Review of "From The Holy Mountain: a journey in the shadow of Byzantium" by William Dalrymple

I've listened to William Dalrymple on the "Empire" podcast, and I think of him as a decent, progressive, liberal and intelligent sort of guy. This book came as a bit of shock. The framework is him following in the footsteps of a learned Byzantine monk who decided to go with a mate to visit the monasteries of the Byzantine empire, so he goes to the same monasteries, now much depleted or deserted and left as tiny islands of Christianity in a world that is mostly Muslim (and in one small corner, Jewish). He meets a lot of monks who he experiences as very good, ascetic and holy, and he repeats apparently unquestioningly the bollocks that they believe about demons, possession, miracles and relics. 

He's learned in a way that upper class Brits who have had a "classical" education can be, and he can draw on lots of background about the history of the Empire and of religion to make it interesting. As we went through I occasionally noted places where he'd left things out that didn't favour his narrative of beleaguered Eastern Christians keeping alive a flame of holiness. 

The book is from 1998, and what's changed and what hasn't in terms of the contemporary politics that he describes is interesting. The Kurdish PKK has laid down its arms and ended its guerrilla war against Turkey, and the Islamists that are only just beginning to appear on the horizon in 1998 are now firmly in power. The lovely orderly oasis of religious toleration that he finds in Syria is its exact opposite, and probably wasn't nearly as nice as he seemed to think it was even back then. Lebanon is an even bigger shit heap than it was then.  I was reminded by the book about the trail of massacre and counter-massacre...I suspect that almost all of my friends know about the Deir Yassin massacre, but I bet not one of them has heard about the Damour massacre, when Fatah and Palestinian Ba'athist fighters slaughtered hundreds of Lebanese Christians in retaliation for an earlier massacre, and for which the subsequent slaughter of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila massacre was claimed as a retaliation by some of the victims' relatives. 

The Israeli pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank, and persecutions in Israel proper, have notched up a gear - he doesn't mention or go to Gaza, which is funny because there's quite a lot Byzantine Christian stuff there, including a very old and famous monastery. 

And his analysis of the Mubarak regime and its "crackdown" on the Muslim Brotherhood is so misguided as to be comical. I guess "experts", and people who visit and talk to others on the ground, are not really better informed than anyone else. Did the Western intelligence agencies see the fall of Mubarak coming? I don't think so.

Review of Margarete: Queen of The North

A well-plotted, well acted and beautifully shot Danish history movie, about the woman who managed to unify the warring kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway in the fourteenth century. The apparently massive budget definitely shows - stunning landscape shots, beautiful interiors and clothes. 

The drama comes from the sudden appearance of a man claiming to be the Queen's supposedly dead son Oluf, which undermines her plans to marry her adopted son and co-ruler Erik to an English princess and thereby solidify the dynasty and the union. The real history says that the impostor's claims were not at all believable, and the plot was amateurish. In the film it's left uncertain as to whether "Oluf" is genuine is not - I incline to think that the film is saying that he was, and that the Queen believed him.

Watched on BBC iPlayer.

Review of "Swing Time" by Zadie Smith

Not really my sort of book - coming of age novel about a young mixed race women living in Willesden with a politically engaged mother and a loving but ineffectual dad, and her better-dancer friend who has a brief West End chorus line career, and the protagonist's career as a gopher for an Australian pop-singer celeb (who seems to me to be thinly disguised Kylie). 

But I enjoyed it lots anyway...Zadie Smith (who I don't think I've actually read before) is a very good writer and lots of it is beautifully observed, particularly the bits about NGOs and aid projects in Africa - the celeb wants to save the world one village at a time, and is really obnoxious about it.

Review of "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy

I decided to read this because I'd read William Morris's News from Nowhere, which is a response to this different vision of a socialist utopia. It's a strange and not particularly socialist book, though perhaps also an illustration of how many different things have been called "socialist" over the years. Bellamy's socialist future is one in which everything is run on corporate/military lines. Socialist has grown "naturally" out of the tendency of capitalism to monopoly - eventually all the big monopolists corporations merge into one, and then there's no capitalist competition so that's socialism, right? And work and production are organised via an "industrial army", with ranks and units and so on.

I have a vague memory that some of the German Social Democrats, in particular Hilferding, thought along similar lines - that Monopoly Capitalism would make socialism thinkable and possible.

Bits of are repulsive, though I think Bellamy has tried to think kindly about the way in which a future society will include women (somewhat better than Morris did), and about how "from each according to their ability" really does mean that those who can't contribute much deserve just as much as everyone else.

As a piece of fiction it's not great, but better than Morris's book, which has a lot of people floating about dressed as happy medieval peasants and doing cute crafty things. Bellamy's frame tale, in which he explains how his protagonist arrives in the future, also seems better crafted than Morris's, which is barely explained at all.