A BUZZ AROUND

My thought processes are easily stimulated but the occasion for my latest pronouncement was not very promising. I read in the papers that there had been a ram-raid at a branch of Barclays, Olney in Buckinghamshire, and the thieves had made away with an ATM after wrecking the branch with a JCB.

Wrecked Barclays at Olney

The name “Olney” rang a vague bell and soon enough the penny dropped. The Olney Hymns, a collection of 300+ hymns for the edification of evangelical Anglicans published in 1779, was the work of the popular poet William Cowper and the curate of Olney John Newton. Hymn-writing and hymn-singing later became a craze in the 19^th century and matters devotional are not really my thing. Two at least of the Olney hymns remain popular – Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken. Newton in time moved to London and was rewarded with the appointment of vicar of St Mary Woolnoth, Hawksmoor’s imposing masterpiece in the City of London. Cowper (pronounced Cooper) struggled with insanity but produced The Task, the popular comic ballad John Gilpin, translated Homer and wrote affecting poems to his friend Mary Unwin. The excellent biography The Stricken Deer (1929) by Lord David Cecil does him justice.        

John Gilpin races through Edmonton

                     

Despite the claims of Scotland, Amazing Grace is nowadays set to an American tune, New Britain. The words are rather heavily theological on the subject of Redemption but it has been a firm favourite in the USA since the Civil War, reappearing strongly in the 1970s pop charts. A version with bagpipes is often played at solemn Caledonian occasions.

The other famous Olney hymn is Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken, mainly famous as the words are made to fit Haydn’s splendid tune Austria. The tune was the national anthem of the Hapsburg monarchy and also used by German liberals and radicals from 1848 using the words Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles. Adopted as the German national anthem in 1922, it became notorious in the Nazi era – now only the third stanza is allowed to be sung:

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit              

   Für das deutsche Vaterland!

Danach lasst uns alle streben

Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand!

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit

Sind des Glückes Unterpfand;

 : Blüh' im Glanze dieses Glückes,
  Blühe, deutsches Vaterland! 

                                                                  Unity and justice and freedom
    For the German fatherland!
Towards these let us all strive

Brotherly with heart and hand!
Unity and justice and freedom
Are the foundation of happiness;
 : Flourish in the radiance of this happiness,
  Flourish, German fatherland! 

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit has become a German motto after all this convoluted history.

.

Anthems are often a source of conflict. I think the South African Springbok rugby team has at least three to humour three sets of supporters. Scotland’s rugby team has been lumbered with the dismal Flower of Scotland, a very second-rate pot-boiler conjured up by the Corries, a local folk group. Its chippy Scottishness, toe-curling nationalism and general illiteracy is exemplified by these opening lyrics:

O Flower of Scotland, 
When will we see
Your like again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against him (against who?),
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
To think again.

To add to the horror of it all, the tune is dirge-like and emetic – worth a least 5 points to the opposing side. How Scotland performed so well last season I cannot fathom with this anthem to weigh them down. Something stirring like Scotland the Brave would be a hundred times better.

Which brings us to Russia. The Russian National Anthem uses exactly the same tune as the Soviet one, though the words have changed. This is indicative of Russia in general – Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. President Putin, the former secret spook, was weaned on lies and reared on murder. He had absolutely no compunction about permitting his gangs to bump off the defecting spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury with their deadly home-grown Novichok nerve agent. But the gang fouled up and both targets survived. The Russians’ guilt was exposed (whatever The Guardian might tell you) and even the EU protested vociferously. I suppose Putin thought “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

The people of peaceful Salisbury have been terrorised but they have the comfort of their incomparable Cathedral in Early English Gothic to soften the blow and a very early copy of Magna Carta to keep tyrants at bay,

Salisbury Cathedral

With its lovely spire, majestic nave and green-lawned precincts, Salisbury takes some beating. OK, it is not perfect; there is no peal of bells, the ancient clock has no face but merely goes “ting!” every quarter while Alec Clifton Taylor thought the West Front “insipid” There is a spacious 80-acre close with some very fine houses, one of which, Arundells, was the home of former Prime Minister Edward Heath for the last 20 years of his life. He ungraciously sulked during Mrs Thatcher’s transformational ministry. At his prime, Heath’s driving ambition was to lead Britain into the EEC which he signed up to in 1973.He probably meant well but it was in retrospect an historic mistake. Like Putin he might say “it seemed like a good idea at the time”

Thank you for joining my mazy buzz around from Olney to Salisbury via Germany and Russia!

SMD

30.07.18.

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

CATASTROPHE in ATHENS

The Greeks are a talented and likeable people but Greece is notoriously badly governed, corruption multiplies, competence dwindles and moral apathy is widespread. A mixture of these faults and an unlucky turn in the weather created a volatile mixture which duly exploded on 23/24 July in a series of fires. These caused 85 deaths near Athens, the destruction of 1,800 houses and countless cars, the ruination of thousands of acres of prime coastal land and an indelible stain on the reputation of the Greek State.

A wildfire takes hold

       

 There are wild-fires every year in Greece, often caused by arson. They are usually contained in some remote area – the Greeks shrug them off as a summer danger, seldom fatal. Until this year. The worst fires were near Mati, a village by the sea in eastern Attica, 29 km from Athens. Mati has expanded greatly over the last 60 years, first as a place for a weekend home for Athenians, then as an area for permanent commuter homes as Athens became too expensive or otherwise intolerable.

Developers years ago bought up the cheap scrub land and crammed in as many houses as they could, some quite substantial residences. In those days Greek planning laws were regularly flouted or ignored – width of roads, distance between houses, materials used, parking restrictions and so on – but nobody doubts the developers “squared” the municipality and the nationalised utilities as the “illegal” houses were connected to electricity and water without any problem – that is how business was done in Greece.

The Greek government makes much now of Mati’s “illegality” but that is a retrospective justification. The Government for decades cast a blind eye over Mati’s and a hundred other areas’ shortcomings and did nothing about them. Only in the last 6 years has the Government, under EU pressure, introduced a programme of legalisation of unauthorised buildings, costing the householder €500 +. Few in Mati probably bothered to pay up as they were not planning ever to sell their property. Fatally, the Government has no easy control of property as, alone in all Europe, Greece has no national Land Registry. The EU has sent money to have one, but progress has been glacial.

When, alas, the fires came, Mati was horribly vulnerable. The Fire Service had conducted no danger or evacuation assessment, the municipality had not erected any signposts towards the sea and Mati was full of car-borne residents and guests. Force 8 winds and swirling gusts made the direction of the fire unpredictable. Locals say the fire travelled very quickly and ripped through the area in a 15 minute inferno. There were many pine-trees whose shed needles and resin-soaked trunks were highly inflammable. Those who rushed for their cars found the narrow roads blocked by parked cars and access to the safe main road was impossible. One path to the sea was open but the second was hidden by residents’ gardens. Tragically one group of 24, unable to find a way out, held hands and huddled together, only to perish from inhaling smoke or from the dreadful heat of the fire.

Burnt cars blocking the road at Mati

          

Those who got to the sea were confined to a rocky strip, not a beach. Crowded there, they waited 4 hours for rescue, having to immerse themselves in the water to prevent their hair catching fire and avoid smoke. Only when a local phoned the coastguard was any help available. Municipality and police had done nothing effective.

Victims await rescue by the sea

Unsurprisingly the grief of residents has turned to anger. Yesterday Panos Kammenos, the defence minister and leader of ANEL, junior partner in the governing coalition, visited Mati and he was mercilessly heckled by people who reckoned the government had let them down completely. He did not apologise but referred to the illegality of buildings in Mati, which did not impress his audience.

There will doubtless be an enquiry and equally doubtless nobody will be blamed and no radical action will ensue. The residents might have been more pro-active in ensuring their own safety. The municipality might have reminded itself about its duties and obtained the necessary resources. The fire service may ponder on the necessity of safety assessments for every community. Most of all the Greek Government should think why successive governments have neglected their basic duties and betrayed their people.

Burnt Houses in Mati

Today identification of 85 burnt and mutilated bodies continues and in time there will be a number of highly emotional funerals. Will these poor souls have died in vain?

SMD

27.07.18

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

PATRIOTIC CINEMA

Only in recent months have I caught up with two excellent films which I would term “patriotic cinema” namely Dunkirk and Darkest Hour. Both were 2017 releases – I am often well behind the pack in such matters! My definition of patriotic cinema is a stirring, inspirational production celebrating national values and national courage peppered with a discreet soupçon of flag-waving. I will return to the two recent efforts presently but would like to mention some earlier films which qualify under my definition.

The US is the leading world film-maker and the war film is a well-established genre. But even the thoughtful and moving epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) with Lew Ayres is not quite the genuine article as it carries a strong anti-war and anti-nationalist message. At the other extreme, films like The Battle of the Bulge, The Longest Day or Patton, whatever their merits, concentrate on their war narrative and do not allow the audience to draw its own conclusions.

My favourite patriotic cinema piece emanating from the US is the 1946 The Best Years of our Lives directed by William Wyler featuring Fredric March, Dana Andrews and Harold Russell as three returning servicemen facing problems in post-war civilian life. Banker March is reprimanded as being too generous in his help for veterans, cuckolded Andrews cannot progress from his dead-end soda-jerk job in a drugstore and Russell, an amateur actor who actually had prosthetic hands, fears his injuries are a handicap to his love for his girl.

Harold Russell, Teresa Wright, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy and Fredric March

 

In the end March is vindicated, Andrews finds a new wife and a good job and Russell gets his girl in a paean to the uplifting generosity of US society which so heartened the world after 1945. The film is a tribute to all the positive aspects of the American Dream.

France produced a marvellous soldierly film in La Grande Illusion (1937) directed by Jean Renoir but it was rather an examination of class solidarity and of the shared values of the dying aristocracies of France and Germany. It was more intelligently reflective than stirring.

It actually fell to the USSR to produce a pre-war patriotic cinema masterpiece to stir its audience under the expert cinematic direction of Sergei Eisenstein of The Battleship Potemkin fame. The 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky with Nikolai Cherkasov in the title role and rousing music from Sergei Prokofiev entranced Soviet audiences. The film was eerily prophetic as it chronicles the invasion of Kievan ‘Rus by the crusaders of the Teutonic Knights with their Estonian auxiliaries and their attacks on Pskov as a stronghold of Eastern Orthodoxy. The film’s highlight is its historically dubious version of the 1242 Battle on the Ice (Lake Piepus), carefully choreographed as the ice shatters and the Teutonic Knights drown. A parallel was drawn between the Nazis and the Teutonic Knights (whose priests are adorned with swastikas in the movie.) 

Battle on the Ice from Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky

The film was suddenly withdrawn in September 1939 on the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact but returned to Soviet screens after the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941. It was a great and much-needed morale-booster.

Dame May Whitty and young Miniver sing Onward Christian Soldiers

   Britain’s film industry was trying to raise morale at home too but ironically the most successful production was American, Mrs Miniver with Greer Garson and Walter Pigeon, directed in 1942 by William Wyler (again!). It pressed all the right buttons in its depiction of a Thames-side middle-class English couple with three sons, one an RAF pilot. He falls for the grand-daughter (Teresa Wright) of the formidable Lady of the Manor (Dame May Whitty). Pigeon does his bit, heroically picking up soldiers from Dunkirk in his pleasure boat, an injured German pilot is disarmed and tended by Garson, air raids kill local characters and the beloved newly-married Teresa dies from injuries. The church is open to the sky but the vicar preaches an inspirational address with the congregation singing Onward Christian Soldiers as the RAF fly overhead in a V-formation. An uplifting stiff-upper-lip tribute - they don’t make them like that anymore!

Dunkirk (2017), directed by Christopher Nolan is an Anglo-American-Dutch co-production with an ensemble cast which nevertheless includes Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy. Its episodic narrative runs together three stories on land, sea and in the air. You see no Germans nor any politicians back in London and the dialogue is sparse. Yet you understand the raw courage and discipline of the queues of soldiers on the beach awaiting evacuation, sitting ducks for dive-bombers. You see the out-numbered Spitfires challenging the enemy and persevering in their task. Most of all you admire the large and small ships under fire and delivering a miracle.

Defeated soldiers awaiting salvation at Dunkirk

The film follows the fortunes of a flight of 3 Spitfires as one is shot down, a second ditches in the Channel to be rescued by Mark Rylance, while the third flown by Farrier (Tom Hardy) destroys a bomber attacking a laden minesweeper, before running out of fuel, landing on the Dunkirk beach outside the perimeter and being captured. Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh) controls ships on the mole, constantly attacked by Stuka dive-bombers striking fear and death into the soldiers. Mark Rylance (Mr Dawson) steers his pleasure boat with his son and a local lad across the Channel and rescues a shell-shocked soldier who wants only to go home. He is angered when the boat makes for France and has to be restrained, striking the local lad, who later dies. They get through to the beaches with other boats and fill up with soldiers. Rather quietly the strains of Elgar’s Nimrod are heard on the sound-track as they all make it to a proud welcome in England and read Churchill’s great Dunkirk oration. Then the boatmen get back to their usual business.

I did not think the film struck any false notes and I found it stimulating and inspirational.

Darkest Hour is a more controversial film as it takes some historical liberties and makes several omissions. The star, producing an electrifying performance as hyper-energetic, defiant and difficult Winston Churchill is Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill

The action takes place as Churchill is appointed Prime Minister by an unenthusiastic George VI after a Commons vote against Neville Chamberlain, who remains party leader. Military disaster in Norway is followed by a deteriorating situation in France as the Blitzkrieg storms through. The inner core of the Tory party is hostile and Churchill tries to rally the outer reaches and backbenchers with some success. Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, favours a negotiated peace with the Nazis, brokered by Mussolini, but Churchill is adamantly opposed. He goes on a Tube journey to fathom what ordinary people feel – they favour resistance (this is a ludicrous scene). Encouraged, Winston fails to rally the French but sees his army safely evacuated at Dunkirk. Supported by the King, the Labour Party and finally by Chamberlain, Churchill delivers in the Commons his famous Dunkirk oration.

“…..we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender” 

Churchill moved his audience and this film has moved millions of others including me. The film carries a powerfully positive message today for the supporters of this country. That is what makes it “patriotic cinema”.

SMD

25.07.18

Text copyright ©Sidney Donald 2018

DISLOYAL BIOGRAPHY

Biography is a delicate art, as the relevant papers are often entrusted to a person who knew the subject well and who is expected to accentuate the positives and downplay the negatives, if not actively to conceal them. How much more delicate is the task of a son to give a candid account of his father, warts and all - much more prudent to embark upon a cosy hagiography and forget the warts entirely, giving no offence to the subject’s family and friends. But such a route hardly serves the cause of historical truth, in as far as that really matters.

Young Winston Churchill

Lord Randolph Churchill

       

Winston Churchill squared this circle with admirable aplomb. He greatly admired his father, who had treated him with cold indifference, and his mother who erratically neglected him. His 1905 biography of Lord Randolph Churchill is a masterly effort, in 2 volumes, describing the career of this maverick Conservative, a gadfly goad to eminent Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer. Winston overstated his father’s importance but analysed Tory politics brilliantly. By concentrating on politics, he conveniently avoided any real discussion of Randolph’s relations with his American wife Jenny Jerome, nor of his early death from syphilis, that terrible scourge of the 19^th century West. Roy Jenkins in his great 2001 biography of Winston rates this book his third best after Great Contemporaries and My Early Life. Winston was both readable and filial.

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Published at much the same time and credited with being the first “psychological” biography is Father and Son, the 1907 description by Edmund Gosse of his relations with his father Philip Gosse. Philip was a man of extreme fundamentalist religious views who developed a love of natural history, especially marine biology. He became a well-known populariser of his science and spent hours huddled over his microscope. He also became an accomplished scientific illustrator. In time his expertise was recognised and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1847 he married the dynamic artist and religious pamphleteer Emily Bowes and they had their only child Edmund in 1849. Much-loved, but fanatical, Emily developed lung cancer and died when Edmund was only 6 in 1856.

Edmund was thus largely brought up by his father. Philip was a loving, academic parent but he had become obsessed with the notion of an imminent Second Coming and he adhered, like his wife Emily, to the beliefs of the (Plymouth) Brethren, the “Close” variety, a small sect of fundamentalist Protestants. The Brethren had no clergy and no church establishment.  They were a group of independent Puritanical “Assemblies” and their congregations were known as “Saints”.

The Gosse family moved from Islington to St Marychurch in South Devon. The local Brethren met every Sunday, with Philip Gosse at their head, and read the Bible aloud to each other (no secular literature permitted) and speculated endlessly about Redemption through the Blood of Christ, the Chosen, the Salvation of Souls and similar dismal concepts. The alarmingly apocalyptic Book of Revelation was read as a kind of light relief! The luckless Edmund had a childhood totally dominated by this brand of religion – no companions of his own age, no fairy stories, no juvenile fantasy, no back-garden games. Other than his own father, Edmund could talk to nobody but his rather dim if devout governess and the uneducated kitchen-maids.

Philip and Edmund Gosse

 

Philip's illustrations of sea anemones

    

The high-point of Edmund’s religious education occurred at age 10 when, after interrogation from two rustic Elders on the doctrine of Atonement, he was baptised in front of a large assembly and admitted to the society of “the Saints”. From then onwards it was down-hill all the way towards liberty. Philip married again and his new wife Eliza was elegant and easy-going, though a Quaker. 

She brought poetry books into the house to Edmund’s delight and Philip allowed his son to read Scott’s poetry, but not his novels, even Virgil and astonishingly Dickens, whose Pickwick captivated Edmund. Edmund mixed with village children and went unprofitably to a local evangelical boarding school. Aged 18 he went up to lodgings in London, persecuted by a daily letter from Philip questioning him about his spiritual condition and by the time he was 20 he found this constant Inquisition too irksome and suffocating. He remained on polite terms with his 60-year-old father but gradually lost all his Faith and all respect for Christianity.

Philip in his 60s

 

Edmund in his 20s

After his breach with his son, Philip did not change – despite his intellectual talents he remained a bible-punching party-pooper; knowing he was dying, he was indignant not to witness the Second Coming. Happily, Edmund survived his ruined childhood and became a poet, critic and expert on Victorian sculpture. Edmund befriended Swinburne, Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. He married but was a closet gay – no doubt causing his father to spin in his dismal grave. Edmund’s book was admired (never out of print since 1909) but some thought it “unfilial” – he exposed the peculiar logic crippling his father (understandable) and sometimes stretched the facts to make a good story (reprehensible). Edmund’s real qualities were recognised by his 1925 knighthood.

                                                                                -----------

A more modern book and without doubt “unfilial” is Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson describing the open marriage of his parents Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. Married in 1913, they were together 49 years. He was a junior diplomat , she an aspiring author and sprig of the aristocratic owners of majestic Knole in Kent. The oddity of the marriage was that from the start both accepted that their partners were primarily homosexual, although they had two sons, Ben and Nigel.

They loved each other profoundly, exchanged daily letters for many years and were exemplary parents. Harold left the Foreign Office in 1929, was briefly the gossip columnist in the Evening Standard, flirted with Oswald Mosely’s New Party. left it when it embraced Fascism and became a Tory MP. He wrote biographies and kept a diary from 1930 to 1952, a treasure trove for later historians. Vita inhabited the fringes of Bloomsbury and had a passionate relationship with Virginia Woolf. She wrote novels, not much read nowadays.

In the early 1930s Harold and Vita bought as their residence Sissinghurst Castle, a rather neglected property in Kent. They together created a magnificent garden, Harold the layout and the vista, Vita, an accomplished gardener, the seasonal blooms and flower-beds. The castle was also a cherished home for their two children.

Vita had embarked on an early affair with Violet Trefusis, the love of her life. Violet, daughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of Edward VII, was highly demanding, not to say unbalanced and eventually the affair ended. Harold’s long-term companion was the critic Raymond Mortimer.

Harold Nicolson

Vita Sackville-West

                    

Nigel Nicolson’s book lingered rather pruriently over Harold and Vita’s sex lives – their respective lovers were many and various. A son is best advised not to write much on this subject- it simply “is not done”. Harold and Vita are well commemorated by their writings, their lengthy marriage and by the beauty of Sissinghurst. The old adage De Mortuis nil nisi Bonum retains some of its relevance.

SMD

20.07.18

Text copyright Sidney Donald 2018

MILESTONES

We all observe our private little Anniversaries and on 4 July my esteemed wife and I remembered it was 50 years ago that we first met on the beach in Famagusta, Cyprus, she a raven-haired Greek beauty, me a passionate Scotsman. That 4 July was redolent with meaning as I lost my Independence that day, forever afterwards a slave to her enchantment! Summer is a busy time for Birthdays, Saint Days and Anniversaries, none of which we dare forget on pain of mini-sulks, like the rest of softly affectionate mankind.

That year was 1968, a memorable year for the rest of the world too. The Vietnam war was appalling a generation of Americans. The Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre entered the global vocabulary. Martin Luther King and later Robert Kennedy were gunned down. Gaullist France exploded in revolutionary fervour, student riots rocked Paris but the regime survived. Germany saw Baader-Meinhof gang violence; the Prague Spring was soon suppressed by Soviet tanks. The Colonels’ junta tightened its grip on Greece. Enoch Powell in England spoke of his vision of “Rivers of Blood” caused by excessive immigration. LBJ did not run and Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey and segregationist George Wallace. After a radical start, the year fell to the old guard.

Nixon wins - not a fresh face, alas

Moving forward to the year 1988, history was another mixture of disaster and triumph. The Troubles in Northern Ireland saw 3 IRA men eliminated as they recce’d a hit in Gibraltar, a Loyalist attack on an IRA funeral at Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, killed 3, followed by the murder of 2 corporals at Milltown by an IRA mob. Cracks appeared in the Soviet Union as Estonia became the first Republic to deny the supremacy of Soviet law in what became an avalanche of dissent. Hungary opened her borders to tourists and East Germans took advantage by fleeing West from there. The Piper Alpha disaster, when an North Sea oil rig exploded causing 167 deaths, was a dreadful blow to my home town of Aberdeen and around. Ronnie Reagan, stepped down as US President after 8 fruitful years to be succeeded by fellow-Republican George H W Bush.

The decades tick by; 1998 saw the Good Friday Agreement and a precarious peace in Northern Ireland. 2008 was the year of the economic crisis, the collapse of Lehmann Brothers causing a domino effect on other US institutions and much chaos in Europe. Ten years on brings us to 2018 and the heady joys of Brexit and Trumpery.

May and Trump - an uneasy couple

           

The principle of Brexit still arouses passions but the mechanics have bored the pants off every Briton. The public just wants Brexit to happen, hard or soft, good deal or indifferent deal, and the EU to become a good neighbour. That looks unlikely, given Brussels’ visceral hostility, and May’s Tory Party is badly split over her plan.  She struggles to survive in Parliament at this moment.

Trump amazes by his indiscretion, his blatant lies and his bumptious self-justification. His meeting with Putin in Helsinki was marked by his betrayal of his own FBI and of the higher ranks of his own government. Both Republicans and Democrats are offended and alarmed – surely an attempt at impeachment cannot be far away.

Next year, 2019, will see Brexit in March and my 50^th wedding anniversary in April – both milestones worth waiting for!

SMD

17.07.18

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

MARCHING ON

I make no claim to personal military experience nor even to a family tradition but I guess most British people get a frisson of excitement when they hear familiar martial music. The military are much respected in Britain, but not raised to the heights of adulation often demonstrated in the US or Russia. We reflect on the sacrifices of war and rue the heavy cost, but we are also deeply grateful for the bravery and resource shown by countless servicemen in hard-fought campaigns and engagements. Martial music inspires and stimulates memories of national pride.

This year is the Centenary of the foundation of the RAF and there was a spectacular fly-past in London yesterday marking the occasion. 100 planes participated, many vintage ones from WW2 reminding us of The Few, the bombing offensive and later conflicts in Malaya, the Middle East and the Falklands. The RAF March brings back those memories.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV3hscgyuAs

A much earlier march is Lillibullero for many years the signature tune of the BBC World Service. Its origins are obscure – Purcell is tentatively supposed to be the composer of the melody – but it became popular in England at the time of the conflict in Ireland in 1688 between Protestant King William III and deposed Catholic King James II and later on in the 18^th century. Sectarianism apart, it is a great tune and I am sure redcoats stepped forward in a lively fashion whenever the fife and drum band struck up.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCRH-BB5flA

The Brigade of Guards is the custodian of much of the British martial music repertory. One of my favourites is the slow march Scipio by Handel, the march of The Grenadier Guards. A distinguished former Guardsman was Harold MacMillan, prime minister 1957-63. His loyalty to his regiment surpassed almost any other and he requested that Scipio should be played at his funeral in 1986. Such ancestral loyalties are not unusual in the English upper classes – Lord Rosebery, prime minister 1894-5, decreed that The Eton Boating Song, should be played on a background radiogram for his 1929 death-bed. By any measure, Scipio is evocative and uplifting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMM9rjL8XA

The most famous Grenadier march is The British Grenadiers, sung with pride by every schoolboy

Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules

Of Hector and Lysander and such great names as these

But of all the world’s great heroes, there’s none that can compare

With a tow, row, row, row, row, row, row of the British Grenadiers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4vIhqU5CR0

The show case of the Guards is the Trooping the Colour parade held annually on the Queen’s official birthday in early June. The massed bands start off with the rousing slow march, The Huguenots, adapted from Meyerbeer’s opera of the same name. It features a rendering of Luther’s great hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, warming the hearts of Protestants, though I am no longer of their persuasion. Luther had many qualities and some faults but he was a formidable hymn-writer and enlivener of the German language.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHrHE_a4DEY

I have paid some small tribute to the RAF and the Army but I will not ignore the senior service, the Royal Navy.  Perhaps her greatest days of glory were in the victories of the Seven Years’ War and in the lethal struggle against Napoleon, immortalising Nelson and Trafalgar. The official march of the Royal Navy is Heart of Oak, music by Boyce and words by Garrick, here sung with pride and enthusiasm.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXFCDgyanA

Finally, you would not expect me to ignore Scottish martial music and I recommend to you Hieland Laddie, the regimental march of the Scots Guards, the third member by precedence in the Brigade. From the Peninsular War to Waterloo, from Crimea to the Somme, from the Western Desert to Tumbledown in the Falklands, Scots dash and courage have set an example to soldiers everywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESsVydlq8cM

My own marching days are long gone, but as I take my daily brisk walk though nearby woods here in Athens, there is a spring in my step as I recall some of these old tunes and whistle to their well-remembered rhythms. Try them for yourself!

SMD

11.07.18

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018

SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED!

I have no wish to be considered a cross-patch, complaining noisily all day to everyone’s irritation. So, it is in my usual gentle spirit of mild tolerance that I dare to mention some current oddities in the hope that a responsive chord may be struck. Let me dive in head-first.

Like millions of others I am watching the World Cup, which I concede is being well-run by Putin’s otherwise dubious Russkies. There has been much good football, several surprises and quite a few dull longueurs, to remind you of those wet Saturday afternoons at a god-forsaken provincial stadium. England’s team seems fragile and her prospects of further advancement do not look particularly glittering, but I am a lousy tipster and I may be quite wrong. What gets up my nostrils is not the football but the tattoos sported by the stars. The tattoo epidemic has spread rapidly and hardly a hairy arm, leg or manly chest has escaped the tattooist’s ink-drill. I deplore young people defacing their skins permanently in this way and the end-result is hideous, although clearly it gives the wearers of tattoos some kind of psycho-sexual exhibitionist thrill.

 

Recent stars sport their tattoos

On retirement I suppose footballers could have their skins flayed, cured and mounted like any other feral trophy, but somehow the wearers may not find that idea particularly tempting!

Fernando Santos of Portugal

Gareth Southgate bucks up Eric Dier

As a footnote, who would want to be a World Cup team manager? The hopes of millions and the derision of the same millions await him ominously. To see a ravaged Santos, manager of defeated Portugal, was a pitiful sight - one hopes Southgate will strike it luckier and fare better.

On 13 July we Brits are to be treated to an official, but not a state, 2-day visit from President Donald Trump to our welcoming shores. Perhaps not so welcoming in London where the Leftie mobs run riot, but brief brain-storming with Mrs May & Co at No 10 should yield some (thin) pickings. A pleasant chat with HM over the tea-cups at Windsor will not strain anyone too hard. Rumour has it he will then buzz up to my beloved Scotland to wield a golf club either at his addled partly-built course on the dunes of Balmedie by Aberdeen or, more likely, at his sumptuous Turnberry Resort in Ayrshire, which has all mod.cons.

Trump drives out of the rough in Scotland

The Donald may have a round of golf with Prince “Air Miles” Andrew, Duke of York, not a widely admired royal currently, I hope diplomatically primed to allow the Super-egotist to win. There is talk of Andrew re-marrying his ex-Duchess, noisy Sarah Ferguson of toe-sucking fame. Mind you, other royals have their crosses to bear too - sadly even delightful Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, whose peculiar dysfunctional father, Thomas Markle, can be depended upon to put his foot in it, whenever he opens his mouth, to toe-curling embarrassment all round.

The Beast Thomas and the Beauty Meghan

Wimbledon has started, always a great pleasure, once a paradise of long rallies, strawberries and cream and groping Anglican vicars, nabbed for quaintly named “breach of the peace”. We are all rooting for impeccable and elegant Roger Federer, as the hope of Scotland, Andy Murray, has withdrawn, unfit. Nowadays we hear of florid ex-champion Boris Becker, hiding from his creditors behind the bizarre diplomatic immunity conferred on him by (sic) The Central African Republic! Henman Hill will bubble and squeak incessantly. The ladies are dominated by statuesque Serena Williams but there is a cloud lurking over the ladies’ game, as we are promised early exposure of widespread sexual harassment of aspiring players. I assume this is connected to the Sapphic clique in tennis, who may have exceeded the limits of tolerance.

How one longs for earlier, simpler days when John Betjeman could serenade beefy English tennis girls in innocent worship:

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament – you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

SMD

03.07.2018

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018