Giving voice to the whistleblower: Le Carré on cracking form in A Delicate Truth

There’s a key moment when the oleaginous Foreign Office chameleon, Giles Oakley, goads his protegé and A Delicate Truth‘s protagonist, Toby Bell, about what he should do with his qualms about government policy in the run up to Iraq War.

You’re exactly what the Guardian needs: another lost voice bleating in the wilderness. If you don’t agree with government policy, don’t hang around trying to change it. Jump ship. Write the great novel you’re always dreaming about. (p51)

Telling a story when words don’t get through

I believe in words. I believe in the importance of words. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I believe in the primacy of words. But words can never be exclusive media of truth, understanding and communication. Please note: they are the primary (i.e. supreme) means, not the only means. I’ve touched on this issue before. Words are still essential.

As I mentioned then, the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov attacked the myth of the image by saying:

Friday Fun 37: Swotting up on the English Reformation with Sellar and Yeatman

A day late, but hey. It’ll be worth it. But whatever you do, don’t use this for your GCSE history revision. [If you have done your revision, you'll see why]. Having read this, how will you ever be able to confuse the Reformation and the Restoration again? What’s more, whoever thought we’d need Hilary Mantel to bring this era to life?

Anyway, thought I would dedicate one or two Friday Funs to the sublime brilliance that its 1066 and All That. So let’s dive in straightaway, with Henry 6th and his 8 wives. Or was that the other way round?

The British Empire was never quite what you thought: John Darwin’s Unfinished Empire

Nearly 10 years ago, a dear friend of mine was addressing a gathering of Ugandan MPs in the Parliament building in Kampala (around the 40th anniversary of independence). It included those from all shades on the political spectrum, including not a few post-colonial firebrands. My friend is certainly no great apologist for imperialism, but he posed two simple questions.

• “Which Ugandan regions (of those that the British failed to develop) have we since developed?”
• “What aspects of public life, government and rule of law have we improved on or done better in than the colonial regime?”

Friday Fun 33: Christmas Moments on Instagram

So it seems our very human rights and liberties are being threatened by Instagram’s change of terms. Or they’re not. Or not in quite the same way. Well who knows?

Just in case they do decide to pilfer my works of art for their own heinous ends, I thought I’d display some of my chefs d’oeuvre from around London in recent weeks to put us all into a bit of a Christmas spirit.

Enjoy… while the world still exists…

One field, rather a lot of trees and a post-arable parable

20 years ago my parents bought a south-facing wheat-field off a local farmer. As an investment. It’s about 10 acres in beautiful rural Norfolk (here’s a view from the church tower right) So how would you invest?

Friday Fun 28: Aural Nostalgia for an African Day

This is a random Friday Fun. It’s not especially funny, although some will probably think this makes me seem very funny, putting me in the same bracket as collectors of birdsong CDs. Too bad. It just so happened that I was searching for some old files on my computer and came across these – I’d completely forgotten I’d made them. But in the few days before we left Uganda in the summer of 2005, I took my rudimentary digital recorder out into the garden and just let it listen.

Friday Fun 25: Urban Guerrillas Alive & Kicking on the London Underground

Thanks to my indefatigable colleague, Charmaine, who noticed this on The Poke, this week’s Friday Fun is brought to you courtesy of the London Underground. I suspect all Londoners have a love/hate relationship with the Underground e.g. I LOVE the Jubilee line and the DLR, but I HATE the Northern and Circle lines (that sort of thing). But the truth is that we would be sunk without it. It’s great that we can joke about it, though. So this webpage is collecting various attempts to lighten the mood. I just hope I get to see someone in real life soon.

Et in arcadia essemus: a visit to Wilton

With both children away on camp, Rachel & I ventured out on rather a road trip from Wiltshire along the South Downs and up. Marvellous.

At the start of the week, we had a chance to visit the original Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney’s imagination (see right for poet pic) – Wilton House near Salisbury, home of the Earls of Pembroke.

The view from Olympian gods

What an extraordinary night. I’ve never been to an athletics event before in my life (not since defying the odds and coming second in the U13 100m at my prep school – nb there were only 3 other runners and only about 4 others in the qualifying age group in the whole school). But this was one not to miss – a night at the Olympics. Our seats were very high up ‘in the gods’ – but what a perspective, what a joy, what a privilege to witness.

Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

A Renaissance Paradise: The costs and glories of a Wiltshire Arcadia

I have a mild obsession with human attempts to create heaven on earth. Of course, their idealism is infectious: who doesn’t want heaven on earth? But such visions always come with a cost – in whatever society, in whatever generation. But if modernist visions of utopia have been about projecting the dream of the future through rejection of the past, others have been more concerned with recreating the long-gone, supposedly golden past. The English Arcadian vision is one such: it gripped several generations before the English Civil War and is the subject of Adam Nicolson’s fascinating book Arcadia: The Dream of Perfection in Renaissance England.

Memento Mori: Matthew Parris, The House of Commons and the 1994 Death of John Smith

John Smith MP was one of those tragic political should-have-beens. But while Leader of the Opposition riding on Labour’s 23% point lead over the Tories in 1994 and widely assumed to be Prime Minister in waiting, he died 18 years ago tomorrow from a pair of massive heart attacks. He was only 55. For those concerned with public life, it was one of those remember-what-you-were-doing-moments. But the reason for picking up on it here is that I was blown away at the time, and recalled in conversation last week, the piece written by the great Matthew Parris, at the time The Times’ Parliamentary Sketch-writer and oft-quoted by Q.

Forget Avatar: David Hockney’s ‘bigger’ vision is the one to relish

When Avatar came out, I couldn’t help but get swept up in James Cameron’s astonishing conception. This is because a hopelessly bad movie was redeemed only by an awesome visual feast of digital artistry, And others were equally swept up. So much so in fact that I noticed at the time that there was a popular sense of despairing yearning for a world as beautiful and stunning as Pandora. Which led me to start a slightly flippant post called Antidotes to Post-Pandora Blues. I never finished it for some reason, but the exhilarating new Hockney exhibition this morning at the Royal Academy brought it back to mind.

A Bodyguard of Lies: Secrets, sleights of hand and deceptions in wartime

Churchill famously declared during the Second World War that the “Truth is so precious that she must often be attended by a bodyguard of lies” – and the British military effort entailed the largest and most complex exploitation of deception  in warfare to date. This involved the twin arms of message interception and code breaking (through the extraordinary work of Bletchley Park in particular), and the use of all kinds of deception tactics (including the use of double agents and entirely fictitious battalions preparing to invade the Pas de Calais around the time of D Day’s Normandy landings).

An unimpressive herald of an unimpressive message: a final message under Parliament

Last week saw the final instalment of the little 1 Cor 1 series in the undercroft chapel in Westminster. Unfortunately, we had the slight inconvenience of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement happening on the same day, and as this had been brought forward to 12.30, there were few who were able to come. No worries though. We happy few had a happy time.

And how nice it was to have a Christmas tree in the centre of Westminster Hall. No thought of winterval here… yet. But give it time I suppose. Now, was it my imagination or does this tree look as though it is leaning to the right…? I’m sure that can’t be significant, can it?

Wintry reflections at Little Gidding

Am just back from a 24 hour escape to the country with a few other guys – we meet once or twice a year and have been (on and off) for years. It was a real tonic and encouragement to me personally. I’ve realised more and more how much I need this sort of thing. But the particular treat of this time away was staying at Ferrar House in Little Gidding. As its website shows, it has all kinds of wonderful historical, and especially literary, connections. Charles I and George Herbert… and of course more recently T S Eliot. As it happened, he only came here for an afternoon and never stayed the night. But his link with the place was immortalised by the 4th of his FOUR QUARTETS, entitled Little Gidding.

An unimpressive people for an unimpressive king: another message under Parliament

Back in Parliament yesterday, and I unexpectedly arrived a little early – so found myself waiting for around 15 minutes in Westminster Hall. It was idyllic – the sun streaming through the great south windows. Perfect for reflections on the extraordinary events that occurred on this very spot: from monarchs and statesmen lying in state (the most recent, of course, being the Queen Mother), to grand inquisitions and historic orations (such as Mandela in 1996, the extraordinary moment of seeing a Pope address both Houses in 2010, and then Obama this year, the first US President to address both Houses from the Hall).

Spinning an unspinnable message – why bother? A message under Parliament

One or two have asked for this, so here it is: the first of 3 talks given in the gaudy riot of Pugin-inspired colour that is Parliament’s Undercroft Chapel. This is a group that meets mostly weekly under Christians in Parliament. The next two are on 15th and 29th November. We’d decided to do 3 sessions from the opening chapters of Paul’s extraordinary and thoroughly contemporary first letter to the Corinthian church.

11:11 11/11/11 – WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Ashamed though I am to admit it, I never realised that the famous “We Will Remember Them” words used on Armistice Day come from a much longer poem by Laurence Binyon so it seemed sensible to quote it on this uniquely binary Remembrance Day.

“Whatever…” – a mission statement or a social condition?

It’s not every day that one gets to sit around the same table as representatives of Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Christian and Humanist networks with the chance to pick brains and question of the most senior leaders of the BBC. But that is exactly what happened today, as I’d been invited to attend a small group that meets twice a year on Religion and Belief in broadcasting. I certainly felt both out of my depth and a fish out of water (if that’s possible) – still, it was very interesting indeed (not least because the BBC is our next door neighbour) and a privilege to be present.