Robert Graves recreates the life of the Roman Emperor Claudius, as if Claudius were writing his biography in secret.  The first part of his story, I Claudius, follows events up until the fearful and comic moment when, against all expectations, Claudius, the stutterer, the fool, the gauche academic, becomes emperor of the Roman Empire.  Claudius the God describes his subsequent years as emperor.  If Claudius could have chosen his life, he would have been a historian working quietly in some pleasant university.  Through Graves’ imagination, Claudius’s subject becomes himself, and the way people organise leadership.  In I Claudius, we see the dark consequences of deciding that the messy business of life is all too much, and that instead of frustrating debate, disagreement, and compromise, why not throw all of that out of the window and get yourself a tyrant?  In some of the most charming sections of Claudius the God, we actually see the advantages of this plan.  Claudius is a good emperor who uses his power to defeat short-term self-interest and small mindedness.  Corn merchants, for example, object to plans to improve Rome’s harbour at Ostia, because a secure supply of corn coming in through a safer harbour might depress prices.  Claudius has the power to cut through all that and transform Ostia.  Sadly, at the end of the book, with the promise of Nero’s rule to come, we see that these advantages will be short-lived.  It is very difficult to get yourself a good tyrant, to find someone with the humility to see that power does not rest in themselves, but in the fear of others.

I loved the second book as much as the first.  Graves seems to get into Claudius’s mind so successfully, that a reader sees the world from a completely different viewpoint.  We see Britain as a backward place, where at a push some of the best men might make good coachmen.  And we see early Christianity as a confused mass of Life of Brian events, different people claiming to be messiahs, unexpected births in a down-at-heel Bethlehem inn, an earthquake moving a rock covering the entrance to a tomb, all somehow becoming the familiar story of Christianity we know today.

The story Claudius tells us is over two thousand years old, but we see our own world in it.  We see where our present situation evolved from, and realise that the dilemmas we face in selecting leaders remain strangely familiar.

 

 

Britain’s association with Europe goes back much further than entry into the European Community in 1973. Ever since the climate improved enough to make Britain a place where anyone would want to live, there have been waves of migration from Europe. Following centuries of settlement by a range of European people, Britain became a province of the Roman empire, remaining so for about four hundred years, from AD43 to around 410AD. When the Romans left there was a period of chaos, which Scandinavian invasions in the ninth century helped to end, directly through imposed rule, or indirectly by providing the surviving English kings with a formidable enemy to unite against. Then in 1066 the Normans invaded, and Britain became a northern province of the Angevin Empire based on Normandy and areas of what is now western France. As time passed this empire suffered stresses and strains between its senior leaders, and was attacked by the kings of France. By the thirteenth century only the English rump of the Angevin Empire remained. England, led by kings such as Edward III and Henry V then spent a few centuries trying to recreate the old empire, a struggle which ironically is often told in terms of English patriotism. In 1485 Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, representing the line which once ruled the Angevin Empire, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth. This ended a period of 1400 years when Britain was either part of a European reality, or struggling to recreate it.

After 1485 there was a change. The Tudor monarchs, Henry VIII excepted, tended to look outside Europe for links that would help a small island nation find some influence in the world. These explorations would eventually lead to the period of the British Empire, which for a few hundred years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allowed Britain to wield huge global influence. This brief, and historically anomalous time soon passed, ending with the Second World War. After that, with the Empire falling away, it would be natural that a small island on Europe’s northern flanks should look back towards a large neighbouring continent. It is historically incorrect to see Britain as an ancient island nation which only now is threatened by bureaucrats in Brussels. From an historical point of view, Britain as part of Europe is the more normal state of affairs.

 

Old Mars is a collection of short stories, inspired by the pre-Mariner probe tradition of science fiction writing about Mars. There is a great introduction by George R.R. Martin about his youthful admiration for fanciful Martian tales. Then comes a selection of stories reflecting the influence of various twentieth century science fiction writers. Allen M. Steele, for example, sets the first story in a desert not unlike that of Nevada, complete with an Edgar Rice Burroughs themed resort. This resort is a reminder that we like to create fantasy worlds on Earth. So why not continue to create them on Mars.

I also enjoyed The Wreck of the Mars Adventure, which imagines seventeenth century pirate William Kidd sailing to Mars with the help of a scientist of the time. Kidd’s flying sailing ship had me thinking about how difficult it is to imagine the future. We usually only see what is to come in terms of technologies we actually live with.

The final story in the book was my favourite. Ian Macdonald imagines a future where Earth strikes back at the Martians of H.G. Wells who invaded west London in their tripod machines. The story follows a singer of popular song and light opera, his career on the decline, who finds himself in a concert party entertaining troops on Mars.

However, I didn’t find all of the stories so successful. King of the Cheap Romance was shoddily written. I don’t know if this was an ironic reflection on the poor standards of cheap romance writing. There is shoddy writing in the history of Mars literature. John Carter of Mars, listed as by Edgar Rice Burroughs, (actually by his son) uses a style known politely as “juvenile.” Joe R. Lansdale appears to write King of the Cheap Romance in the same style, and a sense of irony was not enough to get me through it.

Overall, I would recommend this book. It’s a good way to introduce yourself to authors you might want to explore further, and Ian Macdonald’s concert party story makes the book worthwhile on its own.

 

When I was at university in the 1980s, I wrote an essay on the American writer David Henry Thoreau, and said he was interested in economics. My tutor’s reaction is still clear in my memory: “Literature is not about economics!” he declared. This was quite shocking. I thought literature could be about anything. But no. I guess it had to be about star-crossed lovers.  The fact is, however, as Alfred Marshall wrote: “Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life”. Economics, seemingly an esoteric dark art confined to forbidding institutions is really about what we do everyday; going to work, or being unemployed, going out shopping, or staying in and watching television. Economics like literature, can be about anything.

 

Money is the common currency, something virtually all of us have, and something which divides us. People are divided by how much they earn. This seeming inevitability hasn’t always been the case. In hunter gatherer societies surviving today, there does not seem to be a tendency to gather private property. Resources are more likely to be shared out, rather than hoarded by a few individuals. Both John E. Pffeifer in The Creative Explosion and James Shreeve in The Neandertal Enigma begin their explanations of human social development by pointing out that hunter gatherer societies rarely have a leader. Modern Kalahari Bushmen have no specific leader, and train their children from an early age to share all they have with each other. Charles Darwin remarked on the same social arrangement in the natives of Tierra del Fuego, during his famous voyage on the Beagle. He met the Fuegians on a freezing, rainy day, and wondered at their condition as rain ran over their entirely naked bodies. “In Tierra del Fuego, until some chief shall arise with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantages, such as domesticated animals or other valuable presents, it seems scarcely possible that the political state of the country can be improved. At present, even a piece of cloth is torn into shreds and distributed; and no one individual becomes richer than another” (The Voyage of the Beagle P184). There is a sad truth in Darwin’s words. People aspire to nicer things, a better life. They look at other people and covet what they have. In this way, economies are driven forward. They depend fundamentally on some people having a great deal, and others having much less. But of course this division is never going to be stable. The fluctuating struggle between necessary social division and necessary reaction against such division is a fundamental aspect not just of economic history, but of history itself, and the literature which has been written by people living through it.

So, yes, its perfectly acceptable for novelists to be interested in economics.

We take mirrors for granted today, but a reflective surface probably played a crucial role in the development of human self awareness. Obviously if you see an image of yourself, and realise that image is you, self awareness has been acheived. This could only have first happened when people looked into the water of ponds or gently flowing rivers. Not surprisingly springs, rivers, ponds and lakes have often been invested with spiritual significance. The huge Bronze Age monument at Flag Fen in Cambridgeshire, a ritual bridge structure across an area of water meadow, probably celebrated the reflective characteristics of water.

The earliest manufactured mirrors were made from obsidian, a rare, naturally reflective volcanic rock. Examples of obsidian mirrors have been found in the area of Anatolia in modern day Turkey, dating to around 6000BC. From 4000BC craftsmen in Mesopotamia were making polished copper mirrors. From this time onwards mirror manufacture continued as a highly expensive business, confining ownership of mirrors to the rich. It wasn’t until 1835 that the silvered glass mirror was invented by German chemist Justus Von Liebig, and mass production became possible. Today mirrors are everywhere. We brush our teeth, style hair, and squeeze spots in them. But mirrors were the first place where we became aware of ourselves, and are now used as a basic test of self-awareness in the animal kingdom. In 1970 the psychologist Gordon Gallup developed the Mirror Test to judge ability in self recognition. So far only humans and other great apes, dolphins, orcas, European magpies, and a single Asiatic elephant have passed the mirror test.

So that mirror in your bathroom was the place humanity first became aware of themselves, and where we discovered we are not alone in this ability.

 

There are many elections to think about at the moment – London elections for mayor, local elections, elections for the U.S. president. In any election “change” is a big thing. Anyone who offers it seems exciting. Anyone who says “I can offer you more of what has gone before,” doesn’t come over as quite so compelling. That being said, it is obvious that people are also wary of uncertainty, and fond of the familiar. Ideally then, change should be a continuation of the past dressed up as something new. I was thinking about this earlier this week on my latest stop on a journey through the Rolling Stone Magazine Top 500 albums of all time. I had reached 106, Rocket to Russia by the Ramones. The notes on Apple Music told me that the Ramones were the first punk band, which meant they took the bare essentials of pop music – four chords, a catchy melody and cleverly inane lyrics – and speeded up the tempo. In this way, they could go back to the pop of the late 50s and early 60s, and still sound revolutionary. They could wear the torn blue jeans and leather jackets of late 1950s greaser rockers and yet still have the sound for a radical new generation. Strange as it may seem the Ramones managed the trick used by successful politicians, to offer something old dressed up as something new. Still you won’t have a politician sing:

You think I’m real cute, but who’s gonna bring home the loot

Make up your mind about, hope you don’t doubt

That I can’t give you anything.

 

The Victoria and Albert Museum is one of the five short listed candidates for museum of the year. The V&A is an interesting museum for such an accolade. The V&A was originally dedicated to industrial design. In 1913 the scientific and industrial collection was taken to the nearby Science Museum, and the V&A was switched to its present role as a collection of decorative art. But even if we think of the V&A in terms of decorative arts, this does not lessen the significance of its collection. The history of art shows that there was always a stifling weight of expectation on areas of art considered important. For many centuries fine art was confined to churches and cathedrals, and its subject matter was limited by its religious setting. It was only in the decorative arts, with much lower expectations, that artists could widen their scope. During the Renaissance when art finally began to leave the Church, it was decorative art that led the way, with many famous artists engaging in this kind of work. The fifteenth century artist Botticelli, for example, painted furnishings for domestic use. I’ve seen one of Botticelli’s lovely laundry boxes at the National Gallery. A modern artist like Andy Warhol taps into this with his paintings of every day things – cans of beans and so on. So whether the V&A is the best museum or not, awards and a sense of importance can sometimes be a drawback. I’ll think about that next time I don’t get an award.

This week Angela Merkel, has had to appease the Turkish president Tayyip Erdagon, by attempting to prosecute a German comedian who composed a scurrilous verse or two about him. I gave this some thought over the last few days, reading Robert Graves’s I Claudius. I was reading the sections of the book where, following the death of the essentially decent emperor Augustus, his son Tiberius succeeds as emperor. Tiberius, thin skinned and insecure, passes a law  making it treason to assail his own honour and reputation in any way. People accused of writing impolite verse are put on trial for their lives.

Later in the book, there is a falling out between Tiberius and his formidable mother Livia. Taking revenge on her son, Livia arranges a party where she reads to her guests from a collection of letters written by her former husband Augustus. She takes bitter pleasure in shaming her son with the following passage:

“Though I have been bound to protect myself legally against all sorts of libel I shall exert myself to the utmost… to avoid staging so unpleasant a spectacle as a trial for treason for any foolish historian, caricaturist or epigram-maker who has made me a target for his wit or eloquence.”

Augustus concludes: “To use the majesty of the law for revenging any petty act of private spite is to make a public confession of weakness, cowardice, and an ignoble spirit.”

Not much has changed in two thousand years.

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I’m reading I Claudius by Robert Graves. It’s a great book in many ways, not least in the education in writing that young Claudius receives from his teacher Athenodorus.   Claudius writes a description of a huge draft of army recruits parading on Mars Field for the inspection of Emperor Augustus.  Receiving criticism from his teacher, Claudius says:  “I was forced to admit that I had told both too much and too little…  I need not have mentioned that the cavalry had horses: people took that for granted.  And I had twice put in the incident of Augustus’s charger stumbling; once was enough if the horse only stumbled once… On the other hand I had not mentioned several things that he would have been interested to hear – how many recruits there were on parade, how far advanced their military training was, to what garrison town they were being sent, whether they looked glad or sorry to go, what Augustus said to them in their speech.”

I must avoid telling too much and too little.

April’s Grand National at Aintree has a prize fund of over £1 million, the greatest of any jump race in Europe. Horse Racing has always been unashamedly commercial, ever since rascally King Charles II used to disappear up to Newmarket in the 1670s to have a flutter on the horses. In fact the presence of high street bookmakers is down to horse racing. Until 1960 betting could only take place at race meetings, or via postal bookies who had a reputation for unreliability. This meant that punters who couldn’t attend meetings were likely to go to an illegal street bookie, who because you knew where they lived, were much more likely to honour bets than postal bookies. By 1960 the illegal street betting industry was so huge that the government gave in and legalised high street betting shops. But even with this commercial background, horse racing is still a sport, in the sense that it is about more than money. This is clear in the way many people involved in racing do not put financial profit as their top priority. Horse racing is often irrational as a way of making money. For many years race entry fees were used to provide prize money, which meant that race horse owners were competing mainly to win back their own money. It is also the case that owners have nearly always spent more on their race horses than they earned from them. By the 1960s, prize money on average only contributed 23% of the total costs of ownership (figures quoted by sports historian Wray Vamplew). Most owners lose money, but are willing to bare these costs for the prestige of being involved in the sport. In the 1830s a third of owners were titled. Today the nobility have been replaced by super rich business people, who don’t seem to care about the costs of participation. For them sport is on a different plane to normal laws of profit and loss. The age of the gentleman amateur might appear to be over in sport. And yet some of the most prominent people in horse racing, the most unashamedly commercialised of all sports, don’t do it for the money.