The British 20th Century under the social historians' microscope

There is almost a surfeit, these days, of British social historians combing over the ashes of the second half of the century. Dominic Sandbrook’s (rather controversial) work now extends to four volumes, covering the period from Suez in 1956 to the election of Margaret Thatche in 1979r.

Chroniclers of the 1970s include Andy Beckett (When The Lights Went Out), Francis Wheen (Strange Days Indeed) and Alwyn W Turner (Crisis? What Crisis?), to name just the most celebrated handful.

Moving on to the 1980s, we have Alwyn Turner’s Rejoice! Rejoice! , Richard Vinen’s Thatcher’s Britain, Jackson and Saunder’s Making Thatcher’s Britain, Andy McSmith’s No Such Thing As Society and, most recently, Graham Stewart’s Bang! 

For the 1990s there are Alwyn Turner’s books Things can only get Bitter and A Classless Society; Britain in the Nineties

But one social historian surpasses all that – David Kynaston sequence entitled Tales of a New Jerusalem: 1945-1979, whose mission is to document the story of “ordinary citizens as well as ministers and mandarins, of consumers as well as producers, of the provinces as well as London, of the everyday as well as the monumental”. Austerity Britain: 1945-51 was his first 700-page in the series and makes for gripping reading (in 2 days I am at page 426). His notes and references cover every published source you can imagine - including the comments of ordinary people as captured in the publications of Mass Observation. 

Kynaston accomplishes this in his first volume with a prose style that balances entertainment with erudition and in-depth historical assessment with gorgeous, fact-laden word pictures, all fused together in an exemplary narrative of a fascinating period. On a particular Bank Holiday Monday in 1945, for example, he records that thirty-five extra trains had been added at Liverpool Street to make the London-to-seaside rounds and yet station queues still snaked around the block; 30,000 people were at London Zoo and only 4,500 at the V&A; and 100,000 people tried to gain entry (only half-managed) to an athletics meet at the White City stadium to see British pre-war champion Sydney Wooderson best the Swedes.
What elevate Kynaston’s Austerity Britain out of the encyclopaedic and dryly academic and into the transfixing is a potent blend of the seismic and the banal. Its breadth of geographical and socio-economic perspective distinguishes it from the wealth of other social histories written about the mid- and postwar periods: The legacy of Beveridge’s report gets expert treatment … as do postwar marital trends, cricket and racing preferences, the rise of Aneurin Bevan, the reception of David Lean’s Brief Encounter by working class audiences (hearty guffaws), the fabrics available to seamstresses and the Liverpool race riots.
Kynaston’s sources are equally diverse, ranging from government publications to industry manuals and from unpublished journals to the ubiquitous Mass Observation diarists (although he is scrupulous in drawing attention to their middle class biases).

Prospect Magazing looked at the second Kynaston blockbuster in the series  and asks how we might explain this obsession with raking over the ashes of the recent past

Does it signify anything, however, apart from the fact that they are good writers with a knack for traversing recent history in a likeable, accessible way? Can we infer anything more interesting from their success, something which is peculiar to the times we are living through now?
I can think of a couple of plausible interpretations. One is that these histories offer us an unexpected kind of consolation. Marooned as we are in a state of great political and economic uncertainty, we have become prey to a habitual sense of unease. However often we are told that history repeats itself, we never really believe it: we live in the moment, convinced that the problems we face are new and unprecedented. Modernity Britain gives the lie to this belief. It’s not just that it transports us back to an era when the cabinet was stuffed full of old Etonians comically unfamilar with the everyday anxieties of most British men and women. It shows us that in the very texture of life, in the moral temperature of the country as a whole, things were not so different back then. Here is Kynaston, for instance, quoting a BBC report on the attitude of late-1950s teenagers towards the political establishment: “Teenagers are bored by politics,” it claimed. “This is rather a bald statement, but it does seem to be true of an astonishingly large proportion of them… ‘It’s sort of corrupt.’ ‘They’re too dogmatic.’ ‘It’s all fixed.’ ‘They’re just keeping to the party line.’ At the back of it seemed to be the feeling that… they didn’t honestly believe what they [the politicians] said… and that discussion between, say, Labour and Conservative was pointless since neither was open to persuasion by the other.”
Does this not equally, and exactly, encapsulate our conviction that young voters today have become detached from mainstream politics, and are already numbed by a weary cynicism about political discourse? Again and again, reading Modernity Britain, you come upon these spectral echoes of the present day: the sense of “’twas ever thus” grows inescapable, and helps to dismantle, piece by piece, one of the most pervasive and misleading fictions about our current situation: that it is somehow unique.
For the other, more deep-rooted explanation of why this new breed of historian has struck such a resonant chord, we need only look at one recent, much-reported event: the death of Thatcher, and the barrage of contradictory responses it provoked in print and online. The election of Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979 provides either the fulcrum around which these books revolve, or (in the case of Kynaston) their future climax. Thatcher, so divisive while in office, remains such a contentious, polarising figure in British mythology that even now, more than 30 years later, there remains a profound fracture running through the body politic. Cameron’s line to the effect that “we are all Thatcherites now” will either strike you as a joyful affirmation or will send a shudder coursing through every fibre of your being: either way, you have to recognise that it has a certain chilling truth.
However strong most of us are, individually, in our convictions on this subject, the country as a whole has still not, and cannot, make up its mind about 1979: still can’t decide whether it was the moment which saved the nation, or whether it marked a disastrously wrong turn. And, as a nation, we will probably never be “at ease with ourselves” (to use perhaps the only memorable phrase which Thatcher’s successor ever came up with) until we begin to understand that moment clearly and see it for precisely what it was. If Kynaston’s Tales of a New Jerusalem helps us to do that—if it succeeds in its objective of showing us, on a scale both panoramic and intimate, exactly what the postwar governments struggled to build, and which Thatcher, just as determinedly, sought to dismantle—then it will surely come to be seen not just as one of the present era’s most important histories, but as one of its most illuminating works of literature.

Czeslaw Milosz

Every now and then, an author’s words hit you with the force of nature – no matter how quiet and reasonable they seem. The opening pages of Milosz’s Selected essays – To Begin Where I Am - about exile and his return as an 80 year-old to the landscape of his childhood Lithuania have had this effect on me. I don’t really know Milosz and bought the book simply because a blurb told me they represented a very powerful example of the essay form – which is one I love.

Some reminiscences I found on the internet suggest that he is an “unfashionable poet”. To go by the Amazon lists, he is certainly a neglected writer – with only the one set of essays (Proud to be a Mammal issued recently by Penguin Central European Classics is apparently the same book as To Begin where I am!), his poetry and The Captive Mind in print. That needs to be changed – since the man has more than 20 books to his credit – let alone his poetry. The reviewer in the Dublin Review of Books tells it well -

Czesław Miłosz, the centenary of whose birth was in 2011, had a long and productive life. After his spell in Paris, he emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the University of Berkeley in California. While he appreciated the opportunities the United States gave him (and loved its great outdoors), he remained, over the decades he spent there, rather hostile to its commercial culture and continued to note how savagely American capitalism treated those at the bottom of the heap. In his final decade, following the collapse of communism, he returned to live part of each year in Poland.
In his early adulthood Miłosz saw the world plunge into evil, but unlike many of his friends and contemporaries he survived that evil and even outlived the repressive political system he had once believed to be an inescapable destiny for his nation.
Miłosz’s fullest treatment of the part of his childhood he spent with his grandparents in the depths of the Polish (now Lithuanian) countryside (three full years, from age seven to ten) is in the autobiographical novel The Issa Valley, but there is also this lyrical passage in the sparkling miscellany Miłosz’s ABC under the heading “Szetejnie, Gineity, and Peiksva” (three hamlets close to his grandparents’ farm): The Niewiaża Valley is like a crevice cut into the plateau, from which neither the parks nor the remains of manor houses can be seen. A traveler journeying across that plateau today will not be able to intuit what was once on it. Smoke from the hamlets has vanished, along with the creak of the well pumps, the crowing of roosters, barking of dogs, people’s voices. There is no longer the green of orchards embracing the roofs of the cottages – apple trees, pear trees, plum trees in every farmyard, between house, barn, and granary, so that the village streets were framed in trees.

As a child, Miłosz writes, “I was primarily a discoverer of the world, not as suffering but as beauty ... Happiness experienced in childhood does not pass without a trace: the memory of ecstasy dwells in our body and possesses a strong curative power.” Returning to visit this landscape at the age of eighty, Miłosz feels no particular regret, or anger, or even sadness. The orchards are gone of course, but so too is the communism which could find no place for them, vanished after less than fifty years: “Among the many definitions of Communism,” he writes, “perhaps one would be the most apt: enemy of orchards.” Now, in spite of the changes in the landscape, he can see that in all his wanderings and exile he had searched in vain for such a combination of leaves and flowers as was here. “Or, to be precise, I understood this after a huge wave of emotion had overwhelmed me, and the only name I can give it now would be – bliss.”………

Perhaps the central point of Miłosz’s philosophy, certainly the key problematic to which he returns again and again, is man’s war with nature. Nature here is not to be understood as the beauty of trees, woods, rivers and flowers but as necessity, “the way things are”, “the kingdom of inertia, senseless birth, and senseless death”. Refusing to bow down before this necessity, we assert our “anti-natural freedom”, through our creation of religion and culture, politics and ideology:

We are unable to live nakedly. We must constantly wrap ourselves in a cocoon of mental constructs, our changing styles of philosophy, poetry, art. We must invest meaning in that which is opposed to meaning; that ceaseless labour, that spinning is the most purely human of our activities. For the threads spun by our ancestors do not perish, they are preserved; we alone among living creatures have a history, we move in a gigantic labyrinth where the present and the past are interwoven. That labyrinth protects and consoles us ... Death is a humiliation, because it tears us away from words, the sounds of music, configurations of line and colour ...

A couple of nice tributes are here and here.

How Economics forgot History

I used to devour critiques of the World Bank with great glee - but got fed up with the ease with which it seemed able to deflect the devastating exposes with slippery new phrases and concepts such as “transparency”, “social capital”….. Some 20 years ago Susan George subjected the Bank to a marvellous attack in Faith and Credit - comparing the Bank to the Catholic Church. It is an apt comparison – with priests and Cardinals having unshakeable beliefs in their own wisdom and the wider congregation suffering from the effects of their arrogance, myopia and abuse of power.  

A brief review of a couple of recent books on the subject directed me to some great downloads which should keep me occupied to Christmas – The Debt Crisis – from Europe to where? (2012); and the 400 page From Political Economy to Freakonomics (2009)

economics was once rich, diverse, multidimensional and pluralistic. The book details how political economy became economics through the separation of economics from other social sciences, especially economic history and sociology. It ranges over the shifting role of the historical and the social in economic theory, the shifting boundaries between the economic and the non-economic and puts the case for political economy back on the agenda. This is done by treating economics as a social science once again. It involves transcending the boundaries of the social sciences through the reintroduction and full incorporation of the social and the historical into the main corpus of political economy, by drawing on the rich traditions of the past

From this I was led to the work of Geoffrey Hodgson - a thoughtful political economist who has long been out of tune with his fellow economists as you can see in this table and longer interview 

Amazingly I was able, thanks to scribd, to download a couple of his complete books – eg the rather daunting How Economics Forgot History (2001) as well as one of Susan George’s more recent (and typically accessible) contributions - Another world is possible (2004)

The beauty of independent book publishers

Books have always been important to me – a library tends to grow wherever I put roots down for a year or so. Of course it is the content that drives my choice – but I notice that I am now giving attention to the format and aesthetics of the book itself. It was the font which started to arouse my curiousity – but then the layout, feel of the paper, design of the cover etc. American editions of books, I realise from the choices Vlad of the Frost English Bookshop in Bucharest makes, are often more attractive than the English edition – I had always appreciated their hard covers and the rough pages…..but now understand that the paperbacks are so much better.

Everyman’s library is a great hardback series - although it does belong to the Random House congomerate.

New York Review Books Classics are paperbacks which epitomise all that’s best about book aesthetics. But there are many small publishers I find myself increasingly drawn to – by virtue of the originality of their titles and production - Bitter Lemon Press, Serpent’s Tail, Pushkin Press, OneWorld, Dedalus, Hesperus, Europa Editions, Persephone Books 

A couple of years ago, the Guardian did a nice little feature on the growing importance of book design.
And bookporn is a site which gives visual expression to the sensual side of book appreciation.

Just as we need to treasure the independent bookshops which have managed to survive the onslaught of the larger bookstore chains and internet giants so do we need to recognise the value which the smaller publishers offer. So its nice to learn a bit about these companies eg Persephone. But it’s not only sad but dangerous that names like Penguin get eaten up in the capitalist onslaught (they’re now part of Random House).

Farrar, Straus and Giroux is another one which succumbed – and The New Yorker gives a nice history of the firm here. But the statistics on book publisher decline in the UK are gob-smacking - 98 fewer than last year!

I have no less than three Farrar books in the pile waiting for my attention - two collections of what look to be superb essays, one by the 1980 Literature Nobel prixe-winner Czeslaw Milosz - To begin where I am by  published in 2001. The other - Joseph Brodsky's Less than One published in 1987 - looks rather less impressive.

Also in the pile The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (pic above) of whom I have never heard; and a stunning take on the barbarities of the last century - My Century by Aleksander Wat 

Health and .....the pursuit of happiness

An article based on a new book invites us to identify what elements of city design might make a difference to resident happiness and then seems to suggest that bike lanes and pooling are the answer. 

That does seem a bit simplistic since, patently, the basic layout of a city is a crucial factor – things like densities, patterns of movement and physical structures - let alone the frequency (and price) of facilities such as public transport, parks, bookshops, galleries, theatres, swimming pools and restaurants....Not much use -trying to cycle if you are boxed in by dual carriageways and multi-stories!!

I blog quite a lot about Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, the structure of whose centre consists of narrow streets and tiny shops run by individuals - old and young. Walking around them (and the neighbouring parks) is a great joy - people carry their coffees or drink them on the doorstep, chatting over a cigarette to their neighbours; all key institutions are in walking distance and restaurants are cheap, healthy and tasty. People take care of the stray cats
It is a city like no other European one.
Mayor Yordanka Fandakova is doing a great job of clearing cars from the pavements and many of the streets. What a contrast with Bucharest whose power-mad Mayor Sorin Oprescu has new dual carriageways running through the city and is outdoing Attila the Hun in his (illegal) destruction of so many lovely old houses.

The article finishes with an important message -

By spending resources and designing cities in a way that values everyone's experience, we can make cities that help us all get stronger, more resilient, more connected, more active and more free. We just have to decide who our cities are for. And we have to believe that they can change.

I was once very active in the WHO Healthy Cities network which I see is still going strong.
Health….and happiness. Fundamental issues for us all. Honoured with so much rhetoric but increasingly displaced by Greed and Dishonesty…..I want to explore this disjunction in a bit more detail.
For 30 years, the WHO website tells us -

The primary goal of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network has been to put health high on the social, economic and political agenda of city governments. The Healthy Cities movement promotes comprehensive and systematic policy and planning for health and emphasizes:

• the need to address inequality in health and urban poverty

• the needs of vulnerable groups

• participatory governance

• the social, economic and environmental determinants of health.

About 90 cities are members of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network, and 30 national Healthy Cities networks across the WHO European Region have more than 1400 cities and towns as members.

Sadly, however, health and health inequalities have become much worse during this period – and I see little sign of the Healthy City literature recognising this – or exploring why this is so.

Indeed, as so often happens, a new vocabulary (expertise and bureaucracy) has taken over – that of the happiness minions of the OECD and UNDP , for example. This paper on the phenomenon of happiness research and indices is one particular (libertarian) slant on the past decade's work on happiness.

I get a bit impatient with those who tell us that happiness is about spending time with family and friends since that misses the political aspects - the nature and scale of the obstacles which those with power place on our enjoyment of public places and public goods. Equally, however, we need to be realistic about what can be achieved by political actions. Whatever, therefore, my sympathies with those who stress the importance of reducing social and economic inequalities, let us focus on the sorts of modest actions which can mobilise the support of large numbers of citizens - such as the removal of cars and cancelling of city motorways.....In that sense, I align with those who argue for more of a "nudge" approach to civic action - and also with those who argue for municipal (rather than government) initiatives.

Perceiving the Balkans

Patrick Leigh Fermor is a name to conjure with - as the wikipedia entry puts it -

At the age of 18, Leigh Fermor decided to walk the length of Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople He set off on 8 December 1933, shortly after Hitler had come to power in Germany, with a few clothes, several letters of introduction and a few books. He slept in barns and shepherds' huts, but also was invited by landed gentry and aristocracy into the country houses of Central Europe. He experienced hospitality in many monasteries along the way. Two of his later travel books, A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), were about this journey. The final part of his journey was unfinished at the time of Leigh Fermor's death, but was published as The Broken Road: Travels from Bulgaria to Mount Athos in September 2013 The book draws on Leigh Fermor's diary at the time and on an early draft he wrote in the 1960s

Neal Ascherson's review of The Broken Road in the current issue of London Review of Books puts his writing in the wider context of British writing about this part of the world -

There are fewer schlosses in this book. The explanation is that after using a good many introductions to nobility across Austria, Hungary and then Transylvania, he had entered Bulgaria. Barons with Germanic titles and estates didn’t feature in this land of peasant villages and Orthodox monasteries, which had only recently emerged from centuries ‘under the Turkish yoke’. And Leigh Fermor was now crossing formidable mountain barriers – the Balkan and Rhodope ranges – as winter approached. To survive, he had to rely on the food and shelter offered to him along the way. He is in no way condescending about his hosts. This strange, penniless English boy walking to Constantinople had nothing to offer them but his curiosity, and they were as interested by him as he was by them.
‘Paddy’s travel writing is often brilliant and moving, always humane. And yet its sheer descriptiveness, its concentration on things and people exotically “other” when contrasted to some assumed English norm, does put it in a category.’ The guide here is Vesna Goldsworthy’s Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (1998). As she shows, writing imaginative or purely fictional work about the Balkans has been an overwhelmingly British habit. Byron can be said to have set it off. But the genre reached its zenith in the late 19th century and early 20th. Anthony Hope’s Ruritania seems to be located in Germanic territory rather than further south-east, but other writers – ‘Sydney Grier’ (Hilda Gregg), Dorothea Gerard, Bram Stoker etc – floated their dreamlands far down the Danube and into the ‘bloodthirsty’ Balkans. Later, John Buchan, Lawrence Durrell, Evelyn Waugh and Malcolm Bradbury were among those who tried their hand at brutal, gaudy Balkan Ruritanias.

Weeping old houses

It seems that some Romanian architects at least have a soul. Some months back I mentioned a lovely little production on the rehabilitation of traditional Romanian houses produced by the Igloo architectural publishing house

And this month, an even better one has been produced by the Association for Rehabilitation which started its work in 2010 and identifies “weeping houses” ie those whose semi-criminal neglect has brought houses almost to the stage of collapse.

The attractively produced new book has the underwhelming title of The RePAD  Guide - and sets out - in English, French and Romanian - guidelines and examples for restoring old houses to their previous glory. Its available for only 7 euros!

Such initiatives need encouragement in the climate of hostile indifference which exists amongst the Bucharest and Romanian authorities! It contrasts with the celebration by the Bulgarians of their Bulgarian revival style which can be found in abundance in so many villages - one of which (Koprovishitse) I visited again only a few weeks back.

A case-study in political stupidity and ideology

Southern England is in the grip of strong winds and floods - and an excellent article in The Guardian reminds us of the ideological imbecility which has gripped the political class in that unfortunate country - 

Trains are being cancelled en masse while would-be travellers are instructed to follow news from that array of corporate names which still feel like some alien imposition on national life: First TransPennine, CrossCountry, First Capital Connect, c2c. Even the most efficient set-up can probably not do much about "localised flooding, fallen trees and debris on the tracks". But still: as rail travel is disrupted, thousands of people will once again seethe with fury at the operating companies' shortcomings, whether unfairly or not. Public anger, moreover, will also reflect a firmly embedded belief: that the approach of politicians to the railways is lily-livered at best; and at worst, completely barmy.
If you want a good example of the latter, consider the fate of the east coast mainline, which runs between London, the north-east and Scotland. In 2006 GNER lost its contract to run trains along the route when its Bermuda-registered parent company filed for bankruptcy. The franchise then went to National Express, which soon defaulted on its payments. So the then-Labour government created a not-for-profit public operator called Directly Operated Railways, which has run the service for the last four years with much success.Since 2009, DOR has paid £602m into public funds: over £200m more than National Express did, and £209m more than Virgin Rail – the franchise-holder for the west coast mainline – has managed during the same period. Its public subsidy is comparatively minimal – seven times less than that paid last year to Virgin. Its record on safety improvementsis jaw-dropping: "major customer accidents" are down 81% since 2009. And customer satisfaction and punctuality are at unprecedented highs.Now, of course, the government wants to re-privatise it – which is where things get truly absurd. Among the top bidders for the franchise is a consortium split between Eurostar and Keolis, both majority-owned by the French state firm SNCF. As well as Virgin, another probable contender will be Arriva, the British train company wholly owned by Deutsche Bahn, which is in turn wholly owned by the German government. As is increasingly the case across a whole range of national infrastructure – from power stations to water suppliers, via airports and bus companies – supposed free-marketeers are gleefully happy about state ownership of British assets, as long as it's somebody else's state that's doing it. In the case of the railways, moreover, you end up with the inevitable consequence of profits being skimmed off and invested in trains and tracks overseas.This is another of the insanities at the core of an economic model that George Osborne in particular wants to develop. Labour argues that the east coast mainline should stay in public hands and that DOR should be allowed to bid for other train franchises, following the same revenue-generating model as publicly owned firms from Germany, France and the Netherlands.But is that really enough? The Greens' Caroline Lucas, a rare voice of sanity, recently tabled a private member's bill outlining a simple alternative: that over time, as rail franchises expire, they should be restored to public ownership – which would cost peanuts, repatriate a fair bit of money, and commence the abolition of all the complex and costly stupidities that privatisation produced. This would at least slow those outrageous ticket price rises. And just imagine: we would also get the kind of integrated railway system to which politicians could finally apply some joined-up thinking.

And the economics correspondent of the same newspaper actually had the courage to argue that basic utilities should be returned to the public sector.

Four of the "big six" cartel, which controls 98% of electricity supply, have now increased prices by over 9% – blaming green levies and global costs – while wholesale prices have risen 1.7% in the past year and profit per "customer" has doubled.
Thousands of old people will certainly die this winter as a result of the corporate stitch-up that is called a regulated market – designed in large part by the same John Major who last week called for the introduction of a windfall tax on energy profits.
Meanwhile, David Cameron's coalition has signed a private finance initiative-style deal with one of the cartel, EDF, and two Chinese companies – all three state-owned, but by other states – to build a new nuclear reactor which will guarantee electricity prices at almost double their current level for the next 35 years.
As if all that wasn't grotesque enough, most of profitable Royal Mail has now been privatised by the supposedly dissident Vince Cable. The current loss to the "taxpayer" from selling shares below their market value is upwards of £1.3bn – more than the government's entire planned savings from benefit cuts in 2013-14. And its biggest shareholder is now the hedge fund TCI.
Within days, the Co-operative Bank had also fallen prey to US hedge funds, as Conservative ministers put out to tender the country's most successful rail service, the publicly owned east coast mainline. Never mind its reliability, value-for-money, popularity and the £208m dividend payment to the public purse. Privatisation dogma is undisturbed by evidence.
But then privatised water companies are planning to increase prices by 40% by 2020; Simon Stevens, an executive for the US private health firm UnitedHealth, now bidding for NHS contracts, has been put in charge of the NHS in England; and the security firms, G4S and Serco, are allowed to bid for a share of the probation service despite fraud investigations into existing deals.
It should be obvious that powerful interests are driving what is by any objective measure a failed 30-year experiment – but which transfers income and wealth from workforce, public and state to the corporate sector. In the case of privatised utilities, that is the extraction of shareholder value on a vast scale from a captive public.
What's needed from utilities are security of supply, operation in the public interest, long-term planning and cost effectiveness without profiteering. The existing privatised utilities have failed on all counts.
The case for public ownership of basic utilities and services – including electricity, gas, water and communications infrastructure – is overwhelming. It's also supported by a large majority of the country's voters. But it's taboo in the political mainstream.

Off the Bulgarian beaten track

There are two parts of picturesque Bulgaria which are off- the beaten track – the south-east borderland (with Greece and Turkey) and the entire stretch of the Danube in the north. A small but fascinating book on the Danube Riverside which I picked up in a Sofia store had a substantial section on the town of Svishtov (birthplace of artists Nikolae Tanev, Alexander Bozhinov and Nikolae Parvevitch)  persuaded me to take a detour for it – despite the bank of fog which was darkening the otherwise cloudless skies over norther Bulgaria. It was a worthwhile journey – through small desolated settlements and rolling hills until I reached a town which has seen much better days. In its heyday it was a bustling city which history (and shifting transport patterns) have left isolated. 

Having viewed a few of the old houses, I took the road for Russe and, a few kilometres out of Svishtov, hit an amazing sight – what appeared to be a building site was in fact the reconstruction of the old Roman camp of Novae and I was lucky enough to meet up with the Polish archaeologist who had been working the site for 35 years!
There is a nice little guide here about visiting the site which gives an excellent sense of the whole area. And I learned that this was the very site from which the Russians launched the campaign in July 1877 which brought Bulgaria independence from the Ottoamn Empire - I had earlier passed through one of the villages which houses a grand house which was the Russian HQ. Several hundred Russian soldiers lost their life here........

The subsequent drive to Russe was very beautiful - with the autumn leaves in their most glorious foleage.

Aesthetics and economics

Two sad departures – the lovely small Tabak café which occupied the back of the National Gallery building (the old Palace) and spread on to the quiet garden area leading up to the Russian Church was unceremoniously bundled out of its space a few months back. By the Minister of Culture himself apparently – for failure to pay back rent due. I loved the challenge the cafe represented to political correctness – and also the serenity of the garden section with its views of various statues.

And the large gallery space which used to offer paintings, ceramics and wine from the Katarzsyna estate in Ivan Denklogu st just down from Vitosha which also offered musical performances a couple of times each week in its downstairs basement has also disappeared – now being made over I suspect into a luxury shoe shop. 

Not good for Sofia’s European City of Culture 2019 bid! Although the pavements (the worst of any European capital) are now being repaired!!

Times have been bad for Sofia’s small galleries for the past few years – and still don’t show any sign of looking up. I talk to their owners – one of whom told me that she recoups very little of the 1,000 euros a month which her small space costs her - in rental, facilities and help. It is a labour of love – and I look forward to being amongst the participants of tonight’s event which celebrates her first year. I’ve bought three things from that particular gallery so far – and am pleased that pride of place in the exhibition which marks the first anniversary are aquarelles from a 90 year-old! And it's good to see that the older painters still alive are honoured by several of the smaller galleries.....

Sofia’s atmosphere was nicely captured for me yesterday when I was leaving another gallery (having bought the Kostadinov “lady in red” which heads the last post). A man with a painting under his arm was walking past and paused to let us examine it. “Do you like it?” he asked after he told me it was a Trichkov (a painter I have been trying to buy) and then walked off……..

Temptations and turbulence

The beautiful weather continues here in Sofia – 24 yesterday – and, invigorated by the exercises and swim at Rodina hotel, I strolled  for some 4 hours visiting my small galleries 

First the Absinthe gallery (where I bought this aquarelle of a view from a window - by a young woman - Klementina Mancheva); 

then Vihra at the Astry Gallery (tempted by this fetching Kostadinov figure in the red dress on the right): 

My friend Yassen was showing his latest oil at his Konus gallery; 

A rarer visit to the Kristal gallery had me tempted by an Alexandrov and a Zhekov;

and, finally, a first visit to the Grita gallery just past the Opera for a Vernissaj - one of four apparently which were taking place that evening in the capital. 

A lovely little area this last – between the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and General Dondukov Boulevard – with a tiny gem of a classical disc shop just outside the Opera house on Vrabcha St from which I emerged with 20 odd discs – mainly Dvorak. Incidentally, I was shocked to see the extremist party Ataka offices prominently sitting ajowl the Opera!!

Earlier I had purchased some charming Bulgarian ceramics and also reproductions of the irresistable Angela Minkova - at Albena's wonderful tiny but joyful shop- Art Magazin at the corner of the Catholic Church and Skobelev St (number 38);  and popped into the Raiko Aleksiev gallery on Rakovsky St which turned out to be celebrating the works of one Nikolay Rostovchev (1898-1988). 

Rostovchev was an officer in the Russian dragoons who was part of the residue of the White Army which landed in Varna in 1921. In 1925 he enrolled in Boris Mitov’s class at the Art Academy in Sofia and graduated in 1930, exhibiting in the annual exhibitions of the Association of Independent Artists until 1945 – at which point the new communist authorities stripped him of his membership of all associations. His past was against him – not only presumably his time with the White Army but his religious painting during most of the 1930s – for example his work on the St Nedelya Church. What a turbulent life he had - fleeing from the Bolsheviks only to land up 20-odd years later facing their successors who at least only ostracised him. It was appropriate therefore that the exhibition is in the Raiko Aleksiev gallery since Aleksiev died in custody a few weeks after the communist takeover.    

On this historical note, I was aware of the slaughter which took place in 1925 at the church but had not properly connected it with the September 1923 communist uprising. I remember passing a monument to communists at the roadside near Vratsa in the north-east of the country – and wondering about it. I posted last year about the massacres which took place in the communist takeover of September 1944 - 70 years ago next year. I wonder how the period will be remembered next year??

My evening finished with another nice discovery as I took a side road back to the flat – a small bookshop which had a copy of a remarkable 500 page book on Bulgaria – Bulgaria Terra Europeansis Incognita by Ivan Daraktchiev. Original both in its provocative text and superb photos of old ceramics. There's an interview with the author here.

Imagining a future

A space for books, paintings, wine and….ideas? A possible new concept for Sofia – European City of Culture?

As well as conducting my usual haunts of galleries and bookshops here in Sofia, I’m looking at property – and feel that any flat has to be large enough to take my present (let alone future) stock of books and paintings. 

I found a dream flat – on the edge of a forest a mere 20 minutes’ drive (or metro) from the centre – but it’s only 70 sq metres; and does not allow the flaneur life I love in the centre of town.

And the second-hand and remaindered books whose titles appealed to me in the last few days (and now lie around the flat) speak powerfully of the importance of serendipity and conversations - eg 

• JG Ballard’s dystopian novel Kingdom Come (2006); 
• Charles Bukowski's collection of despairing poetry - War all the time (1984)  
• a book about the Anglo-Scottish borderlands between the 14^th and 16^th centuries -The Reivers; 
• Desperately seeking Paradise – journeys of a sceptical muslim (2004) by Ziauddin Sardar;
• Dinner with Persephone; travels in Greece by Patricia Storace (1996); 
• Hungarian Antal Szerb’s 1937 masterpiece Journey by Moonlight ; 
• the final (third) part of Russe-born Nobel-prize winning Elias Cannetti’s auobiography The Play of the Eyes (1986);  
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; and
• The Language Wars; a History of Proper English (2011) by the improbably-named Henry Hitchings

So why not a small gallery space in the centre where I can hang the paintings, display books, offer wines and converse in whatever language......? Fine for experience - but what would I actually sell - apart from glasses of wine?? The books (eg my extensive collection of about Bulgarian painters) and paintings would not leave the shop but simply be a catalyst for conversation.....
Now that the British Council here has closed its library of books, perhaps there is a place for people to go who wish a taste of European (if not British) culture. I could add French and German books; link with the British butcher and the second-hand English bookshop here; and with cultural centres such as The Red House........Dream on.......

Yovo Yovchev - a painter to watch!

My great friend Yovo Yovchev of Sofia has had an exhibition these last few weeks – at the Finesse Gallery in Hristo Belchev St just off Solunska St. 

Here he is with my other great gallerist friend, Yassen Gochev at the exhibition - which, sadly, ends tomorrow. Yassen's artistry is variously surrealist (oil) and realist (aquarelle and oil) - and you can find him at his Konos Gallery
Yovo was the first guy to introduce me to the great traditions of Bulgarian painting - he sold me my first Emilia Radusheva (I have about 5 now) and was the first person to show me the catalogues of the Victoria Gallery Auction House....and hence help captivate me into the incredible tradition of Bulgarian painting .

Tomorrow is the last day of the exhibition - and 3-4 of his paintings have caught my eye.
I managed to buy the second of these.....

Global Looting - Taxing Times

Rumours about a tax on bank savings – have been sweeping Europe according to The Slog blog which implicates a document available on the IMF website dated ‘October 2013′. This document with the significant title Fiscal Monitor; Taxing Times argues that a 10% tax on bank accounts would bring public debt in European countries back to 2007 levels! Go the box at page 49 for the full argument

You thought the Cyprus raid was a one-off?!!
Be very afraid.

Savings in bank accounts are not safe - on the other hand, is it really possible that European governments are so suicidal as to be contemplating the infliction of losses on their middle classes???????? But thee IMF has now given them the legitimacy.....The unthinkable has become the thinkable.......

But where are those of us who haven't sunk our money in property to put it? Money that we earned (in my case) in consultancy fees over the past 20 years. I had nothing except a mortgage in 1990. Now I have a fair amount. I cashed in the investments in the mid 2000s just before the whistle went on the financial system. Since then they were earning a pittance in the northern banks! So I transferred most to Romanian and Bulgarian banks where they have been earning about 4%. Now I even insist on checking the serial numbers of notes withdrawn - and the watermarks.....

Zest for Life

A zest for Life seems to me the most admirable of qualities. So many of the people I have blogged about in the past year – eg Naomi Mitchison, Dennis Healey, Dervla Murphy, Diana Athill , Tisa von der Schulenberg, Georgy Faludy (1910-2006) all had it in buckets – and so, I think, did Iris Origo (1902-1988) whose incredible Images and Shadows I found this week in the Vasil Levsky branch of Knigomania (for 4 euros).  The blurb tells us that -

Iris Origo was born in 1902 and was instantly catapulted into a life of "unfair advantages of birth, education, money, environment and opportunity." But she used this birth-right wisely, and her legacy includes a string of books apparently beloved and admired equally by historians, biographers, and readers.
Iris spent her youth in the ancestral estate on Long Island and in her grandfather's castle in Ireland. Her father died tragically when she was eight, and she continued her peripatetic life with her indefatigable mother and beloved governess. A woman who always knew her mind, in 1923 Origo bought La Foce, an entire valley, almost feudal in organization, in the Val d'Orcia of Tuscany. There for fifty years she worked tirelessly with her (Italian) husband, improving the land and the lot of the peasants, saving endangered children from the brutal incursions of the Nazis, and writing history and memoirs that are still considered classics of the genre.
Origo was at once a woman of action and introspection, of boundless curiosity and endearing innocence. She writes beautifully, thoughtfully, and lucidly.

The introduction to her memoir is typical of her style: "It has sometimes been pointed out to me that I have had a very varied and interesting life, have lived in some extremely beautiful places and have met some remarkable people. I suppose it is true, but now that I have reached `the end game', I do not find myself dwelling upon these pieces on the board. The figures that still stand out there now are the people to whom, in different ways and in different degrees, I have been bound by affection. Not only are they the people whom I most vividly remember, but I realise that it is only through them that I have learned anything about life at all. The brilliant talk that I heard at I Tatti in my youth, in Bloomsbury in the thirties, in New York and Rome in later years, has lost some of its glitter. All that is left to me of my past life that has not faded into mist has passed through the filter, not of my mind, but of my affections. What has not warmed by them is now for me as if it had never been."

Born into an international family, Origo spent her childhood years between her paternal grandparents' estate in Westbrook, Long Island, her maternal grandparents' home in Great Britain, and her mother's villa in Fiesole. Although her father died early, he made sure his daughter grew up devoid of limiting national identity and open to different cultural influences. Her mother instilled a passion for travel and books. While grateful to her family for the comfort and care they provided, Origo portrays certain aspects of her upbringing with restrained criticism. 

Her proper British mother, for instance, insisted on Origo's private education by governesses and tutors, opposed her desire to enroll in university, and committed her to a tasteless, nauseatingly ``healthy'' diet. In hindsight, Origo considers her period of ``coming out'' into high society a considerable waste of time. Readers, however, will appreciate her colorful accounts of balls and theater visits as a glimpse of elite diversions in bygone days. Origo's descriptions of early 20th-century American magnates and patrons of the arts and her detailed reconstruction of Italian landowners' traditional life are among many other engaging passages. Sketching her own character in an irreproachably modest tone, she commands respect for her ability to apply her superb education, knowledge of the world, and financial means to worthy causes. She helped modernize devastated farmland in Tuscany, volunteered in the Red Cross during WWII, and sheltered orphaned children at her home after the war. This active, creative attitude arises out of Origo's profound sense of being ``singularly fortunate,'' despite some personal tragedies a rare and therefore doubly appealing trait. Along with its exquisite style and thought-provoking digressions on the philosophy of writing, this autobiography documents fascinating experiences of the modern European and American aristocracy.
She is marvellous at nuances of place and personality, writing with a subtle mingling of candour and affection that lingers in the mind.

Images and Shadows seems to be one of a few of her a books which are still in print (or rather reprinted in a lovely 1999 Nonpareil edition). It is time her other books saw the light of day again eg her 1953 biography of the Italian poet Leopardi whose proliferous Notebooks have just been published in a huge translated version, 

Through Tourist eyes - and taste buds

A hectic few days as my youngest daughter and her husband flew in for a long weekend. Sofia and Bulgaria were looking at their best – with the early morning mist, later sun and autumn foliage much in evidence as we visited the isolated redoubt of Koporivishtica village to the east of Sofia and, the next day, Rilski Monastery two hours’ drive south of Sofia.

Koprivshtitsa is a captivating mountain town, unique with its cobblestone alleys, houses painted in bright colors with expansive verandahs and picturesque eaves.
During the Ottoman rule, Koprivshtitsa withstood many a raid- although it was reduced to ashes several times and its inhabitants were frequently robbed and driven away.
The wealthier townsfolk managed to “ransom” Koprivshtitsa from the Turkish rulers and win some special privileges, thus keeping the Bulgarian traditions and atmosphere of the town intact.
In this way Koprivshtitsa was able to preserve its freedom-loving, patriotic spirit and hand it down to its children. Quite a few Bulgarians who laid down their lives for the liberation of their country were born here.

The April Uprising, which broke out in Koprivshtitsa on April 20, 1876, gave voice to the desire and efforts of the Bulgarian people to win back its freedom after five centuries of Ottoman oppression. A lot of foreign journalists reported the events of the spring of 1876 and showed the world that there was a people on the Balkan Peninsula who had not lost their identity and were willing to strive for independence. Eventually, in 1878 Bulgaria won the freedom it had so long yearned for, at least partly helped by the publicity of the April Uprising and its subsequent brutal suppression.

We were not the only ones to visit Rila – one of my favourite ex-pat bloggers about the Sofia scene (now sadly back in the US) was there at the beginning of the month (and also at Plovdiv)

Rilski Monastery is now a UNESCO site and, much as I enjoyed this time the exuberance of the recently repainted artwork,

I felt that it was actually a bit over the top and inconsistent with the soul of the place. The screams of hordes of kids shattered what little calm the Saturday crowds allowed the monks in their warren of cells.

The only calm element were the postures of the 3 Japanese visitors who sketched the buildings.

 In between times a bachanalian  feast of Bulgarian dishes and wines was enjoyed – particularly at the two restaurants in my area, one of which is vegetarian and cooks superb black bread on the premises,

Words ....and silences

I suppose I live an odd life – for the past 23 years in countries whose languages I don’t speak (although I had a good stab at Russian during the 7 years I spent in its old empire in Central Asia and the Caucasus). But the last 6 years I’ve been living alternately in Bulgaria and Romania and confess to have made no real effort to learn their languages - which are just so much musical background for me. I note the different intonations, stresses, voice and delivery pitches as if I was listening to a symphony….

I think, read and write in English – and am spoiled by having access to great English bookshops in Bucharest and Sofia (the latter the second-hand “Elephant” just a few minutes’ stroll from my flat). It was my first port of call the day of my arrival and I quickly picked up a couple of books - Dennis Healey’s Time of my Life (a 1989 hardback) and Dervla Murphy’s Silverland – a winter journey beyond  the Urals . Murphy has become a favourite of mine and I have always had a soft spot for Labour statesman Healey - he may have been a bruiser but he was (indeed is - going strong at 95 like his friend Helmut Schmidt) a highly cultured man with a real European perspective - working in the Socialist International in the 1930s - a taste of poetry and paintings and strong opinions. 

The next day I was back and left with three interesting books  - Tony Benn’s More Time for Politics- Diaries 2001-2007 ; Arthur Marwick’s British Society since 1945 (2003) ; and Roy Jenkins’ Gallery of 20^th Century Portraits (1988)

Coincidentally I came across an excellent Bulgarian online bookstore which gives short resumes in English and actually has a short list of books in English on Bulgarian topics. The resumes give me precisely the glimpse of Bulgarian life I need.

I don’t mind not being able to read the newspapers (which contain noise in every country we are better off without) but I do miss not being part of other conversations on matters literary and artistic.

And, while on the subject of noise, let me draw your attention to a fascinating read - A Book of Silence by Sarah Maitland

The sculpture is one of the bronze ones which are in the grounds of the Sofia City Art Gallery.
The oil painting I got for 50 euros from my antique dealer Alexander Alesandriev and is by an unknown. The sketch (also from the AA gallery) is apparently by (or of?) Petr Chukovsky, a teacher of Ilyia Beshkov.

Two who died too young

Two wonderful exhibitions – first the Sofia City Gallery’s one of Jules Pascin’s amusing erotic drawings from 100 years ago.

I wrote about Pascin last October - referring to a dedicated website  and a blogpost about his oil portraits, The gallery's coverage says - Julius Mordecai Pincas, known as Jules Pascin, was born on 31 March, 1885 in the city of Vidin. In 1892, his family moved to Bucharest. Pascin graduated from high school in Vienna. Between 1902 and 1905 he received training at the art academies in Vienna, Budapest, Munich and Berlin. He contributed to the “Simplicissimus “ magazine published in Munich. In 1905, he moved to Paris, where he met his future wife, Hermine David. In 1907, he organized his first solo exhibition at Paul Cassirer’s gallery in Berlin. In 1914 he left for New York, where he lived until 1920. He travelled to the Southern states and Cuba. Then he went back to Paris, where he lived until his death in 1930. Pascin reflected in his paintings the influence of Art Noveau, and later – of expressionism. The exhibition includes artworks belonging to all major themes and genres but particularly the nude body,

There is an exhibition catalogue in Bulgarian and French, including all artworks featured in the exhibition. The research paper “Jules Pascin and Artistic Developments at the Turn of the 20th Century”, compiled by the exhibition’s curator Maria Vassileva is also available (again in Bulgarian and French) as a separate edition.

I then paid a visit to the School of Art in Vassil Levsky Boulevard – and was very touched to view a small exhibition of the aquarelles of a young man - Margarit Tsanev - who committed suicide in 1969 at the age of only 25. 
The curator told me that they had been found only in the 1980s (?) and donated to the School - which exhibits them annually on a rotating basis. Pity the exhibition ends tomorrow!

Remembering Europe

Drove up to the mountain house at the end of last week – the village is under half a metre of snow and was shivering in minus 13 during the night. But the place was beautiful. 

Had to check out the alarm – which had been triggered either by the powerful high winds early last week or by mice. Everything was in order and properly operational. 

A log fire had the bedroom snug and warm in no time – the heat lasting in the brick-stove for a good day. So two books (and some Bulgarian and Romanian wine) were duly consumed – the former being the spell-binding The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal; and Hilary Spurling’s gripping Matisse – the Life 

Both books evoke the worlds of the late 19^th/early 20^th Century – but using very different approaches.  De Waal’s book is a one of a kind – using a collection of small Japanese ivory artefacts to weave a highly personal story of an emblematic banking family in first Paris, then Vienna and, finally, Tokyo. A whole era is superbly captured in his taut prose – culminating in the destruction of family fortunes in one week with the Nazi putsch of Austria in 1938. 

I also have a (small but) lovely collection of Uzbek terra cotta artefacts which I treasure - so I can understand the fascination.

Spurling’s purpose is more biographically conventional – but the tale she tells of the courage of Matisse in facing outrage and frequent migrations in the first half of the 20^th century is a vivid one. His powerful sense of colour was apparently developed as a child in the environment of the silk-weaving towns of NE France and she paints a wonderful picture of a man driven with his own sense of what was right.
This is the sort of detail I need when I meet a painter whose work speaks to me; and which I would love to develop for many of the Bulgarian and Romanian artists of the same period.
I have become an avid collector of books about such artists but the cyrillic of the Bulgarian texts totally defeats me. The Romanian texts I can make stabs at!
You can therefore imagine my delight at being presented yesterday with a large book in English - Bulgarian Art; 120 years - 1892-2012 - Unions, Societies and Groups - published in 2012 with superb reproductions.So many new names!! Although, sadly, no details are given of their lives - instead we are fed a general drip of references to internecine squabbles between the various artists's associations - with no attempt made to explain them.
There is one blog which does sterling work in sketching vignettes of the lives of interesting older artists - its called my daily art display

Early Sunday morning a significant earthquake (5.2) was experienced by people in central Romania - my partner was in her Ploiesti flat and had to seek shelter under the eaves of the hallway as the place trembled. Very frightening - particularly as everyone is fearing the next big one to hit Bucharest........ 

Back Monday in Sofia after a gap of 5 months – a beautiful run down, just 5 hours in a Kia loaned by the nice management by way of apology for the delay in my car’s arrival.

Georghe Stefanescu

It’s a curious fact that most of the Romanian painters I have come to know and appreciate in the past few months were born in the 1860-1900 period – whereas almost all of the 150 Bulgarians who figure in the little book I produced last year about realist Bulgarian painters were born a generation (30 or so years) later. What, I wonder, does that say about cross-national influences? Thanks to Theodor Aman, Bucharest certainly attracted some Bulgarian  painters at the turn of the century – but it was the city of Munich which had the pulling power for Bulgarian artists then.    

Georghe Stefanescu (1914-2007) is one of the few new faces in Romanian circles of that interbellum period. Earlier this week I found an attractive painting attributed to him in one of the Bucharest antique shops. I cannot, of course, be sure whether the painting is actually one of his - but he certainly had a lovely sense of colour - and the composition I saw (for 300 euros) has a mastery which appeals - this picture gives a sense. If I buy it I will put it online.

This facebook entry has some nice photographs of the guy in his studio.

Kia "service"

The Kia car company markets itself very well with its 7-year guarantee – but my experience of trying to buy one of its cars here in Romania makes me wonder what this guarantee is actually worth.

In early July I placed a deposit for one of its Ceeds and was assured it would arrive in late August. That date came and went – without anyone from Kia bothering to get in touch. 

On 2 September I sent a formal letter of complaint to one George Damian at the sales office here in Bucharest – but have not even received the courtesy of an acknowledgement. And I am also still waiting for details of their service network which I asked about in July. 

My experience has now raised some doubts in my mind about the type of service I am likely to receive when I need to activate the guarantee – whether for emergency repairs of the regular annual service. How far will I need to travel to find one of their service points? And will they bear the transport costs of an emergency repair?

This casual (if not contemptuous) approach to customers is, sadly, typical of most (if not all) companies in this part of the world, I have been amazed when approaching estate agents in both Bucharest and Sofia about purchasing property to find how little they seem to care about us. How, I wonder, do they make their money?

Update; I wrote this morning to the Managing Director of Kia Romania and was very impressed to receive an apologetic response within the hour from him promising a detailed explanation and outcome.......watch this space.....
further update; on 7 October (the day I left Bucharest) I received a message from the MD indicating that the car had arrived!