Recent Commonplace Entries

May

“Victors and perpetrators were mixed together in the same families, ethic groups, and lines of descent  . . .  If the Nazi Holocaust exterminated the Other, the Soviet terror was suicidal. The self-inflicted nature of Soviet terror had complicated the circulation of three energies that structure the postcatastrophic world: a cognitive striving to learn about the catastrophe; and emotional desire to mourn for its victims; and an active desire to find justice and take revenge on the perpetrators. . . The suicidal nature of the Soviet atrocities made revenge all but impossible, and even learning very difficult.” (Alexander Etkind, in Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied, pp 8-9, quoted by Masha Gessen in The Future is History, p 143)

“A chapter on ravens explains that we domesticated dogs around 13,000 BC, but we were living with and eating ravens in 28,000 BC.” (Horatio Clare, in review of Adam Nicolson’s Bird School: A Beginner in the Wood, in Spectator, May 3)

“To understand what really went haywire in the Americas, you have to replace traditional prejudices with three ingredients of a helpful perspective: first, awareness of environment (which, while it determines nothing, limits and conditions everything that humans do); second, appreciation that the best approach is regional and transnational; third, acknowledgement that history is not the predictable or inevitable product of long-grinding determinants, but a series of sudden or short-lived contingencies that scatter opportunities and challenges apparently at random. However daunting the impersonal, material forces may seem, the individual – as Latin American history shows – is always free to make matters even worse.” (Felipe Fernández-Arnesto in review of Greg Grandin’s America, América, in TLS, May 9)

“Historical writing in the US academy seems to be in regression. Ranke seems to have been forgotten. Instead of writing history wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, or trying to sympathize with or understand dead white males of currently unfashionable opinions, academics can achieve renown and win prizes by traducing the past, inflicting sententious value judgements on their readers and plucking at motes in dead men’s eyes, while ignoring the beams in their own. Grandin is entitled to detest imperialism and plutocracy, but not to misrepresent his uninformed denunciations as history. We should be wary of wallowing in self-righteous judgements of the past: they will be visited on us in our turn.” (Felipe Fernández-Arnesto in review of Greg Grandin’s America, América, in TLS, May 9)

“Humans: A monstrous history explores how we as a species make monsters by ‘monstrifying’ those seen as other or foreign, in terms of ethnicity, race, ability or sexuality.” (Jan Machielsen in review of Surekha Davies’s Humans, in TLS May 9)

“The journalists would follow what had become a tried-and-tested formula: gather every available scrap of information, assemble it into a coherent narrative and trust that the answers to the central question would become clear.” (Peter Gillman and Emanuele Midolo in Murder in Cairo, p 21)

“Fundamentally, the founding fathers of US intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Office and Frank Wisner were the grandmasters. If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them there soon.” (James Angleton to Joe Trento, cited by Peter Gillman and Emanuele Midolo in Murder in Cairo, p 307)

“To reverse the rise of protectionism, nationalism and authoritarianism across the world – and restore stability, sustainability and prosperity – it will be necessary to restore political, democratic liberalism. Above all, political leaders will need to commit to a new spirit of internationalism and to building a cooperative and coordinated economic world order.” (Ann Pettifor, in Prospect, June)

“When, towards the end of the [19^th] century, the academic study of English literature was beginning to be more seriously mooted, it was usually considered a subject for the less able. One proponent suggested it as appropriate for ‘the weaker candidates’ – ‘the women’ and ‘the second- or third-rate men who were to become schoolmasters’.” (Philip Hensher, in review of Stefan Collini’s Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain, in the Spectator, May 10)

“It was sometimes said that the school of ‘Eng. Lit.’, as we knew it, was not a true academic discipline; and that instead of providing a basis of solid learning, it served as a forcing-house for literary chatter masquerading as æsthetic criticism. This was certainly a danger, but the best teachers knew how to avoid it.” (Lord Strang, in Home and Abroad, p 30)

“In my view about the Rhineland, namely that there was great force in the widely-held opinion that it would not be a wise course to throw the Germans by force out of indisputably German territory, I was, as I now see it, certainly wrong.” (Lord Strang, in Home and Abroad, p 66)

“  . . . I would remark that the work of a civil servant in putting public business through is not performed merely by writing words on pieces of paper. It means also seeing the right people at the right time and saying the right thing to them in the right way, a process which, is used for personal ends or to promote a personal policy, may justly be called intrigue, but which, if applied for the purposes of government as laid down by Ministers, I an essential skill in the professional repertory.” (Lord Strang, in Home and Abroad, p 127)

‘For the handling pf international affairs, the qualities most to be desired are knowledge enough to understand the past, perception enough to judge the present, imagination enough to scan the future, and, when action is needed, resolution enough to take courageous decisions and act on them. It is our good fortune as a people that in later times, men with more than a touch of these qualities have been found holding commanding positions in Governments of both parties.” (Lord Strang, in Home and Abroad, p 153)

“When the Council of Europe was first mooted, he [Ernest Bevin] is reported to have burst out: ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it. When you open that Pandora’s box, you will find it full of Trojan horses.’” (Lord Strang, in Home and Abroad, p 290)

“The painter Dorothy Brett’s sister Sylvia whose hand was said to have come into contact with the trousers was married to Charles Vyner de Windt Brooke, soon to become the third and last White Rajah of Sarawak and it would certainly have taken some nerve for Asquith to introduce his private parts to the wife of a man whose family subjects included several thousand head-hunters.” (from Stefan Buczacki’s My darling Mr Asquith, p 190)

“He [Edwin Montagu] was and always had been deeply and passionately anti-Zionist, believing the Jews were a religious community and not a nation. He considered himself a Jewish Englishman, not someone whose real home was on an alien and foreign territory . . .  as Edwin wrote in his diary was that he believed ‘The Government has dealt an irreparable blow at Jewish Britons, and they have endeavoured to set up a people which does not exist; they have alarmed unnecessarily the Mohammedan world  . . .’” (from Stefan Buczacki’s My darling Mr Asquith, p 199)

“After Kim’s escape to the Soviet Union in January 1963, I discussed his defection with Lebanon’s former security chief Emir Farid Chehab. Farid was a great friend of Britain, ever since the British sprang him from a Vichy French goal during the Second World War, and could not understand how Philby had been allowed to escape. ‘We could so easily have arranged a small accident,’ he told me, clearly puzzled by the behaviour of his British colleagues.” (from Richard Beeston’s Looking for Trouble, p 34)

“It was Elliott’s idea that when Philby died, in order to confuse the KGB, he should be appointed a CMG, and that Nicholas should write in his obituary that Philby was one of the bravest men he had ever known. ‘This’, suggested Elliott, ‘would cause terrific trouble in the Lubyanka!’” (from Richard Beeston’s Looking for Trouble, p 134)