Champagne cocktails and an unexpected spring pleasure as we recall the long gone glory days of a Fleet Street paper now in its death throes

The Germans say Vorfreude ist die schönste Freude (‘anticipating pleasure is the nicest pleasure’, though the German it’s a damn sight snappier and to the point, and ‘nice’ is horribly weak). But I would add that an unexpected pleasure is up there with the anticipation of pleasure as being one of life’s glories. And I had an unexpected pleasure today.

It was a lovely spring day, sunny and mild, and I dropped in on my stepmother down the road as I always do on Thursdays to see whether she needed any shopping. I had quite forgotten that one of her oldest friends would be staying for a few days, and as my stepmother has only just moved back home after her stroke four years ago, and as this was the first visit by her friend when she was back home, it was decided that we should all treat ourselves to a champagne cocktail.

The great thing about champagne cocktails is that, however pleasant a drink they are, they are not half as grand or expensive to make as the name makes them sound: a chilled bottle of Cava for £4.99 and a common or garden bottle of supermarket own-brand brandy is all you need. In fact, it would be rather silly to waste an expensive bottle of champagne and a dearer brandy on making champagne cocktails.

The only other ingredient is sugar lumps: one sugar lump in the bottom of a champagne flute or ordinary wine glass, something like a tablespoon of brandy on it and both topped up with chilled Cava. It is one of those drinks where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and it really will not break the bank. (I went for a pint with a friend last Sunday to a pub called The Dove, which is up the river from Hammersmith Bridge in London, and two pints set me back £6.80, so that bottle of Cava, which is sufficient for three with being in the slightest mean, really is good value.) But that was only half the unexpected pleasure I am describing.

As the weather was so pleasant, we decided to have lunch outside in the garden. So I nipped into Bodmin (I got back home to Cornwall last night) to buy whatever took my fancy and returned with an iceberg lettuce, radishes, cucumber, mini pork pies, Thai chilli crisps, brie and jarlsberg, and a bottle of Dijon mustard to mix with olive oil for a very nice salad dressing (which I learnt from my aunt in Bordeaux). So that was it: champagne cocktails and a simple, though extremely tasty lunch on a day off – no obligation to be anywhere soon – sitting outside in the garden on gloriously sunny spring day, chatting about everything and nothing. A unexpected but fine pleasure.

. . .

There has been speculation on the business pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times that the Daily Mail and the Daily Express are to ‘merge’. Well, the very first thing to point out is that there is no such thing as a ‘merger’ in the newspaper industry. What a ‘merger’ really means is that of two arch-rival newspapers, one is on its uppers, hasn’t long to go and knows it, so the other uses the opportunity to kill it off once and for all, hoping that it will grab a reasonable chunk of the departing newspapers advertising market. It is only referred to a ‘merger’ by both sides to allow the owner of the dying newspaper to depart the scene with some apparent dignity.

In this case the Express owner, by all accounts a notorious pornographer who made his millions selling beaver shots to all and sundry, has recently bought Five, one of Britain’s national TV channels and now wants to dedicate his time to that, fancying himself as a bit of a player. He screwed as much money as he could out of the Express (even obliging his readers to use premium rate 0900 phone numbers when they wanted to contact the paper), but most recently, with circulation, once in the millions, now bumping along at rock bottom, he has been flogging a dead horse. So the time has come to ‘merge’ his paper with any other paper which feels it would benefit from such a ‘merger’. In this case, it seems the Mail does.

A more recent development, however, throws all this (and especially my blog entry) back up in the air. Barclays is talking up the value of Desmond’s newspapers to make then more attractive to potential buyers. Obviously if Dicky Desmond (the ‘Dicky’ being an allusion to his pornographic interests rather than the short form of his Christian name) can get more moolah by selling off the papers than by ‘merging’ them with the Mail (Lord knows what he would do with the two Stars if that is the course he follows), then that is what he would do. Why take 2p when with no extra effort you can make 4p. A no-brainer, really.

. . .

One of the oddest snippets of film I have seen was one of Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken) standing on the steps of Birmingham Town Hall just after the war giving a speech in which he exhorted his audience to ‘support Stalin’. It was odd because Beaverbrook was a far from being pinko or a fellow traveller as you could care to imagine, and the Daily Express, the newspaper which he finally bought in 1916 and transformed into the biggest what at one time was the best-selling newspaper in the world is always identified as being right-of-centre.

I’m glad to say that World War II ended before I was born – it’s always good to make these things clear – but I gather that in the euphoria following VE Day, Stalin will briefly have been regarded as a friend. What makes it all rather odd, though, was that Beaverbrook (pictured right, and don't doubt that like all men, he became uglier as he got older - me, too, I'm afraid - though searching for a piccy to add to this blog, I was struck that he was not bad looking as a younger man and his looks and money will most certainly have ensured a steady supply of women to his bed), who served in the wartime government, would have been privy information which would have left him in no doubt as to what an unsavoury character Stalin was.

The Daily Express was Beaverbrook. Almost as soon as he died, its sorry decline began. At one point it had the largest circulation of any paper in the world, selling more than 3.7 million copies daily. Now, owned and run by a man who made his money publishing cheap pornography, it sells just under 700,000. The Aitken family hung onto the paper for a few years after Max died, but its arch-rival the Daily Mail – the two papers were immortalised by Evelyn Waugh as the Daily Beast and the Daily Brute, run respectively by Lords Copper and Zinc, and I can’t tell you which was which and, anyway, it hardly matters – took pole position.

This was ironic because under Beaverbrook the Express wrote the rules of what a successful paper should be and the Mail always tagged along in its wake. But at the beginning of the Seventies the Rothermere family decided it was make or break for the Mail. Under – it has to be said brilliant – stewardship of a guy called David English, the Mail was transformed from a broadsheet into a tabloid and its target readership was realigned to cater for women. It streaked ahead, while the poor old Express was a pale imitation of its former buccaneering self. It was eventually bought from the Aitkens by a building company – which says it all, really – and run by a chap who knew bugger all about newspapers.

Circulation carried on falling. Then it was bought out by United Newspapers in a hostile takeover, and at least United Newspapers was in the business. But the decline carried on, with United more or less asset stripping what was left. For example, the Express had moved from Fleet Street into a purpose-built block at the far end of Blackfriars bridge, complete with its presses in the basement. When United took over, the building was sold off to a separate company owned by United and then leased back to the Express.

As I said asset-stripping. I worked shifts on the Daily and later the Sunday Express and the Daily Star, and we all knew things were going wrong when the in-house pub, The Poppinjay, was closed. You know newspapers are going to the wall when that kind of things happens. They shot themselves in the foot. Until then, we could all be found downstairs in the bar and if we were needed, we could be back at our desks within minutes.

Once the bar was closed, everyone dispersed to various pubs around Blackfriars and could never be found when they were needed. Finally, that scruff Richard Desmond bought it, and it really is a very sorry and very pale imitation of its former glorious self. But he is now off to play with his latest toy, the TV channel, so the time has come for a ‘merger’ to put the Express out of its misery.

Houses that look like Adolf Hitler: why Britain will always remain a bastion of freedom

It is not every day that the Press distinguishes itself. Always keen to justify its existence by reminding us of the ‘fourth estate’s’ fundamental role in bolstering and protecting democracy, of which the people’s ‘right to know’ what is in ‘the public interest’ is an essential element, it nevertheless all too often shoots itself in the foot as the various papers vie to out-trivialise each other. Any number of High Court judges have pointed out that we should not confuse ‘the public interest’ with ‘what the public is interested in’, and despite valiant, not to say desperate, attempts to persuade the public that its activities are vital to the continued well-being of democratic society, many newspapers fail dismally to convince. Would the free world as we know it really come crashing to the ground if we weren’t told who Jordan (‘Katie Price’) has most recently been shagging or that Cheryl Cole is considering dyeing her hair blonde? Well, not on the face of it. Yet, oddly, there is a connection, in as far as we are always obliged to take the rough with the smooth. And it does get very rough indeed.
Her Majesty’s Press is often accused of ‘making up stuff’, and unfortunately that’s quite true. I know, because I’ve done so myself. ‘Quotes’ are never really what people say for the simple reason that ‘people’ - we call them ‘civilians’ - are largely illiterate and rarely speak grammatically or coherently, and even if they did, they cannot be relied upon to say what we want them to say. So naturally quotes have to be improved, quite often substantially. Whenever you see a quote which runs along the lines of: ‘My husband, 43, a lorry driver from Chiswick ...’, you know damn well that the lorry driver’s wife said nothing of the kind. Once I made up a 200-word quote by Princess Di, purportedly something she said while visiting New York. I had to do it, because the copy was way too short for the space it was intended to fill, and, anyway, what I had her say was so tediously innocuous and so utterly vague that she might well have said it anyway. The fact that she didn’t is neither here nor there.
When things get really rough, as of course they inevitably do when one is operating in a multi-million pound industry, being in the crosshairs of the Press at large can, however, become intolerable. Ninety-nine per cent of us have never experienced being ‘door-stepped’, but those who have can testify to the British hack’s unrivalled tenacity in getting what he or she wants at whatever the cost — there are no rules. None at all. They know damn well that, with a gang of hacks knocking on the door non-stop - and in these situations arch-rivals working for opposing newspaper work as one unit, much like a pack of scavenging dogs, and only turn on each other later on — everyone caves in sooner or later. (Well, everyone except those wealthy enough to apply to the courts for a ‘super-injunction’ which prevents publication of everything. That is a recent and very worrying development her in Britain, but outraged jeering at it must be left for another time.)
Theft by hacks pursuing a story is not unknown, and at the present time the issue of newspapers hacking into the mobile phone messages of celebrities and politicians is active (the Prime Minister’s Press secretary has already been forced to resign over the matter as much of it took place while he was still editor of the News of the World), but still we are obliged to take the rough with the smooth. Every so often, politicians - usually of the Left - moot that we should have some kind of Press regulations here in Britain, to curb the worst of the fourth estate’s behaviour. It is not too difficult to see why they might be keen on shackling the media: last year the Daily Telegraph had a field day detailing the way many of our MPs had been abusing their expenses system, which ranged from the utterly fatuous - one MP had a ‘duck island’ built and claimed it on expenses - to the criminal - three Labour MPs have been jailed for their fiddling. Had there been some kind of mechanism for the House of Commons to determine that is expenses fiddling was not revealed, you can bet your bottom dollar we would never have found out about it and, worse, one or two hacks would now be languishing in jail for trying to publicise it anyway. But any kind of state regulation of the Press would be very dangerous indeed (and the British being more bloody-minded than many, that will, I’m certain, never happen in Britain), so we are most definitely obliged to take the rough with the smooth. And by the same token, we are also obliged to accept the utterly, utterly ludicrous and pretend that those responsible for presenting it to us are perfectly rational men and women.
The other day, I turned up for work, bought my cup of tea in the canteen (make that polystyrene beaker of tea), took the lift to the third floor, went to my desk and began to look through that day’s paper. I only rarely actually read anything in it, I just glance at each page and pay special attention to those I had worked on the previous day to see whether I had cocked up or not. (I do sometimes - a few years ago, while cutting and pasting letters on the letters’ pages into a different order, I got into a horrible muddle and many names and addresses were attributed to the wrong letters. There were complaints from readers - a spinster in Norwich insisted she had not written to the paper demanding the legalisation of cannabis - and a huge inquiry as to what had gone wrong. But I was able to cover my tracks, and to this day no one knows it was my cock-up and mine alone. So you heard it here first, though I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself. One major failing of newspapers, especially the big, important ones, is that they do not have a sense of humour. One day I might tell you how I accidentally closed down Newcastle airport all on my own. Flight delays, a search by police for bomb which didn’t exist - I’ll tell you some day.)
Anyway, I got to page 28 and saw the following:


This house in Swansea, apparently, is the spit of Adolf Hitler. And to prove the point, we also published a picture of the man himself. Here it is. Can you spot the resemblance? I sorry to say that I can, just. Just. It grieves me, but there’s no denying it: that terrace house in Swansea does actually look a bit like Hitler. But what is important is this: Old Blighty, Perfidious Albion, the UK, Great Britain, call it what you will, the choice is yours, will always, always, always, remain a country of stout-hearted men and women while Her Majesty’s Press continues to publish pictures of houses that look like Adolf Hitler. Cue Land Of Hope And Glory. Do you know, I think I’m going to cry.

. . .

Incidentally, my advice to everyone approached by a hack, whether they work for a newspaper, magazine, TV or the radio, is to tell them to fuck off. And make no exception. Bear this in mind: they are not working in your interests but their own. And if they don’t get it wrong, they make it up, and if they don’t make it up, they get it wrong.

Why greens make me often see red, and a question: did Gandhi bat for the other side?

There is something very odd about the following: the West is 'concerned' about global warming and the EU sets targets to cut the emission of carbon dioxide (also known as 'devil gas' in parts of Islington and Stoke Newington, both boroughs in London). As cars are reckoned to be some of the worst offenders, there is a rush to develop 'biofuels' made from 'renewable' sources. One of those renewable sources is jatropha, whose seeds yield an oil which (according to the various net sites I have just been scavening, he said honestly) can be used as a high-quality fuel for cars. So far, so green. But these past few days, several environmental groups have claimed that jatropha creates six times as much carbon dioxide as standard petrol and diesel. Quite how, I don't know, but then that isn't my objection.
(I'm not particlarly green. I dislike waste and think it is scandalous how the West wastes an enormous amount of food while elsewhere people go hungry. But the zealotry of the whole green thing gets up my nose. There is rather too much about it of 'the latest cause'. I ask myself, for example, what happened to the campaign for nuclear disarmament. In its heyday in the Fifties and Sixities only about five nations around the world had nuclear weapons. Now everyone and his bloody aunt has got a stash of A bombs tucked aways somewhere, but CND and similar bodies seem to be dormant. Why? I'll tell you why: because a newer, sexier cause has arrived - bloody global warming.)
My objection is quite simple: in countries such as Kenya people are in real danger of being evicted wholesale so that jatropha plantations can be established. So there we have it: to 'save the planet', people who have no means of fighting back - try finding a straight politician in Kenya to fight your corner - are being shat upon. Does that not also strike you as rather odd? Who exactly are we 'saving the planet' for? Then there's the question of cultivating land and growing jatropha so that cars in the Western world can drive on 'green' fuel instead of growing food on that land for people who have precious little of it. If that isn't utterly daft, I don't know what is.

. . .

A new book, of which I have, however, only read a review printed in the Wall Street Journal, rather dents the 'demi-God' status of Mahatma Gandhi. The book, by a former New York Times executive, has only just come out and I have no idea (at least no idea until I search the net) how it has gone down in India. But the review in the WSJ is by the British historian Andrew Roberts and is not in the slightest sensationalist, despite the many claims made by the author. Roberts notes that, in fact the author goes to some lengths to excuse Gandhi for the failings he lists. Roberts describes the book as well-researched and well-written, so when I remark that one of the many claims made about Gandhi is that he had a gay love affair with a German-Jewish bodybuilder, it is crucial that the book is accepted to be not at all sensationalist. Other claims made are that the great man was politically inept, did not practice what he preached, was in many ways a hindrance to Indian independence rather than a help, upset the leaders of other groups unnecessarily (which is given as one reason why Indian independence was delayed) and was sometimes quite a racist himself - it seemed that once when arrested by the South African authorities, he objected to being put in the same cell as 'kaffirs'. Mind stripping the gilt of ours heroes is popular pastime. Who next, I wonder?

Life, my children and what are birds saying? And will it get worse or just very, very bad?

We've come a long way as far as animals are concerned and believe we know a lot more about them. Undoubtedly, future research will demonstrate beyond doubt that a great deal of what we now 'know' is complete cobblers, and research conducted even further in the future will demonstrate that the certainties of 2211 were just so much bullshit. But that is the way of the world, nothing much changes, and I don't think we should fret too much that our present knowledge is wanting.
When my daughter was born 14 years ago, it seemed a miracle had occurred. Naturally, I knew she was on her way - I like to think I had something to do with setting her off on her journey and my wife assures me that is the case - but even though a day before she was born my wife's belly was grossly distended with the child she was carrying, when little Elsie did finally make her debut - at 11.42am on August 7, 1996 - it seemed to me that she had come from nowhere. Suddenly she was there, a new life and a new person.
Her birth changed me, I hope for the better. One way I have previously described it is that my centre of gravity shifted from within to without. I also had a new conception of 'life'. 'Life' was everywhere, and 'life', which in those first few days and weeks of wonder always came back to be defined as this little bundle which was my child and which, it seemed, had come from nowhere, became far more valuable. I have never seen animals as 'dumb', although I have never sentimentalised them, either. But suddenly - and it was suddenly - the 'life' in a dog or a cat or in one of the bullocks on my brother-in-law's farm which were being reared merely to be slaughtered once they had reached a certain weight and size, was no less valuable than the 'life' which suffused my daughter. I could, at a pinch, have become a vegetarian. I took fright, when driving across the moor one of the thousands of rabbits which live there darted out from one side of the road in front of me in case I should run it over and kill it. I felt sad when I heard the cows next door in my brother-on-law's farm lowing over the disappearance of their calves - after a few a month or two, the calves are taken from their mothers to be reared elsewhere and all night the desperate mothers call out in grief. It might sound fanciful, but their grief was and is in no less than the grief I would have felt had my daughter been take away from me.
That feeling of wonder has slightly diminished, although the love and protective concern I feel for my daughter and the brother who arrived just under three years later is no less strong, but nor have I lost that wonder at 'life'. And life is everywhere. Often the wind can blow, and I am reminded of 'life'. Sometimes I look at plants and I grow confused: surely this is just a bloody nettle, so why does it remind me of 'life'. But it does remind me of 'life', and that 'life' makes of me a man who unashamedly believes in God. I have no idea what, who, why, where, when or how 'God' is. The only thing I know is that he or she or it is unknowable. But he or she or it is the essence of everything.
But this entry is not and was not intended to become a maudlin recollection of sentiment. All these things occurred to me again - again, because they are always close to the surface now, since the birth of my daughter - when I was walking the few hundred yards down the lane to visit my stepmother this afternoon. Today, March 25, 2011, was a lovely day, as was yesterday. The leaves and buds aren't yet out, but the weather is mild, the air is fresh and there is a whole spring, summer and autumn to come. Who couldn't feel enthused. But it was the birdsong which caught me.
At dawn, birds make a hell of a racket. Then, as the day goes on, they become quieter, but still sing. They only cease as the day draws to a close an hour or so before twilight. Their song intrigues me. I know various (whatever they're called) have made many, many in-depth studies of birds and birdsong, but the fact is we simply do not have a clue as to what is going on. But when, as this afternoon at about 5.10pm, I walk down the lane and several solitary birds are singing away their complex songs, I cannot and will not believe, that it is just something a little higher than 'noise'. Certainly, we are assured that 'this is a mating song' and that is a 'territorial song' but at the end of the day we know absolutely bugger all about what is going on, and why. Nothing. Zilch. And when I hear those complex songs I ask myself: is this an individual bird giving some kind of personal account of him or herself? Is he or she actually - well, the only word I can use, however silly it sounds in context is talking? Is this all really just 'reflex reaction', 'genetic behaviour'? Given that birds have spent far longer on this planet than primates, having evolved from dinosaurs, might, just might, it be possible that they are, in their own curious, quite specific way be 'communicating'. And not just 'communicating' along the lines of 'I am a female ready and will for a shag in order to fertilise my eggs and perpetuate my kind' but in some more specific way?
Well, I don’t' know, you don't know and mankind, hubristic species that it is, will never know. But when I hear that cow lowing for its lost calf, or see those bloody stupid rabbits dart across the road in front of me, and when I see 'little Elsie', now 14 with small breasts and attitude, and 'little Wesley', now 11 and a penchant for wanting to wrestle with me and again feel that wonder of 'life' I first discovered 14 years ago when 'little Elsie' was born, I do wonder.

. . .

Decision on decision 'just days away' we are promised. Nato convenes to decide date for a meeting to discuss agenda for possible future policy. Don't think me naive (well, do so, by all means, but that will only get you banned from reading this blog) and accept that I truly understand the difficulties in trying to round up 35 unwilling cats, but all too often the West's - in this case Nato's - response to a crisis descends into what would be farce were the circumstances not to tragic. 'More demonstrations in Syria' I read on the BBC news website, with 'gunfire heard after funeral of repression victims', then in another report we are told that Nato is 'all in favour of a considered, proportionate and effective response to [insert your favourite crisis hotspot here]', while EU leaders 'condemn unequivably and in the strongest language we can think of without running the risk of actually psetting someone' actions by various thugs around the world, more particularly Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.
Of course the West faces dilemmas - it doesn't particularly want to upset Saudi Arabia, for example, by commenting on just how repressive that regime is. Such talk would only threaten oil supplies (and China is only too willing to buy up all the Saudi's have to offer if the West falls out of favour) and who else is going to keep our armaments industry going if we piss off all the dictators in the world - but behaving like some ugly virgin on her wedding night only makes it look very foolish.
I should dearly like to be around in 50 years time when I would be able to read a considered and sobre analysis of 'the situation which began to develop in early 2011', because understanding what is happening and how it will develop over the coming months and years is anyone's guess. All this is happening while Portugal is going to the wall with, and to make matters worse for everyone involved, it looks suspiciously as though the opposition social democrats are playing politics in order to get into government instead of supporting the government in a time of crisis. It is also becoming so blatantly obvious that Germany is extremely and increasingly disinclined to bail out all and sundry - well, the German taxpayer is, not necessarily the politicians who are always very keen to do the noble thing is someone else is picking up the bill - that its reluctance is being spoken of quite openly and is now regarded as a political factor. And why should they: it is all so easy, as many are now discovering, to embrace hi' falutin supranational communitarian ideals in a time of plenty, but when the going gets tough, it is usually those ideals which fly out the window soonest.
We have heard suspiciously little from Russia about the crisis in the Middle East. (Is it too early to call it a crisis? I don't know. Perhaps I'll wait a week or two.) But then Russia has always played its own game, and is sitting pretty while the U.S and the West get themselves into all kinds of trouble by insisting on being Mr Nice Guy withoug actually having a coherent strategy of any kind.

. . .

To blame, of course, are the media, and specifically television. My map below should give you a fair idea of how TV crews have been deployed to keep the 'concerned viewer' up to date. Each white flag represents a camera crew. Hacks of every

stripe have been filing reports about atrocities in troublespots more or less since mankind learnt to read and write, but for the past 35 or thereabouts, nothing can happen anywhere with some bloody TV crew sticking a camera lens up someone's arse and demanding to know what going on. And its all rather pointless. The theory is that 'in a democracy' people have the 'right to know' and 'be informed'. Which is all fine and dandy, but in practice 99 per cent of us have got the attention span of a flea and two and a half minutes of seeing images on bombing and tsunami victims is more than enough, before we demand to see footage of the Oscars or the Ryder Cup or Elizabeth Taylor's funeral or Michael Jackson's resurretion. Years ago the Economist did a survey: it asked a whole gang of people whether or not they supported the the then government's policy on someting or other. A majority said they did, many unequivocally. Then those who said they did were asked what that policy on something or other was. Less than a quarter knew. So on the one hand we crave TV coverage and demand to know what is going on, but on the other we pray to God they keep it short or else we'll miss the beginning of EastEnders.
The upshot of all this TV coverage is that politicians feel obliged to be seen to be doing something even when they either can't do anything useful. They have to justify their existence or, they fear, lose votes. The equation si quite simple, really. Yet, ironically, given a situation like the massacre in Rwanda a few years ago where because of the remoteness of the area there was no virtually live TV coverage at all, and precious little other coverage, more than a million were slaughtered without the West batting an eyelid. It was most certainly a real case of out of sight, out of mind. Oh, naturaly the wholesale murder was condemned in 'the strongest possible terms we can think of without actually risking upsetting anyone', but there was no talk of intervention, and the pitiful UN force subsequently sent in was so small it would have had trouble defending a street corner.
If the news editors of the West had decided that the civil war in Rwanda was sexy and worth the overkill it usually indulges in, our TV bulletins would have been filled with pictures of victims and our politicians would have felt obliged to act. As it was they didn't, it would have been too expensive anyway and - to be brutally honest - it involved blacks didn't it and however much we all abhor racism these days, well, blacks are blacks, aren't they, blacks, TV news editors seem to believe are quite up there with whites. A few years ago, when there was the widespread famine in Ethiopia, it was in all seriousness suggested to me that blacks, in this case the Ethiopians, didn't mind hunger as much as whites 'because they were used to it'. But there's no time to be shocked by that particular snippet, it's almost time for The Simpsons.

They weren't planning four years of wholesale slaughter, but it happened anyway

Here in Britain we have a series of short books called [whatever you’re interested in]: A Very Short Introduction. ‘Whatever your’re interested in’ can be more or less anything – the range is vast. And the subject matter has to be reasonably academic – if you’re looking for the latest goss on Nicole Scherzinger, I’m afraid you’ll be out of luck. But if you want to get an overview of, say, Buddhism, Schopenhauer’s philosophy, African history, myth, postmodernism and even the Marquis de Sade, they are immensely useful. The Short Introduction series is published by the Oxford University Press (always a good name to drop) and are written by scholars in their field, who have pared down the subject matter to give the lay reader an overview. And when I say they are available in Britain, they will most certainly also be available abroad, too. You can find out about them here.

I have bought quite a few of the series and have almost read several of them. Most recently, my stepmother decided she didn’t know anything about how World War II - ‘The Great War’ for those who get nostalgic about these matters – came about, and I decided I didn’t, either, so I bought two copies of The First World War: A Very Short Introduction. Both arrived safely and I presented my stepmother with her copy. She is now an expert on everything to do with the subject matter until April 13, 1914. Give her time.

My copy has already found a secure berth on my bookshelves where, if my life were to follow its usual routine, it would remain untouched and unblemished for a number of years. I don’t mean to be an enthusiastic, then lazy, sod, but unfortunately I am. I have a terrible habit of acquiring books I think would be interesting, then not giving them a second glance for any number of years. And even when I do, I all to often get sidetracked. So at the moment I am halfway through Misha Glenny’s McMafia, Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, a volume of short stories by Angus Wilson, The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham and an extremely useful book on teaching yourself to play bass guitar. I suspect, however, that in view of what is now going on and occupying the headline writers throughout the lands, my short introduction to World War I is destined to suffer less benign neglect than all the other books I have acquired (some of which I bought, others, like the book which claimed – rather convincingly, actually, that Jesus was a terrorist – I found knocking around the office).

As I haven’t yet read it, I am still on shaky ground as to how World War I came about, or rather I know an impressively long list of factoids, some of which might even be true. But I think I know that one factor which led to four years of slaughter in a part of the world which until then had regarded itself as reasonably civilised was that various European nations were rather impressed by their own might and weren’t at all averse to a bit of showing. Certainly, there were many other, far more complex, reasons, and when and if I do complete my Very Short Introduction, I shall be able to pontificate on the subject at far greater length at some future date. But loads of what here in the office we call ‘willy waving’ was most certainly a factor.

The point is that none of those involved expected the war they were all so very keen on waging would last more than a few months. You’ll be home by Christmas, all the sad patriotic saps who signed up were assured, rather as a former Labour defence secretary assured a concerned nation that quite probably not a shot would be fired in the operation in Afghanistan. None involved in the enthusiastic declarations of war which were made in the capitals of Europe expected, or even suspected, that it would not be a cakewalk and would, instead, become the long-drawn out slaughter of millions we know from our history books.

I mention that Very Short Introduction, and intend digging out that slim volume sooner rather than later, because I do wonder whether the current noble action by the West to impose a no-fly zone to protect the Libyan rebels is similarly an action which might precipitate the wholly unexpected. I think I mentioned a week or two ago the observation by a friend that 2011 might well turn out to be ‘one of those years such as 1848 and 1914’ and bring about all the changes they did. I don’t for a moment doubt that those involved – Cameron, Obama, Sarkozy, Merkel and various faceless idiots from the EU aren’t fully aware of the dangers. After all, they, too will know their history. It’s just that so much else is going on in the world: the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, the world economy still recovering from the banking crisis of a few years ago, almost universal unrest throughout the Middle East – Syria is said to have experienced protests over these past few days – and the fact that the difficulties of waging war in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, Iraq are far from over. If I were the kind to resort to cliché, then I might add ‘that it all adds up nicely for the perfect storm’. Oh, and then there’s the continuing hassles the bloody euro is causing, with the Germans understandably getting increasingly irritated that they should be expected to bail out all and sundry in the interest of European brotherhood.

I mention World War I because at the time the various chancelleries around Europe will have considered that they had fully thought through the consequences of what they intended to do. I mean, they didn’t have to go to war after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, but they doubtlessly decided that it was a good enough excuse to pick sides and start the fighting and to demonstrate what superior nations they had become. I doubt whether many involved even knew where Sarajevo was. But what happened, happened and World War I marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.

There is certainly direct comparison between the origins of World War I and what is now going on in the Middle East, but events do have a habit of getting out of hand. Take Iran, for example, a situation which has loads of potential for spinning out of control. Its own opposition might well be encouraged by the dissent that is being shown in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and, it now seems, Syria and Saudi Arabia so the country, and it all follows the problems the government had a few years agoa. It will also know that throughout history the tried and tested tactic for defusing internal problems is to unite the country against an external enemy. So what better time to launch action against Israel and invite attack by the West? Either the West felt obliged to respond in kind with all the problems that would bring, or it would – implausibly – regard it as wisest to leave well along and risk losing an enormous amount of credibility very fast indeed. I’m not saying that will happen, I’m just saying that it is wisest to expect the unexpected. So it really might well be time to dig out Armageddon: At Very Short Introduction (available I all good bookshops until they are all burned to the ground).

. . .

There are several pieces of music which send a shiver down my spine. Always. On is Aretha Franklin’s version of I Say A Little Prayer. Another is the beginning of of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But it is not always music. The cartoon below does so, too. It happened again when I googled it so that I could post it here. If you are not familiar with it, it refers to the ‘peace treaty’ hammered out by ‘the big four - David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, Vittorio Orlando at Versaille in 1919, which was so ineffably punitive for Germany.
The caption has Clemenceau observing: ‘Curious, I thought I heard a child weeping’. If you can’t make it out, on the left of the cartoon is that child, marked ‘1940’. The cartoonist was only out by a year.

The one I had in my mind’s eye is different, but perhaps what I thought I remembered is nothing but a false memory.