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

BENEATH THE LAW

I often find myself saying in Greece that this country needs some law and order, decent courts and an efficient legal process. I suspect that I place too much confidence in the actual integrity of such functions. Our surface adherence to law and order is often just a veneer. While like many I can say “some of my best friends have been lawyers…..” and indeed most are the salt of the earth, the barrel inevitably hides some rotten apples and I briefly now describe four such from major countries.

Ernst Kaltenbrunner

Standing at 6’4, Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903-46) with his deep facial scars and aggressive bearing, was an intimidating presence even among the brutes of the Nazi Third Reich. An Austrian, trained as a lawyer and admitted to the Viennese Bar, Kaltenbrunner became a leader of the Austrian Nazis in the period leading up to the Anschluss in 1938. He became head of the Austrian SS, built concentration camps and, after hostilities started, calmly watched demonstrations on helpless prisoners to discover the relative efficiency of death by shooting, hanging or gassing.

Rapidly promoted, he succeeded assassinated Heydrich as Gauleiter of the Czech territories in 1943 and was subordinate only to Himmler in the SS. He played a leading part in the foul concentration camp system and in implementing the unspeakable Final Solution. After the failed 20 July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life, Kaltenbrunner was in charge of the prosecution of the conspirators, whom he gloated over murderously in court.

The most senior SS officer to be captured by the Allies, he was tried and condemned to death at Nuremberg. Hanged in 1946, Kaltenbrunner was a disgrace to his profession, to his country and to humanity.

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Almost as odious was Andrey Vyshinsky (1883 -1954), Stalin’s favourite state prosecutor. Born in Odessa to Polish-Catholic parents, he became a Menshevik in 1903 and was imprisoned for his part in the 1905 revolutionary turmoil. In prison he befriended Bolshevik Stalin; on release he eventually became a successful lawyer in Moscow. After the 1917 Revolution, he joined the Bolsheviks and became a state prosecutor, later being appointed rector of Moscow University in 1925. His legal impartiality can be judged by his doctrine that a court should consider not just the evidence but also “wider social perspectives” in the context of “the class struggle”.

Andrey Vyshinsky

Vyshinsky rose to prominence as the chief prosecutor in the 1936 Moscow Show Trials following on from Stalin’s Great Purge of his ideological enemies. Vyshinsky’s ferocious language gives a hint of the poisonous atmosphere, wholly devoid of justice:

Shoot these rabid dogs. Death to this gang who hide their ferocious teeth, their eagle claws, from the people! Down with that vulture Trotsky, from whose mouth a bloody venom drips, putrefying the great ideals of Marxism! Down with these abject animals! Let's put an end once and for all to these miserable hybrids of foxes and pigs, these stinking corpses! Let's exterminate the mad dogs of capitalism, who want to tear to pieces the flower of our new Soviet nation! Let's push the bestial hatred they bear our leaders back down their own throats!

The accused almost all confessed to their crimes, brainwashed by their own twisted Marxist logic and bowing to physical threats, as brilliantly described by Arthur Koestler in his Darkness at Noon. Vyshinsky became an intimate of baleful Stalin, Beria and Molotov and held high office in the 1940s. British diplomat Sir Frank Roberts described him as “a cringing toadie”.

Vyshinsky corrupted Russian justice for at least two generations and whether the rot has been to any degree stopped under Vladimir Putin is far from certain.

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We British often take a smug view when reviewing the faults of totalitarian nations’ legal systems, but in the relatively recent past the law in England was dominated by a reactionary clique. This clique was centred around Lord Goddard, but also included future Lord Chancellors, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, later Lord Kilmuir, a fanatical homophobe while Home Secretary in the early 1950s, and Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, later Lord Dilhorne, who oddly mishandled the trial of well-connected Dr John Bodkin Adams (allegedly implicated in 163 murders) and earned the nickname “Bullying Manner”.

Lord Goddard

Rayner Goddard, (1877-1971), who became Lord Chief Justice of England from 1946-58, was a powerful judge - with 12 years in office, few other judges would dare to challenge him. He belonged to what is now thankfully an extinct breed “the hanging and flogging judge” – a group with vocal Tory support in the 1950s. Such judges, notorious for their severity, were in the tradition of Judge Jeffreys and his Bloody Assizes of 1685.

Judicial corporal punishment (the use of the cat o’nine tails and the birch) was abolished in 1948 but strenuously supported by Goddard right up to 1958. The judiciary also opposed all attempts to abolish capital punishment, with Goddard in the forefront. In 1952 Goddard presided over the trial of Craig and Bentley for the murder of a policeman. The policeman had caught the pair in a burglary and Craig had shot him dead: Bentley was supposed to have shouted “Let him have it, Chris!” but this is disputed. Craig was 16 and too young to hang, but Bentley was 19 (though with a mental age of 12) and legally an accessory. He was hanged, despite the jury having recommended mercy. Goddard’s conduct of the case was very partial – his summing-up was particularly tendentious – and Maxwell-Fyfe as Home Secretary claimed there were no grounds for reprieving him.

The case became a cause celèbre: the journalist Bernard Levin criticised Goddard and Manningham-Buller proposed he be prosecuted for criminal libel. When Levin repeated his strictures 20 years later, Levin was black-balled from the lawyer-heavy Garrick Club! In 1998, after many a campaign, the murder conviction of Bentley was quashed by the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, on the grounds of serious misdirection of the jury by Lord Goddard, sadly 42 years after the event.

A sinister twist to Goddard’s conduct emerged after his death. His clerk revealed that, such was Goddard’s excitement while handing down a death sentence that he ejaculated and always required a second pair of pin-striped trousers. It seems that Goddard derived some perverted thrill from condemning prisoners. The closed culture of the Law is much at fault in supporting and revering such personalities.

My final dubious lawyer is American who found fame in that most American of blood sports, the witch-hunt and the crusade against evil – yet who hobnobbed with many “colourful” characters whose passage through the pearly gates would be far from assured.

Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn (1927-86) was born into the purple of a wealthy Jewish legal family (his father was a judge) in New York. A clever pupil, he excelled in law and was soon working in the state attorney’s office. He shone in the prosecution of communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, both of whom went to the chair for espionage. Cohn’s ruthless, confrontational and combative style was admired by Senator Joe McCarthy, then becoming feared as a red-baiter.

Cohn became chief counsel to McCarthy’s senate investigations committee in 1953 – to the chagrin of Robert Kennedy who wanted the job himself. Cohn harassed civil servants, Hollywood actors and army officers with his dreaded refrain: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? Answer Yes or No.” He became a well-known public figure, but he and McCarthy made the mistake of taking on the Army establishment and the TV coverage of the outrageous hearings appalled the US public – helped by Ed Murrow’s critical probing. Censured by the Senate, soon McCarthy lost his influence and in 1954 Cohn was out of a job.

His talents as an advocate could not be overlooked. He intimidated prosecutors, flustered witnesses and impressed jurors. His clients included, inevitably, Donald Trump but also Cardinal Spellman, various property billionaires and, more darkly, suspected Mafia bosses Carmine Galante and “Fat Tony” Salerno. He lived a high life, friendly with Ronald Reagan, frequenting Steve Rubell’s louche Studio 54, favourite of the glitterati. Cohn always sailed close to the wind and in 1986 his past sins caught up with him and he was disbarred from practising law in New York. On four counts, he was described as “unethical”, “unprofessional”, and “particularly reprehensible”. Including misuse of escrow funds and trying to obtain a deathbed signature improperly.

An early rabid persecutor of gays, Cohn himself died of AIDS, although in denial, only admitting to liver cancer.  Cohn was not admired by many lawyers, his overreaching ambition proving his undoing.

SMD

13.11.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

SURPRISING NEW YORK

          

I went to New York last month full of pre-conceived notions, ripe for contradiction and rebuttal. After 30 years absence, I had become lazy and easily accepted hoary old caricatures and urban myths. New York is no doubt very different from other parts of the far-flung USA and finding the “real” New York is well beyond me. But let me tell you how I put paid to some illusions.

New Yorkers are rude – quite false! Even the passport controllers and security staff at JFK were polite and friendly (much more so than at Heathrow). Frequently lost in Manhattan, passers-by readily took time to help with directions; on the notorious subway, my wife and I were at least 4 times offered a seat in deference to our age (73), though we are not obviously decrepit (I fondly believe!). The local courtesy campaign is working! “Have a nice day” may be just a formula, but it still sounds pleasantly welcoming.

The New York Subway is fine

New York is exhaustingly hectic – well, maybe the glittering streets of Manhattan are a challenge, but Central Park is a huge real haven and we were based in Brooklyn Heights, where a stroll round the human proportions of the shops and brownstones brought back memories of elegantly laid-back St John’s Wood.

Fifth Avenue shopping

Everything costs a bomb in New York – not everything, though certainly rents are at least as high as astronomic London’s; restaurant bills can be high too, especially if you drink alcohol, and are swollen by a sneaky 8% sales tax, not to mention the expectation of a service add-on in the cool 16-20% range. But clothes are much less expensive than in Europe, costing about the same in dollars as they would in pounds, with further discounts often available. The flat fare New York subway is also a bargain and petrol is amazingly cheap.

Multi-Ethnic America

Americans are cousins to the Brits – well, only rather distant ones. In truth the Americans are sui generis, a people apart, fashioned by their own distinctive history. They share with us some, but by no means most, of our cultural assumptions. They speak eloquently, sometimes vociferously, a vibrant version of the English language with many novel coinages. There are 308m Americans in a vast melting pot; the largest minority is the German with 49.2m, there are 41.2m Blacks, 31.7 Mexicans and 18.8m other Hispanics. Those of British origin (including Scots, Welsh and Scots-Irish) total 39.5m and if you add in the 35.5m of Catholic Irish ancestry and include the Germans you get 124.2m Anglo-Saxons and Celts. Once predominant, this bloc is losing ground to the rapidly rising Hispanics and now Asians (14.7m). Russians, Italians, French and Polish also have substantial minorities. So American attitudes naturally enough will not mirror those of London.

I assumed Americans are religious, knowing about the strong historic influence of Puritanism and seeing dozens of churches, cathedrals, tabernacles and synagogues in every area. They certainly value the oldest (Trinity Church, Broadway), the tallest (The Riverside Church) and the largest (incomplete St John the Divine). Yet I guess Americans have sublimated their religious enthusiasms and transferred their whooping and tub-thumping to their Byzantine national politics instead. The low quality of most of their presidential hopefuls is dismaying – the leading Republican, Donald Trump, reminds me of General Boulanger, the classic Man on the Black Horse, who greatly flustered the French electorate in 1889 but who soon faded: may The Donald do likewise!

If New Yorkers do not always feed the inner spirit, they certainly know how to feed the inner man. Their food is absolutely fabulous. Their ribeye, porterhouse and fillet steaks are legendary (try Keens, Del Frisco or Wolfgang’s) and burgers are consumed by the million (see Shake Shack et al). We developed an insatiable taste for tender moist brisket with corn hash and baked beans at Brooklyn’s modest Hill Country. Saucy classic dishes – veal, beef and duckling - are a speciality at cosy Henry’s End, washed down by warming Californian red Paso Robles blend, Troublemaker. Great seafood and fish abound in New York, oysters at Cull & Pistol and Keens too, though our favourite became Brooklyn Heights’ Kittery for scallops, oysters, mahi-mahi and snapper. To supplement all this you can savour award-winning pizza at Juliana’s, classic pastrami at Katz, superior Greek cuisine at Ethos Gallery and trendy American food at The Boathouse in Central Park.

Porterhouse steak for two at Keens

An unsurprising aspect of New York is its cultural depth. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the top world collections and The Frick and MOMA broaden the range further. Theatre on and off-Broadway flourishes, books fall in a cascade from articulate pens and the Lincoln, Rockefeller and Carnegie provide splendid concert venues. We strolled around the model campus of Columbia University and also one Sunday, Washington Square, centre for NYU, where a performance of Shakespeare’s Tempest competed with singing and piano playing. In the autumnal warmth, hand-in-hand couples, costumed pet dogs and tame squirrels mixed in a civilised fashion.

Many of my readers will know New York much better than I do. I had one final surprise. My ever-kind sons provided me with some pairs of jeans, a garment I had always disparaged and never in my life possessed. I am hooked - I love them and wear them constantly! Has America helped me at last to join the 21^st century?

SMD

8/11/15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015