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| John Burrow obituary Intellectual historian who challenged assumptions about the ways that societies represent the past"History is the record of what one age finds of interest in another." John Burrow, who has died of cancer aged 74, was fond of this dictum (by the 19th-century historian Jacob Burckhardt), and his own work illuminated its truth with unparalleled virtuosity.His talents were displayed to a broad readership in his highly successful A History of Histories (2007), a panoramic study of historiography from ancient Greece to the present. In this work, Burrow's wide learning, warm responsiveness and literary skill enabled him to recapture the ambitions and anxieties that led writers in different ages and cultures to try to recover and reanimate some part of the human past. The book was a triumph: it achieved the unprecedented feat of encompassing, authoritatively and lucidly, 2,500 years of historical writing, without sacrificing the distinctiveness and idiosyncrasy of the works it explored.Burrow's interest in the ways that individuals and societies thought about the past was a unifying theme across a body of work that made him one of the most highly regarded intellectual historians of his generation. His assured first book, Evolution and Society (1966), challenged the assumption that the prevalence of social-evolutionary thinking in Victorian Britain was down to the influence of Darwin. Instead, Burrow showed, with some brio, how the limitations of earlier political theories provoked an anthropological interest in the growth of different social forms, arranged in a developmental sequence.English historians writing about the national past formed the focus of his next major work, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (which won the Wolfson prize for 1981), perhaps the most satisfying and perfectly achieved of his books. In it, he engaged not only with the political resonances of Whig historians' interpretation of the national story, but with a whole sensibility, which connected their work to Gothic architecture and to historical novels and genre painting. His ear was alive to the powerful tonal effects achieved by historians such as Lord Macaulay or James Anthony Froude, and his own writing was in no way intimidated by the lushness or sentimentalism of high Victorian prose.Later works, mining related seams, included a short study of Edward Gibbon (1985), in the Past Masters series; Whigs and Liberals (1988, based on Burrow's Carlyle lectures at Oxford University); and a dazzling exploration of European thought in the second half of the 19th century, The Crisis of Reason (2000). Burrow's writing was renowned for its elegance, subtlety and wit, but his work is distinguished above all by its combination of intellectual penetration and imaginative sympathy, all informed by an uninhibited vitality.Burrow spent most of his early life in Devon and went to school in Exeter. A man of deep loyalties and attachments, he retained a special affection for his Devonian roots. He was the only child of parents who, though not themselves the beneficiaries of any extended formal education, indulged his early bookishness, and he won a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1954, to read history. After obtaining firsts in both parts of the history tripos, he embarked on a PhD and soon won a research fellowship at Christ's. But at a time when the discipline in Britain was dominated by the self-conscious hard-headedness of political and administrative historians, Burrow's early interest in the history of ideas left him feeling a little marginal, a feeling exacerbated by being passed over for permanent appointments in Cambridge. In 1965 he took up a post at the then new University of East Anglia, moving in 1969 to the University of Sussex, becoming professor of intellectual history there in 1982.Sussex in the 1970s was a congenial and stimulating environment for someone of Burrow's wide and eclectic intellectual and literary tastes. He helped to establish both BA and master's degrees in intellectual history, making Sussex the first, and for many years the only, university to offer such courses. Together with his Sussex colleagues (and close friends), myself and Donald Winch, he co-wrote That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (1983), which challenged the orthodoxies that tended to dominate approaches to the history of the social sciences. We three authors were often identified as the core of "the Sussex school", a misleading label but one that signalled a shared aversion to schematic and overly rationalised ways of addressing, and often appropriating, the intellectual life of the past.In 1995, Burrow took up the newly founded chair in European thought at Oxford University, becoming a fellow of Balliol College. His tenure was somewhat clouded by a controversy over the funding of this post, which was eventually withdrawn, with the result that the chair was suppressed on his retirement in 2000, an outcome that left him with an abiding sense of regret.A History of Histories, the fruit of his retirement, brought Burrow's gifts to the attention of a wider audience, but he had long received the recognition of his peers. He was elected to the Royal Historical Society (1971) and to the British Academy (1986), and awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bologna in 1987; he held visiting posts at the University of California, Berkeley, the Australian National University, the University of British Columbia, Williams College, Massachussetts, and All Souls College, Oxford.But, for all these marks of professional distinction, Burrow cultivated his interests in a manner that recalled an earlier, less professionalised age. He published almost nothing in learned journals; he hated and shunned conferences; he did not fill his footnotes with references to the work of others (though he had often read it). He was learned, impressively so, but in the way in which a private scholar might be, reading widely in his own library, rather than as an up-to-date authority in a "field".It was of a piece with this identity that he found academic administration a trial; though it must be said that even the most well-disposed colleagues could find his idiosyncratic performance of such duties something of a trial, too. Mastery of a filing cabinet eluded him, and he was never on amicable terms with any form of technology.In 1958, he married Diane Dunnington; they had two children, Laurence and Francesca. Burrow took great delight in his children and, later, his grandchildren, even if his friends sometimes suspected he improved their childish bons mots in the retelling. At home, he cooked for victory (though his kitchen might not have pleased the health and safety inspectors), and enjoyed the pleasures of the table with undisguised enthusiasm. It was a matter of pride for him to maintain a shockingly unhealthy way of life (especially when teasing tiresomely healthy friends), and he nursed his high cholesterol level as sedulously as any athlete does his fitness.Above all, he loved convivial gatherings of all kinds, where he could be unstoppably talkative, hilariously amusing and unselfconsciously egotistical in equal measure. It was impossible not to admire and respond to his sharp intelligence, his verbal exuberance, his quick sympathy and his sheer vitality. In his final two years he bore the disfigurement and indignity of a painful cancer with impressive resolution and grace. He was remarkable, he was lovable, he was infuriating; most of all, he was fun.He is survived by Diane, and by his children and grandchildren.• John Wyon Burrow, intellectual historian, born 4 June 1935; died 3 November 2009HistoryHistory and history of artAcademic expertsguardian.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 |
Faces of 2009: Brooke Magnanti Wild speculation as to the identity of Belle de Jour, the call-girl blogger and author played by Billie Piper in ITV's Secret Diary of a Call Girl, was finally answered last month when scientist Brooke Magnanti stepped forward to pre-empt an outing from a tabloid newspaper.I meet the artist formerly known as Belle de Jour in a Bristol pub. To say that she's not what I was expecting is an understatement. Small, neat and meet-your-eye straightforward, Dr Brooke Magnanti, research scientist, is also wearing a knitted hat that, though pretty, could easily double as a tea cosy. This is extremely confusing. After all, when Belle de Jour, the waspish former call girl who wrote about her adventures anonymously in a blog and several books, finally revealed her true identity to the world last month, she was photographed by a Sunday newspaper not in sensible boots and a bright red tea cosy but wearing a silk dressing gown and what I can only describe as a come-hither smile.Did she like the picture? "Yes, hugely!" she says. But it was a one-off. In future, she will be photographed only in jeans or a lab coat or something. Does this mean that she is wary of her newfound visibility? Not at all. Six weeks on and she is still glad that she came out. Yes, her hand was forced – a tabloid was on her trail – but the burden of secrecy had also grown increasingly heavy."I thought I should just get this over with. The thing that bothered me was not knowing if, or when, exposure would happen. I would never pick up a withheld number. Never. So I went to my boss and I said, 'If you can think of any reason why I shouldn't be doing this [revealing her identity], say so now.' Her attitude was, 'So long as you get on with your work.' My boyfriend already knew and a couple of close friends. I warned my mother something big was about to happen and when I did tell her, she took it in her stride; she went straight out and bought the book. It was hilarious. Then I braced myself for other people's reactions. I decided to consider anything over 0% positive a success."There followed several days of fuss: newspaper columnists spouted; Magnanti appeared on a TV book programme; her father – estranged – gave an interview to the Daily Mail. ("That was his choice," she says. "I just hope he feels comfortable with his decision.") Then, as suddenly as the squall had blown up, quiet reigned once more. "Life continues as normal. I do feel a huge sense of relief. If someone asks me a question, I can answer it honestly. But day to day, nothing is any different. I go to work, I attend conferences."Her current research project – it involves a pesticide she believes can be linked to developmental problems in children – is in its final stages and she must now start applying for new grants. "My concern isn't that people will interview me out of curiosity; it's that people will be less likely to interview me because they don't want to be associated with all this."So is she determined to remain a scientist? "Oh, yes. That's my passion. I've worked really hard to stay in science. When people talk about my old life, they say, 'Oh, so she wasn't doing it to pay for a drug addiction.' Well, that's true. But I did have an addiction. It was to higher education. That's a very expensive addiction."It is more than six years since she gave up her £300-an-hour part-time job; she is now 34. So how does she look back on the girl who decided to fund her doctorate not by waitressing but by selling sex? "I think I was a bit overwhelmed at the time. I was coming to the end of my studies and I'd applied for, and failed to get, so many jobs. Sometimes, I felt like a small cork bobbing on a large ocean. But I would have felt like that anyway, probably more so, if I'd decided to work at Starbucks."She sounds detached, as though all this happened to someone else. Was it like being an actor? "Some aspects were like that. The bits where I had conversations, put people at their ease. But I'm not really self-conscious about my body. I've never had to psych myself up to take my clothes off. It's a difficult one to explain, but the job made me more sympathetic to men. They've got the money but not necessarily the power. If they had all the power, they wouldn't be paying for it. Somewhere, there is some vulnerability. Either they didn't have time for a girlfriend – I had a lot of those – or they were having a difficult relationship and were feeling confused. You're the one who can walk out. I've had some terrible dates, but the men who were clients bent over backwards to be nice to me. They were so eager to be seen as honest. They wanted to impress me. It was sweet."Magnanti tells me that we shouldn't be too startled by the yawning gulf between her old job and the one she does now; we might be surprised if we knew how many women are working in the sex industry while outwardly maintaining every appearance of an ordinary, middle-class life. "A few of the girls I met at my agency were not dissimilar to me. I don't think there is such a thing as [a] typical [prostitute]. Go to some streetwalkers' charity and it's easy, from the outside, to think these people are abused. But everyone has a different set of circumstances."But what about Belle? Is her career as an author over now? And how much has her frankness lowered the bar when it comes to writing about sex? Magnanti laughs. "I think people might like to read a little bit more Belle… as to how much she has changed things… on balance, she's been a good thing. But I don't think this is a fabulous life choice for everyone. It's more that every woman should be able to say, 'This is what I'd like.' Human sexuality is a massive continuum. We shouldn't forget that."Brooke Magnanti (Belle de Jour)guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe | Book review Hermione Hoby enjoys the glitz and bombast of the definitive 80s satireSo regularly is Tom Wolfe's brash 1987 tome described as "the quintessential novel of the 80s" that you almost feel the phrase could be slapped on as a subtitle. But the ability to "capture the decade" isn't the only measure of a writer's ability, and like a hot-pink puffball dress, this story displays a blithe disregard for nuance.Sherman McCoy, known to himself as a "Master of the Universe", is a millionaire bond trader at Wall Street's Pierce and Pierce, where the roar of the trading floor "resonate[s] with his very gizzard". His mastery is punctured, however, when, with his mistress at the wheel, his Mercedes hits and fatally injures a young black man in the Bronx. The story of McCoy's subsequent downfall is told alongside those of three other men, all characterised by their raging ambition and vanity: an alcoholic tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop; a power-hungry pastor; and a district attorney keen to impress one of his former jury members, the brown-lipsticked Miss Shelly Thomas.Wolfe revels in the rambunctious, seething world of 80s New York and brings to life in primary-colours prose a city fraught with racial tensions and steeped in ego. The contrasting worlds of McCoy and his victim, Henry Lamb, are vividly dramatised, if not with great subtlety: rich, white Park Avenue versus poor, black Bronx.At one particularly extravagant party, McCoy strays into a room described as "stuffed… with sofas, cushions, fat chairs and hassocks, all of them braided, tasselled, banded, bordered and... stuffed". Sometimes this big beast of a novel feels the same: dense with research and bulging with bombast. Yet, it has to be admitted, it's also great fun. So regularly is Tom Wolfe's brash 1987 tome described as "the quintessential novel of the 80s" that you almost feel the phrase could be slapped on as a subtitle. But the ability to "capture the decade" isn't the only measure of a writer's ability, and like a hot-pink puffball dress, this story displays a blithe disregard for nuance.Sherman McCoy, known to himself as a "Master of the Universe", is a millionaire bond trader at Wall Street's Pierce and Pierce, where the roar of the trading floor "resonate[s] with his very gizzard". His mastery is punctured, however, when, with his mistress at the wheel, his Mercedes hits and fatally injures a young black man in the Bronx. The story of McCoy's subsequent downfall is told alongside those of three other men, all characterised by their raging ambition and vanity: an alcoholic tabloid journalist desperate for a scoop; a power-hungry pastor; and a district attorney keen to impress one of his former jury members, the brown-lipsticked Miss Shelly Thomas.Wolfe revels in the rambunctious, seething world of 80s New York and brings to life in primary-colours prose a city fraught with racial tensions and steeped in ego. The contrasting worlds of McCoy and his victim, Henry Lamb, are vividly dramatised, if not with great subtlety: rich, white Park Avenue versus poor, black Bronx.At one particularly extravagant party, McCoy strays into a room described as "stuffed… with sofas, cushions, fat chairs and hassocks, all of them braided, tasselled, banded, bordered and... stuffed". Sometimes this big beast of a novel feels the same: dense with research and bulging with bombast. Yet, it has to be admitted, it's also great fun.Tom Wolfeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
from Limbo by Samuel Taylor Coleridge'Tis a strange place, this Limbo ! — not a Place,Yet name it so; — where Time and weary SpaceFettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,Strive for their last crepuscular half-being, —Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny handsBarren and soundless as the measuring sands,Not mark'd by flit of Shades, — unmeaning theyAs moonlight on the dial of the day!But that is lovely — looks like Human Time, —An Old Man with a steady look sublime,That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;But he is blind — a statue hath such eyes; —Yet having moon-ward turn'd his face by chance,Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,With scant white hairs, with foretop bald & high,He gazes still, — his eyeless face all eye; —As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb,He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!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 |