...and now EVERYTHING changes..... (as about an hour ago).

Happy Birthday: Gregor Johann Mendel (20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian-Czech biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favour certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour. Taking seed colour as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms "recessive" and "dominant" in reference to certain traits. In the preceding example, the green trait, which seems to have vanished in the first filial generation, is recessive and the yellow is dominant. He published his work in 1866, demonstrating the actions of invisible "factors"—now called genes—in predictably determining the traits of an organism.

The profound significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century (more than three decades later) with the rediscovery of his laws. Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns independently verified several of Mendel's experimental findings in 1900, ushering in the modern age of genetics.

Just Finished Reading: How to Make the World Add Up – Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers by Tim Harford (FP: 2020) [296pp] 

Numbers are everywhere. We are bombarded with them from media outlets, on the Internet and from politicians. But what, exactly, are we supposed to DO with them? When you’re told that inflation is down by 2% what exactly does that mean? When a government department has made a £5 billion deal is that a lot of money? When we’re told that migration is up by 15% since this time last year how are we supposed to react to that? 

Facts and figures thrown at us from every news programme or every tweet [side note: If tweets were part of Twitter, what do we call individual posts on ‘X’?] could simply be ignored as either lies, misinformation or just too complicated to think about (and do ‘they’ want you to feel that way about them?) but it doesn’t have to be that way. One thing you can, and the author suggests that you should, do is the pause a moment and think of how the number/statistic being presented makes you feel. Is it anger? Shock? Dismay? Elation? Or confusion? Now ask yourself: Was that emotional response the point of the figure you’ve just seen? If it is, it's time to dig deeper and start asking questions. 

Take the (made-up) figure I mentioned earlier – that migration was up by 15% since this time last year. If true (which it might not be), what does it mean? Is 15% a lot? In raw numbers does that mean hundreds, thousands or millions? If it's say, 10K what kind of percentage is that of the population? Does that number seem large to you or insignificant? So, was the 15% figure – given without context – designed to make you afraid/angry. If it was, maybe you shouldn’t trust that source about other figures. Then, of course, there’s the question of what constitutes a ‘migrant’ (a term I particularly loathe)? Does it include those studying here on 3–5-year visas who will be leaving on graduation? Does it include those who have been recruited to fill vital job vacancies in critical industries? Does it include seasonal farm labourers who will be gone in a few months? Or does it only include so-called ‘illegal immigrants’ many of which might legitimately claim refugee status?  

Once you start asking these sorts of questions several things happen – firstly you should expect to lose some of the emotional heat and then you start to LEARN things, like how things work, what figures really mean and that definitions (often unstated, sometimes on purpose) matter. After a while you stop being afraid of figures, stop being befuddled by statistics and stop being manipulated by those who suspect (rightly too often) that people tend to ‘switch off’ when they’re presented with a math problem. That, in a nutshell, is what this excellent book is all about – providing the intellectual tool-set that’s handy and easy to use when presented with facts and figures. Personally, I’m a sceptic by nature and probably always have been. This doesn’t mean I dismiss everything I see or hear. It does mean that I TEST things for logic, reason and, even sometimes, whether it makes mathematical sense. With this book I think I just got a whole lot better at the last bit. MUCH more from this author to come (I’ve already bought two of his other books). This was highly readable, fun (and often funny) and a much-needed aid for modern life. One of the highlights of the year. Highly recommended.   

Just Finished Reading: The Testimony of Alys Twist by Suzannah Dunn (FP: 2020) [273pp] 

England, circa 1554. It was the very pinnacle of achievement; she was a laundress to royalty itself. It was, even if she said so herself, a strange kind of royalty – a Queen, ruling alone, without a man, a King, to guide her. Alys thought it both disturbing and oddly exhilarating. Even so, a Queen needed a King to produce heirs and Queen Mary wasn’t getting any younger. More worryingly though was the fact that the new monarch still clung to the old religion and was, it seemed, dedicated to bringing it back to prominence with all the dangers that such an idea entailed. One of those dangers was the Queen’s younger half-sister the Lady Elizabeth. As an adherent to the new religion of Protestantism she was likely to be a lightning rod for any conspiracy against the rightful crown. But Miss Twist thankfully realised, this was none of her concern – until it was. The Lady Elizabeth needed staff and elements within the Queens orbit needed information. As Alys had only just arrived at court, she was the ideal subject to be transferred to look after Elizabeth’s laundry. Now at the very heart of things, Alys begins to wonder which side she was on and whether being on any side in such an endeavour wasn’t just a quick road to an execution. 

As usual I picked this up years ago because it looked interesting and different. It also focused on a particularly interesting period of English/Tudor history – the countries (brief) return to Catholicism following Henry’s establishment of the Church of England and the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’ so revealed in later centuries. Although both monarchs are only very briefly ‘on the page’ they have very distinct and well-known characters – Elizabeth is young, intelligent, crafty and lucky whilst Mary is wracked with doubt, pious to a fault, paranoid (especially about Elizabeth) and delusional if not actually mad. The main thrust of this often-excellent novel is, as the title suggests, the life of Alys Twist herself. Alys is a great character, maybe a little too modern for the period but I can understand why this is the case. Like updating the language to a more modern parlance – I'm not sure if more authentic ‘Shakespearian English’ would work with most readers! - a more modern mindset/personality is more palatable to a modern reader as long as things aren’t TOO modern that is. This is where the author come in for my only criticism, if I can use that word. The world the author creates and the characters she populates it with are very good indeed. The author's style is, likewise, very good indeed and I thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience. But, sometimes, I paused and thought to myself – did people REALLY say such things in the mid 16th century? Would someone in 1544 even find that particular thought even possible? I’ll explain... 

Metaphors or styles of speech have their time and place. Words, meanings and common usage are born, live and, sometimes, die. Phrases have historical roots. For example, a Roman would never have said that something was ‘a flash in the pan’ or that everything had been taken ‘lock, stock, and barrel’ - because both phrases date from the age of gunpowder flintlocks. In this novel nothing ‘quite’ like that happened, but on more than one occasion the author used a phrase that knocked me out of the narrative because it made me wonder – without any actual knowledge to back it up – if such a phrase COULD be used at the time. It certainly didn’t ruin things for me – nowhere near – but it was more than a little irritating at times. This was, however, my only quibble with the book which, apart from that, I thought very good and edging towards excellent. It’s from a very interesting period of British history, its chocked full of interesting characters and has a real sense of place which I enjoyed. There are some minor (non-conventional) non-explicit romantic elements which shouldn’t bother anyone but is worth a mention. Overall, a fun intriguing read. Definitely recommended to all history, and especially Tudor history, buffs.                

Happy Birthday: Sir Patrick Stewart OBE (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor. With a career spanning over seven decades of stage and screen, he has received various accolades, including two Laurence Olivier Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, four Emmy Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1996 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama in 2010.

In 1966, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He made his Broadway theatre debut in 1971 in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1979, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Antony and Cleopatra in the West End. His first television role was in Coronation Street in 1967. His first major screen roles were in Fall of Eagles (1974), I, Claudius (1976) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979). In 2008 he reprised his role as King Claudius in Hamlet and received his second Olivier Award and his first Tony Award nomination for respectively the West End and Broadway theatre productions.

Stewart gained international stardom for his leading role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), its subsequent films and Star Trek: Picard (2020–23). He starred as Captain Ahab in the USA miniseries Moby Dick (1998), Ebenezer Scrooge in TNT television film A Christmas Carol (1999) and King Henry II in the Showtime made-for-television film The Lion in Winter (2003). He also became known for his comedic appearances on sitcoms Frasier and Extras for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series nomination. He also starred as the lead of Blunt Talk (2015–2016). He currently voices Avery Bullock on American Dad!.

Ooooh... I LIKE that...... 

Just Finished Reading: Iceland Defrosted by Edward Hancox (FP: 2013) [279pp] 

It was an obsession, freely admitted. Iceland, the landscape, the people, the food and especially the music fascinated him beyond anything else. Travelling to, and around, the country at every opportunity mostly alone, sometimes with local friends, sometimes with his wife and, more recently, with their new born the author made new friends, experienced the strangeness of the land (and more often than not the people too!), stayed in small hotels or bed & breakfast places – complete with interesting, often delicious, food – enjoyed concerts and other concert goers, and generally had a LOT of fun. 

Almost any way you look at it, Iceland is a pretty amazing place. The scenery alone, seen in various Lord of the Rings movies as well as more than a few others over the years, would make it a holiday destination for anyone jaded by the regular destinations we’ve all heard so much about (and often been too far too often). But it has SO much more going for it than awesome lava fields, active volcanoes (as the world, and especially western Europe has found out to its inconvenience more than once) and world class waterfalls. One thing I can definitely agree with is the music. I’ve been a BIG fan of Bjork for a long time and love her vocal style. After hearing her as a solo artist I starting picking up her earlier work with the Sugarcubes and even have a jazz album by her – in Icelandic! - which is probably the strangest CD I own (at the moment). As a sometimes music journalist, the author kindly lists some of his favourite bands/singers in the back and I’m working my way through them (on YouTube) to see if I like them. Throughout the book as he travels around the country, he also interviews many of the singers he’s long admired from a distance, which is pretty cool. 

As a veggie (coming up to 25 years now) I’ll have to take the authors word on the superb fish meals he had and wrote about with great gusto. One thing I was intrigued by though was Icelandic yoghurt – specifically Skyr yoghurt. He enthused over it more than once and lamented (while in New York of all places whilst enjoying a pot there) that it was a great pity that it wasn’t on sale in the UK. Now this book was published in 2013 so, I thought, I wonder if things had changed. I’m delighted to say that it has and picked up a BIG tub of Skyr strawberry yoghurt from my local big supermarket. It’s YUMMY and deserves the praise the author heaped on it. It is fast becoming a staple part of my weekly diet. 

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this book. Not only is it simply a fun read in itself but the authors love of that island shines through in the prose. Iceland is a fascinating (if rather expensive!) place with a seriously unique history and culture – and I don’t just mean the yoghurt. If you’re thinking of trying it out as a potential holiday destination you could do a lot worse than reading this excellent travelogue first. Recommended.

Officially BLOWN away....

Ok, this is going to sound a little weird. I've just started a book and I think this is quite possibly the BEST single sentence I've ever read. Check THIS out:

"There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention - that indefinable something which forces upon the mind and heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he had seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary - the sunshine, the memories, the future - which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life."

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, page 7. 

Just Finished Reading: Fracture – Life and Culture in the West 1918-1938 by Philipp Blom (FP: 2015) [411pp] 

When I was young and ignorant (or at least more ignorant) I used to think that the period between the 20th centuries World Wars was a time of peace. I have long been disabused of this notion. As a French delegate to the Versailles conference said with great prescience, they had not just signed a peace treaty but rather a 20-year armistice. He was not wrong. The supposed ‘War to End Wars’ had instead shattered the world system, fracturing most of the last Empires in Europe as well as fatally damaging the globe spanning British Empire. The ramifications of this passed over the planet like an earthquake with regular aftershocks changing the world forever. Yet, even as the quake echoed around the world tensions still built beneath the surface and, unknown to the vast millions hoping for a better future a greater, even more devastating, quake was building. 

But, as with all times of social and political unrest, the West saw an outpouring of creativity both remarkable in its breadth and staying power. Works of art, literature, poetry, music, dance, and theatre since recognised as ground-breaking, indeed epoch defining, arose during this time. Not always recognised instantly (or quickly) with the regard later generations placed on them, they shocked, enthralled or dismayed the public often in equal measure. With the breaking of the international system anything, it seemed, was possible. One of the great epicentres of this new found freedom of expression was Berlin where an explosion of avant-garde art, music and lifestyles both appalled locals and attracted international visitors (who much later would be called the ‘jet set’). Briefly overshadowing Paris as the European city of culture, Berlin was THE melting pot of new ideas in a new world. 

Covering this and much else besides – including the emergence of Surrealism, Art Deco and the Jazz explosion, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the bizarre findings of Quantum Mechanics, the Charleston dance craze and psychoanalysis – this was an epic tale of the Wests reaction (or maybe over-reaction) to the devastation of total war on a scale not seen before as individuals, major groupings and whole nations struggled to come to terms (or at least try to) what had just happened and to try to square the discontinuity between what they had been told (or promised) in 1914 and what had resulted by 1918. Chocked full of interesting observations, personalities and ideas this was one of the best books of the year so far for me. I do find the ‘between the wars’ era quite fascinating for a whole host of reasons (personally I’m kind of obsessed about periods of rapid or fundamental change – probably because we’re living through one) and this did nothing to diminish that interest, quite the contrary in fact. If you’re after a detailed look at the era in a single volume I’d definitely recommend this as a very good place to start. Highly recommended as is all of this author’s works. 

[Highest page count of the year so far: 411pp][+14pp]

Some interesting (OK, to me) Political Stats.

I've just been watching an early review of the recent UK election and a number of interesting (as I said, to me at least) numbers came up. 

Keir Starmer is only the 7th Labour PM - EVER.

Labour have 209 new MPs as part of the 335 total new MPs

The Conservatives recorded their lowest result EVER at 121 seats - that's since their founding in 1835

The Labour party victory was on the smallest proportion of the vote in British political history

The turnout was the lowest since 2001 and the 2nd lowest since 1885.

So, this election has been quite one for the History books!!

Happy Birthday: Eva Gaëlle Green (born 6 July 1980) is a French actress. The daughter of actress Marlène Jobert, she began her career in theatre before making her film debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers (2003). She portrayed Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott's historical epic Kingdom of Heaven (2005). The following year, she played Bond girl Vesper Lynd in the James Bond film Casino Royale (2006), for which she received the BAFTA Rising Star Award.

Green has since starred in numerous independent films, including Cracks (2009), Womb (2010), and Perfect Sense (2011). In 2014, she played Artemisia in the 300 sequel 300: Rise of an Empire and Ava Lord in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's Sin City sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Green is also known for her collaborations with director Tim Burton, starring as Angelique Bouchard in the horror comedy film Dark Shadows (2012), the titular character of the fantasy film Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and Colette Marchant in the fantasy film Dumbo (2019). For her role as an astronaut mother in the drama film Proxima (2019), she earned a nomination for the César Award for Best Actress.

Green starred as Morgan Pendragon in the Starz historical fantasy series Camelot (2011). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in the Showtime horror drama series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016), earning critical acclaim and a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.

Late... But I blame lack of sleep yesterday..... [grin]

Election 2024.

WOW..... I mean.... WOW. Where do I start..............

Apart from a Labour AVALANCE and a complete Tory BLOODBATH, where do I start.....? The Conservative vote absolutely collapsed helped along by a comparative upsurge in the Reform UK vote - and Nigel Farage *finally* gets into the Commons on his 8th attempt. 

Interestingly (and hilariously), ex-PM Liz Truss lost her seat despite previously holding a majority of 32,988! Unfortunately I missed the actual event as I finally went to bed around 6am this morning. Another loss I missed (damn it!) was that of Jacob-Rees Mogg who the BBC also seemed to have missed in the shuffle. Another loss for the Tories that might have interesting knock-on effects was that of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt who was tipped as a possible future leader of the Conservatives.

There's still (as I type) a handful of seats to finish counting, but Labour have a majority of about 170 which means that they do pretty much what they want - within the limits of the new reality. So, what now? Watch this space... [grin]

...and the Polling Stations are closed... which means we should have the first results in about 90 minutes if Newcastle & Sunderland are as fast as usual. Then we'll begin to see how big the estimate swing will be. Interesting times - at least to political twonks like me!!

The New Statesman Predicts...

The pollsters and pundits have been predicting a Labour landslide and a Tory wipe-out for weeks now, and we should know how right (or wrong!) they are at some point tomorrow. From what I've just seen the predictions are:

Labour: 418 seats

Conservative: 114 seats

Liberal Democrat: 63 seats

Reform: 6 seats

Greens: 4 seats

It'll be interesting to see how accurate this is by this time tomorrow! The talk is of the worst Tory result since the 1930's. If things go REALLY bad it might be their worst result since they were founded in the 19th century. Personally I'm going to enjoy staying up and watching it happen, most especially when cabinet members lose their seats.. Sorry and all that, but its my idea of FUN.

Just Finished Reading: Atoms and Ashes – From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima by Serhii Plokhy (FP: 2022) [301pp] 

It was quite a promise, the idea of turning Weapons of Mass Destruction into the engines of progress itself. Some even said that the electricity the new stations would be producing was too cheap to meter, in effect free. It was quite the promise. Dazzled by all things nuclear it was easy to forget that promises and radiation containment vessels are made to be broken. 

Growing up in England in the 1960’s I, like most of the rest of the world, had never heard of a place in the Soviet Union called Kyshtym. It appeared on few maps and none of those maps mentioned a classified nuclear facility there. The world only found out about the accident at that plant when the Soviet Union fell. In late September 1957 something went wrong there – VERY wrong – and quickly got out of control. The resulting fire and the explosions they caused spread highly radioactive debris over a large area. Never having dealt with anything like it before the response, especially in a secret obsessed society like the USSR, was far less than that required. Few died on the day, but many followed in the decades to come, vast amounts of topsoil were removed, whole villages destroyed to prevent their occupants returning to contaminated zones and countless animals were destroyed to prevent them being eaten or milked. 

The first nuclear accident I HAD heard about, although it also happened (just) before I was born was at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria (128 miles north of where I was born and 72 miles north of where I went to University) on 10th October 1957. A fire which lasted 3 days in one of the reactor cores spread radioactive isotopes across the UK and into Europe. It was the worst ever recorded incident in England and one of the worst in the world (given a severity level of 5 out of a potential 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.) Downplayed at the time for political reasons – the UK was desperate to be involved in the US nuclear bomb program – the full scale of the disaster remained classified for some time. 

Things got even more interesting when the book moved into the modern era and incidents that many people reading this will remember. First up we have the Three Mile Island incident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in March 1979. This was also a level 5 event and only narrowly avoided being something MUCH worse. The near-meltdown released radioactive gasses and water vapour into the atmosphere as well as radioactive water into the nearby rivers. Luckily for the local residents (and everyone else downwind) a truly awesome tragedy was avoided. However, the costs of the clean-up and the decommissioning of the reactor are in the billions of dollars. [Side note: If you haven’t watched the 1979 movie ‘The China Syndrome’ it’ll give you some idea of what happened at Three Mile Island. Rather spookily the movie was released 12 days BEFORE the Harrisburg accident!] 

Then, of course, we move on to the poster child of all nuclear accidents: Chernobyl. Located in Ukraine (and in the new again recently whilst occupied by Russian soldiers who were crazy enough or ill-informed enough to dig tranches in the still contaminated ground around the plant) this mother of all accidents - level 7 out of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale – occurred in April 1986 and initially in secret (again) until radiation spikes were reported across Europe and the finger very obviously pointed towards the Soviets. Finally, reluctantly admitting a problem they threw everything they had to prevent an even bigger disaster. It was, for many around the world a wake-up call about the dangers of nuclear power. Whilst some pointed to the lacklustre safety protocols of Soviet industry others pointed to the failures on the Three Mile Island facility with it supposed superior design and safety environment. Unsurprisingly the approvals for new nuclear power stations across the world plummeted. As the situation within the industry began to improve everything crashed to Earth with a bump – or should that be a wave? Fukushima happened on 11th March 2011. 

Hit by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded (with little damage directly caused to the plant itself) and then hit by TWO tsunami waves – one of which exceeded 14 metres (the defensive sea wall only measured 10 metres) - a series of problems caused a fire, partial melt-down and a series of explosions across the site and ultimately another level 7 incident. The facility was state of the art and the operators highly trained yet still a disaster was only averted by some quick thinking, personnel with the dedication and (honestly) suicidal bravery to stay at their posts and luck. Again, unsurprisingly, the world reacted with dismay as yet another nuclear incident shook confidence in the technology. 

Of course, what makes it worse, if such a thing is possible, is that nuclear power is seen as THE saviour to a future energy crisis as older fossil-fuel power stations are increasingly decommissioned and the preferred greener renewable power sources are still coming online and slowly improving in efficiency. The stopgap was supposed to be filled – at least temporarily if not permanently – by nukes. BUT the approval process and building of nuclear power plants takes DECADES – time we seemingly don’t have. So, it is proposed, we need to cut back on safety protocols and cut corners on the building process to speed things up. Really? When some of the most advanced and well-maintained nuclear plants in the world fail how well are quickly thrown up and cost-cutting versions going to manage? It’s a very relevant and deeply disturbing question the author ends with. 

Told in a measured tone without any of the expected hyperbole or ‘the sky is falling’ rhetoric this is a deeply disturbing narrative about a technology that promised SO much and ended up leaving us with problems that our far descendants will be left to deal with. If you have any interest at all in the nuclear industry and want to know more about the promises being made about it ‘solving’ the ongoing Climate crisis this is definitely the book for you. But be warned, it might very well give you nightmares especially if you live downwind of a nearby nuclear station. One of the best reads of the year (so far) and, therefore, HIGHLY recommended. Much more from this author to come.    

Just Finished Reading: The Undivided Past – History Beyond our Differences by David Cannadine (FP: 2013) [264pp] 

Identity and Identity politics seems to be THE cultural topic these days. People, across the West (is it happening elsewhere?) are either pondering their core identity or proudly proclaiming it to anyone who will listen or just happens to be in the vicinity of the proclamation.   

But such debates are FAR from a new phenomenon – though I’m guessing they’re far more public because of social media, larger media attention and the fact that they quickly became a political football at least/mostly in the USA. Thinking about who you are and what identity defines you is nothing new as the author points out in this excellent book. Covering topics from the Nation, Belief, Class, Gender and Race then beyond to Civilisations and the so-called ‘clash’ between them he shows repeatedly that these terms we throw about in casual conversation have multiple meanings depending on who you (and when you!) speak to them, have meanings that change over time and change between cultures and are all too often blown out of proportion in how they define any individual. 

National identity seems to be a pretty fixed property, right? But when you think about it and start asking questions things start to get a little fuzzy. Nations are not ‘fixed’ entities when looked at over historic periods. Nations come into existence, change size, grow, shrink and, sometimes, disappear – sometimes permanently and sometimes for generations only to reappear later often with different boundaries. National identity also doesn’t always correspond with national boundaries. A person can define themselves and feel themselves to be French, German or other nationalities despite the fact they were not born in those countries but happen to live near enough to their borders and speak the same language as that nation. They define their nationality in cultural terms rather than mere geographic ones.  

Take Race. Does it even exist? The racial groupings we recognise today were an invention of Europeans from the Age of Discovery to account for the ‘strange’ peoples they were encountering for the first time across the world. Inevitably they created a hierarchy with ‘white races’ at the pinnacle given them dominion over ‘lesser races’ to do with as they may. Without any knowledge of genetics and the belief that ‘types’ were immutable they defined peoples on physical characteristics and then ‘ranked’ them. It wasn’t long, of course, until they discovered that ‘inter-breeding’ was absolutely possible – you know, because we’re a single very homogenous species – which quite naturally led to worries over racial ‘purity’ and other nonsense. With definitions of ‘race’ becoming more and more convoluted and self-contradictory the very concept of such a thing came under increasing scrutiny and its long past the time when we should abandon the idea. 

Without attempting to condense the entire work into a few paragraphs (impossible for such a work), I’ll skip onto the idea of Civilisations – opposing and ranked of course. The idea/phrase “Western Civilisation” is much used these days without any clear definition (or more often without any attempt to define such a thing because everyone ‘knows’ what it means, right?), but what DOES it mean? That’s a good question. Often there’s some hand-waving about Ancient Greece and Rome but no mention of slavery, violent ‘entertainments' or the treatment of women. Likewise, the talk of ‘western values’ is left in mid-air often without a single example or explanation or is followed by vague mentions of Democracy, the Rule of Law and Respect for Individuals. Are these *purely* western values? Do we both value them and practice them as our highest ideals? Or are they ‘aspirational’ values? Drilling down a little deeper we can question the very idea of ‘The West’. Where exactly IS that? Western Europe, North America, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand & Japan? Plus a few others... Do all of those countries share a set of values? A set of ‘core’ values? A common culture, language, history... ANYTHING? If defining the West is fraught with problems then how can we define ‘civilisations’ outside of the West? 

Identity is definitely an odd one. We use words in common that mean a myriad of different things to different people at different points in history. What makes it ‘worse’ is that individuals not only define themselves in often idiosyncratic ways but those definitions both change over time and rise or fall in priority not only through a person's lifetime but through a person's day. If you’re feeling confused or overwhelmed by the present (often heated) debate on identity and identity politics this slim but dense volume will give you much to mull over (it took a day longer than anticipated to read because there was SO much to think about) and will help you put things into both cultural and historical perspective. I certainly feel less bamboozled by it all and can look at the latest outpourings or ‘scandal’ with a bit more context and a bit more room to breathe and to make informed rational opinions on the matter. Definitely recommended, but leave some additional time to think, muse, ponder and mull things over.