Category Archives: Personal

Students of human evolution may have encountered stories in the press over the past year that ‘we’ are a hybrid species – specifically that modern human beings interbred with at least two groups of other ‘human’ species, in particular the Neanderthals and the Denisovans, about 50,000 years ago. (The New York Times reporter called the latter group ‘mysterious’, presumably because it destroyed all records of its charter and member rolls, like MI6, whereas the Neanderthals were prototypical Liberal Democrats, and believed in open access and maximum publicity.) Now I don’t know if there is a word that expresses the notion that homo sapiens is culturally superior to other hominid cousins (anthropomorphism is already taken, and anything around homo- is fraught with danger), but this strikes me as a very arrogant and unscientific way of presenting the facts. After all, if ‘we’ interbred with Neanderthals (or those Denisovans, who were in fact far more alluring because of their mystery), weren’t those Neanderthals part of ‘us’, too? It is not as if the offspring of a Neanderthal and an – ahem – ‘modern’ humanoid lady, taught to be houseproud and to clean his fingernails regularly, could have told his father: “Sorry, Dad, you’re a Neanderthal, and I’m not, and I’m not going to put up with your filthy habits any longer.”

Now this analysis raises all sorts of testy questions about the immutability of species, and the gradualism of evolution, and may remind us that our DNA has a helluva lot in common with that of fruitflies, anyway. I don’t intend to go into those questions now. All this is mere preamble to the fact that, this month, I ordered my DNA testing-kit from the Genographic Project via National Geographic Magazine, took the swab samples from my cheeks, and sent them by mail to Texas. By this method, I shall learn, in a few weeks, about my own biological heritage, and how closely I am related to Attila the Hun, which would explain a lot about my famed curmudgeonliness. I suspect it will also show a dense packing of Denisovan genes, which would account for my fascination with spies and detective stories and cryptic crosswords, and for my absorption with the Great Mysteries of Life. And when my wife accuses me of being enigmatic and obtuse, I can just tell her: “Sorry, dear. It’s in my DNA.”  More to follow in a few weeks.

A new year of Commonplace entries starts here.                                                                                                                                                     (January 31, 2013)

I post another separate article this month, ‘Emily Davison’s Wig’, which contains some typical socio-historical musings touched with some personal interest. Through the magic of electronic publication, I am able to make a minor clarification to ‘September Spooks‘, and add two freshly mined anecdotes to ‘Reflections on the North Downs‘. The normal updates to the Commonplace book appear, as well as a few other sundry items added to the files of Rolls-Royce Quotations and Hyperbolic Contrast Examples.                           (November 30, 2013)

My October report ended up being so long that I made it a separate document, at ‘September Spooks‘, suitable for Halloween. The normal Commonplace updates appear.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     (October 31, 2013)

A premature posting for September, as I am leaving for the UK on September 18, not returning until October 8. I shall be visiting the National Archives at Kew, the Bodleian and Balliol Libraries in Oxford, and the archive of Churchill College, Cambridge, with my seminar on Sir Isaiah Berlin at Buckingham in between (seehttp://www.buckingham.ac.uk/research/prebend-seminars). I also hope to see several old friends. This month also saw my latest Listener crossword puzzle offering, titled ‘Lassoed’, published in the Times on September 7. The Commonplace entries posted this month are few in number.                                                            (September 17, 2013)

Another month goes by. I am preparing for my seminar at the University of Buckingham on October 3. A varied set of Commonplace items, with several quotations on Jewry from Isaac Deutscher and Arthur Koestler.                                                                                                                                                                                   (August 31, 2013)

Little news this month. I have been intensely involved with my research into Walter Krivitsky. Just a few new Commonplace items.                                             (July 31, 2013)

June was a joyful month: our daughter-in-law, Lien, gave birth to identical twin girls, Alexis and Alyssa, sisters to Ashley, on June 17. (Those devotees of social media can find James and his family at www.facebook.com/james.percy.186. ) All are doing well. The nature of this birth has been known to us for months: I was reminded of how far we have come when I picked up the new biography of Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore in the Wilmington bookshop, and read that, when the Iron Lady’s twins were born, her husband, Denis, was watching cricket at the Oval, and did not even know that twins were expected.                                                                                           (June 30, 2013)

This last day of May saw me score my best-ever round of golf – a 77 on the Cate-Irwin Back combination at my home club, the Members at St. James. It is not the most demanding of courses: about 5800 yards off the white tees, but it has plenty of hazards and pitfalls in the form of water and sand, many of which I normally encounter, and the greens are notoriously tricky and grainy. I scored nine pars, two birdies, and seven bogeys. As with many outstanding rounds (so I am told), it could have been so much better. I three-putted four greens, missed a two-foot putt for par on Number 4, and a curling five-footer for birdie on the last hole. When I attempted to enter my score on the on-line system, it was rejected at first for being ‘out of my normal range’. Indeed.    (Just the regular Commonplace updates this month.)                                                  (May 31, 2013)

The results from my DNA testing were disappointing – not because of my shameful Denisovan ancestors, but because they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already. It turns out that I am 45% Northern European, 38% Mediterranean, and 17% South-West Asian. (That last bit probably comes from the Neolithic expansion, perhaps from the Eastern part of the Fertile Crescent.) But guess what? That pattern almost exactly matches the mixture predominantly found in – the United Kingdom! So British is my first reference population, and the second is German. (That can be traced to Luke Blumer, who came over to Hull a couple of centuries ago.) I am 1.9% Neanderthal, and 1.5% Denisovan. And that’s it. Of course, National Geographic now wants me to provide information about my family tree, so they can refine their work, but I have other fish to fry. For anyone who knows a lot about their immediate ancestors, I wouldn’t recommend this test. It is quite expensive, and won’t tell you much.

By a strange coincidence, just as I was about to post this text, I read in today’s New York Times an article about cannibalism in 1609 in colonial Williamsburg. The piece quoted a letter written in 1625 by George Percy, president of Jamestown during the starvation period, confirming that incredible things were done, ‘as to digge upp deade corpes out of graves and to eate them’. The article reported that recent analysis of the skull of a 14-year-old girl gave evidence that she had been used as food after her death and burial. It went on to say that ‘the ration of oxygen in her bones indicated that she had grown up in the southern coastal regions of England, and the carbon isotopes pointed to a diet that included English rye and barley.’

[Since I have just returned from a week’s holiday/vacation in Vero Beach, Florida, I shall be not be posting new Commonplace entries for a few days. (Done on May 5.)]                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          (May 2, 2013)

Since posting the Reflections piece last month, I have read Nina Berberova’s biography of Moura Budberg. She claims that the young lady with whom Robert Bruce Lockhart had  a dalliance with in St. Petersburg was an actress, and not Moura Budberg, whom he met later. I have thus amended my story. This may not have been the most exciting discovery of the month, but it should be recorded. Again, I have posted a new set of Commonplace entries that show that my reading focus of late has been very intently on espionage and political matters around World War II.  And at the exact moment when I was composing this sentence, I received an email telling me that the results of my DNA analysis from the Genographic Project were available. I’ll report on this fully next month.      (March 31, 2013)

This month I was going to post a reminiscent anecdote about a visit back to England last year, but it developed into something a bit too long for this column, so I made it into a separate article: ‘ReflectionsOnTheNorthDowns‘. The analysis of my DNA sample is meanwhile proceeding on schedule. The usual Commonplace updates.  (February 28, 2013)

Another year of Commonplace entries goes in the books, as well as some updates to examples of Hyperbolic Contrasts, and references to Rolls-Royces. In January, I start my course for an M. Phil. degree with the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham. This will be carried out almost exclusively remotely, although I plan to go to the UK for some of the research. It will leverage some of the work that I have been undertaking into the thoughts and actions of Sir Isaiah Berlin (as yet unpublished!). What it will mean is that my reading in the next couple of years will have to be rather more focussed, and thus items deemed appropriate for entry in the Commonplace Book will not have such an eclectic range. I wish a Happy 2013 to all my readers.  (December 31, 2012)

One phenomenon that intrigues me is the representation of articles that appear in the press, and their appearance in electronic form on the Web. One might expect the New York Times, for instance, with its slogan ‘All the News That’s Fit To Print’, to take very seriously the journalistic record that it commits to posterity. Yet its editors sometimes display an unnervingly cavalier attitude to stories that have already appeared in the printed newspaper, emending the text  ̶  not always to reflect the evolution of the news, but to sanitize or even censor what has been published. On Sunday, November 25, the Times published a story titled ‘Israel and Hamas Are United in Seeing Scant Value in Compromise’. It included comments from Efraim Halevy, former chief of Mossad. The text ran as follows:                                                                                                                                   ‘Efraim Halevy, former chief of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, said that Israel had three alternatives in Gaza: to destroy Hamas, leaving the enclave to its more radical groups; to reoccupy the area, which it evacuated in 2005; or to start a process where the hostile environment is slowly reduced by preventing the influx of new weapons into Gaza while allowing Hamas to increase its civilian political role. “After the elections are over, Israel will have to sit down and ask itself, ‘Where do we go from here?’ ” Mr. Halevy said in an interview.  “If you aim for deterrence rather than trying to destroy your enemy,” he added, “that means you accept his legitimacy, I think.”’

Yet the on-line version has been dramatically changed (see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-and-hamas-are-united-in-seeing-scant-value-in-compromise.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=tw-nytimes&partner=rss&emc=rss. Among the changes is the omission of Mr. Halevy’s last remark about deterrence, one that could be considered quite controversial.  I questioned the Editors about this apparent act of censorship, but got nowhere. The Public Editor (who represents the readers, and writes a regular column), was a little more outgoing and sympathetic, through her assistant Joseph Burgess. He initially suggested that it had been removed ‘for space considerations’, but the final response I received from him was: “As The Times said to you earlier, The Times routinely adds and removes information throughout the day as a story develops.”

This is patently nonsense. There are no space limits on-line, and the extended quotation had nothing to do with the development of the story. I suspect someone drew attention to the fact that Mr. Halevy’s comments could be considered as being unduly hawkish and thus ‘unhelpful’ to the peace process. I suspect the editors of the paper thought it was something they could get away with.                                                                                                                                                               (November 30, 2012)

I cannot yet report progress or status on the project that has consumed me recently. Thus this month’s posting merely draws attention to new Commonplace entries, and a poem on Anthony Blunt: ‘To The Ramparts!’     (October 31, 2012)

The main event in September was my brother’s wedding in London. While I was in the UK, I was pleased to be able to meet Dr. Henry Hardy, the editor of Sir Isaiah Berlin’s works, in the Wirral, and Professor Anthony Glees, Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, in his university town. My research into Berlinian topics of pluralism and multi-culturalism resulted in an unusual set of quotations on various ethnic and religious practices in my September Commonplace entries. I also heard from the Woodland Trust that it had at last posted my poem on its website, and had tastefully added a few photographs to illustrate it. It can be seen at:http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/woodwatch/woodwatchers/Pages/theenglishnamesforwood.aspx                        (September 30, 2012

This month has been consumed by a special project – about which more will be revealed soon. Meanwhile – the normal set of Commonplace updates. (August 31, 2012)

My July reading was dominated by several volumes of memoirs, predominantly of the inter-war years. First was Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s The Way the Wind Blows, in which I was interested, primarily, in order to fill out my picture of the Prime Minister’s view of his education at Christ Church. Next was an item that had been highly recommended in some periodical or book – but I can’t for the life of me recall where! – Ronald Fraser’s In Search of a Past, subtitled The Rearing of an English Gentleman 1933-1945, an attempt, via both psychoanalysis, and recording of oral recollections, by an alienated adult to come to grips with his family and pampered background. The third was Goronwy Rees’s A Chapter of Accidents, focusing on the author’s acquaintance with Guy Burgess. I wanted to go back to the source to discover more clearly how Burgess was allowed to get away with his errant behaviour, and what Rees’s stance on Communism and espionage, and his relationship with Burgess, was. I picked up in a second-hand bookshop Frances Donaldson’s A Twentieth-Century Life; I felt it was a name I should know (biographer of Edward VIII and P. G. Wodehouse), but wouldn’t have been able to place her as a farmer who taught herself to write. Lastly was the extraordinary Snows of Yesteryear, by Gregor von Rezzori. Von Rezzori had dazzled me with his ironic Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, and I at last got round to buying this volume (the local public library’s copy is missing).

Each was pleasurable, but in different ways. Douglas-Home’s boyhood showed not a trace of the angst that dominates the others, but his largely anecdotal account of his political life reflects a wisdom to which his overall reputation does not do justice. Fraser’s account of his mother’s behavior, and the attitudes of the servants whom he engaged to invoke the past, is moving, but a little self-indulgent. Rees’s memoir is somewhat windy, but reveals a number of telling events and observations that deserve re-inspection after all this time, such as the friends he semi-identifies at Burgess’s wild parties. There was little of significance in the Donaldson book, although the claims of Donaldson and her husband for being socialists when they complain about having to hire servants, cheerfully exploit the Stock Market during the Abdication, sluice around the world at the taxpayer’s expense, and then buy a second house in a prime South Downs location, were a bit hard to swallow. (They did claim also that the Healeys were their friends – a relationship that Denis acknowledges, at least concerning Donaldson’s husband: see TheFriendsofDenisHealey).

The von Rezzori volume, however, is a classic work of recollection and imagination, primarily of his childhood in the Bukovina (part of Austro-Hungary ceded to Romania in 1918),  one dominated by another manipulative and neurotic mother, and influenced by a father who is a kind of Transylvanian Farve Mitford. It is beautifully written (and superbly translated from the German by H. F. Broch de Rothermann), and highly evocative. All five books bear the shadow of the Thirties in them, and the nervous wondering whether the twin monsters of Nazism and Communism might devour them all, on which perils each makes its unique commentary. I also read Erik Larson’s In the Garden of the Beasts, a very clever reconstruction of the life of the American ambassador’s family in Berlin during Hitler’s dictatorship. I have selected key passages from all these in myCommonplaceBook.

On June 23^rd, the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth, the Times published a Listener crossword puzzle by me, titled ‘SUM’, which celebrated him and the logical machine to which he gave his name.                                                                                                                                                                                (July 31, 2012)

A few years ago, I visited my old college friend, Derek Taylor, at his home in Stow-on-the-Wold. During one of our country walks, we started musing about all the English names for ‘wood’ (e.g. hurst, spinney, copse). The idea stuck in my mind, and for a long time I wondered how all those words might be celebrated. This spring, I concluded my research and composition, and the result can be seen in a new section of this website, Verses: The EnglishNamesForWood. I dedicated this piece to the Woodland Trust, an organization in the UK dedicated to the preservation of trees and woodland. It has been a bit of a struggle getting any response from this group, but I am hopeful that someone from the charity may actually read my piece in the near future.

Derek has recently published a very entertaining book, A Horse in the Bathroom, and I encourage any reader of this passage to visit his website athttp://www.derekjtaylorbooks.com/ , and then, of course, buy the book.                                                                                                                    (June 30, 2012)

I paid a visit to the UK in the second half of May. One of the highlights of my trip was a day spent in Oxford on May 23^rd, where my brother and I viewed a room at Oriel College dedicated to our father. I was also able to renew contacts with officers at the Bodleian Library.

Earlier this year, I had read Fullness of Days, the memoir by Lord Halifax, the British politician and His Majesty’s Ambassador to the US during WWII. One episode described by Lord Halifax is the conversion of Harvard into Oxford, so that the latter could confer an honorary degree on President Roosevelt in 1941. This required that ‘all who could be discovered in the United States with Oxford Doctors’ or Masters’ Degrees were got together; two Masters became proctors for the occasion’. The black and gold gown of Lord Halifax (sometime Chancellor of Oxford University) was brought over, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, the President was indisposed and unable to attend, so he asked General Watson (Pa) to deputise for him, which meant that Pa had to read the President’s speech. Halifax then states that “After his death Mrs Watson gave me the typescript from which her husband had read
the President’s acceptance speech and which is now lodged in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It is historically interesting, not only for its connexion with what I believe to be a unique occasion in the history of Oxford University, but also for the marginal note by the President near its end. ‘Here Pa will sing ‘Take me back to Old Virginny.’” I could find no reference to this speech in the many biographies of Roosevelt on hand at the UNCW Library in Wilmington, and emailed the Bodleian to determine whether the document was inspectable. They were at first very surprised at my request, but, after a few weeks, were able to locate the document – in good condition, and I was thus privileged to be able to view it in the temporary vault set up while the New Bodleian is restructured.  It does not reveal much of significance, the bulk of the address consisting of a quotation by the then US Ambassador to Great Britain, John Winant. An obvious incongruity is the note of levity introduced by Roosevelt’s marginal note, which is in sharp contrast to the very solemn tenor of the speech.                        More on my visit in next month’s report.                                                                                                                          (May 31, 2012)

Reading Eric Hobsbawm’s selection of essays, On History, was a puzzling experience. The committed Marxist historian and unrepentant member of the Communist party can show a light touch, and vivid insights, but can also write clunking sentences that would never get past an alert don at a Cambridge tutorial. His narrative is frequently strait-jacketed by vague personifications and the dismal Marxist categories of class that dominate his thinking. For example, he rightly states that there is no such thing as black history, or women’s history, or homosexual history – only history, but then undermines his whole philosophy by insisting that Marxian insights are alone what give history its structure and purpose. Thus I was also surprised by Tony Judt’s plaudits for Hobsbawm in the former’s Thinking the Twentieth Century, a book comprising conversations between Judt and the historian Timothy Snyder shortly before Judt died in 2010. Judt, a declared ‘man of the left’ himself – although what that means apart from a belief in state welfarism is not clear – identifies the damage that influential historians have performed in ignoring the massacres that have consistently occurred in the name of Marx, Engels and Lenin, or treating them as unfortunate mistakes in the Great Socialist Experiment, but appears to exclude Hobsbawm from his targets. Judt has an appealing iconoclastic bent: he is overall incisive and refreshing about the role of the public intellectual in laying open the truths that lie behind politics, and fulfils that job well. Unfortunately he shares with Snyder an apparent belief that intellectuals can therefore be experts in everything – while asserting that most economists (not all?) just confuse the public. The conversations conclude with some wishy-washy and fashionable observations on ‘the crisis of capitalism’, calling for greater intervention and regulation by the governments of the liberal democracies without analyzing their failures in contributing to the problem by virtue of unsustainable deficits. It seems to me that such an observation crisply encapsulates the hollowness of leftist intellectualism, which a) assumes that the fruits of wealth-creating entrepreneurialism can be taken for granted; b) presents what are really aspects of political spending choices as moral, instead of pragmatic, questions; and, c) overlooks the fact that the Law of Unintended Consequences will almost certainly play a dominant part in any decisions made. A rich sample of quotations, showing the strengths and weaknesses of both writers, appears in this month’s Commonplace entries.                                                           (April 30, 2012)