblical, reflecting the spirit of the mid-Victorian age: others were genre paintings of theatrical scenes, of working people and some fine landscapes.

Francesca da Rimini

King Lear and the Fool in a Storm

Welsh women knitting

A Scottish Boatman

One of Dyce’s models was Maria Summerhayes who posed as Beatrice (see above). Maria was by night a lady of the town and was one of Mr Gladstone’s “rescue cases”. With astonishing indifference to the reputational danger he ran, Gladstone from 1850 – 71 went out on nocturnal expeditions from Downing Street (he was for years Chancellor of the Exchequer and four times Prime Minister) to try to reform the many “fallen women” he met on the nearby streets. Gladstone was highly moral but these ladies became some kind of erotic obsession; he introduced the attractive Maria to Dyce; while there was no evidence she mended her ways, she did marry.

From 1845 onwards Dyce was enlisted to help decorate the Houses of Parliament, rebuilt after the destructive fire in 1834. Dyce was recognised as an authority on fresco painting. He spent years on decorating the Robing Room in the House of Lords with scenes from Arthurian legend, at the time an obscure subject but later popularised by Tennyson in his Idylls of the King

Generosity from Westminster

                         

Descent of Venus from Osborne House

                                             

The Knights of the Round Table leaving Arthur's Palace

Many of Dyce’s frescos have deteriorated and are no longer enjoyable and he did not complete his Westminster commission, dying at work in 1864. He was buried at High Anglican St Leonard’s, Streatham, whose new chancel he designed. He is commemorated there with an elaborate brass tablet.

Dyce is a little difficult to place artistically. His Italianate style places him on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelites who almost post-dated him. He is sometimes described as a Scottish realist and there are certainly echoes of Courbet in his paintings of working people.

He was a polymath in that he included a dissertation on Gregorian chant in a book he wrote about the Book of Common Prayer; he founded the Motet Society to foster late-medieval music: he was himself a fine organist and he composed a Non Nobis Domine, sometimes still sung in thanksgiving at Royal Academy banquets.

Although his later life was spent in London, Aberdeen Art Gallery has about 50 of his works. He was a man of profound culture – the Tate holds what some think his finest painting, Pegwell Bay, Kent, a landscape which rivals the easel of Turner.

Pegwell Bay, Kent

SMD
30.11.15
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2015

CRITICAL PATH

The critics who illuminate our literature, analyse our public life and promote contemporary artistic values are part of the life-blood of our culture. They are inheritors of a long tradition and I will sketch in the principal players in Britain and America as I see them.

I start with one of the most famous critics in the English language, Dr Samuel Johnson, opinionated Tory, authority on Shakespeare and English poetry and masterly writer on a wide variety of subjects. A formidable controversialist, he was never neutral; Sir, I tell you the first Whig was the Devil! Waxing indignant at Bishop Berkeley’s philosophic idealism, he kicked a stone down the road with some violence, roaring I refute it thus!

Dr Samuel Johnson

Moving on to the 19^th Century, influenced by the French Revolution and hopes for the common man embodied in Napoleon, Regency England saw the libertarian effusions of William Hazlitt and the brilliant journalism of William Cobbett, describing in Rural Rides the blighted lives of the working classes.

England was graced then by a quartet of critical giants. Thomas Babington Macaulay, unparalleled Whig historian, popular poet and an energetic writer of pellucid clarity, blotted his copybook in my mind by his attack on my hero James Boswell as Impertinent, shallow and pedantic…a bigot and a sot. But Macaulay’s judgements were normally of exemplary quality.

Matthew Arnold, pontificating with high seriousness, laid down the laws of literature, wrote some arresting poetry and in his Culture and Anarchy sought to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light. Equally influential in the aesthetic kingdom was social radical John Ruskin, writing gloriously of the joys of Gothic architecture – When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece - of the beauty of Venice and swooning theatrically on his first sight of the steeple of Grantham parish church. My final giant is eccentric and difficult Thomas Carlyle, a native of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, but long ensconced in Cheyne Row, Chelsea. Muttering to himself cantankerously, he was an unrivalled social critic (coining the phrase The Dismal Science to describe economics) and introduced insular Britain to the merits of German culture via essays on Goethe, Fichte and Lessing and an adulatory biography of Frederick the Great of Prussia, one of his cherished Heroes. There were many other redoubtable critics, not least Walter Bagehot who dissected the British Constitution: The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

From late Victorian times onwards, for at least 60 years (he lived to age 94) the most celebrated critic was George Bernard Shaw, an irrepressibly garrulous Irishman, a Fabian Socialist enthusiast, whose many popular plays were prefaced by long essays on the issues of the day. He wrote with wit and sparkle. His thrusts could be deadly: All professions are conspiracies against the laity or The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

George Bernard Shaw

Soon America joined the critical party: H L Mencken was an enlivening writer with a mordant wit berating the ignorance of the masses (the booberie) and ridiculing Puritanism, woolly Wilsonian idealism and the absurdities of Prohibition. English critical spats were more parochial with traditionalist F L Lucas crossing swords with esteemed modernist F R Leavis in Cambridge after Lucas deplored the obscurantist clique around T S Eliot. Lucas went on to write his masterly Style, an appreciation of fine writing in English literature. A generation later, English letters and esoteric knowledge found their champion with fluent controversialist Hugh Trevor Roper, a fine but not fecund historian, whose preferred metier was the Sunday newspapers or the heavyweight weeklies. He came sadly unstuck when he vouched for the genuineness of the forged Hitler’s Diaries.

As America became the pre-eminent world power, much of their critics’ energy was diverted to political and social rather than purely literary issues. The most powerful columnist was Walter Lippmann -- who coined the phrase The Cold War – his informed column was required reading for a generation. By the 1960s, a group of novelists started to dominate the media and TV chat shows sounding off about the full range of problems – Norman Mailer, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Mailer was pugnacious to a fault, coming to blows several times with unflappable and elegant Vidal while Capote was ridiculed. Vidal described meeting Capote in a friend’s apartment: I did not have my glasses on and sat on what I took to be a colourful ottoman. It squealed and it turned out to be Truman! All three were significant commentators, Mailer with his The White Negro, Capote with In Cold Blood and Vidal with his US historical series including Burr and latterly dismissive reaction to the Kennedy clan.

An Englishman, iconoclastic Christopher Hitchens, barged onto the scene in England from Balliol, Oxford, and later spent the last 30 years of his life in the USA. Starting off as a Trotskyite, he moved right ending up supporting the Iraq war but he was a doughty enemy of Kissinger, Clinton, Mother Teresa and the Christian religion. A born contrarian, the collections of his essays are unmissable.

Christopher Hitchens

I end with three critics who are still with us (just!). Clive James, born in Australia, has delighted his British audience with his Unreliable Memoirs, caustic reviews of other TV channels and a wide range of literature. Stricken with leukaemia, he professes embarrassment at still being alive, but long may he give us pleasure. The US is criss-crossed by The Man in the White Suit Tom Wolfe, an energetic 84, bringing us penetrating reports from Silicon Valley and points West. He supported George W Bush, derided the radical Left and praised astronauts unfashionably. His 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities mercilessly satirised Wall Street, black-white race relations and macho attitudes. My final great critic is Leeds-born Alan Bennett, prolific playwright, diarist and literary master, now 81. His anthologies Writing Home and Untold Tales are deservedly best-sellers; his essays on Philip Larkin and W H Auden could not be bettered.

The above writers cannot be described as “only critics, not do-ers”. They all have the arsenal of their own original work and a profound intellectual hinterland. Their criticism is informed by their own experience and achievements and we learn much from them.

SMD

27.11.15

Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2015

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HBOS HOTCHPOTCH

At least seven years after the event, the official report by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority on the failure of HBOS has now been published. It makes sorry reading, all 405 pages, a chronicle of mismanagement and poor leadership. The era of “banker-bashing” can now draw to a close – the culprits are identified and must live with their disgrace – but the overwhelmingly respectable banking profession can turn over a new page and steadily rebuild the esteem it once enjoyed.

Dennis Stevenson (chairman) James Crosby 1st CEO Andy Hornby 2nd CEO

Now that most of the facts about the two major UK banking failures, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) have been revealed, it is possible to draw some tentative conclusions.

HBOS, unlike RBS, was not a complex bank. It was not involved in investment banking – its offerings were principally personal overdrafts and mortgages (it came to hold 20% of the UK mortgage market) together with commercial loans (principally to housebuilding and property companies). Its overseas operations were not extensive although it lent heavily in Ireland and in Australia. The company’s origins derived from the merger in 2001 of Halifax, the large, long demutualised UK building society and now a bank, and Bank of Scotland, established in 1695, a strong regional financier but quite small in UK terms. The ambition was to develop BOS into a much larger UK player and for Halifax to retain its leading rank among mortgage providers.

A drive to grow the HBOS balance sheet ensued by rapidly acquiring new customers and making larger loans. This hectic drive resulted in poor quality loans being made to second rate borrowers, imprudent credit being granted on the basis of over-optimistic property valuations and executives concentrating on their sales targets upon which their advancement and bonuses depended. The HBOS balance sheet grew in the 2002-5 period from £312bn to £540bn; in the buoyant pre-2007 financial market HBOS flourished and few questioned its business model.

Yet there were fundamental flaws. A bank cannot expand indefinitely without expansion of its funding. HBOS’ lending, often long-term, soon outpaced the growth of its deposit base. It depended too much on short-term funds, for say 1 month, from the wholesale inter-bank money market to finance the business. This mismatch of funding is a commonplace of banking and HBOS should have realised it was becoming ever more illiquid and cut back its lending. It failed to do so and was in a uniquely vulnerable position when the 2007-8 crisis struck. Wholesale lines of credit dried up and HBOS was unable to meet its liabilities; only a hasty takeover by Lloyds Bank in 2008 prevented an ignominious collapse. Lloyds itself had to be bailed out by the UK government with £20.5bn when the size of HBOS’ losses engulfed it.

Strange to relate, there was a shortage of banking experience at the highest level at HBOS. The chairman, Dennis Stevenson, was a management consultant with much knowledge of the media, but not much of banking. Unusually he participated in the sales-orientated share option plan, so he had a vested interest in rapid growth. The first CEO, James Crosby, was an actuary rather than a banker (though he was bizarrely recruited to the board of the FSA) and the second CEO Andy Hornby had worked for 3 years in the bank but his main career had been with supermarket group Asda, and was essentially a salesman. There were senior bankers at HBOS but hardly any had any outside experience: they were home-grown, loyalist and parochial. There were normally 9 non-exec directors offering their wisdom, but their eminence derived from quite different businesses. Their contribution was invisible, as they did not have the knowledge to question the dense banking information provided; only when John Mack of Bank of America joined the board in 2007 was any challenge mounted, much too late. HBOS was an accident waiting to happen.

I guess there are many lessons and I touch on a few:

(1)    The Bank of England needs to vet the suitability of the Chairmen and Chief Executives of banks with especial rigour.

(2)    The FCA (formerly the FSA), fatally complimented for its “light touch” in the early 2000’s, should have the staff resources thoroughly to analyse and insist on change in any financial institution. Place no confidence in non-execs for this purpose.

(3)    Auditors have proved useless in flagging or overseeing change in banks. They rarely stand up to assertive bankers as the banks are plum clients generating enormous fee income.

(4)    These reports, with their lengthy Maxwellisation process, take far too long to produce – in the case of HBOS their publication came after the relevant Statute of Limitations expired and no penal sanctions on those named are possible. The process leaves Fred Goodwin of RBS and Andy Hornby of HBOS untouched, inevitably to much public unease.

(5)    Whatever the City objections, ideally the separation on the Glass-Steagall model or at worst the ring-fencing of investment banking from retail banking should be enshrined in law. This would hopefully reduce the chances of another taxpayers’ bail-out – but would have made no difference to HBOS which had no investment banking activities.

A very dark era in the world of finance is ending. May the next chapter tell a happier story.

SMD

22.11.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

SPORTING HEROES HONOURED

As the years roll by, the great sporting names of one’s youth inevitably pass on too. 2015 has seen some great figures depart, who gave enormous pleasure, unexpected thrills or ecstatic moments to me and my generation. I honour a selection of those lost in 2015 here.

Benaud the pundit

Benaud the bowler

                                                                        

Richie Benaud captained the Australian cricket test team from 1959-64 and flourished as a hard hitting batsman and superlative leg-spin bowler from 1951. Bowling both over and round the wicket his deliveries were cunningly flighted and many an English batsman was baffled by his deceptive cat-and-mouse skills, a joy (a dread, if you were English!) to watch. In retirement Richie became a laconic pundit, his Aussie drawl complementing his real cricketing wisdom.

Another departing Australian star was Arthur Morris, a left-handed opener whose salad days were with Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles who won 4 tests in England, with Morris scoring 3 centuries. Rather before my time, I recall his name in the 1954-5 Ashes series but Morris had lost form and soon retired.

Tom Graveney's off-drive

Among the very finest of English batsmen was Tom Graveney. A stalwart of Gloucestershire and then Worcestershire, Tom had all the strokes. John Arlott once waxed lyrical describing the sound of a Graveney off-drive “as mellow as old port”. His career with England was inconsistent but he still notched up 11 test centuries and a highest test score of 258, while often being the highest scorer in county cricket.

Brian Close, Yorkshire Hero

Frank "Typhoon"Tyson

Brian Close never had a regular place in the English test team although he spasmodically played during the 1950s and 60s. He captained Yorkshire and won 4 county championships in the 1960s; he then fell out with the committee and moved to Somerset. He had been recalled as English captain for the final test against the seemingly unbeatable West Indies in 1964 and duly won it by an innings and 34 runs. An angular Yorkshireman with a sharp tongue he was recklessly courageous, braving the West Indies fast bowlers in the era before body padding or head guards, even in his final test in 1976 aged 45.  

Frank “Typhoon” Tyson was perhaps the fastest bowler of all time. His heyday was brief but he won immortality as the man who skittled out Australia in the 1954-5 series, allowing England to retain the Ashes. Knocked unconscious by a bouncer from Ray Lindwall, Tyson returned the next day and shattered the Aussies with 6 wickets for 85. In the 3rd test he bowled at a terrifying pace to take 7 for 28 in the Australian 2^nd innings and their challenge was over.

Dave Mackay (Spurs) remonstrates with Billy Bremner (Leeds)

Moving away from cricketers, football has also seen the loss in 2015 of Howard Kendall, Everton’s iconic manager who won 2 league championships, an FA Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup in the mid-1980s. The greatest player to pass on must be Dave Mackay, the Scottish dynamo, who played left half for Hearts – I saw him several times at Tynecastle in the 1950s – but who gained a wider audience in the memorable Spurs side 1959-68. With his barrel chest, leadership qualities and exquisite ball skills, Mackay was the complete footballer.

The roll-call for 2015 cannot be complete without due tribute being paid to phenomenal Pat Eddery, champion jockey 11 times, winner of 3 Derbys and 4 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, whose haul of 4,632 British flat winners was only exceeded by Gordon Richards.

Pat Eddery wins the 1997 St Leger on Silver Patriarch

   

SMD

18.11.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

ROBERT ADAM, ARCHITECT

There are few more distinguished names in the annals of Scottish and British architecture than that of Robert Adam. He was the leading proponent of the Neo-Classical style, which he had studied with immense industry and the fruits of that industry beautify Britain and epitomise the elegance of the 18^th century.

Robert Adam

Robert Adam (1728-92) was born in the Fife town of Kirkcaldy, though the family soon moved to Edinburgh, where Robert attended the Royal High School. His father William was already a leading Scottish architect and after 2 years at Edinburgh University, interrupted by the Jacobite Rebellion and serious illness, Robert became apprenticed to his father. He helped in works on Hopetoun House and on the Duke of Argyle’s new house and estate at Inverary.

His father William died in 1748 and the family business was continued as a partnership between Robert and his brothers John and James, known as the Adam Brothers. In 1754, Robert embarked on the Grand Tour to France and Italy. For 4 years he studied architecture In Rome under the artist Piranesi and architect Clérisseau. He thoroughly absorbed the prevailing Baroque and Italianate style and with Clérisseau he extensively inspected the Palace of Diocletian in Spalato (modern Split) before returning to Scotland in 1758.

Brimming with classical enthusiasm, Robert strove to bring the light and elegance of the Mediterranean to the uncertain skies of Britain. He quickly attracted clients and soon stately homes, public buildings, interiors and furniture demonstrated his talents. Typical is Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, whose central façade adapts the Arch of Constantine in Rome

Kedleston Hall

The Marble Hall at Kedleston, replete with classical statuary, is another homage to Rome.

Marble Hall, Kedleston

The Library, Kenwood, Hampstead

Many other country houses have lovely Adam suites of rooms, like Kenwood, Bowood, Culzean Castle, Osterley Park and Syon Park. He took endless trouble to perfect his interiors and to develop his theory of “movement” with contrasts of colour and decoration. Perhaps Adam’s masterpiece is the interior of Harewood House, near Leeds. Furniture and carpets were chosen with great care resulting in a delightfully bright home amid the mists of Yorkshire.

The Gallery, Harewood House

Public buildings were not neglected: The majestic Adelphi at the top of the Strand was sadly demolished in the 1930s but we still have many including Pulteney Bridge, Bath and Bute House, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh and the Trades Hall, Glasgow.

Pulteney Bridge, Bath

Bute House, Edinburgh

Trades Hall, Glasgow

Robert Adam’s genius and that of his brothers’ was highly productive and embellished many buildings throughout Britain. Widely imitated in Britain and the US – how many properties have that elusive “Adam” fireplace! – his style retains its appeal. The Hall at Syon Park is the final beauty in this heartfelt tribute.

The Hall at Syon Park

                 

                                                                   

SMD

15.11.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015