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| 1282 and all that | Hywel Williams Welsh historians must look beyond England to challenge their tired and introspective consensusIs the history of Wales really as boring as it seems? A generation ago this was still a Cinderella subject for a coterie of scholars. In Welsh schools A-level history students had to write one essay on their country's past – and that was a chore. England and Europe provided the meaty stuff, and that was where we wanted to be. Things seem very different now as the syllabuses proliferate and the books are published. There are more historians of Wales than ever, but the fustiness persists. Their volumes make little impact on the wider culture, either in Wales or Britain.Historians of England capture the public's attention with revisionist theses. Was a compromise peace feasible in 1940, and didn't the urban poor get richer during the industrial revolution? Irish historians have had an enjoyable time subverting myths about the potato famine; and some Scottish ones wonder just how horrid the Highland clearances were. Historians of Wales, however, offer little in this revisionist line. The boldness that questions fundamental assumptions holds few attractions for them, and so they are relegated to the margins, where they quietly plod.Historical writing needs assumptions, otherwise its pages are a mere chronicle rather than an explanation. But those fundamental ideas always need to be revised if the subject is to live and develop. In the case of Wales, the tired old assumptions tend to be mildly nationalist or blandly socialist. The country's history, therefore, revolves around a handful of events: the conquest by Edward I's army in 1282; the acts of union with England in 1536 and 1542; and the Labour victory of 1945.Two wrong things, and one right thing: the Welsh version of 1066 and All That – and the consensus established is dull and introspective. Wales is looked at from within, and always seems a victim of outside forces. Stuff happens all right, but the causes are always found in the country to its east. Survival against the odds is duly noted and admired with a degree of self-satisfaction. The Welsh – we are told – are still around because they believe in community.An assumption that a nation is preternaturally friendly is surely a pretty feeble historical thesis. But it's certainly helpful in understanding the timidity of Wales's historians, absorbed as they are within a comforting but unquestioning national culture. A Labour-Plaid coalition is in the saddle at the Welsh assembly, and that consensus is reflected in the writing of history. Respectful praise for past radicalism can of course continue, and is indeed something of a national tradition. But this is now a quiet time. Best not to dissent.Wales's history can come alive when viewed in an international and comparative dimension. Czech and Hungarian national movements illuminate Wales's 19th-century nationalists, as Robert Evans shows. That great medievalist Rees Davis explained how the 13th-century conquest is best seen as part of the renewed vogue of empire in Europe as a whole. And Ieuan Gwynedd Jones's pioneering work on the health and wealth of Victorian Wales shows the relationship between capitalism and hygiene.A wider renaissance in Welsh history is therefore surely possible, but only if more of its practitioners escape the tyranny of political trivia and start interpreting those profound economic and cultural shifts that disregard the national borders. Our recent and contemporary history should not be subjected to an anorak's obsession with byelection results, since politics became a minority hobby in the Wales of this period. The pattern of Welsh daily life was now conforming increasingly to global developments in trade and environmental awareness, in the new cult of the body beautiful, and in the fast decaying cult of Christianity.It's not, therefore, much use rushing towards England's history to explain what happened in Wales at this time. The chain of causes and consequences was stretching way beyond the established frontiers, not just in Britain's case but in the Americas and Asia. Countries both old and new had to cope with the march of neighbouring hegemonies. Central American states needed to accommodate themselves with the US, just as south-east Asian ones are having to do in relation to China.How to assimilate without losing too much self-respect in the process is the great question for an increasing number of countries in the early 21st century. And it is this perspective that can lend a new interest to the history of Wales – a place with a gift for assimilation and a face-saving skill in denying that this is what has really happened to it.WalesHistoryHywel Williamsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Holiday Books: The Man Who Sang, Played and Smiled The first fully adequate narrative biography of Louis Armstrong. feeds.nytimes.com |
The X Factor, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolita? and Jamie's Family Christmas | TV review Simon Cowell gave us plenty of stuffing on ITV as the BBC offered sport without personality, while an engaging BBC4 film tackled Nabokov's troubling obsession, says Phil HoganThe week before Christmas is always what you might call a yawning chasm, with schedulers correctly assuming that everybody will be out shopping or being sick on the train so what's the point of wasting perfectly good programmes that will do nicely on Boxing Day evening with a white sauce?Of course, there wasn't literally nothing on. The biggest slow-burner of the season went bang on Sunday night courtesy of The X Factor final, with young dreamers Olly and Joe still holding to the idea that you can have anything you want just by wanting it, which is a novelty to those of us who remember when "I want never gets" was the nation's favourite article of faith. But which of the boys wanted it most? That was a question trumped only by how ITV was going to fill two hours while the rest of us spent millions on phone calls.Time-wasting was soon under way, starting with the grand opera of getting the judges down the stairs amid the yammering graphics and blazing lights – Dannii as Eva Peron and lovely Cheryl trailing a black wedding dress behind her; the pair of them escorted by Simon, face as stiff as his chimney-brush hair, and bowtied Louis, grinning like the office joker at a building society dinner. That was five minutes gone, but now the stage was alive with the ghosts of rejected candidates invited back to do a number with the boys, cavorting shamelessly and wearing the desperate rictuses of people still hoping to cheat death. Dermot O'Leary, swivelling on his heel like a man on castors, introduced "the story of last night", a blitzkrieg of clips from Saturday's show accompanied by the usual disaster movie music and lasers and anti-aircraft fire and surging Wagnerian choruses, ending with an ad break for Argos and Pizza Hut. By the time beefy Essex boy Olly Murs finally came on for an alarming tight-trousered "Twist and Shout" routine with a cast of thousands and backing tapes, Simon had almost grown a beard.Olly and 18-year-old Joe McElderry, from South Shields (the eventual winner, for those who don't care enough to already know) managed 10 minutes of competitive crooning in between guest stars with festive CDs to publicise and the competition to win a holiday in LA and endless saccharine biogs and video diaries and family snaps and barking live hysteria from Colchester and the north-east, and interviews with proud mums, dads, aunts and uncles, previous winners and old teachers and postmen and dancing bears. Cheryl emoted for geordies the world over, while Simon – alternating between his fake thoughtful look and his fake yikes! look – developed a speech impediment that rendered him unable to start sentences without the words "Do you know what?"It was a bit more sedate over on the other side, where Ryan Giggs was busy winning The BBC Sports Personality of the Year – though presumably not for his personality, which probably preferred its football to do the talking. Even so, he was up against strong opponents, four of whom even I'd heard of ( including Beth Twaddle, or Tweddle as it turned out). Gary Lineker struggled with an echoing microphone while Sue Barker tried to enthuse the audience (who had come dressed for a christening) on the subject of women's cricket. It wasn't compelling but at least the BBC had paid for a proper orchestra.I didn't really expect How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolita? to answer its own question, but Stephen Smith's gentle fathoming of Nabokov's classic about the seduction of a pubescent girl by a middle-aged predator closed in on it. With Nabokov, the hoary issue of whether great art can be squared with doubtful morals is complicated by the literary world's torn regard for the genius behind it. How much were the urges of Humbert Humbert – a character as enduring in the mind as any in fiction – a sublimation of the author's own? And if Nabokov was a perv in hiding, what did that make us, seduced by this suave creation, sent out with a case to plead and the guile to do it?The programme was edged with extracts from Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film of the book starring James Mason and an old BBC documentary showing Nabokov up a mountain with a butterfly net and browsing in a European newsagent's. He didn't spend much time defending Lolita. He wrote all his books for the fun of it, he said. Did he protest too little? Smith (bravely opting to pronounce Nabokov with an "oh!" in the middle) set out on the great man's trail – to Switzerland, to Russia, where Nabokov was born to an aristocratic family, to his adoptive New York and to Cambridge, where he played in goal for the university football team. First stop, though, was a grand lakeside hotel in Montreux (or Montreaux, as Smith interestingly called it) where Nabokov lived with his wife, Vera, for 15 years. Here, Toni the barman remembered the writer as a "happy, happy man", revealing that Vera did most of the work while her husband – a serious lepidopterist – went off to catch butterflies. Did he leave good tips? asked Smith. "No tips!" insisted Toni.Smith wandered around, inhaling the grandeur. "What kind of person lives in a hotel?" he wondered. Perhaps the kind who grew up surrounded by flunkeys, I wondered back. Off he went, looking for answers, to the Nabokovs' old summer estate near St Petersburg, which the young Vladimir inherited from his uncle, along with the equivalent of $2m. It was here that the 15-year-old Nabokov fell madly in love with a local girl his own age. Five minutes later (in TV years), the Bolsheviks were on the streets, the family were fleeing to Berlin and Nabokov never saw the girl or his country again. Was it this multiple trauma, Smith asked, that fixed Nabokov – "like a figure in the lava of Pompeii" – with an obsession that invested love and evanescent beauty with a sense of loss?Humbert, in Lolita, had been scarred, too, with the loss of a childhood love, and the fixation with young girls surfaced in much of Nabokov's other fiction. "Lolita was always going to happen," said Martin Amis, a fervent but worried admirer of Nabokov. "He liked the idea of it too much."In one of the most telling parts of this engaging film, Smith discovered the clapboard house Nabokov lived in during the 40s, when he taught at Cornell University in upstate New York. There in the back garden he found the incinerator – a barbecue now – where Vera had pulled the Lolita manuscript from the flames after her husband had tried to destroy it. Perhaps writing it wasn't that much fun after all.Jamie Oliver was all over the ads, trying to get us to buy Sainsbury's mince pies, but then turned up on Jamie's Family Christmas airily suggesting we bugger about making our own strudel! I did like the look of his gravy, though, which he made with a baby wailing in his ear. "Don't bother peeling the veg," he said, unnecessarily. Glee is the word Glee, E4's latest US comedy import, doesn't start until the new year but they ran the pilot last week. Is it for Mamma Mia! fans? High School Musical addicts? The more you try to describe Glee, the worse it sounds. There's the teacher with something to prove and his showbiz choir of losers, so cheese lovers will be happy. But it's not Dead Poets Society schmaltz, and it's smarter than School of Rock; camp but not Ugly Betty camp, and keen on life's hard lessons, though no worse than Scrubs. Idealists versus cynics, nerds versus meatheads – it's all here, nicely drawn, with sharp wit amid the goofery and hoofery. See the poor teacher and his missus at home completing an American Gothic jigsaw. My God, I feel a song coming on...TelevisionTelevision industryThe X FactorSimon CowellJoe McElderryVladimir NabokovRyan GiggsBeth TweddleJamie OliverPhil Hoganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Kathryn Simmonds Reading from Her Poems; Kim by Rudyard Kipling; Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh | Audiobook reviews Kathryn Simmonds Reading from Her Poemspoetryarchive.org £12.75, 45minsA delightful, almost playful freshness emanates from these poems. In lyrical, chiming lines Kathryn Simmonds slips from her ordinary life with "bits of bits in bowls" in her fridge, to the intriguingly surreal – launderette customers peeling off their skins "as sheer as moth-wing".Kim by Rudyard Kipling. Read by Madhav SharmaNaxos £38.50, 13hrs 19mins unabridgedKim, the "little friend of all the world" and chela or disciple to the questing lama, is caught up in the espionage of "the Great Game". The real protagonist in his magical adventure, however, is India in all its teeming life, mystery and beauty, highlighted by a captivating narration.Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio MarshHachette £14.99, 4hrsThe fatal shooting on stage seemed a tragic accident at first, but Roderick Alleyn, the gentleman detective, gradually unmasks a nest of jealousies and blackmail lurking among the "friends" of the murdered band master. The unbeatable Anton Lesser is perfect for this retro 1949 crime classic.AudiobooksRachel Redfordguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIn Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round:And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slantedDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!A savage place! as holy and enchantedAs e'er beneath a waning moon was hauntedBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,A mighty fountain momently was forced:Amid whose swift half-intermitted burstHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and everIt flung up momently the sacred river.Five miles meandering with a mazy motionThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war!The shadow of the dome of pleasureFloated midway on the waves;Where was heard the mingled measureFrom the fountain and the caves.It was a miracle of rare device,A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!A damsel with a dulcimerIn a vision once I saw:It was an Abyssinian maid,And on her dulcimer she played,Singing of Mount Abora.Could I revive within meHer symphony and song,To such a deep delight 'twould win me,That with music loud and long,I would build that dome in air,That sunny dome! those caves of ice!And all who heard should see them there,And all should cry, Beware! Beware!His flashing eyes, his floating hair!Weave a circle round him thrice,And close your eyes with holy dread,For he on honey-dew hath fed,And drunk the milk of Paradise.Samuel Taylor ColeridgePoetryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |