Month: August 2012

Telstar – the satellite (thanks to Wikipedia)

I was 3 when Telstar came out, so I probably don’t remember it when it was actually a hit record. But I heard it often enough as a small boy that it formed part of my experience of growing up.  It was always my favourite.  It was just so space age. This was what the future was going to be about.  Rockets and music without any singing.  I just loved it all so much.  I acquired then and have never lost a profound belief that the future is going to be better, people are going to sort things out and that technological progress is a good thing.  

Pussy Riot (Thanks to Wikipedia for the image)

Pussy Riot are the only Russian punk group I have heard of.  I think I am in good company on that, as they seem to be a lot more interested in getting publicity for their political protests than their art. On the whole I don’t approve of either religion or authoritarian tendencies in nominally democratic governments.  So I am sympathetic in a general sort of way to what Pussy Riot seem to be doing.  On the other hand, religious people are entitled to hold whatever beliefs they have and to practice those beliefs.  And those rights ought to include not having a punk band set up without permission in a cathedral.  So I am not sure that Pussy Riot have got their tactics quite right.

In tackling the Second World War Antony Beevor was picking a big subject. I had reservations. I love his accounts of Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin. But it wasn’t obvious to me that the same formula would work.  Usually he gives enough background to understand what was at stake and then looks at how individuals caught up in these big events coped with them.  Would this work on a larger scale?

And in fact I was right to be worried to some extent. It doesn’t work as well, but it still works well enough to produce a really splendid and readable book.  If you are looking for a book on World War 2 there are plenty to choose from. But I can’t think of a better one than this, particularly if you want to know what it was like to take part in it.It is easy to forget one of the most obvious facts about World War 2, which is that a very common experience of it as a participant was to simply get killed straight away.  Millions of people’s lives were abruptly, un-heroically and completely pointlessly brought to a sudden violent end.  No war has taken a greater toll on innocent bystanders.And you were no better off if you were involved officially.

I still find it slightly astonishing that entire operas can be posted on YouTube.  But there they are, and as far as I can tell they are there with the blessing of the producers.  If they objected YouTube would have taken them down straight away.  I suppose the advertising revenue that they generate is a bonus, though I can’t imagine it amounts to very much.  Still the economics of opera has never made any more sense than the plots. But it does mean that what used to be the ultimate in elitist entertainment is now available for anyone. In the comfort of their own home.  Or you can even watch opera on your phone while wandering about.  I wonder if this ready supply will entice people who might not otherwise have considered it to give it a go?  I’d like to think so.

One of the fifteen decisive battles of history identified by Edward Creasy was the battle in the Teutoburg Forest where the Roman General Varus lost three legions almost to a man to a huge ambush by the German tribesmen.  We have a pretty good account of the engagement from Tacitus and Creasy writes it up superbly to make it into a great piece of writing.  It is hard to dispute that this is indeed a decisive battle since it prevented the Romans from establishing a frontier much further east which would have made the empire much deeper and would have reduced the length of the frontier that needed to be defended considerably.  Had they succeeded the empire might well have lasted a lot longer.