Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands (1959)

Back in 2003, whilst on a cruise of the Black Sea, we dined each night with an elder­ly cou­ple, Evan and Vivien Davies, who turned out to be charm­ing and inter­est­ing com­pa­ny. They were clear­ly well-con­nect­ed and rather posh, and Evan in par­tic­u­lar had lived what sound­ed like a pret­ty adven­tur­ous life back in the day: British Com­man­do dur­ing the war; mem­ber of Spe­cial Branch’s anti-ter­ror­ist unit, respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing Win­ston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin (1945–50); and Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent of Police, British Malaya (1950–52). We got on tremen­dous­ly well despite an age dif­fer­ence of some four decades and I’ll nev­er for­get Evan, respond­ing to being gen­tly nudged by Vivien to calm down at one point, stat­ing to the table: “I do apol­o­gise – I do tend to get gid­dy when in good com­pa­ny”! To cap it all, Vivien men­tioned that she had recent­ly attend­ed the funer­al of Sir Wil­fred The­siger…

Wil­fred The­siger! I knew that name…one of the greats of British explo­ration, per­haps the last great British explor­er. Between 1945 and 1950 The­siger criss-crossed the Emp­ty Quar­ter of the Ara­bi­an penin­su­la, with the help of the Bedu peo­ple with whom he acquired a life­long bond, and with whom he endured hard­ships and real-and-present dan­gers on an almost dai­ly basis. Car­ry­ing basic sup­plies and water stored in goatskins (to be refilled at water­holes per­haps hun­dreds of miles dis­tant), The­siger set out with his Bedu com­pan­ions on camel­back across hun­dreds of miles of arid, sun-bleached dunes and grav­el plains. In cer­tain areas where there were trib­al ten­sions and they could be vio­lent­ly robbed of their camels, they had to be con­stant­ly on their guard and pre­pared to defend them­selves, whilst in oth­er areas The­siger had to be passed off as a fel­low Arab oth­er­wise he could eas­i­ly have been shot for being an infi­del Chris­t­ian.

Pestered by a friend to write about his expe­ri­ences, he even­tu­al­ly wrote Ara­bi­an Sands, which was pub­lished in 1959 and is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of trav­el lit­er­a­ture. I have just got round to read­ing it and indeed it is a remark­able mem­oir. The insights into the lives of the Bedu are pro­found, and I was cer­tain­ly tak­en with a cou­ple of the char­ac­ters in par­tic­u­lar – bin Kali­ma and bin Ghabaisha — who became hard and fast friends with the man they called Umbarak. This para­graph sums up the sense of sat­is­fac­tion that The­siger derived from his expe­ri­ences:

In the desert I had found a free­dom unat­tain­able in civil­i­sa­tion; a life unham­pered by pos­ses­sions, since every­thing that was not a neces­si­ty was an encum­brance. I had found, too, a com­rade­ship that was inher­ent in the cir­cum­stances, and the belief that tran­quil­li­ty was to be found there. I had learnt the sat­is­fac­tion that comes with hard­ship and the plea­sure which springs from absti­nence: the con­tent­ment of a full bel­ly; the rich­ness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecsta­sy of sur­ren­der when the crav­ing for sleep becomes a tor­ment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.

This also informs the sense of loss that The­siger express­es else­where when he bemoans the inevitable ero­sion of tra­di­tion­al Bedouin ways by the march of moder­ni­ty and the large-scale devel­op­ment begin­ning to be brought to the region by the Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies. How he would have been aston­ished and dis­mayed by mod­ern-day Dubai and Abu Dhabi!

Wil­fred The­siger
Ara­bi­an Sands book cov­er

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

You could have safe­ly bet that at some point in this series of blogs I was always going to vis­it a cer­tain trin­i­ty of British uni­ver­si­ty dons who have done more for the lit­er­ary fan­ta­sy genre world­wide than, well, any oth­er trin­i­ty of uni­ver­si­ty dons. Huge. Immense. The Ronal­do, Mes­si and Mbap­pé of children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture — I am talk­ing of course about Lewis Car­roll, C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. If your bet had been an accu­mu­la­tor you would be quids in, too, because I shall cer­tain­ly be vis­it­ing C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien at some point in the future, but for today let’s look at the grandad­dy, that long-time maths pro­fes­sor at Christ Church Oxford, Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son AKA Lewis Car­roll (1832–1898).

Lewis Car­roll, what an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter! First and fore­most, he was a math­e­mati­cian and long-time uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar, spe­cial­is­ing in geom­e­try, alge­bra and log­ic; under his real name, he pub­lished eleven books on maths-relat­ed sub­jects. He was also an avid puz­zler and is cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of the “word lad­der” – you know it, that puz­zle that involves chang­ing one word into anoth­er, one let­ter at a time. He loved word play, amply dis­played in his non­sense poems Jab­ber­wocky (1871) and The Hunt­ing of the Snark (1876).

How­ev­er, it is of course Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (com­mon­ly Alice in Won­der­land) for which Lewis Car­roll will be for­ev­er remem­bered. As we all know, it details the sto­ry of a girl named Alice who falls through a rab­bit hole (and boy, don’t we hear that phrase a lot these days: “going down a rab­bit hole”?) into a fan­ta­sy world of anthro­po­mor­phic crea­tures. Car­roll first out­lined his sto­ry whilst out on row­ing trips on the Thames near Oxford which he often under­took with mem­bers of the Lid­dell fam­i­ly (Hen­ry Lid­dell being the Dean at Christ Church).

When he told the sto­ry to Henry’s daugh­ter Alice Lid­dell, she begged him to write it down, which he duly did and then passed the man­u­script to anoth­er friend and men­tor, the nov­el­ist George Mac­Don­ald. The enthu­si­asm of the Mac­Don­ald chil­dren for the sto­ry encour­aged Car­roll to seek pub­li­ca­tion, and so he approached Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers, who loved it. After the pos­si­ble alter­na­tive titles were reject­ed – Alice Among the Fairies and Alice’s Gold­en Hour – the work was final­ly pub­lished as Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land in 1865 (fol­lowed up of course by Through the Look­ing-Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1871). The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

The artist John Ten­niel pro­vid­ed a bril­liant set of wood-engraved illus­tra­tions for the book, of which we can see a gallery of some of the uni­ver­sal­ly famil­iar char­ac­ters here:

Lewis Car­roll

Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Kalevala Paintings (1890s)

Greece has its Ili­ad and Odyssey, Italy its Aeneid, Por­tu­gal its Lusi­ads, Ice­land its Eddas, Ger­many its Nibelun­gen­lied, Britain its Beowulf and Le Morte d’Arthur, and India its Mahabara­ta and Ramayana. I am talk­ing of course about nation­al folk-epics, those lit­er­ary mas­ter­pieces that were orig­i­nal­ly an oral canon of folk-sto­ries per­co­lat­ed down through the mists of time and lat­er writ­ten down and inte­grat­ed into the world­view of its peo­ple.

Well, Finland’s was the epic poet­ry col­lec­tion known as the Kale­vala, which was devel­oped quite late — dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry — but still from ancient tra­di­tion­al folk-tales. The Kale­vala was an inte­gral part of the Finns’ nation­al awak­en­ing in the era of the Grand Duchy of Fin­land when they were under the yoke of the Russ­ian empire, and it was instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of the Finnish nation­al iden­ti­ty, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to inde­pen­dence from Rus­sia in 1917.

This nation­al awak­en­ing coin­cid­ed with the so-called Gold­en Age of Finnish Art rough­ly span­ning the peri­od 1880 to 1910. The Kale­vala pro­vid­ed the artis­tic inspi­ra­tion for numer­ous themes at the time in lit­er­a­ture (J. L. Runeberg’s The Tales of Ensign Stål; Alek­sis Kivi’s The Sev­en Broth­ers), music (Jean Sibelius), archi­tec­ture (Eliel Saari­nen), and of course the visu­al arts, the most notable of which were pro­vid­ed by one Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Born Axél Walde­mar Gal­lén in Pori, Fin­land, to a Swedish-speak­ing fam­i­ly (he Finni­cised his name in 1907), Gallen-Kallela first attend­ed draw­ing class­es at the Finnish Art Soci­ety before study­ing at the Académie Julian in Paris. He mar­ried Mary Slöör in 1890 and on their hon­ey­moon to East Kare­lia, he start­ed col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al for his depic­tions of the Kale­vala. He would soon be inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the inde­pen­dence move­ment as he pro­duced his scenes from the old sto­ries.

The most exten­sive paint­ings that Gallen-Kallela made of the Kale­vala were his fres­coes, orig­i­nal­ly for the Finnish Pavil­ion at the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle in Paris in 1900, but paint­ed again in 1928 in the lob­by of the Nation­al Muse­um of Fin­land in Helsin­ki where they can be seen to this day. How­ev­er, many stand­alone works exist too; here’s a flavour of his art, though if you want to know what they depict you’ll have to read the Kale­vala!

Alek­si Gallen-Kallela

L M Montgomery’s Anne Of Green Gables (1908)

Ah, the book­shelf in our class­room dur­ing my lat­er years at pri­ma­ry school, I remem­ber it well. Replete with titles and illus­trat­ed cov­ers promis­ing tales for chil­dren of adven­ture and der­ring-do in exot­ic lands: Robin­son Cru­soe, King Solomon’s Mines, Trea­sure Island. It had all the girls’ clas­sics, too: Black Beau­ty, Lit­tle Women, What Katy Did, Hei­di, and Anne of Green Gables. Of course, I nev­er read any of the lat­ter books…until recent­ly, that is, when I final­ly read L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, hav­ing been inspired to do so by watch­ing Netflix’s excel­lent Cana­di­an TV adap­ta­tion, Anne with an E (2017).

The nov­el was pub­lished in 1908 by Cana­di­an author L M Mont­gomery (Lucy Maud Mont­gomery 1874–1942). Set in the late 19ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry, it recounts the adven­tures of 11-year-old orphan girl Anne Shirley sent by mis­take to two mid­dle-aged sib­lings, Matthew and Mar­il­la Cuth­bert, who run their farm in the close-knit com­mu­ni­ty of Avon­lea in Prince Edward Island, Cana­da. They had planned to adopt a boy who could help them with the farm work and so when Anne arrives, their first instinct is to send her straight back. How­ev­er, her exu­ber­ant plead­ing per­suades them to keep her for a tri­al peri­od and soon her per­son­al­i­ty wins them over.

Amy­beth McNul­ty as Anne Shirley in “Anne with an E”

Anne is talk­a­tive to the extreme, huge­ly imag­i­na­tive, dra­mat­ic, an extrac­tor of joy from life wher­ev­er it may exist, and a touch­stone of youth­ful ide­al­ism, if a lit­tle prone to defen­sive­ness over her red hair, freck­les and pale com­plex­ion. She is also insis­tent that her name should always be spelt with an “e” at the end, hence the title of the TV adap­ta­tion. In this she was played impec­ca­bly by Amy­beth McNul­ty, the more so now that I have read the book and see how accu­rate­ly she nailed the char­ac­ter. The whole series turned out to be a large­ly faith­ful ren­der­ing of the book and cer­tain­ly it was a heart-warm­ing depic­tion of a sim­ple turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry lifestyle in rur­al Cana­da, well wroth the watch.

Since its pub­li­ca­tion, Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50 mil­lion copies — that’s actu­al­ly not far behind J K Rowling’s Har­ry Pot­ter books albeit hav­ing had a cen­tu­ry longer to sell copies! And it has that acco­lade for good rea­son, so who knows, I may even have to delve into Black Beau­ty or Hei­di next?

Anne of Green Gables, 1st edi­tion book cov­er
L M Mont­gomery

John Atkinson Grimshaw’s Boar Lane, Leeds (1881)

Last Sun­day I popped along to see Monet’s icon­ic The Water-Lily Pond, on loan at York Art Gallery, and very nice it was too, being the cen­tre­piece of a nice col­lec­tion of key loans fea­tur­ing var­i­ous French en plein air pre­cur­sors to Impres­sion­ism. How­ev­er, whilst there, I was remind­ed that the gallery had also recent­ly acquired for its per­ma­nent col­lec­tion a piece by an artist a lit­tle clos­er to home, Leeds-born John Atkin­son Grimshaw, known not for the Impres­sion­is­tic brush­work or gar­den scenes of Mon­et and his ilk but for real­is­tic noc­tur­nal scenes of urban land­scapes. The paint­ing is Liv­er­pool Docks at Night (1870s) and it’s a fine exam­ple of Grimshaw’s oeu­vre. It was also some­thing of a coup for York Art Gallery, giv­en that it had been accept­ed by HM Gov­ern­ment in lieu of inher­i­tance tax from a col­lec­tion and had been allo­cat­ed to the gallery for the bar­gain­ous price of £0.

Grimshaw was born in a back-to-back house in Park Street, Leeds, in 1836, and at first looked des­tined for a nor­mal, anony­mous life —  he mar­ried his cousin Frances at age twen­ty and got a job as clerk for the Great North­ern Rail­way. How­ev­er, the young John had an artis­tic gift and an ambi­tion, and it must have tak­en a great deal of courage and self-belief for him to dis­may his par­ents by pack­ing in his job and launch­ing him­self as a painter, but he did just that, in 1861. His pri­ma­ry artis­tic influ­ence was the Pre-Raphaelites and true to their style he paint­ed with accu­rate colour and light­ing and with vivid detail. Although he did start out paint­ing a vari­ety of gen­res, Grimshaw was lat­er drawn to depict­ing moon­lit views of city streets in Leeds and Lon­don, and dock­side scenes in Hull, Liv­er­pool, and Glas­gow. James McNeill Whistler, with whom Grimshaw worked lat­er in his career in his Chelsea stu­dios, said: “I con­sid­ered myself the inven­tor of noc­turnes until I saw Grim­my’s moon­lit pic­tures”.

Unlike Whistler’s Impres­sion­is­tic night scenes, “Grimmy’s” noc­turnes were sharply focused and almost pho­to­graph­ic in their qual­i­ty, and there is an eerie warmth about them. Rather than con­cen­trat­ing on the dirty and depress­ing aspects of indus­tri­al life (that he would have had no trou­ble find­ing), Grimshaw imbued his paint­ings with a lyri­cal evo­ca­tion of the urban land­scape and there is poet­ry in his cap­tured mists, reflect­ed street­light in wet pave­ments, and dark fig­ures wrapped up against the weath­er. His twi­light cities became his “brand” and became very pop­u­lar with his mid­dle-class patrons; he must have done well because by the 1870s he and his wife were liv­ing at Knos­trup Old Hall, in the Tem­ple Newsam area of Leeds, a far cry from the back-to-back in Park Street.

Here is a favourite of mine, Boar Lane, Leeds (1881), a street we Leeds dwellers have walked down many a time on a win­ter’s day like this.

 

Boar Lane, Leeds (1881)
John Atkin­son Grimshaw

Spencer Tracy in Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

The Cot­tage Road Cin­e­ma in Head­in­g­ley is the old­est indie cin­e­ma in Leeds and has been con­tin­u­ous­ly show­ing films since 1912. As such it is regard­ed with fond­ness by much of the north Leeds com­mu­ni­ty and long may it con­tin­ue. Any­way, it has a clas­sics night every month, where view­ers can watch a series of nos­tal­gic ads and pre­views from back in the day, pri­or to set­tling back with a fair­ly-priced box of pop­corn to enjoy a clas­sic movie, select­ed for its his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al or aes­thet­ic sig­nif­i­cance. Last month, for exam­ple, I went to see Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow; next month I’m tempt­ed by Irv­ing Rapper’s Now, Voy­ager; and this month I went to see the sub­ject of this blog, John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock.

Bad Day at Black Rock is a 1955 Amer­i­can neo-West­ern film star­ring Spencer Tra­cy and Robert Ryan with sup­port from Wal­ter Bren­nan, Anne Fran­cis, John Eric­son, Ernest Borg­nine and Lee Mar­vin. The term “neo-West­ern” does not sig­ni­fy a west­ern movie as such, and instead implies the use of cer­tain themes and motifs redo­lent of west­erns but set in more mod­ern times (in this case, 1945). Real­ly, it’s a crime dra­ma but it con­tains the wide, open plains and desert land­scapes of the west­ern, and Spencer Tracy’s “stranger comes to town and is met with unfriend­ly sus­pi­cion” per­sona is top-draw­er Clint East­wood.

Tra­cy plays a one-armed stranger, John Macreedy, who dis­em­barks from the train that rarely stops in the iso­lat­ed desert ham­let of Black Rock and is soon put under hos­tile scruti­ny from the locals who lounge on the wood­en veran­das of the saloon and bar-and-grill and won­der who the hell this new guy is and what the hell does he want? At this point I should say that if I were har­bour­ing a dark secret – which you can be sure these Black Rock locals cer­tain­ly are — and a stranger comes to town ask­ing ques­tions, I would put on a friend­ly and coop­er­a­tive façade to deflect sus­pi­cion. This lot, how­ev­er, opt for the acute hos­til­i­ty and eva­sive­ness approach and thus come across as guilty as sin from the get-go, with Borg­nine and Mar­vin in par­tic­u­lar push­ing the enve­lope in the “I’ve clear­ly got some­thing to hide” depart­ment.

Still, Macreedy’s been ask­ing ques­tions about a cer­tain Japan­ese-Amer­i­can gen­tle­man named Komoko, but nobody seems to want to engage. Robert Ryan’s char­ac­ter Reno Smith is clear­ly in charge and holds the rest of the town in his thrall, includ­ing the inef­fec­tu­al, alco­holic sher­iff. Smith claims that Komoko was sim­ply interned dur­ing World War II but also reveals his vir­u­lent anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ment devel­oped after Pearl Har­bor — we the audi­ence are only too aware that some­thing dodgy has gone down and not only that but Macreedy him­self needs to be in fear for his own life. Macreedy grad­u­al­ly breaks down the omer­ta of the towns­folk and begins to sep­a­rate the real cul­prits from the sim­ply scared, some of whom are inspired by Macreedy to step up. It’s a tour de force of psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma, with great tough-guy dia­logue and the stun­ning back­drop of the Mohave desert, and well worth my punt in ven­tur­ing out on a Wednes­day night!

Let’s watch Macreedy, despite his one arm, get­ting the bet­ter of thug Coley Trim­ble (Ernest Borg­nine), in this tense encounter.

Spencer Tra­cy and John Eric­son in Bad Day at Black Rock

The Animals’ The House Of The Rising Sun (1964)

If you’re a music his­to­ry enthu­si­ast, hours of fun can be had perus­ing the Roud Folk Song Index (https://archives.vwml.org/search/roud), the online data­base of around a quar­ter of a mil­lion ref­er­ences to near­ly 25,000 songs col­lect­ed from oral tra­di­tion in the Eng­lish lan­guage from all over the world, and named after its com­pil­er Steve Roud. It cor­re­lates ver­sions of tra­di­tion­al folk song lyrics inde­pen­dent­ly doc­u­ment­ed over past cen­turies by many dif­fer­ent col­lec­tors across the UK and North Amer­i­ca. Take Roud num­ber 6393, for instance: The House of the Ris­ing Sun.

Although wide­ly known from the most suc­cess­ful con­tem­po­rary ver­sion, record­ed by the Ani­mals in 1964, The House of the Ris­ing Sun is a tra­di­tion­al folk song with deep roots: it was first col­lect­ed in Appalachia in the 1930s, but prob­a­bly goes back much fur­ther, ema­nat­ing from the tra­di­tion of so-called “broad­side bal­lads”. A “broad­side” was a sheet of cheap paper used between the six­teenth and nine­teenth cen­turies to dis­trib­ute news and so on, but also, most pop­u­lar­ly, bal­lads. “Bal­lads” were nar­ra­tive rhymes and songs devel­op­ing from the min­strel­sy of the ear­li­er four­teenth and fif­teenth cen­turies, and which told folk sto­ries on every top­ic under the sun, from leg­ends and heroes and reli­gion to the more pro­sa­ic side of life.

The House of the Ris­ing Sun bal­lad tells of a per­son­’s life gone wrong in the city of New Orleans, and is a clas­sic cau­tion­ary tale, appeal­ing to his lis­ten­ers to avoid the same fate:

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Ris­ing Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I’m one

Folk song col­lec­tor Alan Lomax not­ed that “Ris­ing Sun” was the name of a bawdy house in at least two tra­di­tion­al Eng­lish songs, and a name for Eng­lish pubs (Leeds dwellers may be famil­iar with the one on Kirk­stall Road, albeit now sad­ly dis­used). He hypoth­e­sised that the loca­tion of the said drink­ing hole-cum-broth­el was then sim­ply relo­cat­ed from Eng­land to the US by roam­ing per­form­ers. In 1953, Lomax met Har­ry Cox, an Eng­lish farm labour­er known for his impres­sive folk song reper­toire, who knew a song called She was a Rum One (Roud 2128) with two pos­si­ble open­ing vers­es, one begin­ning:

If you go to Low­est­oft, and ask for The Ris­ing Sun,
There you’ll find two old whores and my old woman is one.

The old­est known record­ing of the song, under the title Ris­ing Sun Blues, is by Appalachi­an artists Tom Ash­ley and Gwen Fos­ter, who record­ed it in 1933. Ash­ley said he had learned it from his grand­fa­ther who had got mar­ried around the time of the Civ­il War, sug­gest­ing that the song was writ­ten years before the turn of the cen­tu­ry.

In 1941, Woody Guthrie record­ed a ver­sion; Lead Bel­ly record­ed two ver­sions in the for­ties; Joan Baez record­ed it in 1960 on her epony­mous debut album; Nina Simone record­ed a ver­sion for the live album Nina at the Vil­lage Gate in 1962; and Bob Dylan record­ed the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. But it was the Ani­mals, Newcastle’s own blues-rock band made up of Eric Bur­don, Alan Price, Chas Chan­dler, Hilton Valen­tine and John Steel, who scored a transat­lantic num­ber one hit sin­gle with it in 1964 and made it their sig­na­ture tune.

The Ani­mals, The House of the Ris­ing Sun

 

John Newton’s Amazing Grace (1772)

Amaz­ing Grace is one of the most recog­nis­able songs in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world — who hasn’t been exposed count­less times to these icon­ic open­ing lines?

Amaz­ing grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see

It was writ­ten in 1772 by Eng­lish Angli­can cler­gy­man John New­ton (1725–1807), drawn very much from per­son­al expe­ri­ence. He had grown up with­out any par­tic­u­lar reli­gious bent and after a time hav­ing been press­ganged into ser­vice with the Roy­al Navy, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. How­ev­er, in 1748 he was on a ves­sel caught up in a storm so vio­lent that he begged God for mer­cy and under­went (hav­ing pre­sum­ably got his feet back on ter­ra fir­ma) some­thing of a spir­i­tu­al con­ver­sion. There­after, New­ton gave up sea­far­ing, stud­ied Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, and became a vocal abo­li­tion­ist. He once was lost but now was found.

New­ton was ordained into the Church of Eng­land in 1764, and took a post as curate at Olney in Buck­ing­hamshire, where he met and began to write hymns with William Cow­per (who him­self would become a cel­e­brat­ed poet and hymnodist). They wrote Amaz­ing Grace to illus­trate a ser­mon New­ton was giv­ing on New Year’s Day 1773 with the mes­sage that for­give­ness and redemp­tion are pos­si­ble regard­less of sins com­mit­ted and that the soul can be deliv­ered from despair through the mer­cy of God. It debuted in print in 1779 in their col­lab­o­ra­tive Olney Hymns.

At this stage, Amaz­ing Grace, like all the oth­er Olney hymns, was still rel­a­tive­ly obscure but it took off in the Unit­ed States when it was picked up and exten­sive­ly used by Bap­tist and Methodist preach­ers dur­ing the Protes­tant revival move­ment of the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry (the so-called Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing). In 1835, Amer­i­can com­pos­er William Walk­er set the words to the tune known as New Britain and this is the ver­sion you’ll hear today.

The song has unsur­pris­ing­ly become a sta­ple of Gospel music, and has also crossed over into sec­u­lar music with a par­tic­u­lar influ­ence in folk music. It’s been record­ed thou­sands of times in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, from Elvis Pres­ley to the Roy­al Scots Dra­goon Guards; today though, I offer a ver­sion by Amer­i­can folk singer Judy Collins, record­ed in 1993 with the Boys’ Choir of Harlem.

John New­ton

Phil Cornwell and John Sessions in Stella Street (1997)

A British TV com­e­dy series that per­haps fell under the radar a lit­tle bit (you can actu­al­ly find peo­ple who nev­er saw or heard of it), Stel­la Street was nonethe­less a great find when it began air­ing in 1997 and con­tin­ued over four series to 2001. Its some­what bizarre premise is that an ordi­nary street in sub­ur­ban Sur­biton is peo­pled by a group of big­time celebri­ties going about their lives in ordi­nary, sub­ur­ban fash­ion, but adher­ing to some well-known and exag­ger­at­ed stereo­types per­tain­ing to said celebs.

The show was con­ceived and writ­ten by John Ses­sions, Phil Corn­well and Peter Richard­son, with the main char­ac­ters played by Ses­sions and Corn­well (and Ron­ni Ancona for some episodes). The celebri­ties cho­sen to live in Stel­la Street were pre­sum­ably influ­enced by the per­form­ers’ abil­i­ty to do great impres­sions of them and whose per­sonas lent them­selves to some great send-up com­e­dy. The pro­gramme takes the form of a mock­u­men­tary with film­ing done on a hand­held cam­era and Corn­well as Michael Caine talk­ing direct­ly to the cam­era to intro­duce char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions (just as he does in the 1966 film Alfie).

Jack Nichol­son is por­trayed as the invet­er­ate wom­an­is­ing bad-ass of his stereo­type (or his real per­son­al­i­ty?) com­plete with bad taste Hawai­ian shirts not exact­ly suit­ed to the British cli­mate. Michael Caine is full-on Six­ties’ Michael Caine with the trade­mark lacon­ic vocal deliv­ery, shock of gin­ger hair and horn-rimmed glass­es. Roger Moore is the quin­tes­sen­tial Eng­lish gen­tle­man with impec­ca­ble man­ners, and with a lone­li­ness theme ruth­less­ly exploit­ed by Ses­sions. David Bowie is the self-effac­ing and slight­ly awk­ward super­star stay­ing true to his Brom­ley roots. Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards run the local gro­cery store, Mick with mas­sive enthu­si­asm, Kei­th with time-worn, dev­il-may-care cyn­i­cism and a gleam in his eye.

Let’s enjoy a mon­tage of Corn­well and Ses­sions bring­ing these char­ac­ters to life: the may­hem of Mick and Keef’s cor­ner shop, and then a glo­ri­ous vignette of David Bowie and Roger Moore exchang­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly mun­dane Christ­mas presents (with Roger Moore tak­ing polite­ness to the next lev­el when gift­ed an under­whelm­ing £10 book token).

Mick and Keef

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

A few months ago I went to a screen­ing of the 1920 silent hor­ror film The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari at local venue the Old Woollen in Fars­ley. The film is a quin­tes­sen­tial piece of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma from over a cen­tu­ry ago and a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into cel­lu­loid cre­ativ­i­ty dur­ing the era of the Weimar Repub­lic. As fun as it is, with its sto­ry of a mad hyp­no­tist induc­ing a brain­washed som­nam­bu­list to com­mit mur­ders, I want­ed to look at an even more quin­tes­sen­tial movie from the era, one that most peo­ple have come across at some point, the great 1927 sci­ence-fic­tion mas­ter­piece, Metrop­o­lis, direct­ed by Fritz Lang (1890–1976).

Lang has been cit­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial of film­mak­ers of all time, and he is cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing both the sci-fi genre (Metrop­o­lis, Woman in the Moon) and film noir (M). He didn’t shy away from pro­duc­ing epi­cal­ly long films, either, like the 4.5 hour Dr Mabuse the Gam­bler or the two-part Die Nibelun­gen based on the epic poem Nibelun­gen­lied, but the one film that cap­tures the zeit­geist of the auteur’s work is undoubt­ed­ly Metrop­o­lis.

It was writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lang’s wife Thea von Har­bou and based on her 1925 nov­el of the same name. Metrop­o­lis is set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia pre­fig­ur­ing Blade Run­ner and bring­ing to mind themes from Orwell and indeed Mary Shel­ley with its own Frankenstein’s mon­ster in the form of the sci­en­tist Rot­wang’s icon­ic robot the Maschi­nen­men­sch.

Mean­while, the film’s aes­thet­ics, with Goth­ic touch­es, draw heav­i­ly from the Bauhaus, Cubist and Futur­ist design move­ments of the time. We see a world of colos­sal sky­scrap­ers from which a wealthy elite lords it over the down-trod­den mass­es of the under­ground who toil in abject con­di­tions to keep the machines of the soci­ety run­ning.

One day a mem­ber of this elite, one Fred­er Fred­er­sen (Gus­tav Fröh­lich), has an epiphany when pre­sent­ed with what life is like for the poor, by the saint­ly Maria (Brigitte Helm, who also plays the Maschi­nen­men­sch), and the two con­spire to change the soci­ety and bring about social jus­tice. As such, it can be con­strued as a rather sim­plis­tic moral­i­ty tale, but there’s no sim­plic­i­ty in the styl­i­sa­tion and bril­liant tech­ni­cal effects, which serve to cre­ate a remark­able world, both visu­al­ly beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful. Enjoy the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, with an excel­lent sound­track by Got­tfried Hup­pertz.

Fritz Lang

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