Book Review: Memories, by Andrei Gromyko
This was a serendipitous find in the local Oxfam bookshop a couple of years ago. To be honest, the only thing I remember about Gromyko was his leaving office; at the time I thought he had been pushed (though without thinking that was necessarily a bad thing), though this volume suggests it was a straightforward decision to retire.

In all honesty, the aspect that comes through most strongly in Gromyko's writing is the fact that he was a Party man. There's absolutely no discussion of the Great Terror; Gromyko was transferred to the diplomatic service in 1939, but from where, there is little mention. There's nothing more than token criticism of Stalin, but there's a healthy dose of disdain for Khrushchev. During the Cold War, the Soviet position was absolutely consistent and apparently never in error. In discussing some of these areas (even where I have some sympathy with Gromyko's position), the text degenerates into the stale and clichéd language of the Left.

Mostly, the book is written in a homely style and offers some insights into (quite literally, global) Soviet foreign policy throughout most of the twentieth century, as well as some of the more unexpected encounters a diplomat and foreign minister might make during their career. The relationships between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill are discussed at length and this does provide a genuinely interesting perspective, with warm relations between Stalin and Roosevelt and frosty ones with Churchill. Following on, the history of relationships with different US presidents is also interesting (intriguingly, a very positive impression of Nixon, and a distinctly negative one of Carter). The book closes with an extremely rosy assessment of the future of Socialism. Gromyko died in 1989, the same year as the English language version of the book was published; the USSR followed a couple of years later.

Tags: books, history, politics

At the last car service, the garage recommended changing the rear tyres "soon". I put this off over the winter but decided to go ahead. So, I had budgeted for 2 new tyres.

Yesterday I misjudged the position of a brick on the road. There was a nasty banging sound, and I could tell straight away that something wasn't right. When I stopped to take a look, there was steam emerging from the front near-side tyre ... and then I spotted where it had burst. Fortunately I have breakdown cover; less fortunately, it took Green Flag nearly 2 hours to get to deepest Berkshire. Changing a wheel is something I suspect you're supposed to be able to do yourself, but I'd spend all day on it and still not get it right. (In fact, the guy had to fetch a hammer to dislodge the wheel from the axle, so I didn't feel too bad about that). So, that meant it was going to be 3 tyres. Ho hum.

At least I had planned to visit Total Tyres in Binfield this morning. When they looked at the car, they insisted that the rear tyres were absolutely fine, with at least 4mm all round. (I used to have a gauge but I haven't seen it for years; all I had determined was that yes, they were more worn than the front ones). In fact what he said was "I'd be ripping you off changing them". So it didn't feel so bad that in the end I have only had to buy one tyre. Of course, I know where I'll be going when there is no doubt that they do need replacing.

Tags: car

The Proms 2012 programme has been announced.
It does look like there's an awful lot of opera.

Must see:

• The Art of Fugue - might be worth pre-booking at the Cadogan Hall


• Mahler 7 - I think it's the only Mahler symphony I haven't seen live; Gianandrea Noseda is a passionate conductor


• Nixon in China - I enjoyed seeing this from the balcony at ENO, it would be fun to be a bit closer this time!

Possibles:

• Strauss and Sibelius


• Prokofiev 6 (along with Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2)


• Beethoven 5 and 6 - the Beethoven cycle is an interesting idea, though I'm not especially thrilled by interweaving all of the concerts with Boulez


• Beethoven 7 and 8 - followed by a Late-Night Prom with the Kronos Quartet, including "a BBC commission inspired by the work of Delia Derbyshire"


• Bach's B Minor Mass


• Bruckner 8


• São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop


• G&S - The Yeomen of the Guard


• Britten's Peter Grimes


• Bach Organ Music - followed by Mendelssohn


• Bach Organ Music (II)


• Bernard Haitink, Haydn and Richard Strauss


• The Fantasia on British Sea Songs returns in the Last Night of the Proms

Interesting, but not for me:

• Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande


• More Ravel - might be worth listening to the Respighi and the John Adams though


• Handel's Judas Maccabaeus


• Berlioz - The Trojans


• Rather more than four minutes and thirty-three seconds of John Cage


• Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro

Tags: music

Book Review: Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this book; and although I think the title is somewhat misleading, I enjoyed it nonetheless. In reality, this is a biography of Galileo, although Sobel ties it genuinely to the correspondence with his elder daughter in a convent outside Florence. The careful attention Galileo paid to Church doctrines must have made his life continually difficult. There are two turning points in the TV series The Ascent of Man where an entire episode is essentially focused on a single event in the history of science: one is the trial of Galileo, the other is Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species. I shall have to go back and rewatch the first of these. The impression I'm left with favours neither cock-up nor conspiracy on the part of the Inquisition, it seems there were elements of both (Galileo sought guidance on the Dialogue and obtained the required permission prior to its publication). Certainly Sobel leaves the reader in no doubt that the Catholic Church may have won the battle but that it had immediately lost the war. Galileo's imprisonment, first in the Tuscan embassy in Rome, and later in the custody of the Archbishop of Siena, deprived him of freedom but otherwise allowed him a generous lifestyle not granted to average convicts. Galileo's Dialogue had already reached Protestant parts of Europe, where Copernican ideas were more acceptable; and even within Italy, copies were secreted by their owners rather than handed in.

As is often the case, perhaps a contributing factor to my enjoyment of the book was last year's holiday in Florence, so some of the places were readily identifiable to me. It seemed appropriate to tag on immediately after this book, the Museo Galileo guidebook. By the standards of some museums and galleries in Florence, the two collections housed there (the Medici collections, dating from around Galileo's time, and the Lorraine collections, from the 18th and 19th centuries) are small, but nevertheless of high quality.

Tags: books, history, science

Book Review: The Analects, by Confucius, translated by Arthur Waley
This has been on my mental "to read" list for some time, and it was triggered by Niall Ferguson's recent mini-series China: Triumph and Turmoil. I was somewhat unimpressed by Ferguson on this occasion: he should stick to history, and keep out of contemporary politics. In any case, the specific link between the two was his insistent non-acceptance of the apparent intrinsic self-sacrifice in China of individuality for the "common good".

Having read the book, it's clear why Mao et al would want to banish Confucianism after the revolution (it's written for an aristocratic audience, and an exclusively male one at that), and then, some time later, why they would want it back again (because of its praise of the virtues of stability and an established order). With a suitable interpretation, there's much to commend it; and certainly in this translation, there are quite a few points where a dry and wily sense of humour seems to emerge.

Tags: books, history

After abandoning an attempt earlier in the week, due to panic-buying of tickets, to go and see the David Hockney exhibition at the RA, this afternoon I've been to see the Jubilee exhibition at the Cartoon Museum. Even by their standards it's a small selection, though quite tightly packed in to one small room, and sadly there was no catalogue, but I did enjoy it and thought there was quality if not quantity. There's an air of deference of course, conscious or not, to many of the cartoons; the most biting were probably those relating to the upgrade of the Civil List by Edward Heath in 1970. More often than not, though, the Queen is portrayed as making do, despite all that is going on around her. How very British.

Tags: exhibitions, london

Book Review: Berlin Tales, chosen and translated by Lyn Marven, edited by Helen Constantine
A selection of short stories set in Berlin, from pre-war times to the present day. They're a mixed bag. There's a tendency for the more modern stories to focus on alternative and counter-cultural aspects of city life, but I think I preferred those with a more historical perspective. I did quite enjoy Günter Kunert's surreal Everyday History of a Berlin Street, Wolfdietrich Schnurre's The Loan, Annett Gröschner's Remains of the Esplanade and Fridolin Schley's The Heart of the Republic; also an honourable mention for Alfred Döblin's East of Alexanderplatz, a microscopic rendition sharing some of the themes and locations of his magnum opus.

Tags: books

Book Review: The theory that would not die: how Bayes' rule cracked the enigma code, hunted down Russian submarines, and emerged triumphant from two centuries of controversy, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
A mathematical theory about conditional and inverse probabilities seems one of the less likely subjects for a popular science book; indeed, there is so little about mathematics in this book that I am left little wiser about the theory itself, though there is an appendix that gives a useful though very brief example. For the most part this is a qualitative history of applications of Bayes' theorem, with a sideline theme of the somewhat undignified academic arguments around its merits. There's some interesting material on the history of insurance premium calculations, and certainly the section on Bletchley Park and decryption of the Enigma and Fish codes is particularly well done. My prior knowledge of Bayes was limited to knowing it was used in spam filtering, and although that's mentioned, it doesn't go into much detail on that subject (though there's an interesting aside about Microsoft's dreaded Paper Clip).

Tags: books, science

Like buses, the interesting films seem to have come all at once just now. Last night we went to see A Dangerous Method. Cronenberg isn't a director that would draw me to a film; rather, I thought this was an interesting subject. As part of Reading Science Week, there was a talk before the film, which highlighted inter alia the different ethical standards of the time (that apparently allowed Jung to conduct an affair with a (questionably former) patient) and the rather obvious statement that the "talking method" was in many ways just a secular reinvention of endemic religious confessional traditions. The settings - mostly around Zurich and Vienna - were beautiful; of the characters, I felt Freud was portrayed most sympathetically, though the professional relationships all seemed to fall in a category I would describe as abrasive.

Tags: film

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Tags: film