(This is an E-class, or Elementary, bulletin with D-class, or Divertive, aspects, while its mood is far from Congenial – C-class.)
One of the advantages of running coldspur, and having complete editorial control, is that I can publish my beefs and bellyaches without having to deal with the gateways of magazine Letters Editors, the obstructions of institutional bureaucracies, or the need to engage a psychiatrist to hear me out. I was debating with myself whether I really needed to document some recent frustrations when I came across, in Prospect magazine of August/September, a review of a book titled Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives, by Sam Park. Well, I am not sure that I need my life to be irrevocably changed at this late stage, but, since Park’s message was apparently ‘Let anger be. Channel it. Don’t bottle it up’, I am going to follow Mr. Park’s advice.
Readers may recall that I mentioned in my coldspur report in June how disappointed I had been in my exchanges (or lack of such) with the Development Office at Christ Church, Oxford, my alma mater. After confirming my engagement to talk at Whitgift School, in early May, I had looked around for other speaking opportunities. My first consideration was Christ Church, which, in a remarkable coincidence, is celebrating its quincentennial this year. Now, I must confess that I had become rather disillusioned with the college, after the unfortunate business involving Martyn Percy (no relation), dean of the ‘House’ (as the college is known, from the Latin term ‘Aedes Christi’) from 2014 to 2022. I had been a generous donor to the institution, and had met Dr. Percy on one of my travels, back in 2016 (see https://coldspur.com/doctor-in-the-house/). I must admit that I had found Dr. Percy a somewhat odd choice for dean: he was an outspoken socialist, and a self-promoter who associated himself with some unusual causes. For instance, if you inspect his Wikipedia entry, you will learn that he was a founding fellow of the Centre for Theologically Engaged Anthropology at the University of Georgia. Why the study of anthropology had to be enhanced (or diminished) by such considerations is a mystery to me, and what Dean Percy was doing proselytizing in the Bible Belt is also a puzzlement, but then I am not an expert on these matters.
The Dean of Christ Church is an unusual position. Christ Church is the only academic institution in the world that is also a cathedral. Percy thus carried out an important role leading the Oxford diocese while also being responsible for the overall policies and administration of the college. And he soon fell out with the governing body because of his reforming zeal. The governing body then tried to get rid of him. What followed was very distasteful, and I did not believe that the body behaved at all auspiciously in trying to oust the cleric whom it had hired. The feud went on for years, with much money being spent on lawyers’ fees (of course), and it was a dishonourable stain on Christ Church’s reputation. I thus suspended any thoughts of support for my old college – until this summer’s opportunity.
I was prepared to offer my contribution to this year’s celebrations. I thought a revisionist lecture on the subject of the college’s alumnus Dick White, the only man to head MI5 and MI6, would make an attractive event in September. Christ Church has a rich connection with the intelligence world, counting among its alumni John Masterman, who chaired the wartime Double-Cross Committee, Hugh Trevor-Roper of the Radio Intelligence Service, and Robert Armstrong, who put on that very embarrassing performance at the Spycatcher trial. I thus thought I could offer a stimulating confection of stories with Dick White at the center. I duly wrote to the Development Officer in the middle of May, making a solid case for the opportunity, and rather immodestly promoting my experiences as a speaker and historian. By June 3, I had not received any acknowledgment, so I wrote again, to another Development Officer, inquiring what had happened. I received a short reply, indicating that the Office was very busy, but it would be in touch with me soon.
The weeks rolled by. Nothing happened. And then, out of the blue, in early August I received a general invitation from the Christ Church Development Association to attend an event on September 22, at which lectures would be given! (My original itinerary had me leaving the UK on September 24, but I had brought the whole exercise forward to accommodate another invitation earlier in the month, and I now had my return flight booked for September 17.) I immediately wrote to the Development Officer, expressing my dismay and astonishment, and reminding her of my offer. I vaguely thought that, if she had considered including me, there might be time to extend my visit, offer the lecture, and change my return flight. But, after three days of no response, I gave up. In desperation I wrote to the Senior Censor at Christ Church, recounting the whole sorry story, and expressing my disgust at the lack of professionalism of the development team.
My membership of academia.edu then gave me an important insight. Within twenty minutes of my sending the email, I received a message from academia.edu informing me that someone had googled my name, and had found my review of ‘Agent Sonya’ on that website. I was able to determine from what city that inquiry had come, finding from the site that it was from a professional academic at the University of Oxford. The Senior Censor must have been stimulated by my message to investigate who I was. And, indeed, she responded within an hour or two, was sympathetic, and offered her regrets, but said it was too late to include me. She effectively excused the pair since they had been extraordinarily busy all summer. My request must have ‘fallen through the net’. I thought that excuse was particularly feeble. I recall, when arriving in the United States in 1980, complaining to a colleague about requests or memoranda being completely ignored, and receiving the explanation that they must have ‘fallen through the cracks’, as if the hazard of terrestrial chasms were a valid explanation for managerial indolence. Efficient managers do not simply paper over the cracks, they seal them. And Development Managers trying to boost the endowment should not operate over nets with big holes in them – a characteristic feature of nets, I believe.
It would have taken two minutes to compose a message, on the lines of what the Censor told me, a couple of months ago, one that I would have graciously accepted. What else would these people be, apart from ‘busy’? Idle? I told her that I would have fired the pair of them. She wondered whether I would be willing to talk on a later visit, but I said I wanted nothing more to do with Christ Church while either of them was still employed in the Development Office. And that is the last I heard from the College. The abject Development Officers have not reached out to me to offer any apology or explanation. And the saga of Dick White shall remain unrevealed to the Christ Church ‘community’.
Yet this sad incident was perhaps exceeded by another barren attempt at an exchange with the Friends of the National Archives, of which I am a Lifetime Member. Several years ago, I had struck up a very cordial on-line relationship with Dr. Tony Wakeford, then a very enthusiastic and well-organized Chairman of the Friends. We discussed Rudolf Peierls, scientists at Harwell, ‘Agent Sonya’, and other topics, and found we had similar opinions. I have in my records an email from him dated December 2020, where he wrote: “If you are zoomable, perhaps we could catch up in the New Year and have a chat about doing a talk sometime for the Friends? May be a talk or perhaps an interview style discussion about the pitfalls of using evidence etc., records held at Kew or something more specific of your choice.” I did not – and still do not – use Zoom, but responded enthusiastically. Tony was responsible for setting up physical talks – Helen Fry appeared in March of 2021 – and I looked forward to an opportunity to act similarly on my next visit to the United Kingdom.
And then Dr Wakeford retired. So when I considered the Friends as a secondary option for delivering a talk during my visit, I had a new President to contact, a name and personality familiar to me from the pages of Magna, the Friends’ magazine. I thus wrote to her, offering them a choice of topics, highlighting a revisionist account of the ‘Cambridge 5’, for a date in September. Having not received any acknowledgment (let alone a reply) to my email by mid-June, I re-sent my message to the Secretary of the group, and again sat back, waiting for a reply. By mid-July, with no response, I gave up, and excised the Friends from my possible itinerary.
As it happened, that same week, following a tip from a coldspur reader, I watched an on-line presentation by a National Archives functionary – an earnest and well-intentioned archivist – on the subject of ‘Burgess and Maclean’, and their escape in 1951. I was intrigued to know what perspective he would bring to the topic, and whether he had used any of my research, so I signed up. The talk was dire. The speaker was not a gifted orator: he er-ed and um-ed, and mumbled. He was not a trained historian: he appeared to assume that all he read in the archives was true. Yet he had not studied all the relevant archival material in depth. He admitted to having large gaps in his knowledge: he confessed that he really did not know what role Goronwy Rees played in the whole farrago. He never mentioned Dick White, or Anthony Blunt, or William Strang, but spent an inordinate amount of time on the communications between Burgess and his mother, Mrs. Bassett. He ran out of time: but I had had enough by then, anyway.
I immediately contacted the Events Manager, informed her of my complaints about the talk, and let her know of my abortive attempts to interest the Friends in a similar presentation that would have exploited the archives, but in a way that applied some methodology and professional historiography (which the presenter lacked). She was sympathetic, but the long and the short of it were that she pointed out that the Friends was a completely separate entity from The National Archives, and, apart from reaching out to find me a fresh contact (which she promised to do, but never followed up), there was no help she could offer. (Would not the Friends and the Archives have some sort of collegial relationship, I asked myself?) She invited me to post a complaint, but I regarded that as a fruitless exercise, and I had done enough writing by then. Meanwhile, the Great British Public has been sorely misled, and MI5 has been able to exploit another unqualified person to help its propaganda.
The final insult was that, shortly afterwards, I received a survey from TNA, asking me my opinion of the talk. I duly filled in the appropriate boxes, but then encountered the inevitable final questions where the surveyors wanted to know my race, and lastly whether I was ‘neurodivergent’ in any way! What were these people thinking? Who put them up to it? What were they going to do with all this probably spurious data once they received it? Reconfigure future talks to make them more acceptable to the ‘neurodivergent community’ – as it is inevitably called? They would be much more productively employed in ensuring that some sort of professional quality control over such ventures be exercised. It occurs to me that I am probably not the only person who has been adversely affected by the incompetence of bureaucracies whose officers certainly should know better. After all, why should I be singled out? But what syndrome has affected these institutions, whose user-facing officers cannot even do the simple things well? I have no idea. At least I feel better, having got all this off my chest.