Which British politician was responsible for the introduction of the world’s first zebra crossing?
January 12th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The answer might surprise you – as it did me when the question was recently put to me by a friend over dinner. The answer is Jim Callaghan who, at the time, was a junior minister in the Ministry of Transport in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour Government and subsequently became Prime Minister himself.
In 1948, Callaghan’s ministerial portfolio included road safety and, in that capacity, he visited Britain’s Transport and Road Research Laboratory where he discussed and supported two new safety measures: the zebra crossing and illuminated metal studs (known as ‘cat’s eyes’). The first zebra crossing was then introduced at Slough High Street on 31 October 1951.
The story is that, on his visit to the laboratory, Callaghan remarked that the new black and white design for a pedestrian crossing resembled a zebra which led to the popular name for the innovation, but he himself never claimed authorship of the term.
Fast forward to 24 March 1972 when I was invited to the House of Commons to be interviewed for the award of a Political Fellowship offered by the Joseph Rowntree Social Services Trust. The interview panel was headed by Jim Callaghan and I was given the fellowship, initially working for him and then for Merlyn Rees.
Jump again to the spring of 1976: Harold Wilson resigns as Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan runs to succeed him, Merlyn Rees becomes campaign manager for Callaghan, I attend all the campaign meetings, Jim wins the election to be party leader and therefore PM and he invites me to run his political office at 10 Downing Street.
In fact, private funding for the political office was not forthcoming, I never moved No 10, and instead I continued working as Special Adviser to Merlyn until 1978.
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Normal service will now be resumed
January 6th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I’ve had a personal blog called NightHawk for 22 years now but, for the last three weeks, I’ve had a technical problem which has prevented me from blogging. This has been one of the longest down times in the life of my blog and it has been deeply frustrating.
But, thanks to an IT wizard, the problem has now been resolved and I can resume my blogging. Thanks, Luke!
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of the new Indian film “All We Imagine As Light”
December 14th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
When we think of contemporary Indian cinema, we usually have in mind Bollywood movies with singing, dancing, action, romance. “All We Imagine As Light”, both written and directed by Payal Kapadia, could not be more different: it is an art house film that won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024. Much of the film is actually set in the home of Bollywood, Mumbai, but this is not ‘the city of dreams’, rather ‘the city of illusions’ and indeed disillusions.
There are 21 million stories in Mumba, but this is simply those of three characters who all work at the same hospital: the nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti), her younger colleague Anu (Divya Prabha), and an older cook Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam).
Like any art house work, there is very little plot or action but a slow exposition of character and emotion. It is a film about friendship, more specifically about female friendship, even more particularly about the impact of different forms of patriarchy on these women and their friendship. Again like most art house films, some of it is opaque, even mystifying, particularly in the interaction between the nurse and a man whose life she saves.
It is difficult to make art house films in India and the funding for this one comes from a variety of European sources including France, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. Some in India itself have challenged the work as not so much an Indian film as an European art house film set in India. Whichever way you look at it, this is a rare work that is much to be admired and enjoyed.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the bestselling novel “Conclave” by Robert Harris
December 13th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Harris is one of the best-selling authors of British fiction and has made his reputation with a series of works usually set in a particular time and/or place and drawing on much historical research. He is not a great writer and often the journey is more interesting than the destination (his endings can be weak), but he is a consummate storyteller who is consistently entertaining and informative which makes his books real page-turners. “Conclave” is the ninth novel of his that I have read and, while it was published in 2016, I did not read it until encouraged to do so by my admiration for the 2024 film adaptation.
The word conclave comes from the Latin con clavis ‘with a key’ and, in this case refers to the sequestration of the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church when, as has been the case since the 13th century, they are confined to the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican to vote for a new Pope. It is a concentration of a few powerful people – in this case 118 holy (maybe) men (certainly) – who, in a succession of ballots over a just a few days, select the leader of 1.4 billion souls.
It turns out that the film is a very faithful version of the novel, even down to actual lines of dialogue. The only significant difference in the two formats is that, while in the book the central character is an Italian Cardinal, in the film he is British which enables the casting of the wonderful Ralph Fiennes. Where the novel scores is in its detail of the Vatican buildings and historical references to previous papacies, but I was more impressed by the movie because of the fine acting, splendid cinematography, and evocative sound.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What was most popular on Wikipedia in 2024?
December 5th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Seventeen years ago, I wrote a column with the title “Is Wikipedia the best site on the web?”. I thought then – and I think now – that it is an amazing resource and I use it every day. It is totally non-commercial and funded by subscriptions. I’ve long donated annually and fore the last few years I’ve donated monthly.
The metric of its success are astonishing. 986 million unique devices per month in English. 2.4 billion hours of reading in English. 300+ languages and counting. 4.5 billion hours reading in all languages.
As 2024 comes to an end, these have been the most visited pages on Wikipedia in the past year:
- Deaths in 2024, 44,440,344 page views
- Kamala Harris, 28,960,278
- 2024 United States presidential election, 27,910,346
- Lyle and Erik Menendez, 26,126,811
- Donald Trump, 25,293,855
- Indian Premier League, 24,560,689
- JD Vance, 23,303,160
- Deadpool & Wolverine, 22,362,102
- Project 2025, 19,741,623
- 2024 Indian general election, 18,149,666
- Taylor Swift, 17,089,827
- ChatGPT, 16,595,350
- 2020 United States presidential election, 16,351,730
- 2024 Summer Olympics, 16,061,381
- UEFA Euro 2024, 15,680,913
- United States, 15,657,243
- Elon Musk, 15,535,053
- Kalki 2898 AD, 14,588,383
- Joe Biden, 14,536,522
- Cristiano Ronaldo, 13,698,372
- Griselda Blanco, 13,491,792
- Sean Combs, 13,112,437
- Dune: Part Two, 12,788,834
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 12,375,410
- Liam Payne, 12,087,141
Posted in Internet | Comments (0)
A review of the entertaining new film “Conclave”
December 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Which is best? The book or the film? It’s an endless – and perhaps fruitless – debate.
I’ve read and enjoyed so many books by Robert Harris, but not the 2016 novel on which this film is based. The book has been an international bestseller, but this excellent cinematic version has so many visual and aural elements that cannot be rendered as vividly on the written page: imposing settings in Rome and at the Cinecittà Studios (standing in for the Vatican), vibrant clothing and ornamentation (all that red and all those crosses), superb cinematography (the French Stéphane Fontaine), an arresting soundtrack (the German Volker Bertelman), a magnificent roster of actors (Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini), and lines delivered in Italian, Spanish and Latin as well as sonorous English).
Of course, we have to thank Harris for the narrative: the machinations and power plays of the election of a new pope by the College of Cardinals sequestered in the Sistine Chapel. However, German director Edward Berger, giving us such a different work from his “All Quiet On The Western Front”, and British scriptwriter, Peter Straughan, who adapted “Wolf Hall” for television, have done brilliantly in creating a cinematic version, while Ralph Fiennes – playing the cardinal who must convene the conclave – gives an understated, but career-best and Oscar-worthy, performance.
If the film has some weaknesses, they are essentially those of the novel: a rather fanciful plot with a weak ending and a simplistic representation of the dichotomy in the Catholic Church of the debate between liberalism and conservatism. But now I am going to read the book …
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Need a suggestion for a Christmas present?
December 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This Christmas, if you’re looking for a modestly-priced and personal gift for family and friends, please consider one of these books which are available on Amazon. You can tell them that you know the author.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
A review of the book “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey
November 26th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
It won the 2024 Booker Prize, it is short (136 pages), and it has a great cover – all reasons why I was attracted to this strikingly unconventional and utterly original novel, the fifth by British writer Samantha Harvey who is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. It is set on the International Space Station and describes 24 hours in which the craft makes 16 orbits of the Earth – in effect, “a day every ninety minutes” – carrying four astronauts (American, British, Italian and Japanese) and two cosmonauts (both Russian), four of them men and two women.
It is a work with no plot or narrative, simply a record of the passage of time with a series of observations and reflections. Every portion of the globe is referenced and every colour of the palette is deployed. It is beautifully written with glorious language and imagery utilising a vocabulary both eclectic and extensive. One moment we have a three-page sketch of the 14 billion years of our universe and another moment there are three pages examining an enigmatic painting by Velázquez. It’s that type of book.
So, what is it about? Quite simply, it is Harvey’s love letter to our fractured and fragile planet. She writes: Without that planet there’s no life … without that earth we are all finished” and suggests that “The earth is the answer to every question”. She describes it as “a sight of such magnificence it shoots your senses apart”, “this thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness” and “an unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright”.
Harvey is in love with our planet: “Continents and countries come one after the other and the earth feels – not small, but almost endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses.” She appeals to us all with the existential ecological question: “Can we not stop tyrannising and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend?”
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new blockbuster movie “Gladiator II”
November 20th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Ridley Scott is an outstanding director with a terrific canon of work. Many of his films cry our for sequels and he regrets now not having directed the sequels to “Alien” and “Blade Runner”. He’s been working on a sequel to “Gladiator” for decades and now, 24 years later, here it is. The guy is now 86 and I’ll have whatever he’s having.
Of course, “Gladiator” was so good – it was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won five – that even Ridley Scott could never equal it, but this is a very satisfying sequel that does what good sequels should do: reprises all the main themes but with variations and inversions. So, for instance, we have an enthralling opening battle sequence again, but this time on a different edge of the Roman Empire on a different terrain and with the hero on the losing side.
All the character types in the first movie are reprised but, with only two exceptions (Connie Nielson as Lucius’s mother and 86 year old Derek Jacobi as a senator), all the actual actors are different. Most notably, of course, we have Paul Mescal in the eponymous role, with a voice and body far removed from his breakout role in television’s “Normal People”, and he plays the part ably with more sensitivity than the macho version that we had with Maximus.
The most interesting character is the owner of the gladiator school Macrinus because his motivations are obscure. If one can overlook his American accent, this is one of Denzel Washington’s finest performances.
The greatest strengths of “Gladiator II” are the same as the original: convincing costumes, stunning sets, clever special effects, and exciting battle and fight sequences but, as well as not exhibiting the sheer originality of the 2000 film, the sequel rather plays lose with history in its main colosseum scenes, does not have similarly quotable lines of dialogue, and has a weaker ending. Nevertheless, you will be entertained.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What is time?
November 17th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Now there’s a question and a cold and wet Sunday is as good a time as any to attend a course on this topic. It was at London’s City Literary Institute and just one day. It was delivered by Radmilla Topalovic and it was mind-blowing.
We spent a lot of time looking at how time is expressed in terms of years, months and days and where the measurements and terminology came from. The story goes back to the Sumerians, but we can thank the 16th century Pope Gregory for the calendar currently used by most of the world.
Everything became more complicated when we moved on to quantum physics with talk of entanglement, quantum foam, quantum tunnelling and quantum electrodynamics. It maybe that time does not exist at the quantum level.
The main takeaways from the course were: there is no absolute time; for any particular person, time feels absolute, but it is all relative to you and where you are; beyond the sub-atomic level, time emerges from the notion of entropy or disorder; it may be that time is not fundamental to the universe.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)