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<![CDATA[ - Blog]]>Mon, 13 May 2024 08:55:41 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[What is courage?]]>Thu, 20 Oct 2022 16:45:02 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/what-is-courageI was invited to speak at the Battle of Ideas on the subject of "courage in politics". The general theme was: how do we define courage and does the West still have it? Or are we a bunch of lily-livered wokesters? My talk seemed to go down well, so have published the text below...

Good afternoon. I'll open with the words of a great philosopher: "Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.”

Do you know who said that? Doctor Who. And not the modern, rubbish Doctor Who, which is basically Grange Hill in space, but Jon Pertwee, a Doctor Who watched, in the 1970s, by a generation of adults who had been through a war and, by and large, preferred not to talk about it.

I always admired my grandparents' education and erudition, but also their preference not to show it off. They had interiority. Their diaries were worth reading. By contrast, our generation talks ceaselessly - online and about ourselves, claiming that everything we do is some great act of courage, particularly the incredibly brave act of being ourselves.

In Iran, that is a dangerous thing to do. In Wimbledon, it is not.

All this vain chatter is a product of new technology, yes, but also a perversion of psychoanalysis, which was developed to help us cope with difficult feelings, like fear or anxiety, but nowadays tells us to wallow in them or even to act on them.

And this cult of weakness marinates in a perversion of Christianity - as documented by Friedrich Nietzshe. Christians worship Jesus, who is not a macho God, like Zeus, but a sacrificial victim. As time has gone by, the theological subtleties of this radical message have been lost, but Western culture has retained an instinct that to be weak is automatically to be right - hence to be offended, triggered, marginalised or, that holy of holies, oppressed is to attain visible sainthood.

Human beings are competitive creatures. If we are told that the best way to win is to lose, we'll all throw the towel in at the first opportunity.

But - but - this is not the natural order of mankind. History proves it. There was nothing special about the men and women who fought for Britain in the forties; on the contrary, some of them famously declared that they'd never do it only a few years before.

Everyday life proves it: I am quietly astonished at the bravery of women who give birth or people who take on the task of caring for a relative with dementia.

And what is happening abroad proves it. A few months ago, I went to Ukraine to write about the war. Lots of British people said to me "you must be awfully brave", and it made me feel like a fraud. I was reporting from a part of the country that was perfectly safe, in fact the most dangerous thing was the way Ukrainians drive - and I didn't like the idea that I would be admired for doing something that posed minimal risk.

The Telegraph wanted to send me in a bulletproof vest, but I was told I'd have to check it as extra luggage and I said, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to give EasyJet the extra cash.

No, the brave people are not English tourists who tweet about what they've seen and how they feel about, it's the Ukrainians who fight, or take their family to safety, or stay behind out of obligation or bloody-mindedness. One of the striking things about war is how life goes on around it. There I was, staying in a university, in the middle of a conflict - bombs and all - and kids were going to class, cooks were serving lunch.

There was trauma; like the obvious trauma my grandmother was left with following the Blitz. Such pain, such fear is not to be denied or suppressed, but acknowledged and respected. There is also, however, in Ukraine a quiet resilience.

What I'm saying is: despite a Western culture of self-obsession, there is an abundance of courage out there, if we only expand our definition and thus spot it. The courage of admitting that you have a problem and seeking help to change. The genuine Christian courage of surrendering your own comfort and ambitions to help others. Or the courage to defy society's definition of courage. After all, in the midst of a war, some of the bravest people are those who, on grounds of principle, refuse to fight and kill.

Thank you.
Battle of Ideas, London, October 16, 2022.
]]><![CDATA[Brexit: it's not really good-bye]]>Fri, 31 Jan 2020 18:48:28 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/brexit-its-not-really-good-byeIt's happening! I can't believe it, but it's happening! Britain is going to leave the EU tonight at 11pm. I thought we'd vote to leave but I started to doubt they'd actually let us go. But it looks like if you stick to your principles and push hard enough, you can get what you want in the end.

The country won't reunite in a hurry, but the Leave campaign has by itself united people who normally have nothing in common, and isn't that a good thing? Marxists, capitalists, classical liberals, north and south, rural and town. When Britain voted out, I made a conscious decision to try to get to know the country better. I've been to Sheffield, Dorset, far-west Wales, Dundee and walked to Lindisfarne in my bare feet. It's like discovering a family you never knew you had. Is this what the War felt like? The walls of difference come tumbling down; heart speaks to heart. We are one people.

Brexit has also encouraged me to rediscover romantic socialism. Read Vaughan Williams on music, or Simone Weil on the necessity of roots, and see what I mean. The dream was never that grey nightmare of gulags and factories but, on the contrary, of village and church, freedom and responsibility, modesty and peace. The Labour movement, as Sir Roger Scruton argued, has historically been about protecting us; if the Left won't do it, the Tories now must. The great political challenge of the coming decade is to combine the preservation of tradition with the preservation of the environment, to conquer greed. An independent Britain can do this because it has discovered it can do anything it wants to!

Patriotism is not to hate or hoard, but love and cherish, and European must know that this is how most Britons feel tonight. As AA Milne wrote: "It isn't really goodbye, because the Forest will always be there and anybody who is friendly with Bears can find it."]]><![CDATA[Theresa May's Brexit customs plan: not a betrayal, but a weak hand to play]]>Sun, 08 Jul 2018 16:15:49 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/theresa-mays-brexit-customs-plan-not-a-betrayal-but-a-weak-hand-to-playI’ve had a lot of emails asking my opinion on the Government's customs plan, so decided to post here on my own website – rather than the Daily Telegraph’s – so that my answers can be read for free.
Let’s review the situation..
1. We are absolutely, definitely leaving the EU! Relax. Article 50 is triggered; the domestic legislation is progressing nicely; civil servants are working hard to see it all through.
2. We always knew that once we left, we would seek a trade deal with the EU. This customs plan is it. Any trade deal we sign with anyone will come with pluses and minuses – and a lot of this plan is boilerplate for an international treaty. For instance, there is a rulebook for trade in goods that will set standards for both sides. If we deviate from that rulebook, yes, this will have “consequences” – but that makes perfect sense. If one side breaks from the agreed rules of any treaty, there are consequences. The issue is: what will those consequences be? That sort of detail is yet to be decided.
3. This custom plan covers goods only. That’s around 20 per cent of our economy. The rest, in theory, we can do with as we wish. And why wouldn’t you seek a goods treaty that will help our exporters to Europe (lots of jobs!)?

So, what’s the downside? For me, it’s not what’s in this deal but what could follow. Consider.

1. This is just Britain’s opening bid in the trade talks. This means more concessions could be made (think back to that bit about “consequences”) that will be designed to a) tie us into European structures and b) limit our ability to break from EU rules in a way that could make us more competitive. This is important: the EU is terrified of us becoming a low tax, low regulation country that just sucks up all the global investment.
2. Britain has a habit of giving the EU what it wants. We’ve committed to a big divorce payout, EU citizens’ rights, mutual defence and even some principles regarding the Irish border. Do you trust this UK negotiating team not to make more concessions? On their record thus far, I don’t.
3. The EU isn’t going to accept all of this anyway. Why? Partly because the customs plan doesn’t state how certain things are going to be done. Also because the EU does not want to divide up goods from services or capital or immigration.
4. And what I’m very worried about is the UK moving from these concessions on goods to a concession on services or immigration. Immigration is the big one. If we end up leaving the EU but agreeing to visa-free access to our labour market with special privileges for EU citizens, well, a lot of voters are going to conclude that they have been betrayed.

But is this deal as it stands a betrayal? Certainly not. It’s not a betrayal of the referendum result because we will be leaving the EU. What it doesn’t do is deliver the kind of Brexit that Conservative Party Brexiters want: a big bang of deregulation and free trade. But, quite frankly, I’m not sure many voters really want that either. For instance, this plan commits us to common standards on agriculture, which make a US trade deal difficult because what the US will want is access to our agriculture market, which necessitates lowering our standards. Would we really want to do that? Do we want to kill our family farms with cheap competition from the USA in exchange for Natwest winning the right to establish a few branches in Kansas? Nope. The Tory free trade position was always going to be a tough sell and Theresa May has effectively taken it off the table. In fact, this deal is rather close to Labour’s vision of Brexit – just don’t tell Jeremy Corbyn that it takes state aid to industry off the table too!

My issue isn’t with the customs plan as it stands but what it could become. I fear we are opening with an oddly weak hand. If this is what we end up with – out of the EU and with a goods deal with the EU – it’ll be fine by me. But what we must not, not, not wind up with is economically tethered to the EU. In such a scenario, a Norway-style option would be preferable.]]><![CDATA[2016 has been a bloody marvellous, gold-bottomed corker of a year]]>Sat, 31 Dec 2016 00:00:48 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/2016-has-been-a-bloody-marvellous-gold-bottomed-corker-of-a-year

That biography of St Anthony probably won't get written now. This is Dali's version of his temptation in the desert.

What a year! Not the year I expected. My father died last December and I imagined 2016 would be quiet, mostly spent keeping mum company. As a Brexit supporter, I approached the EU referendum with despair, as a likely indicator of what wasn’t possible. If we lost, I planned to do something like write a biography of St Anthony. Grow a beard. You know, become a little more monastic.

But then we won. We. Won. I remember pacing the room laughing. I’d been on the road, covering elections for the Daily Telegraph since Scotland in 2014 – and in among all the celebrations and tears and history, I realised what it meant for me personally. I was going to have to go on. America next. The convention in Ohio. Obama campaigning in North Carolina. Trump in Pennsylvania. The victory party at the midtown Hilton, where the results came in and I realised that this thing was only going to get bigger. More motel rooms. More mini bars and tiny soaps.

The problem with journalism is that it’s in the moment: you don’t have time to stop and think about what’s just happened. A few memories of stillness stand out, some of them sad. Nothing affected me more profoundly in 2016 than the death of Jo Cox, the Labour MP who was murdered by a Right-wing lunatic shortly before the referendum. It was distressing enough to think of a family losing a wife and mother. But I was also deeply hurt that some Remainers declared that we Leavers were to blame. Hurt, in part, because I was worried that it might be true. I’m not a believer that free speech comes without responsibility. If you choose to air an opinion, you have to accept that it could have consequences. It didn’t have to be said by so many Remainers – particularly with such partisan enthusiasm – that talking about national identity or immigration could affirm bigotry because, well, that’s blindingly obvious. I worry about that. But I continue to do what I do – to write what I write – because I’m convinced that we can find a better way to live if we reason things through.

I am a confirmed democrat now. This year has given me new faith in the process – and not just because I won. Because I grew up in an era, the Nineties and Noughties, when we were told there was no alternative to the liberal order. In that atmosphere of patronising elitism and political correctness, apathy grew and whole communities dropped out of politics. The referendum, for all its many faults, rekindled public debate. It was ugly and often very stupid, but only when the result came out did I realise what it had accomplished. Speaking on a panel during the campaign, Gisela Stuart, the Labour Brexit supporter, said to me that she'd never known such excitement – the feeling that people were taking charge of their lives again. Frank Field, also Labour, told me that the electoral roll in his constituency had increased dramatically. It was all the poor people, he said. People who'd never voted before. After two decades of falling turnout, there was joy in participation.

And when that result came in I felt, for the first time in a long time, a sense of connection to my fellow countrymen that spanned class and region. After all this time, it turns out that we were all thinking the same thing! And even if we disagree, at least now we all know each other a little better.

This year I have ridden a camel in the African desert, visited Stonehenge, built a bookcase and watched Hillary Clinton try to crack a joke in Philadelphia. There has been a lot of pain and I need so very much to rest, but I refuse to allow miserablism to rewrite the history of 2016. I think it's been a bloody marvellous, gold-bottomed corker of a year. The most exciting year of my life.

]]><![CDATA[Priests are martyred every day of the week. Why don't we pay attention?]]>Mon, 01 Aug 2016 11:11:56 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/priests-are-martyred-every-day-of-the-week-why-dont-we-pay-attention

You hear it said that 2016 is an unusually crappy year. That’s Western privilege talking. Every year has been horrible for a long time in Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Sudan – the list is endless. It’s only in the West that a sense of vulnerability is new. And in many cases, we were never that secure anyway. We were just distracted.
As Damian Thompson writes, the murder of Christians in the Middle East is a regular occurrence. The slaughter of Fr Jacques Hamel, 85, probably made the headlines last week because he was killed in France. I don’t say that to downplay the horror. On the contrary. We each identify best with those who look the most familiar – and the idea of terrorists targeting the kind of church I regularly attend feels like an invasion of my own private temple.
That said, Christianity was made for this. It began with an act of self-sacrifice upon the cross. The word was spread through the example of slain evangelists – St Peter crucified upside down, at his own request, so that he wouldn’t imitate Jesus. It is a rare faith that rejects conquest by the sword not only as immoral but as a contradiction of the dictum that belief is a matter of conscience – that faith must be freely chosen. Ours is a very Jewish faith, a logical and intellectual faith that is routinely tested. The Israelites were stolen from their lands and left to wander the desert. The psalmist says: “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord./ Lord, hear my voice./ Let your ears be attentive,/ to my cry for mercy.”
Christianity is a history of the rejection of violence, a progression towards peace. God told Abraham that it wasn’t necessary to sacrifice his son for him. Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek. The Messiah’s death upon the cross is a sacrifice that washes our sins away, and the Lamb of God is offered in our stead. At the Catholic Eucharist, that sacrifice is re-enacted and the bread and wine are transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ (no wonder the Romans thought we were cannibals). Martyrdom means “to witness” and Jesus witnessed loneliness, pain and death. Christians who suffer thereafter are witnesses to the love of Jesus. Those who die because of their faith, such as Fr Hamel, are rewarded in Heaven.
But there are small acts of martyrdom that occur every day around us. I noticed that Fr Hamel was well beyond the age of retirement – and, regardless of personal enthusiasm, there are plenty of priests who are compelled to go on working because vocations are so dramatically down. I knew a priest in Los Angeles who drove between Compton and West Hollywood several times a week to say Mass, into his eighties – and it wasn’t out of choice but duty. Often he was greeted by a near-empty church. The church was conspicuously light on attendance the day that Fr Hamel was attacked.
I know another priest who never wears the dog collar when out. Why? Because a couple of weeks after ordination he was sitting on the London underground in full uniform and someone called him a paedophile. The embarrassment has clung to him for years. A lot of priests tell me they’ve experienced something similar, or else that the collar makes them a magnet for demands for money, violence or juvenile satirists. Hardly surprising given that the Church is presented in the media as hypocritical or sexually perverse or rolling in money. Rolling in money! I bet Fr Hamel didn’t have two sous to rub together. Priests live poor lives, often marked by loneliness.
And yet still people choose to do it. Why? Partly because it’s not all that bad – I don’t want to put anyone off. No other job offers the chance for such emotional and spiritual development. It is like joining a glorious army with all its possibilities for fun, travel and adventure. Except that this army uses words rather than weapons.
Moreover, suffering is part of the job description. How else can one describe a vocation that demands celibacy and passionate service of the community as a way of life? Suffering is part of everyone’s DNA, of course. We are born screaming, we often – alas – go out screaming, too. But the priest who stands at Mass “in the person of Christ” aspires to be Christ-like and offers himself up as a sacrifice, too. Witness Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger at Auschwitz. John Paul II, who bore the suffering of old age with awe-inspiring dignity, called Kolbe: “the patron of our difficult century.”
John Paul II said that Kolbe “won a spiritual victory like that of Christ himself.” That’s something the Islamist killers could never have understood. Their act – hateful, false, heretical – was, in the words of Pope Francis, “absurd”. Fr Hamel’s death was a victory. Yes, a victory. His life has left a glorious example. He died witnessing the love of Christ. And the arrival of Muslims at Mass the following Sunday holds out the hope that it will catalyse defiance and French unity. France must not allow the Islamist fringe to tear it apart. It must fight hate with love, and with radical acts of trust.
That said, let us not be stupid. We are vulnerable. States have a duty to protect us. We need to talk honestly and openly about the pernicious influence of Wahhabism. Integration at some level is not happening, and when separation translates into violence then the wider community obviously has a right to demand conformity.
Those of us who are Catholic need to acknowledge our own failings. Fr Hamel’s death has not just frightened me but shamed me. Am I prepared to die? Will I give what I have for the faith? Have I done nearly enough to support those priests who suffer every day for the laity? No, no, no. Shame on me.

]]><![CDATA[Tintin is not a racist, you idiots. He's the perfect symbol of multiculturalism]]>Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:12:32 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/tintin-is-not-a-racist-you-idiots-hes-the-perfect-symbol-of-multiculturalism

Put yourself inside this kind of mind. There’s a terrorist outrage in Brussels. Brussels is in Belgium and Tintin is Belgian. So people start putting cartoons up of Tintin crying. And someone – a writer for Salon, natch – decides now is the moment to point out that Tintin once starred in a racist cartoon called Tintin in the Congo. So Herge was clearly a racist, posting Tintin is racist and maybe the whole Brussels “thing” is about racism. Not about Islamist fascists and the ineptitude of Belgium's security apparatus. Naw. It's about a freaking cartoon. (Again).

How stupid, how insensitive, how ignorant. Ignorant because if the writer HAD ACTUALLY READ ANY TINTIN they would’ve discovered that Herge’s views on race dramatically changed over time – reflecting Belgium’s own evolution towards multiculturalism. Yes, Au Congo (1930) is a racist book. But Herge knew that, was embarrassed by it, and dedicated himself to making amends. In The Blue Lotus (1936), he introduces Tintin to the character of Chang. Tintin saves Chang’s life – and Chang is surprised. Why? Because he’d been raised to believe white men are the devil and Tintin has shattered his delusions.

Herge is making two key points. First, that all racism is rooted in ignorance. Second, by juxtaposing Eastern and Western racism he’s showing us that all cultures are equally prone to it. Chang becomes Tintin’s soulmate. In Tintin in Tibet (1960), our hero travels halfway around the world to rescue him from the clutches of the Abominable Snowman - itself revealed to be a misunderstood softy. Tintin is also friends with Muslim Arabs (Crab with the Broken Claws) and witnesses the mistreatment of Native Americans (In America). Tintin changes from an imperialist boy scout to a more world-weary liberal, going so far as to sport a CND symbol and practice yoga. A quick Google of “Tintin” and “racism” would have revealed these salient facts. As would reading the books. Which you ought to do if you're going to defame them.

But, most of all, aren’t you just sick of people’s desire to feel morally superior to others by constantly – constantly – pointing out the tiny, insignificant ways in which they might have got something wrong – even when they are obviously trying to do something good? People are in mourning. They love Belgium, they love Tintin, so they’ve put the two together and come up with a sweet cartoon of a boy crying. It's called compassion. It's what makes us different to the killers. Celebrate it, don't constantly look for ways to do it down.

]]><![CDATA[David Bowie: Why do people mourn celebrities they never knew?]]>Mon, 11 Jan 2016 18:14:52 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/why-do-people-mourn-celebrities-they-never-knew

A quick word on the death of David Bowie. Why do celebrity deaths elicit grief? Some people - including Julie Burchill - find it strange. I don’t.

One of the first times I really, truly became aware of mortality was when Bob Monkhouse died. Yep, silly old Bob Monkhouse. I was a total TV kid and Bob was almost like a member of the family. I watched all of his crappy game shows, laughed at all his crappy jokes. A guy like that on the telly never really grows old; you don’t hear about them having a cold or cancer. The makeup covers the wrinkles. So when they suddenly go, it’s a shock.

Shock is key to the grief over Bowie. We had no idea he was ill. He was only 69. He had an eternally youthful face, like an alien child. If he can die, we can all die – and who knows what awful things we’re incubating inside? Moreover, when Bowie goes – the music stops. There’s nothing new to look forward to. Bowie’s appeal was, in large part, his capacity for reinvention. Bowie 1966 was different to Bowie 1975 and to Bowie 2015. We all took it for granted that we’d get to see Bowie 2020. And we’re all a bit angry that we won’t.

Bowie provided the soundtrack to many people’s lives. When an artist like that dies, people think about their youth and where it’s all gone. I’m glad that he died after my father did because my father would’ve been very upset. He was a fan, had all the albums. For working-class men of my father’s generation – growing up in grim, postwar Britain – Bowie and the glam crowd said that life didn’t have to be monochrome. You could be whatever you wanted to be. Wear a feather boa in the bath if you want. Nothing since has matched the democratic, lush world of glam rock (except, maybe, the New Romantics). My father once played his Bowie albums for me and I fell instantly in love with them – so I have Bowie to thank for a moment of closeness. They had a big sound but the lyrics were intimate. When you’re an awkward teenager, life feels as though it’s lived “floating in a tin can.”

When Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney go, some of the best things about being British will go with them. The past will shut down; a bit of history will end. Bowie carried that kind of significance. Cry away, I don’t blame you. It show’s you’re human and you’ve got good taste in music.

]]><![CDATA[Newsflash: Doomwatch actually isn't all that bad]]>Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:18:29 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/newsflash-doomwatch-actually-isnt-all-that-bad

I ended up having an Old Rite Christmas. We were joined by an ill friend for Christmas Day, who brought along his family. The average age was about 75, which meant that once the turkey was eaten and the port drained, we all gathered around the piano. There is no greater joy than drunkenly bashing out We’ll Meet Again surrounded by liquored-up oldsters who know the words – a great, boozy chorus of good memories and rampant patriotism. Afterwards we played Cluedo and Trivial Pursuits. No telly, no Xbox, just good old fashioned clean fun. It was worth the hangover.

The New Year, by contrast, has been painfully dry and, so, TV heavy. I’ve decided to quit drinking for January – and that basically means becoming a shut in. One of the benefits is that I’ve been able to devote more time to watching YouTube. My best discovery so far is the BBC sci-fi serial Doomwatch. Running for three psychedelic series from 1970 to 1972, the show was about an eponymous government department that investigated environmental threats to the future of mankind. The subject could be as banal as it sounds (one episode dealt with the medical dangers of jet lag), but it captures nicely the apocalyptic mood of the era. This was the time of Silent Spring and The Population Bomb, when people were becoming aware that the greatest threat to humanity’s existence wasn’t natural or supernatural but man made.

A lot of its concerns have been dismissed (jet lag really hasn’t had the impact they imagined) while others still linger (genetic engineering was a running theme). Unfortunately, the show is best remembered for one brief and silly scene in an episode called Tomorrow the Rat (Clive James provides hilarious narration from 2:00 onwards). The plot is preposterous. A sexy female scientist is employed by the government to develop a clever strain of rat that will kill all other rats. For reasons of budgeting (thankyou, Ted Heath) they ask her to conduct the experiments from home. The rats get too smart too fast and plot their escape (Using levers. Yep. Levers). We catch up with the critters as they assault a family kitchen – and it’s an absolute hoot. RADA trained actors try to look terrified as they clutch plastic rats at their throats and pretend they're being attacked. A dozen are pulled along tied to a string, while a woman walks in and faints with horror (I suspect that wasn't in the script). The clip is hilarious but it distracts from what was actually a very disturbing bit of telly. The sexy female scientist is full of regret and turns to casual sex and drink. When the mother of a child that has been killed by the rats attacks her unsuccessfully with a knife, she is left alone with a vividly bleeding arm. The audience knows what will happen next because we’ve already been tipped off that the rats like blood. But nothing prepares us for the shock of the final scene. A Doomwatch scientist arrives at the house to find that this poor, broken woman has been mauled to death by her own vermin. We see glimpses of lumps of white tissue covered in bites and blood. The image lingers in the mind.

And Doomwatch certainly earned its name. Modern TV tries so hard for gravitas and emotional punch, which invariably means constant action and melodrama. By contrast, Doomwatch hails from an era in which characters intellectualised their way through disasters and the horror was more often implied than shown. The result has far greater impact. One of the main characters (played by future Jesus Christ, Robert Powell) is killed trying to defuse a bomb. An episode was pulled off air when it featured stock footage of a military execution in Laos. Bacterial warfare is accidentally unleashed on a Yorkshire village and we see soldiers shooting an infected dog. The most affecting scene of all can be found in the episode You Killed Toby Wrenn, when a Doomwatch operative breaks in to a lab experimenting on human/animal hybrids. He pulls back a curtain to find a monkey with a child’s head. The monster sits with its back to the camera, so we’re only invited to imagine the face from the mash of hair and pink skin that we can see from behind. It’s incredibly disturbing – a mood made all the worse when the woman responsible for the experiment proudly announces that she’s carrying another hybrid in her womb.

Ultimately, Doomwatch became too absurd. It exhausted the scientific story lines and developed in to a standard, if fantastical, thriller. Nevertheless, it stands as a great example of how great TV can be made on small budgets enlarged by big ideas. I don’t want to succumb to nostalgia and say that such a thing wouldn’t be made any more – because that’s just not true. The Americans make this sort of bold, imaginative show all the time. But it’s become all too rare in Britain. And I’m sorry but the soapy, silly Dr Who is no substitute.

]]><![CDATA[Doctor Who has become a smug soap opera. It's Friends in space]]>Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:38:31 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/doctor-who-has-become-a-smug-soap-opera-its-friends-in-space

Postmodern Doctor Who is rubbish. It’s shallow, unintelligent and borrows generously from the plots of other, better shows. It confuses choral music and incessant blubbing for genuine emotion. Its approach to history is sexual biography; its approach to science is magic show. Its politics are so brazen that at times it feels like a party political broadcast for the Labour Party (with an occasional thought piece by Richard “I Have No Soul” Dawkins.) Worst of all, it is smug. It’s the kind of show where the characters stop mid-action to stand around in awe at the computer generated sets (actually a green screen held aloft by a technician called Bob) and say, “Isn’t this amazing?!” No, it’s not. It’s teenage rom-com masquerading as serious sci-fi, and it only gets away with it because it’s unique. If ITV was to air an American import at the same time – say Battlestar Galactica or Falling Skies – no one would watch Doctor Who.

It wasn’t always this way. The original Doctor Who series that ran from 1963 to 1989 was low on production values but high on thought. Sure, almost every episode featured a man in bubble-wrap colluding with a hosepipe in a misguided attempt to take over the world. And some of the dialogue was sub-porn (In Revenge of the Cybermen, the Doctor informs his companion, “We’re headed for the biggest bang in history.” Oh, yeah baby.)

But what it lacked in money it made up for in intellect. There was an entire season devoted to the problem of entropy; another tackled social Darwinism. Historical period was used not just as a backdrop but to teach the viewer something about the past, including obscure epochs like the French Wars of Religion. Stories could last up to 13 episodes, testing the pre-internet attention span to the max. As a character, the Doctor was more MacGyver than Merlin, using brainpower and tea spoons to save the world rather than vague alien powers. The series respected its audience’s intelligence. It presumed that they were watching a sci-fi show because they wanted to see sci-fi, not young people canoodling beyond the stars. Not that Classic Who featured much canoodling. Being technically a kid’s show, its lead was usually an old asexual man whose velvet smoking jacket said, “Look but don’t touch.” One or two of the assistants were what the ugly men of yesteryear used to call “strumpets.” But the strumpet is purely autoerotic. She would never have presumed to flirt with our hero, who was too busy reversing the polarity of his neutron flow.

By contrast, New Who belongs very much in the Princess Di era. Thoughts have been replaced by feelings, ideas by issues. Producer Russell T Davies (whose work has been downhill ever since Dark Season) spoke openly about creating a soap atmosphere, filling the show with characters that ordinary people could identify with. Nothing wrong with that, except that in sci-fi ordinariness should never be the focus of attention. Yet Doctor Who is so obsessed with bringing everything back “down to Earth” (or, more specifically, to Cardiff) that it often makes its epic events feel mundane. Every serious idea that is explored is quickly eclipsed by an engagement, a wedding or – as in Saturday’s episode – a divorce.

That might not be a problem if the doctor was removed from the emotional action, but he isn’t. The postmodern doctor is hinted to be sexually active (I write of the clumsy metaphor of dancing). He frequently falls in love with his companions and spends what feels like hours talking about how he doesn’t want to hurt them by getting too close. He’s forever getting angry, excited or mournful, throwing himself about like a hormonal teenager. And then there’s that grin, that insufferable, awful grin. It’s supposed to communicate wondrous possibilities. It looks like the poor fellow is sitting in casualty waiting to have a light bulb removed from his posterior and is trying desperately to hide the pain.

Compounding the problem is the show’s politics. Doctor Who is a recruiting sergeant for young liberals. Episodes have critiqued the war in Iraq, patriotism, capitalism and car ownership. It almost goes without saying that God doesn’t exist, although the Doctor might just be Jesus. The series’ current producer, Stephen Moffat, has denounced the Conservative Party publicly. Can you imagine a Doctor Who writer announcing that he’s joining UKIP because he’s opposed to green taxes? Polly Toynbee would be calling for his extermination.

It should be noted that the old series often had a Left-ward bent, too (although it sprinkled attacks on Margaret Thatcher with parodies of Labour chancellors and trades-unions). But it didn’t matter because intelligence and charm came first. What the old show understood that the new one doesn’t is that in good sci-fi, ideas and wit trump identity politics and tawdry emotion. By contrast, the current series has created a product that is higher in production values but far reduced in imagination. Populated by smug twenty-somethings falling in and out of love - with themselves and each other - poor old Doctor Who has regenerated into Friends in space.

]]><![CDATA[There are no such thing as British values, only tea and sympathies]]>Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:05:35 GMThttp://timothystanley.co.uk/blog/there-are-no-such-thing-as-british-values-only-tea-and-sympathies

This is not a good time to be in England if you detest sports. Living through the Olympics must be akin to forcing someone who is tone deaf to sit through the entire Ring Cycle. It seems to go one forever…

I know that as a Brit I’m supposed to be thrilled by the games because they’re being held in “London Town,” but I just don’t get it. I can’t get excited about someone running, cycling or swimming - and while there’s a voyeuristic thrill at watching all those beautiful bodies bobbing about during a game of beach volleyball, it isn’t enough to carry me through to the rounds of shot put. Just so long as we beat the French, that’s all I need to know.

What to do on a wet summer’s day when the television is a no-go area? I’ve been working my way through the music of Frederick Delius. I discovered it after watching Song of Summer, a 1960s television movie by Ken Russell. Russell thought it was his finest film, and it’s hard to disagree. He eschews his usual stylised, operatic imagery for a stark and naturalistic black-and-white look that allows the music to speak for itself. Song of Summer finds Delius in his later years, paralysed by syphilis. He is visited by Eric Fenby, a 22-year old devotee of the composer who offers to help transcribe his final compositions. Fenby is shocked to discover that one of the giants of the English Musical Renaissance is actually a cantankerous, atheistic, poisonous old man who also can’t stand England. Fenby says, “I can't reconcile such hardness with such lovely music.” The theme speaks to a sad truth: art may be sensitive, lyrical and beautiful, but the ego and discipline required to create it can turn the artists into monsters. Several of Gore Vidal’s obituaries have made just that point.

My one criticism of the Olympics Opening Ceremony is that it didn’t include more music by Britons like Delius (throughout this post, I’ll be confusing British and English – sorry). A bigot might counter that Delius was hardly British at all; his parents were German/Dutch and he lived a great proportion of his life in France. Likewise, Holst was from a Scandinavian family, Elgar was Roman Catholic etc. The backgrounds of many of the great English composers exclude them from the Far Right’s narrow, genetic definition of what makes an Englishman (as does my own messy family tree), yet all of them created a sound that still defines the way we think of England today. Listen to Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor and one is lost on the moors of Hardy’s Wessex, stumbling into the arms of Eustacia Vye.

There has been a lot of discussion about how accurate a portrayal of Britain the Opening Ceremony was. Worryingly, the debate came down to a conflict between different institutions. For the Left, the event showcased the rise of Britain from a feudal state to a socialist democracy via the NHS. The Right complained that it over-indulged social democracy and promoted multiculturalism. Both sides seem to presume that England is defined by “values.” The Left says we are all about fair play, equality, tolerance. The Right prefers individualism, freedom, national community. They’re values that mix the vague and the historically specific – and previous generations of Britons wouldn’t recognise them. Henry V (who exterminated the Lollards, crushed the Welsh and claimed the crown of France) would laugh at pluralism and free speech. Yet is he any less English for having nothing in common with the 20th century? Of course not.

Britishness is impossible to define in words or biology, which is why I wish we could’ve heard some Delius as the torches were carried into the Olympic stadium. National identity is like one of his tone poems. It’s a collection of memories, faces, places, tastes, sounds and sympathies that are summarised in one word: Britain. Anyone who happens to live here can share in it. By the same token, anyone who happens to be born here and doesn’t like it is free to define themselves as something else. To be part of a nation is like being part of a family, with the added benefit that you can join or leave as you wish. As with any other family, the members of a nation have an instinct to care for each other that goes beyond charity. We might call it duty.

So what is Britain? Traffic jams, tea, dragon flies, stormy afternoons, reggae, Surrey stone circles, bad cooking, a glissando on the strings and a rumble on the timpani. It’s impossible to define, only possible to feel. If you feel it and you get it, then you’ll very quickly fall in love with it. And you’ll discover a profound jealousy when people try to take it away from you (which is why there no more English a protest than an old lady tying herself to a tree to rescue it from demolition). If our identity is ever at risk, then it’s not from Islamic migration or too little money being spent on the NHS (we could be covered in mosques or dying from polio and still be British). It’s at risk because we don’t take enough time out of our lives to commune with it and we no longer teach our children how to experience it. We’d make a good start with compulsory Delius.

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