Passacaglia and Fugue

I am trying to do something that gets me out of the house each week. Admittedly, last week it was my flu jab. This week I managed to go and see Pressure, just before it went off showing at the local cinemas.

I suppose in the 1950s and 1960s in some ways it was easy to make a film about the war. Nowadays all the easy ground has been covered, so war films tend to find more niche subjects. A film about the deliberations over the weather forecast for D-Day seems pretty niche. The portrayal of James Stagg and Irving Krick is unedifying and unsubtle. There are no computers, no understanding of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The American has high confidence based on historical charts of similar weather patterns, and has the prediction the generals want to hear. The Scot has more reserved confidence based on local knowledge, and has the news no-one wants. Bertrand Russell's famous quote comes to mind. Krick is presumably no-one's idiot, yet here he is portrayed very simplistically. Stagg's accusation that he is being selective about his data feels like playing the man as well as the ball.

There is no real exploration in the film of how Eisenhower comes to his decision. Perhaps it's Churchill's insistence that Stagg was the man for the job; perhaps it's Stagg's description of the consequences of a similar weather pattern in 1916; perhaps it's Stagg's courage to state the unpopular; or perhaps it's irritance at Monty's self-certainty and vanity. He is haunted by the failure of a dry-run exercise some weeks earlier.

As IMDb notes, there is a gaffe when the church bells ring on Sunday morning (during the war bells were only to be rung as a signal in the event of a German invasion). The discussion about delaying the operation suggests moving it by two weeks, which is confusing when they are talking about the need for a full moon. It wasn't quite as simple as that, but the film is about the human story, not the technical details.

The storm comes (eventually); the weather data suggests an unexpected break is coming; D-Day goes ahead, 24 hours late; it's a success (just about).

More reading on uncertainty in forecasting can be found, for example, in The Primacy of Doubt.

Book Review: British Landscapes - A Sense of Place, by Simon Martin
Maintaining my resolve to read exhibition catalogues if I am going to buy them, this is from the Pallant House Gallery exhibition in Chichester I visited last month. There seems to be some fumbling around for words to describe the relationship between the landscape and the artist; I suggest the French terroir, but presumably we couldn't have that in a British book. Anyhow, this is a pleasant read and revisits the exhibition thoroughly. This gave me the opportunity to confirm that the book England and the Octopus and its illustrated cover by Clough Williams-Ellis was indeed the man of Portmeirion fame. The book somewhat collates works by medium; I hadn't particularly picked up on the focus on woodcuts and engravings in one section, for example. Whilst the inter-war section remains my favourite, the notes on the post-war works do help to set some context.

Book Review: Chernobyl - History of a Tragedy, by Serhii Plokhy
At work, we sometimes said well, it's not a hospital or a nuclear power station, meaning that when a system went wrong, there was no safety criticality and no danger to life. But what do you do when it is a nuclear power station?

I found Chernobyl Prayer dissatisfying because it didn't cross-examine anything. As I observed in that review, it is valid as a record of testimony, but the lack of community notes is disturbing for the amount of misinformation that could be ingested by a naïve reader.

Plokhy's book is a conventional history and comes with critical analysis, even though it keeps the detail of the science to a necessary minimum (the use of myriad units of measurement is inevitably confusing; the explanation of how ionizing radiation affects the body is much clearer). The operators at Chernobyl thought they were performing a valid test during a planned reactor shutdown; something went badly wrong as they reduced the power levels (I am not entirely clear of the minutiae from reading the book, but for these purposes it's not important) and emergency shutdown procedures didn't work, making the situation worse and leading to explosions, fire, an out-of-control nuclear reactor, and a cloud of radiation spreading who knew where. Officials and politicians were jointly in denial for days, in a culture that preferred to avoid decision-making responsibility, but they were also somewhat in ignorance; it's worth noting that some considered the possibility of evacuations relatively early on.

The disaster was brought to the world's attention within about a day by monitoring in Sweden. Eventually, evacuations took place, but the decision was made to go ahead with May Day parades in Kyiv, not so far away and with the radiation cloud spreading unpredictably. In the following days and weeks engineers struggled with fluctuating levels of radiation, unclear as to what reactions were still taking place, and fearful of an even more catastrophic explosion. The concrete sarcophagus that was built around the reactor was an effective sticking plaster, but of unknown longevity.

In the following years conventional procedures in the USSR blamed the incident on the plant operators, verdicts that were later re-examined when design flaws in the reactor became common knowledge. Nuclear power stations are invariably large-scale sources of energy, so the disaster had economic impact on the USSR as well as the health and environmental damage. It's a stretch to blame the disintegration of the USSR on this one event, but it was probably a factor.

For me, the questions are
- Was the planned testing necessary, valid, and carefully considered? This is a difficult question. Obviously, those planning the test thought it was a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately, at least one earlier incident in Leningrad in 1975 had been covered up.
- Why didn't the emergency shutdown work? Essentially, a design flaw in the RBMK reactor could produce difficulty in controlling the reaction under some conditions, particularly when control rods were partially inserted. But this incident became much worse than the 1975 one.
- Why was no-one locally prepared for such an incident? Because a nuclear explosion was considered "impossible" with this reactor design. The local emergency services had no preparation, training or resources for a nuclear incident at the power plant. There is a limit to what you can plan for when the script runs out, but to have no consideration for a nuclear incident with such a power plant nearby seems spectacularly unforgiveable.

Because of the highly centralised nature of the Soviet system, Plokhy feels able to trace accountability and failure to deal with the incident all the way up to Gorbachev, and I think that's fair. Of course he wouldn't have all the scientific knowledge, but did he ask the right questions and did he trust people to give their best answers? However, the system was built to avoid delivering bad news. The available radiation measurements and dosimeters exceeded their range, so no-one really knew how bad it was - so they just reported the maximum measurement.

It's easy to be critical of the system, and we should - but I would also ask the question, how do you think Matt Hancock would have handled this scenario?

Book Review: Why has nobody told me this before?, by Julie Smith
Among Dad's books were a few on mental health and psychology, specifically anxiety. I'm uneasy about anything that describes itself as "self-help" because of the potential for snake oil. However, I would say this was a useful book; it's not full of positivity or unquestioning morale-boosting, but recognises life's ups and downs and covers more general aspects of mental health.

Of course, as implied in the title, much of the material just seems intuitively correct when it's written down. In an odd way it resonates with the Buddhist concept of enlightenment, acknowledging one's circumstances but not over-reacting to them. There is also some science, treating the body as an observatory that receives all sorts of signals from the environment and explaining how the brain tries to make sense of it all. It's not going heavily into the nature of consciousness but it dovetails with what I've read elsewhere.

In summary, acknowledge imperfection and make small incremental improvements.

Book Review: A Member of the RAF of Indeterminate Race, by Cy Grant
This was an oddity on my father's shelves. Perhaps it was just curiosity, or perhaps he remembered him from television in the 1950s and 1960s. The somewhat disturbing title relates to the Nazis' insistence on racial classification, and is taken from a photo caption in the Völkischer Beobachter, when Grant became a prisoner of war.

The short book is only a partial biography; it deals briefly with Grant's childhood in British Guiana, but the main body is about his time serving as an RAF officer during World War 2. After initial reluctance, the RAF began to accept non-white recruits; whilst Grant says he didn't find race to be an issue directly, it's clear that there was what might later be described as institutional racism. Sadly, his flying career was rather short, as the plane in which he was navigator was shot down over the Netherlands in 1943, and he remained a PoW for the duration of the war. Most of the book is a reconstruction from hidden diary scraps and recollections of fellow prisoners, of their various forced marches at the end of the war from one camp to another, and of the bureaucratic difficulties encountered upon being liberated by the Red Army.

Although the text doesn't continue beyond the end of the war, the photo section features Grant in various post-war roles, as an entertainer, actor, and campaigner. Most interestingly for me is a picture simply entitled "Blake's Seven, 1979". It takes only a little research to discover this was the character of Hal Mellanby, who features as Dayna's father in the opening episode of the third season, Aftermath.

Last week would probably have been better to go and see De Gaulle: Résistance, but it was put off. In the olden days, it's the sort of film that would have worked at Reading Film Theatre; now I was disappointed that it wasn't on at Reading Biscuit Factory, but the Vue has not yet closed. Fortunately, I'm now at liberty to go to the cinema whenever, so a late afternoon showing still worked for me. Somehow, all half a dozen or so of us fitted in to the screening.

Plainly it's a serious story, beginning (after a snippet of the Nazi invasion of Poland) with the invasion of France, De Gaulle's rejection of surrender and escape to London, and following events establishing the Free French through to late 1942 or 1943. In particular, the Battle of Bir Hakeim showed human courage that would, in other contexts, be described as extremist. Along with his friends in Paris, the character of Fernand seems generic, until later in the film.

But the film is also in some ways quite playful. Simon Russell Beale is a wonderful Churchill against Simon Abkarian's stubborn De Gaulle. It's not difficult to see how Churchill's sense of adventure and theatricality allowed madcap schemes to go ahead, though most of the cabinet, and later Roosevelt, repeatedly urge caution and rationality. And when De Gaulle advises Philippe-François-Marie de Hauteclocque to take a nom de guerre "like Leclerc" to protect his family, it makes me wonder whether there was a further layer of humour in the naming of Jack Haig's character in 'Allo 'Allo.

Book Review: Wainwright - The Biography, by Hunter Davies
Anyone who has taken fellwalking in the Lake District seriously will be familiar with the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, but beyond that, the name of Alfred Wainwright is probably little known. In 1995, four years after Wainwright's death, Hunter Davies negotiated the deal to write a biography, so this is essentially an authorised or endorsed version.

It's a book that needed to be written as much as it did not need to be written, I think. Davies proceeds chronologically and conventionally, with Wainwright's early years, his career as an accountant in Lancashire, his first marriage and family, and slow rise to fame. In his own books it's not hard to spot the curmudgeon, the prototypical grumpy old man, and this is evident in the unhappy first marriage in an era when divorce was unlikely. So they made do, but at human cost, borne most evidently by his wife, but perhaps also influencing negatively his own character. In this sense I think the biography is also valuable as a wider social document.

Wainwright was persuaded to undertake the later book and TV collaborations not particularly for personal gain, but essentially as a way of funding his animal refuge activities. It helped that Eric Robson was a Lakeland farmer as well as a broadcaster. His legacy lives on, the unique guidebooks eventually updated and still in print. They are to Lakeland as Harry Beck's Tube Map is to London; it's appropriate that a fusion of these ideas resulted in the Tubular Fells map in 2011.

Book Review: The Last Devil to Die, by Richard Osman
On reading the third book in this series, I observed that they are best read in sequence. Whilst this book could be read stand-alone, there is continuity between them, in the supporting cast as well as the main characters.

This time the gang are faced with the murder of an antiques dealer who seems to have been caught up in drug smuggling. But, of course, nothing is quite what it seems. The local police want to keep The Thursday Murder Club out of things - good luck with that - but then, they themselves are usurped by NCIS. There's a certain joy in reading of Chris and Donna outwitting the supposedly serious crime squad, while of course the pensioners outwit everybody.

But there's a more serious and reflective side in this story as well (no spoilers here). I think Osman has done "domestic" rather better than Alexander McCall Smith here, though it's not clear whether any of it will develop further.

Joyce, of course, is caught up in the excitement of it all, but has it when and where it counts.

Book Review: Why the Allies won, by Richard Overy
There are so many ways to answer this question, and this book is definitely wide-ranging. Despite what we might like to think, the Allies did not simply win because they were in the right; nor is it as simplistic to point to Hitler's errors and overbearing control (though that was a factor). The author carefully assesses various aspects, from politics to military strategy to industrial and indirect support.

Certainly, being in the right was a factor; for Britain and the USSR the war was for some time existential; the corresponding Axis populations did not have the same motivation (and many were not motivated). But Churchill made many errors too; the difference was that his officials and military advisers stood up to him, and he would often reassess decisions. Stalin also made catastrophic miscalculations at first, but learned to rely on sound advice from his generals.

Overy is generous to bombing (in its overall effectiveness, including as a "second front" to support the USSR, rather than in its stated intent, of which he is scathing) and gives little mention to Enigma (which is often reckoned to have shortened the war by about 2 years) or other intelligence (although there's quite a bit about the duplicity fed to the Germans prior to the D-Day landings). Stalingrad and Kursk turned the tide, and these were enabled by better decision-making and ever-improving mass production. He concludes that there was no single factor that led to victory. Military superiority was necessary; overwhelming military superiority was useful, but would alone not necessarily have been sufficient. Overy was writing in the 1990s, but his points have been evidenced subsequently by any number of asymmetric conflicts.

Another prompt start yesterday for a couple of Proms. The Sunday morning concert was an organ recital given by Olivier Latry. I'd read a few grumbles that this was a poor choice of timing for organists who might have other things to do, which is a fair criticism. Nevertheless, the seats in the hall were well filled. To my surprise, there was space on the rail for me. Someone once said that it's the one concert where it really doesn't matter where you are in the arena, and that's true, but it was nice to have something to lean on.

The programme was all Bach, or Bach-inspired. Most musicians take their own instruments with them; pianists have to make do with whatever is there; and I suppose for organists, every programme is its own transcription, with the variety of keyboards and stops available. It seemed that Latry used quite a few of the 9999 pipes as he began with the Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1004; the next piece, Jesu, Joy of man's desiring was rather calmer. On through a Widor tribute to Bach, and an aria from Cantata No. 68, then to a Bach/Vivaldi Concerto in A minor, BWV 593. More preludes, fugues and chorales, then, perhaps inevitably, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, a piece debatably not by Bach and possibly not for the organ at all, but never mind. Latry finished the concert with his own Improvisation on B-A-C-H, following in the footsteps of Liszt and others in extracting music from this tricky four-note phrase (in German notation, "B" is B flat and "H" is B natural), and finally an encore of more Bach; I had thought it was one of the Brandenburg concertos, but the Radio 3 announcer credited it as the Sinfonia from Cantata No. 29.

With time to fill between concerts, I decided to head to Regent's Park as I was curious about the new Queen Elizabeth II Garden. I knew it was relatively small, but in the event it was smaller than I had expected. The site incorporates the crushed waste concrete of the flooring of the buildings removed, and so it's very gritty. In this respect, it reminded me of the Delos garden at Sissinghurst. The planting is having a hard time of it, but still looks good (notices informed the visitor that the Park has its own private borehole and isn't subject to any hosepipe bans; how convenient). I did feel that the whole park was much quieter than Kensington Gardens and remained there for most of the afternoon.

Back to the Royal Albert Hall for the evening concert; this time, third row in the arena as everyone wanted to be at the front. The CBSO were conducted by Kazuki Yamada. Often, I'm hesitant when the words "BBC commission; first performance at the Proms" appear against a work; but in this case, the commission was from 1947 and the work was Poulenc's Sinfonietta. Although there were times when I felt this could have been by other composers, it didn't take long for Poulenc's characteristic sound world to emerge, mostly light hearted but with episodes of pathos.

I've seen Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos at the Proms before, all the way back in 1995 and again in 2009, interestingly on both occasions by the Labèque sisters, and this time it was another sibling duo, Lucas and Arthur Jussen. It was fun to see how much they were watching each other and smiling or laughing, as much as watching the conductor; also interesting, that I hadn't noticed before, that it seems very much that there is a first piano rather than a more evenly shared out load. As if they hadn't had enough fun, they gave an encore of far too many notes from Die Fledermaus - I wondered whether it might be Godowsky, but apparently it was Strausseinander by Igor Roma.

Finally, the CBSO were joined by the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs - quite a trip for them - in a performance of John Adams' Harmonium. I hadn't bought a programme and perhaps I should have, for the libretto. The work was stylistically reminiscent of Nixon in China, which dates from a similar period. I admit that I was flagging a bit after a long day, the weather, and perhaps also, having enjoyed the Poulenc so much, I wasn't paying enough attention, so it may pay a further listen on BBC Sounds.