Old majors with large noses…
So it seems that The Economist (see posts passim) does have a sense of humour… indeed a well developed one too. I thought I would leave it a while for this blogpost… I have not had anything to do with it, and death is rarely a laughing matter, but whoever helped Nigel Molesworth of St Custard’s write the recent obituary for the cartoonist Ronald Searle deserves a gong or two.
It opens: “ART is for weeds and sissies whose mater hav said Take care of my dear little Cedric, he is delicate you kno and cannot stand a foopball to the head. Whenever anebode mention Art they all sa gosh mikelangelo leenardo wot magnificent simetry of line. Shurely the very pinnackle of western civilisation etc.etc. Pass me my oils Molesworth that I may paint my masterpeece. The headmaster sa gosh cor is that the medeechi venus hem-hem a grate work so true to life reminds me of young mrs filips enuff said.”
All buoyant enough, but when it comes to the darkness that was the second world war, Molesworth reveals a subtle blend of humour, horror, ‘melankoly,’ and reverts to humour once more. No mean feat:
“A mistery voyage to Singapore then followed drawing all the way, but then come the Japs invading, Boom KABOOM!! ack-ack-ack-ack-ack, motorbikes roring by, urum-urum-urum-uraaaaaa, too late, into prison camp, still drawing. He staid four yeres there and was six stone when he left. A wunder he could smile agane after seeing men die all around him from cholera or torchure with bodes like sticks, but what he drew afterwards had a savvage melankoly underneath it as the art master sa, old majors with large noses and small handkerchiefs, dogs that are undoutedly plotting an evil dede, lugubrioos couples dancing hem-hem, criket bats and balls killing players at a single blo, a man catching music like flys in a jar, a child-hater selling balloons that carry the pathetik little weeds far away.”
And if you have any doubts as to the horror of the Prison Camp into which he was placed, check out details of the infamous Death Railway; during its construction about 180,000 Asian labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war worked on the railway. Of these, around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the project. The dead POWs included 6,318 British personnel, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch, and about 356 Americans. Searle was one of the few that left alive. His distinctive style, and creative genius will be much missed… “As any fule kno.”
Read the full article here.
Filed under Timology
Grandma hid drugs between her legs
Some things you just can’t make up… Oh Oxford, I love you sometimes… and how on earth the Editor managed to steer his team from the inevitable headline gag I dont know.
This from today’s Oxford Mail.
A GRANDMOTHER was caught with her trousers down trying to conceal drugs between her legs.
Police raided Janice East’s house and found the 54-year-old in her bedroom trying to get rid of the evidence.
The grandmother-of-two, from Rose Hill had six wraps of heroin and five wraps of crack cocaine when officers swooped on October 5.
East was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Monday having earlier admitted two counts of possessing a Class A drug and breaching a suspended sentence.
Prosecutor Nikki Duncan said: “Police executed a warrant at her home address. They forced the door and went upstairs where they found her with her trousers pulled down. She was trying to conceal the drugs between her legs.”
The offence put East in breach of a four-month prison term, suspended for a year, which had been dished out by magistrates after almost identical drugs offences in May.
She has 31 previous convictions dating back to 1974.
Lucy Ffrench, defending, said East has been drug-free since November.
Judge Patrick Eccles jailed her for a total of 18 weeks.
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream
Royal Asiatic Society. Lecture. 18 January. London.
I doubt many of you will be at a loose end in London tomorrow evening, but if by chance your date has stood you up, or your heating has packed up, you might find warmth and distraction at the Royal Asiatic Society. I will be offering hot air on the subject of looting in Tibet. RAS Student Lecture Weds 18th January.
The next student series event at the RAS will take place next Wednesday evening 18th January and we have a very interesting double bill of lectures lined up. You can read all about it on their blog here.
Timothy Myatt will speak on ‘Trinkets and Treasures: Looting during the British Mission to Tibet of 1904’. Tim’s interest in Tibetan history and culture was stirred after spending eight months teaching in the Tibetan Monastery of Dip-Tse-Chok-Ling in Dharamsala, India, close to the Tibetan Government in Exile. He is now a doctoral student of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford and the General Secretary of the Internal Seminar of Young Tibetologists and has edited and published numerous books and papers on Tibetan culture, history and Anglo-Tibetan relations.
Apparently I have given the following comment:
I will present new research examining looting during the 1904 Younghusband Mission to Tibet. I will outline the social and cultural milieu that prevailed at the time and note the role models for, and influences on, those who took part in the mission. I will outline the position of L. Austine Waddell, the ‘archeologist’ to the Mission, and the controversial methods he used to acquire both personal and official collections. The aftermath of the Mission will be studied, focusing on contemporary newspaper reports from London and Delhi concerning the looting. I will then show how selected items looted from Tibet are now presented in British museums and collections, before studying the mentality behind the collectors and their desire to construct archives of achievement and ‘Temples of Empire’ that rationalize a perspective of ‘the other’ and thereby, themselves.
Filed under Oxford: The Perspiring Dream, Tibetology, Timology
Facial Furniture and Life on the Open Waves
It has just occurred to me that nearly everyone whose image appears on this blog has a beard. Not all of them are as luxuriant as that of Tsar Nicholas, but there is a distinctly high level of facial furniture on display.
I have recently lost (well, I say lost; more disposed of) my rakish ‘tash that was an integral part of my NYE costume, and Movember fund raising efforts. (New Years Eve revellers might have caught a fleeting glimpse of the ginger lip bush when Thomash and I arrived at the Blitz Party dressed as Spitfire pilots…) And it was with this sense of loss, and cooling breeze across the facial bows, that I considered how it is that Naval Officers always seem to have full and established beards? Are there are days at sea when young Lieutenants are confined to their quarters until their growth becomes acceptable enough to be seen on deck? Are Petty Officers issued them as they take their shore leave? Does the Admiralty offer discounts on beard trimmers to Senior Servicemen? Do they all get razor rations? Are you never ever sick at sea?
A prize for anyone who can guess who this bearded sailor is..
As luck would have it (and the British Navy always has them) there are regulations for such important matters. The most extensive of these are found among the General Orders of the HMS Royal Yacht Britannia. I love the very notion of ‘permission to grow…’:
- The growing of a beard whilst serving in the Royal Yacht is permitted provided that the beard is respectable by the time the Standard is broken and the first time it appears in public.
- The rules are as follows: The granting of a request to discontinue shaving will carry with it an automatic stoppage of leave for 14 days. At the end of this time the beard will be inspected and a further 14 days stoppage may be given. Should the beard still be untidy after 28 days the order to continue shaving will be given. The stoppage of leave applies to members of all sports and recreation parties where there is the slightest chance of meeting anyone outside the Royal Yacht. Requests for leave to take part in representative games will not necessarily be granted.
- Except for medical reasons a request to continue shaving will not be granted within 6 months of the granting of the request ‘to grow’.Since the appearance of Royal Yachtsmen in public must be impeccable at all times, permission to grow may be withheld from Quartermasters, boats crews and other Royal Yachtsmen whose duties are likely to take them ashore after the request is made. So now you know.
Filed under Photography, Timology
The most expensive book sales of December
Each month ABEBooks produce a list of their most expensive sales… its an interesting distraction. December’s most expensive list spans from the 15th to the 20th century. The oldest and most expensive item was a single leaf from the first edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which sold for £6,818. This fine piece of incunabula is one of the most sought-after works of Middle English writing.
However, the most interesting item included may be a sequence of photos of the notorious French criminal Jacques Mesrine who was responsible for multiple bank robberies, jail breaks, burglaries, murders, and kidnappings in France and Canada. Mesrine’s crimes read like a Hollywood script: robbing multiple banks in a single day, holding a real estate mogul for a 6 million Franc ransom, attempting to kidnap a judge who had once sentenced him to prison, escaping a crime scene by running out of a surrounded building (past police) yelling “Quick! Mesrine’s up there!” as he got away, and of course the multiple jail breaks. Mesrine’s eventual demise was also in Hollywood fashion; police were finally able to track him by means of a woman thought to be his mistress. The two of them were heading out of town for a weekend in the country when police boxed their car in at the entrance to an intersection and opened fire, shooting Mesrine 15 times. Throughout his escapades he earned the title of Public Enemy #1 in France. [I have plundered this from the ABE newsletter, so do go and check them out yourself… they are good people.]
And what a good word… ‘incunabula’
Filed under Photography, Timology
Invented People
My old supervisor, Philip, has just sent out this link… it’s so brilliant I really wanted to share it all with you. It is a collection of images from the Palestine in the 1930’s and 40’s that are a graphic response to Newt Gingrich’s comment that Palestinians are an “invented people.” The images speak for themselves, and perhaps Newt should go back to his pond. Find the link here.
Filed under Photography
Penn weighs mighty on ‘The Word’
Lucky you… a second thought download from me in a day… but then you have been patient over Christmas. A quality vital to get you through this one, but bear with me:
In the same way that I never intended this to be a political blog, it is not also a religious blog. However the two so often go hand in hand, especially in America, and especially in an election year, and are often inescapable. It is this connection, not the arguments themselves per se, that I have been thinking about.
This all stemmed from a discussion in the local with a good friend and self-confessed ‘anti Goddist.’ (He would probably spell God without a capital letter, and do check out his blog) (And by including a capital I know I have broken the intention of my opening paragraph… but lets press on before we all end up in a vortex of indecision, grammar, and syntax.) 
My friend told me about a recent clip he had watched by Penn Jillette, one half of the Penn and Teller entertainment duo, that discusses the current Republican Party candidates, their religious affiliations, and presents Penn’s atheist view on the interface between religion and politics in the US. It really is well worth a watch. I am not sure why Penn has been chosen to present this case, but he is certainly rational, reasoned, thoughtful, and passionate about the subject. The clip forms part of a bank of ‘interviews’ and pieces on the Big Think site. If you are not accustomed with this site, please leave my humble ramblings right now, go to it, and rummage about there. It’s much better than any talking animals or the like you will find on here.
Penn presents his thoughts on the major Republican candidates in the current race to fight Obama for the White House. He is noticeable silent on Gingrich, and Santorum, but has some real fun with Bachmann, and claims that “Michelle Bachmann’s blasphemy is greater than anything I have ever accomplished.”
It is pretty frightening that she not only has the self belief to think that voters will be swayed by her beliefs, but is also not hauled over the political coals for claiming that earthquakes and hurricanes were God’s way of getting politicians attention; using human suffering, and God’s wrath to support and promote a candidate that champions ‘Christian values’ is a very round about, and frankly a reductio ad absurdum approach. (It does rather take the writings of CS Lewis to an absurd and literal level… his Problem of Pain is one of the best books on Christian philosophy I have ever read, and his ability to weave words precedes his religious writings.)
On a separate point it is an interesting difference between the here and our American friends how abortion always becomes a prominent theme during the Republican caucuses, but is rarely, if at all, mentioned in the British election debates. In the states the topic seems to then rather melt away once the Presidency is announced… but again, for more on this see the blog mentioned earlier.
Penn accounts how 30 – 40 years ago religion was not seen as a politically motivating factor, and claims that no sensible candidate would ever have described themselves as a Baptist, Catholic, or Protestant, for fear of the support of other factions shying away. Today however, his argument goes, because we now use the umbrella term ‘Christian,’ it has become accountable, mandatory even, to bring God into the polling booth.
IMHO, he is right in general terms, I am not sure I agree with his historical claims… Woodrow Wilson was an ardent Presbyterian, indeed his father was a Presbyterian minister and professor of theology. Hoover was a Quaker and there was a national debate at the time of his inauguration as to how he would swear the Presidential Oath (given that Quakers don’t swear oaths.) Kennedy was a Catholic who often spoken openly about his religion, and Jimmy Carter continued to teach in a Baptist Sunday school and serve as a deacon in his local church while he was President. I think it might be a better theory than practice, and religion (and by this I mean the President’s individual beliefs and affiliations, not a general ‘Christianity’ as Penn claims) has been a major player in US politics for generations. His idea that the ‘Christian’ candidates are in death throws, and that it is now impossible to avoid main stream culture, philosophy, and influences, are however right on the nail.
He also has a good old dig at the Iowa caucus winner (by the narrowest of margins) Mitt Romney, and here he is not only funny, but has a more serious point. Penn reminds us that Romney is a Mormon, and wears magic underwear! “[Romney] believes that a convicted conman, got golden tablets that no-one else could see, and sat with an angel to find out that the original Jews of the Bible were living in North America.” It is true that all this is only slightly removed from talking snakes, virgin births, and burning bushes, I know, but great fun none the less. Do check out this link to get your own magic pants… I know what I want for Christmas next year! 
Penn asks how on some level Mitt Romney does not sit down and say, “Yer, you know, there weren’t actually original Jews living in North America..,” and if he doesn’t then he is actually “bug-nutty bat-shit crazy!” All he asks for in his exasperated tones is for any of the candidates and politicians generally to stand up and say, some of these beliefs I profess are bug-nutty bat-shit crazy, but I am not. Penn believes that they are all moral people, who have family values, but who are speaking in a code for which he has not been given the key.
His final diatribe is against those that claim that they take the Bible as the word of God, and take it literally. On this, he is spot on. There is not a lot I can add to his angry bewilderment, and it’s a frightening feature of religion on both sides of the pond that there are an increasing number of people who believe this, but who also are comfortable about professing it. I know we all have religious freedom, and freedom of expression, but believing someone should be stoned for working on the Sabbath, or will go to hell for mixing cotton with linen cloths is pretty far out in my opinion. For what its worth.
So, go and check out the video linked, the comments alone are priceless. It’s not only thoughtful but also, how many British comedians would use the word “solipsistic” on TV? Oh, and here is the talking animal that I promised you… it’s brilliant!
Ginger angels at Two Temple Place
Ever heard of Two Temple Place? No I thought not… apparently its London’s first venue to specifically showcase publicly-owned art from around the UK. And believe me, there is a surprising amount of it… the Daily Mail is always banging on about Rembrants in provincial fire stations, and Picassos up lighthouses etc etc. (For a more accurate view do click here to have a look at Public Art Online.)
The building itself is one of London’s hidden architectural gems, an extraordinary late Victorian mansion built by William Waldorf Astor on Embankment, and in and of itself is well worth poking about in. But the inaugural exhibition is the clincher for me… it looks at how William Morris told stories through pattern and poetry. It examines the tales and myths that were most important to him, such as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Norse saga, Arthurian legend and Greek myth. 
Morris returned to the same stories throughout his artistic career, and this exhibition explores his continued fascination by arranging the works according to the tale they tell rather than their medium. Five rarely seen panels of the embroidered frieze ‘The Romaunt of the Rose’ are exhibited together with editions of ‘The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer’, elaborately illustrated by Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and printed by Morris’ private press. Both the frieze and Chaucer drew inspiration from the French medieval text the ‘Roman de la Rose’ (Romance of the Rose). This will be the first time that these exquisite panels have been seen since their recent conservation by The Royal School of Needlework.
The bad news is that you have to go soon… (and there is a good chance that you will bump into me and my mum… we are going for her Christmas present…) the Morris exhibition is only on till 29th January 2012, but it is all FREE (dont tell mum!)
Full details from the Two Temple Place website here.
PS, ever noticed that almost all depictions of male angels are ginger? Especially Pre-Raphaelite ones? Hmm…
Filed under Timology
Spot the difference…
OK, I think we have all been occupied with other things over the festive period, but just to reassure you that I am back and mean business, here is an interactive idea for you… its a quick spot the difference…. bonus points for the first correct entry to identify both candidates… BizTsar egh!
Filed under Photography, Timology
Tim Myatt 