My congratulations to Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro
October 6th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I am delighted to hear of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to English writer Kazuo Ishiguro. I have enjoyed two of his works.
“The Remains Of The Day”
“Never Let Me Go”
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Nine reasons why coffee can benefit your health
October 5th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I drink a lot of coffee so I was interested to see this analysis of the health benefits of the drink. Cheers, mate!
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A review of “The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921” by Eric Lee
October 4th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
So many events in history are said to be unknown or forgotten, or at least under-researched and/or under-appreciated, and for me at least this Georgian revolution was one of them. But no more, thanks to this well-researched and lucidly written book by Lee, an American now living in Britain who has wanted to write this work for some 30 years. The publication in 2017 is timely, since we are marking the centenary of the Russian revolution and it was the civil war following that revolution that allowed the Georgians to conduct their experiment but the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia that sealed the fate of the Mensheviks in Georgia.
Lee starts his history by reminding the reader that Georgia was a province of Tsarist Russia from 1801 until almost the end of the First World War and the seeds of the Georgian revolution were sown in the peasant rebellion in the country’s western district of Guria from 1904-1906. The Georgian revolution was led by the Social Democrats, headed by Noe Zhordania, with overwhelming support from the peasants as well as intellectuals and a genuine commitment to the sort of land reform that had been initiated by the ‘Gurian Republic’.
What did the Georgian revolution look like? Above all, even though the Social Democrats were Marxists, it was a functioning democracy, with free elections and a multi-party system. Women had the vote many years before most other countries. Elections to the Georgian Constituent Assembly in February 1919 involved 15 political parties, although the Social Democrats won 109 of the 130 seats. There was a free media and freedom of assembly and, as Lee explains in two dedicated chapters, a thriving trade union movement and a strong role for co-operatives. Civil society was vibrant.
What did the Georgian revolution achieve? Lee argues that “Nothing the Georgian Social Democrats did could compare in importance to their agarian reform”. Land was not nationalised or collectivised but given to the peasants. Unlike in Russia, there was no war between city and countryside, no famine, no starvation.
Yet, from the very beginning and throughout these three years, Georgia was faced by severe challenges. First the Germans and then the British had military forces in the country. There was the threat of a Turkish invasion, a short war with Armenia in December 1918, and incursions from the White Army in the Russian civil war. The local Bolsheviks – although small in number – constantly challenged the government with overt support from the party in Russia and even attempted coups in November 1919 and May 1920.
Then – as now – Georgia was seriously troubled by ethnic divisions, most notably in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara, and Lee concedes that “For all its achievements, the Social Democratic government was tarnished by its crude and brutal attempts to suppress some of Georgia’s ethnic minorities”. Meanwhile the country was in economic crisis.
In all the circumstances, it is remarkable that the Georgian experiment lasted as long as it did, achieved as much as it did, and overall was relatively peaceful. But the experiment was a work in progress and the Constituent Assembly only completed work on the 1921 Constitution as the Red Army was entering the capital of Tblisi (then known as Tiflis) and, following a review of this remarkably progressive document, Lee notes poignantly that the Georgians “imagined a society unlike any which existed in the world at that time or since”. He does not disguise his support for the type of democratic socialism represented by the Georgian revolution but equally he is not uncritical of the weaknesses and failures of the experiment.
This important historical work has contemporary relevance as it explains why Georgia today looks to the European Union and not to ‘mother’ Russia.
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A review of the new movie “Kingsman: The Golden Circle”
October 3rd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The first outing for Kingsman, “The Secret Service” in 2015, was so successful that two years later it’s back, even more star-stunned and even more outrageous but just as action-packed and entertainingly over-the-top.
Taron Egerton as Eggsy Unwin is growing into the role and Colin Firth and Mark Strong are back (even though the former’s character was apparently killed off last time) while, thanks to the involvement of Statesman (the US equivalent of Kingsman), we now have a host of American stars, most notably Julianne Moore, who clearly loved her role as Poppy Adams, head of a truly massive drug operation, but also Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum and Halle Berry (whom we are likely to see next time round in a more active role).
Throw in Elton John playing himself and you’d think that would a rich enough cast-list. But we also have Poppy Delevingne, older sister of the model Cara Delevingne, Emily Watson (Elsa Einstein in “Genius”), and Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell in “Game Of Thrones”).
From the opening fight sequence in a racing London cab, the action is furious and massively enhanced by CGI so that it all looks utterly fantastical. There’s a magical lasso, following in the path of a similar device in “Wonder Woman”, and some scary mechanical apparatus such as robot killer dogs and a giant meat grinder.
Four-letter expletives are commonplace, but the most offensive element is a scene at Glastonbury music festival involving a minature tracking device which surely goes beyond the bounds of decency even for the “Kingsman” franchise. But, perhaps not, because director of both movies Matthew Vaughn and his co-writer of both scripts Jane Goldman are obviously determined to see how far they can subvert the James Bond formula for a new, usually younger, audience. And it’s working …
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Do some religions have a higher birth rate than others — and how does this affect global population growth?
October 2nd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
This TED lecture is fascinating and only 13 minutes:
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A review of the recent film “Patriots Day”
October 1st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The day is 15 April 2013; the place is Boston; the occasion is the annual marathon. As we all know, two radicalised Chechen immigrants, Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff) and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze), set off two bombs which killed three people and injured several hundred others, including 16 who lost limbs.
This film is a very workmanlike and respectful, almost documentary-style, account of the eve of the event, the bombing itself, and tracking down of the assailants in a tense five-day manhunt. Mark Wahlberg, reuniting with the director for the third film in a row, is Boston detective Tommy Saunders, a composite of several real people, while Kevin Bacon plays FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers.
For writer and director Peter Berg, following “Lone Survivor” and “Deep Water Horizon”, “Patriots Day” can be seen as the third part of his unofficial Americans-in-crisis trilogy which probably play better for US audiences than overseas, but manage to combine information with entertainment.
This time round, the viewer cannot fail to be struck by the complexity and sophistication of modern-day surveillance and forensic technologies. If only these technologies could prevent terrorist incidents (without too much of a sacrifice of our privacy and freedoms) as well as find those who have just committed such an atrocity.
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How to have a six-month honeymoon and see the world
September 30th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Earlier this year in May, I had a holiday in Sri Lanka. You can read my account of the trip here.
At one point in the holiday, we made an exciting train journey from a town called Nana-Oya to a city called Kandy. On the journey, I met briefly a good-looking young couple who were clearly very much in love. I learned that they were Australian and were on a six-month honeymoon travelling around the world. I was so impressed by their initiative and in awe at their confidence.
The couple, Damien and Britney Woods, told me about their travel blog and we exchanged Facebook details. Don’t you just love social media? Their journey is now over, they have settled in London, and I’ll be seeing them soon.
Meanwhile you can check out their blog with fabulous photos here and you might like to read Damien’s piece on “Why it was the best thing for my career” here.
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Why did the Conservatives lose the general election?
September 29th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“The Conservatives would have won a 42-seat majority in June’s general election if they had secured the same level of support among minority ethnic Britons as they did among white voters, analysis has found.The report, by the British Future thinktank, identifies what it calls an “ethnic minority voting gap” that cost Theresa May 600,000 votes and an extra 28 seats.”
More information here.
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The one area where women always beat men
September 28th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
It’s called: living. In virtually every country in the world, women live longer than men.
Centenarians are the fastest growing age group in the UK, with the number of 100-year-olds almost doubling over a 14-year period, According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. Although they make up a very small proportion of the total UK population (0.02% in 2016), their numbers have grown rapidly from 7,750 in 2002 to 14,910 last year. In 1986 there were just were just 3,642 centenarians.
Female centenarians outnumber males by five to one.
More information here.
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A review of the new film “Victoria & Abdul”
September 27th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Queen Victoria has now replaced Sherlock Holmes as the most featured character on British screens. According to a study by the British Film Institute, the monarch is now jointly tied with James Bond on 25 films. This is thanks to “Victoria & Abdul” (2017) which is a kind of companion piece to the earlier “Mrs Brown” (1997): both works star the inestimable Judi Dench as the British Queen in a relationship with a court outsider in an attempt to assuage her loneliness (indeed the new film mentions the friendship of the earlier film).
Like all good football matches, “Victoria & Abdul” is a game of two halves. The first half is played for laughs with Abdul (Bollywood rising star Ali Fazal) and his Indian companion Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar) acting like Laurel & Hardy or R2D2 & C3PO and the various British establishment characters presented in rather sterotypical or satirical manner.
But then the second half is much more serious with Victoria making very plain the sorrow of widowhood and the isolation of court life and struggling to make her “Munshi” (Indian Secretary) an intimate part of her life even when all around her – especially son ‘Bertie’ (Eddie Izzard) – are utterly opposed to the friendship and Abdul himself proves to be something of a charlatan.
It seems that this remarkable true story only became known in any detail through the relatively recent discovery of Abdul’s diaries and, at a time of significant Islamophobia in the Western world, the idea that a British monarch and a Muslim clerk could have such a meaningful friendship resonates powerfully. Director Stephen Frears and writer Lee Hall have crafted a work that manages to be both entertaining and topical in a very British movie that will have international appeal.
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