The Mirror Crack'd

Over the past few weeks we've had three letters from Thames Water seeking to gain access to our council flat to fit a smart meter. The first of these was inviting, the second enticing (ie offering a £20 voucher) and the third threatening. None of these tactics has yet elicited a response from us. I daresay we'll take the path of least resistance in the end but, frankly, why would we go out of our way to co-operate with a monopoly private company which has behaved so egregiously? Originally, our water bill was included as a precept in the rent. More recently we became liable for paying Thames Water direct -  currently just shy of 40 quid a month - which triggered a sizeable refund from the council who had apparently been overcharging for consumption for years. Goodness knows how much that bureaucratic exercise cost and now we are faced with yet more upheaval.  Do we believe Thames Water's PR that this is all about monitoring leaks and encouraging less wasteful usage? Not on

As an exercise in reckless hubris the ill-fated descent of the Titan submersible, carrying tourists to see the wreck of the SS Titanic, must rank alongside the building of the Tower of Babel or the flight of Daedalus and Icarus. Sadly, in the case of the Titan, this disastrous enterprise was not mythical but only too real. The warning from history, though, should have been clear: tempting fate can have fatal consequences. In ignoring the risks (flagrantly, even boastfully) the expedition leader and OceanGate company CEO, Stockton Rush, was not only jeopardising his own life but also the lives of his paying passengers. His own life was his to gamble with but what of his duty of care to his clients who entrusted their welfare to him? He and his four companions (one of whom was aged only 19) paid the ultimate price for his insouciance as the vessel imploded and sank to the Atlantic floor, four kilometres down at a pressure of four hundred atmospheres. Now, the wreck of the Titan lies on t

The system of awarding honours in this country has always been a shabby transactional affair. Mediaeval monarchs would dub knights for acts of valour on the battlefield, in that sense rewarding very real service to the crown. As time went on, however, the process morphed into a cynical exercise of royal power through patronage and, as it did so, it became more and more enveloped in the mystique of chivalry, so much so that Edward I commissioned a replica of King Arthur's round table, which now hangs on the wall of the Great Hall in Winchester Castle. This is a prime example of the English genius for dressing up their grubbiest activities in a cloak of respectability - preferably an ermine-trimmed one. About fifty years after Edward I faked-up his round table his grandson, Edward III, founded the Most Noble Order of the Garter, now Britain's oldest order of chivalry. Whatever the truth behind the king's picking up of the Countess of Salisbury's slipped garter, the king w

"There is a world elsewhere." Thus says the eponymous hero of Shakespeare's tragedy, Coriolanus, as he turns his back on the murky world of Roman politics and goes into self-imposed exile. Boris Johnson, with his much-vaunted classical erudition, no doubt casts himself in such a role; his fall the result of the ignoble scheming of lesser mortals. But Johnson's demise is no tragedy, or even farce, it's pure soap opera. A telling coincidence, then, that his resignation from the House of Commons should coincide with the prosecution of one infamous exponent of 'clown government', Donald J Trump, and the death of another, Silvio Berlusconi. However he may flatter himself, Johnson is no tragic hero, certainly no Coriolanus or Julius Caesar. In order to qualify the prerequisite must be the possession of nobility of character, which is then fatally compromised by a temperamental defect, leading to disaster. In the cases of the two Roman generals, the tragedy consi

In order to meet the eligibility criteria to stand for the presidency of the USA you have to be born in the country, have citizenship, be aged over 35 and have had residency for fourteen years. Boris Johnson meets the first three criteria. I wouldn't wish Johnson on my worst enemy but I make an exception when it comes to the US so if he 'does a Harry' and flounces off Stateside in a strop he could in theory, after ten years, run in a presidential race. Of course, he'd have to gain the Republican party nomination first but, post-Trump, that might be the easiest bit. Johnson was born in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, in 1964 and spent his early years living in Washington DC before his parents returned permanently to the UK in 1969. In later life he announced that he would renounce his US citizenship (either a ploy to elude the US tax system or an election 'promise' - possibly both) but, true to form, it seems he never actually got round to it.  A

There's a genre of Spanish literature, relatively unknown in the Anglosphere, called Esperpento. We could learn a lot from it, especially now. First popularised by Spanish novellist and playwright, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, in the 1920s Esperpento employs bitter irony and distorted descriptions of reality in order to critique society. It utilses grotesqueries and reification (the reduction of human beings to objects) to explore the human condition and its recurring image is one of distorting mirrors. In visual art this style is probably best recognised outside the Spanish-speaking world in the darker works of Francisco Goya. In Latin America, the author most well-known for his use of the form is Mexican author, Jorge Ibargüengoitia. In the context of contemporary UK politics, it seems we have discovered the spirit of Esperpento without actually possessing an adequate English synonym to describe the phenomenon. Pantomime is a term often employed to describe the bizarre goings-on

Recently released figures relating to the alarming rise in STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) should perhaps be viewed in their historical context. It can't be coincidental that the last time rates were so high was 1918 for gonorrhoea and 1948 for syphilis, in other words after the First and Second World Wars respectively.  Existential threats seem to bring people together seeking comfort, however fleetingly. The unfortunate concomitant is that it also encourages risk-taking behaviour, with sometimes disastrous results. The largest cohort (one third) suffering the unintended consequences of post-Covid pandemic brief encounters is, unsurprisingly perhaps, 15-24 year-olds. Worryingly, though, especially for a septuagenarian like me (old enough to know better but active enough not to be deterred) rates amongst pensioners have doubled. For my generation of teenagers and young adults in the 'swinging sixties', gonorrhoea and syphilis were yesterday's worries, effectively

According to the novelist, JP Hartley, the past is another country, they do things differently there. While I agree with the first half of that proposition, I'm not so sure about the latter. I hate to disagree with the author of the entirely wonderful The   Go - Between but I think they largely do the same things, only wearing different clothes. I was set to pondering this idea by the piece I wrote recently on BBC2's adaptation of the historical novel, The Gallows Pole, based   on   actual events in Yorkshire in the late-18th century. This in turn prompted thoughts about a story unfolding in the Yorkshire valley where I was brought up involving the unearthing, in an archaeological dig in a closed churchyard, of the remains of children and young people who had died while working in a nearby mill in the early-19th century. This provided a rare, if not unique, opportunity to examine the causes of death of dozens of so-called 'pauper apprentices'.  The scientific study o

How much responsibility do directors have for authenticity in their period dramas, especially where these are based on real-life stories? I found myself pondering this question while watching the first episode of Shane Meadows' The Gallows Pole on   BBC2 last night. The fact that my attention wandered to such considerations rather than being gripped by the unfolding drama is telling in itself. The three-part serial is billed as a fictionalised account of the life and death of 'King' David Hartley, leader of the notorious 'Cragg Vale Coiners', a band of counterfeiters who operated in the Heptonstall area of West Yorkshire in the 1760s. Whether the tag 'fictionalised' gives a writer or director (in Meadows' case one and the same) carte blanche is, I guess, the question I was wrestling with. But maybe it's the wrong question. Clearly in practice it does matter so perhaps the question is, rather,  should it? As to that, after this episode I'm sti