Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: Konrad Mägi, by Eero Epner and Kathleen Soriano
The book of the exhibition; often these just sit on the shelves, so I made an effort to read this one while my visit was still fresh. Mägi's precarious state of health (both physical and mental) comes over much more strongly here; the archetypal artist struggling to make ends meet. A product of his time, Mägi went to study in Paris, and was dissatisfied; went to Norway, and was dissatisfied; returned to Paris, and was dissatisfied. At least it seems his talent was recognised at home in Estonia, though later suppressed by Soviet authorities.

We took the train to Oxford yesterday, to visit the Ashmolean's exhibition In Bloom. The theme is vast and therefore the exhibition is highly selective. There's some interesting bits and pieces on discoveries in the New World and the establishment of the Oxford Botanic Garden and Kew. Other interesting artefacts were some flower models, opium pipes and a tea brick. Some of the commentary about being "extractive" (inferredly a euphemism for exploitative) of native peoples was a little wearisome (though obviously not untrue) and the contemporary exhibits did feel that they were used to fill the remainder of the space.

Book Review: Flood of Fire, by Amitav Ghosh
I think it would be difficult to read this without the earlier books [1], [2] in the trilogy. This time I felt I was relying on previous information for context. It is interesting the way that characters gain and lose importance between the books - this time the principal storylines feature Zachary Reid, Shireen Mistry, and Kesri Singh. The British (with many Indian hired hands) and Chinese are engaged in diplomacy and war over opium. Not that it stands too much scrutiny to compare the situation to current affairs, but one of the combatants, whose war is of choice, is militarily overpowering, yet the other, for whom the conflict is existential, ought not to be underestimated. The result is some superposition of victory and stalemate, profiteering and collateral damage.

On reflection, it is unsurprising that Neel is the constant through the books. There are too many coincidences in the way people meet and rediscover each other, but they are clever and necessary for the saga to work. The ending is particularly brief but does wrap things up.

Book Review: The Blunders of our Governments, by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe
The authors begin by separating a blunder from other unfortunate choices, in that the potential for failure really ought to have been foreseen. They choose to begin with the Thatcher era, while noting that there is nothing new about blunders from that time. The poll tax features heavily, but so does pensions mis-selling, the Child Support Agency, and Black Wednesday (specifically, the decisions to do "whatever it takes" to prop up sterling at the time). Choosing episodes from the Blair era isn't difficult either - the Millennium Dome, Tax Credits and Individual Learning Accounts.

So the catalogue variously induces outrage, wry humour, and irony, but also a weary sense of repetitiveness. The authors attempt to identify common causes and potential for avoidance. The most concrete issue that comes up is short-termism, the determination to get quick results (mostly, in time for the next election) and to avoid anything that might prove unpopular, kicking the realities of the situation down the line. Disconnection of various forms also looms - ministers and officials having no idea how everyday people and businesses would react to certain changes. Whilst there are some anecdotes that align strongly to the plots of Yes Minister, there are also plenty of cases where civil servants did too much to follow the direction set by ministers, where a bit more questioning and challenging might have been appropriate.

The book is from 2013 and reserves judgement on the particulars of the coalition government, whilst pointing out there had already been a spate of blunders; and one can hardly say things have improved since then.

Book Review: Murder is Easy, by Agatha Christie
This novel was the subject of a BBC adaptation a few years ago, which I recall feeling slightly unconvinced by. Not Poirot, not Marple: According to Goodreads this is number four in the Superindendent Battle books. One is left to infer that Battle has nothing much to contribute but wraps everything up at the end. The plot centres around Luke Fitzwilliam's visit to Wychwood-under-Ashe, following a chance encounter with elderly spinster Miss Pinkerton on a train to London; Miss Pinkerton dies apparently in a road accident later that day.

A fair part of the book meanders around several characters in the village, as the visitor probes not very convincingly for an explanation of a number of deaths Miss Pinkerton considered suspicious, and while it's not a bad book, for a long time it doesn't feel Christie at her best. But towards the end there are several plot twists, which improve it considerably overall.

Book Review: My Inventions and Other Writings, by Nikola Tesla
If I'd read this a few years ago I would probably have filed it as largely pseudoscience. With developments in recent years, I would still regard it as such, but would add that there's a lot of egotistic pronouncement about what Tesla would like to be the case in areas where he did not have knowledge (because it wasn't available yet). Tesla was right about quite a few things and maybe was a genius - certainly he thought so - but he was also wrong about a lot of things and failed to keep quiet about them. Does any of this (probably not all of this) sound familiar?

Sadly there isn't that much real science in the book, and the edition I read also omits the illustrations which originally accompanied the writing, which might be important in some cases. There is a lot of writing about war and armaments, which reads completely naïvely today (the idea of machines fighting each other in a bloodless war is not quite how things turned out). Most of the writing is either nineteenth century, or refers to events in that period. Some things might have been different if Tesla had understood relativity or the photoelectric effect - or human nature.

Book Review: Chernobyl Prayer, by Svetlana Alexievich
This is a collection of testimony, first published in 1997 and therefore, I guess, motivated by the tenth anniversary, from various people living in Belarus affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986.

It feels unedited and minimally curated, which is both a strength and a weakness. For certain, these voices should be heard; but on the other hand, My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge is writ large in some of this, and unfortunately it's just not true. Ten years on, some people had plenty of evidence in the form of lost loved ones and/or illnesses themselves. Those with some scientific training generally produce better reports. Some early sections are quite graphic and make for difficult reading. Of course, the disaster took place in a very different culture and many of the responses are a reflection of that. With the passage of time, this invites comparison with the way the Covid pandemic was handled, and it's not gratifying. Emergency procedures and equipment that were out of date and unusable? Check. An expectation that the authorities would keep people safe, when in fact they had no idea what to do? Check. We can't see it/taste it/feel it, so there's nothing there? Check. Death as a result of (sometimes heroic, sometimes foolhardy) exposure? Check. It's worth bearing in mind the priceless four stages of policy from Yes, Prime Minister, as applicable here as in the Foreign Office:

1. Stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.


2. Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.


3. Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.


4. Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

For me, there is certainly a case for some level of nuclear programme (we need a supply of radioisotopes for medical use, for example) but we have never seriously addressed the problem of nuclear waste, preferring forever to kick it down the road. The economic case has always turned out to be optimistic (one can say that for many, if not most, large-scale infrastructure projects).

Coincidentally, while going through the recordings on Dad's PVR, I found a documentary on the history of nuclear power. The programme itself stuck to facts and may not have shifted minds in either direction, but it did fairly cover the safety disconnect between the nuclear lobby and the real world - essentially, the argument that "it couldn't happen here" after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; more difficult to make that claim following Fukushima. It's not about the small probability of an accident; it's about the grave consequences of such an accident.

Book Review: The Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith
Some books in this series are rather void of events; but this one is full of them, and is a better read for it. An accident befalls Phuti Radiphuti, with consequences; the detectives are looking for a vaguely specified legacy beneficiary; and one of Mma Ramotswe's friends has a delicate request which becomes tricky to handle. This series doesn't go for depth, but Mma Ramotswe in particular is often philosophical.

Book Review: Three Against The Wilderness, by Eric Collier
I've been clearing the bookshelves at Dad's home. Some are definitely to discard: they're of no interest, or they're duplicates; others are plausibly to keep; and others are probably worth a read but unlikely to be kept. This fell into that last category. In many cases it's not clear whether a book was initially Mum's or Dad's; this tale of remote Canadian settlement could go either way (I had increasingly distant family on Mum's side, now lost touch, in British Columbia).

Collier abandoned life in Britain in the 1920s as a young man, disinterested in urban life, and emigrated to Canada. In British Columbia he married a woman of part Native American descent, and obtained a land grant of more than 100,000 acres at least 300 kilometres north of Vancouver. This memoir covers the following 30 years or so, starting with nothing but the woods and a tent for shelter, and horses and a wagon for transport.

There's an irony in the early chapters of the book, where Collier attributes the poor land quality to the hunting to local extinction of the beaver for furs. As Collier describes it, the Native Americans, who hunted the beaver to extinction, blamed the white settlers and colonisers for not understanding the limits of the resources available - so much for the overwhelming contemporary perception that indigenous peoples live in balance with nature. But, in understanding and managing the land, Collier first mimics the beavers' actions in replenishing dams to improve and manage water supply and local irrigation, and later, persuades the authorities to reintroduce beavers to the area successfully. It feels in this area that Collier was ahead of his time - or perhaps of his time, given that this was mostly almost a hundred years ago - that one would get better results by working with nature rather than attempting fruitlessly to conquer it.

Collier tells of various episodes where the family is imperilled by nature: often by severe weather, occasionally by aggressive wildlife. Fortunately he never seems to have had serious incidents with the few other humans in the area, and his writing is never anything but respectful to native peoples. On the other hand, his attitudes to gender haven't aged so well, though his wife certainly played as much of an equal role as she was allowed, and the necessity of his situation perhaps made things more progressive on that score than he was comfortable with. His son Veasy was home-schooled, which also seems unusual and difficult in such remote circumstances, but must have been successful. Even in the remotest parts, the twentieth century intervenes: Veasy negotiates the introduction of a jeep for transport, and towards the end of the book he leaves to join the Canadian army and serves in the Korean war.

We ended the holidays by taking a trip to Dulwich Picture Gallery yesterday, to see the Anna Ancher exhibition. Although they always take place in the same space, some of their exhibitions are large and others small. This one felt on the small side, but the highlights were well worth seeing. In particular I found Three old women sewing a blue dress for a fancy dress ball reminiscent of Sorolla'a Sewing the sail: Northern rather than Southern European light, and a different subject, but a common communal sense of purpose.

Sunlight in the Blue Room

Three old women sewing a blue dress for a fancy dress ball

Harvesters