Through a glass darkly – 168

We’ve never made much of our wedding anniversary. Though I think that four years ago we flew back from Kyiv very early in the morning, after a truncated night. And I offered to buy Susie an anniversary breakfast in the airport at Frankfurt, with lots of Bavarian sausages and scrambled eggs. But she didn’t feel up for it.

This year we did better. We went out to tea at The Ivy in St Andrew Square. With a voucher that was a gift last year from Felicity and Ian. It was a damp, grey afternoon. But we sat among profusion of plants, and enjoyed a trio of savoury dishes, including a smoked salmon and cream cheese bun, some excellent scones with cream and strawberry jam. And some more exotic stuff, including a creme brulée. Much to my annoyance my MacBook has just gone all bolshy about providing the appropriate accents. The tea was preceded by a glass of champagne and was all round excellent. An afternoon mug of tea and a digestive biscuit will never be quite the same again.

New Year resolutions

I’ve never made much of New Year resolutions either. Not since primary school days, when I may have written these January good intentions into my Schoolboy’s Diary. Setting down on paper good resolutions seems a bit like a hostage to fortune. Romans 7:19 comes to mind: “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing”.

That said, I am a bit challenged by two things. First, I was given last year a rather forbidding NHS hand-out on How to prepare for hip surgery. Which I dutifully filed, and then put away for a rainy days. As I already have some exercises prescribed by our local [very good] physio. And I find those hard enough. But now that a hip replacement may almost be in sight, and trying to learn from Susie’s surgery in Lithuania at the end of October, I realise that I need to get myself into the best shape possible before any hip replacement. If I am going to profit from it. So – one resolution, posted here in full view, is a commitment to looking at the worksheet. And doing it !

Sort of relatedly, we watched a television programme last night in which a life coach, a would-be Michael Mosley replacement, and his Asian doctor colleague looked at the health and the diet, and the refrigerator, of a couple in their sixties. Both were determined to see their grand-children grow up. But both were a bit overweight, and a bit casual about their diet. In the course of the programme the couple were weaned off their addiction to severely processed foods, had much of the contents of their fridge thrown out, were switching to a vegetable heavy and fermented food diet; and were losing kilograms of weight and inches from their waistlines. Biscuits, it is clear, are as addictive as tobacco. Which we all know in our heads. But a significant change of diet is as difficult as giving up smoking. [Which I dd aged 45.] Yes, it’s a great idea. But no, preferably not today.

The Night Manager

Talking of television, we are now several episodes into The Night Manager. The new series has been very heavily plugged since before Christmas as a return of the much-praised first season eight years on. And which again stars Tom Hiddleston as the former hotel manager turned British intelligence operator Jonathan Pine. Who is again fighting an urgent battle against a conspiracy to destabilise a nation. And who, as in the first series, does not know who he can trust. [ I react badly to films and series that are over-promoted. I may be the only person of my generation who never saw The Sound of Music. Even though it was on for three years in Oxford.  And I’ve taken against The Traitors which is publicised by the BBC morning, noon, and night.] 

Is The Night Manager any good ? Well, up to a point.There are a series of glossy locations, which purport to be [and may actually be] Colombia. And there is tension and episode-ending cliffhangers. But the two most charismatic characters from the earlier series, Hugh Laurie as Dickie Roper and Tom Hollander as Major ‘Corky’, Roper’s right-hand man, are both absent from the early episodes of the new series. As is Olivia Colman, of the Foreign Office’s Enforcement Agency. As is Elizabeth Debicki, as Jed, Roper’s [six foot tall]  girlfriend and Pine’s love interest. Which places an enormous burden in the new series on Tom Hiddleston, again playing Jonathan Pine, now known as Alex Goodwin, a low-level MI6 surveillance officer. In truth I think that they are just milking the John le Carré connection [two of his sons are named in the credits], building a series around a two-dimensional character. Who is more like James Bond than George Smiley. 

For my money the best screen  adaptations of le Carre’s books are the 7-part 1979 BBC series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, directed by John Irvin, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley, supported by an all-star cast. And the six-part follow-up Smiley’s People, shown by the BBC in 1982, directed by Simon Langton. Again starring Alec Guinness with Anthony Bate, Bernard Hepton, Beryl Reid, and Siân Phillips. With an honourable mention for A Perfect Spy,.broadcast by the BBC in 1987, directed by Peter Smith, with Peter Egan playing the title character. And an honourable mention too for the 1965 film, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, directed by Martin Ritt, and starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom. Shot in black and white. Arguably the only le Carré film that was a [deserved] box office success.

Looking Ahead

A recent call to the NHS Appointments Office suggested that hip surgery will/should be ‘within 6-9 months of your appointment with the consultant’. Which was on October 7th last year. It starts to seem like a long wait. Though it could be a few weeks earlier if I am prepared to go to Kirkcaldy. Or possibly to the Outer Hebrides. 

Meanwhile there is the Six Nations rugby on the horizon in a week or so. And I am going to finish [re-]reading Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. His twelve-volume series that tracks a collection of upper class English acquaintances and friends through a series of encounters between 1914 and 1970. And often compared to Proust.

And I want to read The Oppermanns  by Lion Feuchtwanger, a German Jewish writer, a novel about a German family in Berlin in the early 1930s, written at the time when Hitler and  the Nazis were coming to power in the Weimar Republic. Which I was given by my friend Pete after his last visit to Edinburgh.

And when we are both mobile again I want to go back to Biarritz. Sadly a bit too late for its Edwardian heyday. But conveniently accessible on a direct flight from Edinburgh. And also to the Orkneys. And possibly to the Shetlands. And possibly to a new-to-us Mediterranean island. Maybe Malta. Or Cyprus. Or Crete. This starts to sound like a Bucket [and Spade] List.

January 2026

Through a glass darkly -167

Christmas into New Year

That was Christmas that was. We were delighted to have Jem and Anna, Freya and Oskar, with us in Edinburgh for a week. It was the first time since I retired that we have had family here over Christmas. [We have been variously in High Wycombe and Watlington, in Ankara, Kiev, and Chantilly.] Jem and Anna did most of the heavy lifting, with the limbless turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts etc. The weekend papers told us to drink new world Cabernet Sauvignon with the turkey. But we didn’t have any. And drank Chilean Pinot Noir instead.

Now it is New Year, and Edinburgh is dry, sunny, and very cold. Some neighbours came in for mulled wine on New Year’s Eve. Susie and I had a brief excursion into the centre of town on New Year’s Day. Beyond that I have walked in the park. And have finished a book that I began to read back in Kaunas at the end of October.

David Smith’s God or Mammon: The Critical Issue confronting World Christianity  was published last year by Langham Academic. David is a friend of some thirty-plus years; onetime Pastor of Eden Chapel, Cambridge, Principal of Northumbria Bible College when we were in Duns, Co-Director of the Whitefield Institute in Oxford, and Course Tutor when I did an MTh in Mission in an Urban World at ICC, Glasgow in 2006-8. He has published nine books, all well worth reading, including Mission after Christendom [2003], Seeking a City with Foundations [2011], and Stumbling towards Zion: Recovering the Biblical Tradition of Lament [2020]. 

David Smith with the MTh cohort, ICC, Glasgow, 2006

David Smith: God or Mammon

God or Mammon is his most recent and most ambitious book. It is prefaced by a quotation from Albert Camus: “The question of the twentieth century is … how to live [in a world] without grace and justice ?” Camus’ 1971 book L’homme revolté,is a secular lament over a broken world from which both normative ethics and an agreed understanding of the meaning of existence have been lost. Tony Judt charted the post-War social reforms. But his later book strikes a concerned note: “Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of self-interest.” In consequence British and Americans assume that inequality is a natural condition of life. About which we can do very little. David Smith rescues the biblical word Mammon to describe the materialistic world view which dominates our society. And asks how Christian belief and practice can counter this obsessive desire for individual material prosperity.

Biblical Roots

In the first part of the book David looks at the Old Testament, at the biblical roots of the struggle between God and Mammon. As the tribes of Israel gather at Shechem, they are given a choice: either to serve Yahweh or to embrace the way of life of the cities that they have overthrown [Josh. 24: 14-15]. [[They must resist what Dennis Lennon called ‘the urge to merge’.] Walter Brueggemann insists that the Torah reveals Yahweh as a God “committed to the establishment of … …sociopolitical justice in a world of massive power organised against justice”. But the demand for a king, with the consequent centralisation of power, the need for taxation to fund the royal lifestyle, and widening socio-economic divisions, resulted in the erosion of the values of the Torah. 

The pre-Exilic prophets exposed the corruption and apostasy of Israel. Deutero-Isaiah, the great prophet of the Exile, declared that the Servant would recover and renew the Mosaic concern for justice; his ultimate aim would be to “to bring justice to the nations” [Isa. 42: 1-4]. Ecclesiastes, written towards the end of biblical Israel, acknowledges that their return from exile had not triggered the spread of glory through the earth. Trito-Isaiah acknowledges the disappointment of the returning people [Isa. 59: 9-10]. Qoheleth [The Preacher] anticipates Camus; he sees a world gone amiss, a culture in which concern for money and possessions creates an idolatrous system. Which creates division, isolation, and despair. Qoheleth can no longer understand the purpose of the universe.

Moving to the New Testament, Palestine was part of the fertile crescent; with plentiful harvests of wheat, grapes, and olive oil; abundant fruit and abundant fish in the sea of Galilee. But the introduction of a new system of land ownership and the imposition of new forms of taxation created an impoverished rural population. And a widening gulf between the wealthy elite and the rest. Herod’s expensive building projects were mainly in the south, funded by heavy taxation.

David Smith concentrates on Luke’s Gospel. Jesus’ public ministry began with his sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth [Luke 4: 14-3], with what has become known as the Nazareth Manifesto.  In Nazareth, which was essentially a  Jewish settler community, Jesus is walking a tightrope between the imperial power of Rome and the emergence of a growing ethnic nationalism. In this situation he tells of another kind of country, another kind of kingdom.

The disciples struggle with the challenges posed by Jesus. For much of Christ’s teaching “has to do with the dangers of wealth, the blessedness of the  poor, and the need to follow his example in the renunciation of home, property, and death”. [Sean Freyne]

In the Book of Acts we move from the village culture of Palestine to the urban world of the Roman Empire. The early chapters of Acts describe a shared life, in which the power of Mammon is broken, and the emergence of a new Messianic community within which “the Mosaic dream of a society shaped by love and justice was becoming a reality”. The seductive power of money is dramatically illustrated in the story of Ananias and Sapphire [Acts 5].  The distribution of food to the widows in Jerusalem causes tensions, but becomes an integral part of the Christian mission. In Philippi [Acts 16] the exorcism of the slave girl threatens the finances of her owners and causes an uproar. Here is a clear link between pagan religion and material gain.

In Ephesus the people of the Way consisted of both Jews and Gentiles. Who become “members together of one body, and share together in the promise of Jesus Christ”. [Eph. 3: 2-6] In Paul’s Farewell to the Ephesian elders, he testifies that he has not taken money from them; and he tells them that it is their responsibility to help the weak [Acts 20: 33-35]. For Paul the Collection [of money for the Christians in Palestine] was important. On trial before Felix, Paul says he has returned to Jerusalem “to bring my people gifts for the poor” [Acts 24:27]. Paul returns to the theme in 2 Corinthians 8. Concern for the poor is not just charity, but is rooted in the example of Jesus Christ who “though he was rich … became poor …” [2 Cor 8:9].  This collection is not just a one-off event. But is to be an on-going way of life, in order to support poorer brothers and sisters. Modern scholars make little of the Collection. But it is a concept which could be a very significant Christian counter to a global culture built on greed and in thrall to Mammon.

Historical Struggles

One of the distinctive features of Christian mission was a changing attitude towards wealth and power. “… we who once took most pleasure in the means of increasing our wealth now bring what we have into a common fund and share with everyone in need …” writes Justin Martyr in the mid-2nd century. Alan Kreider notes that early Christian leaders well understood the need for converts not just to embrace new ideas, but to transform their values and their way of life. Christian teaching challenged the underlying economic assumptions of the Roman empire. Including the notion of private property. St John Chrysostom [who became bishop of Constantinople in 398] argued that economic injustice was a betrayal of God’s purpose in creation. And that the very basis of human society is mutual need. With different regions trading their produce.

I don’t have the time, and any readers may not have the energy, to follow the story through in detail. David Smith looks at the rise of monasticism, and the way in which monastic communities challenged the imperial culture and were champions of the poor. He traces the role of lay-led revival movements, such as the Humiliati, who fed and clothed the poor and cared for the sick, giving special attention to lepers. He acknowledges that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when Europe was struck by famine, recurrent plagues including the Black Death, and the ravages of the Hundred Years War between England and France, saw a great increase in millenarian excitement. There was a deep longing for a better world, for the coming of the kingdom of God.

The sixteenth century brought a significant rise in the population of Europe, the dominance of certain European countries, the rise of the modern capitalist system – and the beginning of the spread of Christianity. In the Americas mission went hand in hand with violent military conquest. Some European Christians were appalled by the violence and oppression visited on the native populations. Thus Bartolomé de las Casas [1484-1566]: “God made all the peoples of this world … they are among the poorest people on the face of the earth; they own next to nothing and have no urge to acquire material possessions”. Fifty years later the French Protestant missionary Jean de Léry contrasted the culture of the indigenous people with that of post-Reformation Europe: “… not only would a savage die of shame if he saw his neighbour lacking in what was in his power to give, but also … they practise the same liberality towards foreigners who are their allies”.

The Chilean theologian Pablo Richard, writing on the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas wrote that, in 1492 “death came to this continent, the deaths of human beings, the death of the environment, death of the spirit, death of indigenous religion and culture”. [He was of course writing before the coming of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement,]

What was the relationship between the Christian faith, mission, and imperialism ? William Carey, one of the founders of the modern missionary movement, asked questions about the culture of Imperial Britain. Carey’s followers were culturally sensitive, and stressed their priority was to learn. Early Baptist missionaries determined not to profit materially from their mission, and reflected the pattern of primitive Christianity of Acts.

Thomas Guthrie [1802-73] was aware of the social problem of the big Scottish cities; snd believed that the yawning guy between rich and poor was contrary to the gospel. Edward Miall [1809-81] was a clear critic of the hardening class structure of 19th century Britain, which was reflected in denominational divisions. Guthrie lamented “a system of trade which offers up our children  in sacrifice to the Moloch of money”, while Miall deplored the “national exultation of pound sterling”.  The Church failed to champion the poor, the weak, the friendless, the oppressed.

The challenge for today’s world

Camus lamented the absurdity of a culture in which God appeared to be dead. We have good reason to be apprehensive about “the earth delivered into the hands of power without principles”. [Trump. Putin. Et al.] David Smith asks “can the message of the gospel provide an alternative, liberating vision for the future of the human family ?” The ideology of the free market has become embedded as political orthodoxy. Western ideas and modernity are presented as the way forward for new nations. In the modern world there is an insatiable lust for money and power. The world is a business; money is the measure of all things. This is called the culture of economism. The human being is a consumer. No more, no less.

The market society has resulted in a widening gap between rich and poor, creating both millionaires and paupers. A small elite have become unimaginably rich. Professing Christians have not been able to resist the attractions of consumerism. Peter Berger has argued that modern religious institutions do not generate values different from the wider society; they ratify and sanctify the secular culture.

Terry Eagleton believes that religion has a role as a critique of all such politics. “Our forms of life must undergo radical dissolution if they are to be reborn as just, compassionate communities. The sign of that dissolution is a solidarity with the poor and powerless. It is there that a new configuration of faith, culture, and politics might be born”. Andrew Walls recognised that, while western Christendom was entering a significant period of recession and decline, the liberating message of Jesus Christ was bearing rich fruit in indigenous communities across the Global South.  The African theologian Jean-Marc Ela argues that it is in the Third World that Jesus Christ is made visible. We must abandon the notion that Christianity is linked to an American way of life.

After the Second World War, Johann Metz found himself asking whether German Christianity was anything more than a bourgeois religion – devoid of any messianic future. Christians were speaking the language of conversion. But the radical change of heart essential to a life of genuine discipleship was not happening. Metz argued for a Second Reformation; a new kind of Christianity that would liberate us, not from poverty and misery, but from our wealth and our excessive prosperity. Liberation from the consumerism, which is consuming ourselves.

David Smith concludes by calling for new prophets who might challenge the cruel and destructive idolatry of the contemporary world. Who might articulate what a just and human community would look like. Not just a simple return to the world of Acts 2 and Acts 4, but the application of those principles that underlay the primitive apostolic community in a new and visionary way for the 21st century. A vision that may be shaped significantly by the culture and dreams of poor Christians from the Global South, which have become the heartlands of this liberating religion.

This is a carefully written, wide-ranging, and challenging book.  Which challenges the direction and concerns of church life. [In his farewell sermon in Edinburgh in 2000, in St Mary’s Cathedral, Dennis Lennon said that ‘one of the tragedies of the current church is that it has become an institution rather than a movement.’]  But the book challenges too the way in which we individually use our time and money, and the focus of our prayers. As a very new Christian back in the late 1970s, I was very struck with the picture of the nascent Christian community in the Book of Acts. I guess that vision has faded a bit down the years. But for the sake of our children and grand-children we need to work and to pray for a better world, one that is shaped by values of the Kingdom. 

“Thy Kingdom come …”

January 2026

Through a glass darkly – 166

I bought a diary last week, a Quo Vadis executive planning diary. As a sign of confidence in the future. But I don’t have anything to put in it yet. Except for the dates of the [grand-] children’s birthdays. And the programme for next year’s Six Nations rugby matches.

STOP PRESS  And the date of the installation of the New Rector at St Anne’s, Dunbar. Invite just received.

Facebook reminds me that we were in Kiev for Christmas four years ago, in 2021. Spending Advent and Christmas doing locum ministry at the small Anglican church there. The Russian troops invaded some five weeks after we left. FB asks if I want to re-post some of the photos. But I don’t. The following year, 2022, our much loved daughter Joanna was coming to the end of her life in Florence Nightingale hospice at Stoke Mandeville. And I stupidly, not believing that she was going to die, stayed in Chantilly on locum work until December 18th. I saw her in the hospice on December 19th and 20th, and she died very early in the morning of December 21st. We miss her every day.

For Christmas 2023 we were both back in Chantilly, and were joined for Christmas Day by Craig and Amelia and Eloïse. Lunch came mainly from Picard, as I recall. Last year, 2024, were were across in Fife for Christmas. Enjoying the hospitality of Jan and Colin and their family. And again with Craig and the girls.

This year Jem and Anna, and Freya and Oskar, are coming up to Edinburgh for Christmas. And we are looking forward to seeing them all. Needless to say, it doesn’t feel like Christmas. We haven’t been down into the centre of town to see the lights in Princes Street. The Carol  Service at St Peter’s was last Sunday evening, but with driving wind and rain I stayed at home. And the Service of Readings and Carols at Newington Trinity is not until the Sunday after Christmas. Which may be a nationwide Presbyterian quirk. Or possibly just local [invented] tradition.

With several decades of hindsight I guess the classic Christmases of my memory were from about 1953 to about 1959. From when I was eight to about thirteen. My maternal grand-father had retired from the Great Western Railway, failing to qualify by six months for the desired gold watch. [Given, I think, for fifty years of service.] My grand-parents moved on retirement to Bradford-on-Avon, to a big and distinctive house on the side of the hill above Holy Trinity, sharing it with a great-aunt and great-uncle.

The two families fell out and rarely spoke. We invariably went there for Christmas, sitting down to lunch [always chicken as I recall; turkeys had not yet been discovered] with about thirteen or fourteen aunts and uncles and cousins. And home-made parsnip wine for the grown-ups. Lunch was preceded by a [BCP] church  service at Holy Trinity. Always cold and excruciatingly dull. Followed by a walk, men and children only, up the hill towards Turleigh. We always wanted it to snow. And sometimes it did ! After tea there were games, always General Post, in the front sitting room [‘the board room’], followed by presents and tea and Christmas cake and yule log. One of the reasons it came to an end was the arrival of television. Black and white, and programmes only from 5 o’clock to 6 o’clock in those days. But already a great disruptor. As screens no doubt will be next week. 

Advent, as we all know, is the season of waiting. [I may have posted an Advent sermon on this site a year ago ?] Waiting for Christ’s return, date and place unknown. After a gap of several weeks I have got back to reading David Smith’s book, God and Mammon. He notes that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Europe was visited by recurrent plagues, including the Black Death. The population of Europe shrank. And England and France fought each other recurrently in the Hundred Years War. And in consequence there was an outbreak of millenarian movements, as Christians looked eagerly towards Christ’s imminent return and the ushering in of God’s direct rule on earth. Looking at the television news I could be tempted in that direction too.

I’ll finish David’s book after Christmas and will write more about it then. Meanwhile I’ve been re-reading Anthony Powell’s [pronounced Pole, I believe] Dance to the Music of Time. I’m six books in so far. And convinced that Powell may be one of the most over-rated authors of his generation. Yes, he’s literate and stylish and sometimes witty. And it is no doubt an accurate picture of upper class and upper middle class England between the wars. A group of friends meet recurrently at dinner parties and restaurants and family gatherings. The two wartime books could stand alone. But generally more and more characters appear, each one more boring than the last. The narrator, Nick Jenkins, seems to me to be a bloodless, Eton and Oxford publisher. And the women are largely two-dimensional. The scenes only really come alive when Widmerpool appears, the pompous, self-important, socially gauche but upwardly mobile friend from school. Some years ago I saw the BBC 1997 adaptation,  in which Widmerpool was wonderfully played by Simon Russell Beale. And Miranda Richardson was memorable as the femme fatale Pamela Flitton.

In the wider world Trump continues to amaze and horrify with his breath-taking ignorance and his infantile vocabulary. It looks as if Ukraine will be the victims of his obsessive deal making and his limited attention span. A poorly selected and poorly coached England cricket team is being outplayed by the Australians. And, closer to home, Scottish hospital doctors are going on strike shortly. Which won’t advance my hip surgery. I am lining up a few books to read in the new year, and wondering how soon we might get to Biarritz for a few days.

A very Happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year to all who are reading this.

December 2025

Through a glass darkly – 165

We are home in Edinburgh again. It is quite nice being at home. And Jem made a big effort to be in Edinburgh to  meet us off the flight from Kaunas. Which was great. He is not long back from running the Frankfurt Marathon. See below. Susie was a bit nervous in advance about the return flight; as, when you travel with Passenger Assistance on Ryan Air, you are invariably allocated a window seat. Apparently on the grounds that, if there were to be an emergency, you wouldn’t be holding up able-bodied passengers trying to evacuate the aircraft. So they say. But squeezing into a window seat post-op [or even pre-op] can be quite tricky. I found my seat 32A extremely uncomfortable and spent much of the flight standing up at the back of the plane.

Kaunas was generally a positive experience. The professionalism and the post-op physio sessions, and the communication and the customer service generally, at the Nord Orthopaedics Clinic was excellent. As satisfied customers fall over themselves to tell you on the Nord Clinic Users’ Facebook page. We enjoyed sharing experiences with other Clinic patients over breakfast and in the reception rooms at the Kaunas Hotel. Those we spoke to came from Edinburgh, the Scottish Borders, Brighton, Oxford, South Wales, Anglesey, and various parts of Canada. Everyone is willing to share their stories; of the post-op lollipop, and of the Day Three/Four dip in morale. But I do draw the line at looking at people’s photos of their post-op scars. 

While Susie was taken off for daily physio at the Clinic, I shuffled round central Kaunas with a single walking stick. The town centre feels quite affluent. There was no begging. And no litter. And people on the streets are predominantly young. There are a lot of attractive young women with long hair, usually tied back, and long legs.  A lot of the young men look like basketball players. People are almost universally dressed in  black; padded jackets, padded coats, and parkas. And most people wear thick-soled boots and shoes, suggesting that winter brings plenty of rain and snow.

There is a profusion of coffee shops, offering soups and cake as well as good coffee. We ate spicy soup and grilled prawns in a kind of fusion restaurant. And enough ice-cream to feed a family of four, sprinkled with a whole packet of M&Ms. In a Georgian restaurant an enormous television showed an interminable programme of Georgian folk music, a kind of Georgian River Dance. I kept expecting to see the two Ronnies on the end of the chorus line. It was the kind of ethnic show that they sent up mercilessly. In the bar across the road, which offered excellent soup and home-brewed beer, the television was usually basketball and occasionally German football. We were late to discover the Italian restaurant, Il Piccolo Ristorante, just round the corner from the hotel.

On a Sunday afternoon I went to a service at the International Reformed Church of Kaunas. It was planted in 2022 by the Evangelical Reformed Church of Lithuania to reach out to a growing number of internationals in Kaunas, mainly but not entirely students. The service was in English, led by the pastor who is from New Zealand. He preached from 1 Peter 5 on the activity of the devil, ‘prowling round like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour‘. It transpired very quickly that the pastor’s wife knew people whom we know at church here in Edinburgh. Over an informal meal after the service I enjoyed talking to Frank, the pastor, and to Thomas, a Frenchman from Cherbourg, who taught both in a  school and in the university in Kaunas. I really enjoyed being back in an international church.

 I read my first ever book by a Lithuanian, a novel called Shades of Grey. It might be best described as Anne Frank meets Danny Finkelstein’s Mum and Dad. The narrator is a young Lithuanian girl who is deported from Kaunas by the Russians in 1941. She is separated from her father, who we presume to be dead, and spends time with her mother and her younger  brother in appalling conditions on a farm camp in Siberia before being moved on to a desolate gulag within the Arctic Circle. The author. Ruta Sepetys, is a Lithuanian-American, born of Lithuanian parents in Michigan in 1967, the author of several acclaimed books of historical fiction. I found Shades of Grey rather simple, or simplistic, but I now see it was originally written for children and young adults. It is considered a roman à clef, and she has clearly mined a lot of Lithuanian survivors’ stories.

I have also started to read David Smith’s new book, God or Mammon: the Critical Issue confronting World Christianity, which has been lying fallow in our sitting room for a few months. It is an ambitious book, which starts with the liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, and then explores the way in which their distinctive concern for social justice is eroded throughout the Old and New Testaments by contact with the surrounding kingdoms and imperial states. What Dennis Lennon used to call ‘the urge to merge’.  What follows is a wide-ranging survey of movements in Christianity which reflect the church’s struggle to counter a pervasive, materialistic world culture. It is a big book and [for me] a slow read. More about it later.

These are transitional days back here in Edinburgh. There are a lot of soggy leaves down in the garden. We didn’t get to church on Sunday, but watched the Remembrance Ceremony at the Cenotaph, which I always find very moving. Susie is trying to establish a daily routine of exercises, icing, and some gentle walking. I had an appointment at the Orthopaedic Clinic at the Lauriston yesterday. Sadly it didn’t advance any intervention. But it was with a programme called Prehab, whose task is to prepare the elderly and the infirm for surgery. I came away with much good advice about Exercises, and Healthy Eating and Weight Reduction, and Mental Wellbeing. Some of the advice may have come a bit late. I am currently in charge of cooking, and we now have a retro diet of shepherd’s pie, and carrot & ginger soup, and baked potatoes. And a few estimable Charlie Bigham ready meals. All just right for November !

November 2025

Through a glass darkly – 164

Susie was being picked up for her op at 8.35am. She was on a strict fast and looked enviously at my cup of tea. Which left me to have a shower and go down to the breakfast room in the basement. Where I talked to my neighbours from Anglesey. And supplemented my scrambled egg and bacon with a bowl of mixed fruit, pineapple and melon and mandarin orange. 

It was a cold dry morning in Kaunas. I started my walking tour by the bridge across the river at the foot of the Aleksoto funicular on the other bank. There was no easy way to cross the dual carriageway road to access the bridge. I read somewhere that this was once the longest bridge in the country. But that is difficult to credit since the river is no wider than the Thames in London or the Rhône in Lyon. The adjacent church, overlooking the river, is the Vytautas the Great church. 

Just round the corner is the House of Perkünas. It was probably a rich merchant’s house and dates from the late fifteenth century. Like all the old buildings here it is built with distinctive red brick.

The Old Town square [the Rotusés alksté] is lined with fifteenth and sixteenth century merchant’s houses with the graceful seventeenth century Town Hall in the middle. Access is currently limited as the whole square is being resurfaced by a clutch of mechanical diggers and an army of men in hard hats. 

Just north of the square is Kaunas Castle, a bastion against Teutonic attacks, which sits pleasingly in a dry, grassy moat. The adjacent church is St George the Martyr, a former monastery, sacked at intervals down the centuries.

Returning towards the New Town is the St Peter and St Paul cathedral, the largest Gothic church in Lithuania. The elaborate interior is a striking contrast to the sober exterior. I sat in a pew at the back of the nave, said a prayer for Susie and lit a candle. And fell asleep for a few minutes. After which it was time to go in search of a light lunch at a nearby bakery and coffee shop. 

I spoke to Susie on What’s App earlier this afternoon. Early indications are fine and she sounded well. More news to follow in a day or two.

PS

This is all yesterday’s news. Last night I had excellent pulled beef soup and garlic bread at the restaurant across the street. Today I limped a few thousand steps in the other direction, to the railway station, to explore the possibility of a day trip to Vilnius. Meanwhile Susie has started on her 7 days of intensive physio. She is already walking 20 yards or so and had negotiated a flight of stairs, up and down. Which all sounds good.

October 2025

Through a glass darkly – 163

David very kindly took us to the airport in Edinburgh. Where we benefitted from passenger assistance. One of the pushers told us about his hip replacement experience in Kirkcaldy. The flight was uneventful. We arrived here in the dark, I moved my watch forward two hours to Eastern European time, and we were met at the airport and were brought to the hotel. We are in Kaunas, in Lithuania. Where the Hotel Kaunas is going to be our home for the next ten days. Susie is booked for hip replacement at the Nord Orthopaedics clinic tomorrow. I am here [don’t laugh] as her support and prime carer.

The hotel is on Freedom Boulevard [Laisves aléja] a two kilometre, tree-lined, traffic-free street that cuts through the New Town. Our room is on the 5th floor. Breakfast is served downstairs in the basement. A generous buffet is laid out the length of a long wall. There is enough scrambled egg and bacon and sausage [three kinds – avoid the half-sized orange ones] to satisfy the dreams of a Scandinavian truck driver. Lots of fruit and pastries. And good coffee.

Kaunas is the second city of Lithuania. It is situated at the confluence of the Nemunas and Neris rivers. Between the two wars Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania when Poland annexed Vilnius. It was named European Capital of Culture in 2022, and is known for its innovations in the art and design fields. Kaunas is also known as the home of basketball. The driver who collected Susie this morning for her pre-op at the Clinic was unusually tall. The city is divided into two parts: the Old Town, with a medieval castle, some handsome churches, cobbled streets, and a plethora of restaurants and coffee shops; and the New Town, which features most of the city’s museums and a number of attractive art-deco buildings. Many of the numerous restaurants and coffee shops are decorated with impressive piles of orange pumpkins. 

All this remains to be discovered. Today was essentially transitional.  I limped as far as the cobbled square of the Old Town. In a heavy drizzle. My omniscient I-phone tells me that it will rain for much of the next few days. Which is disappointing. I would much prefer it to be cold and dry. Meanwhile I hope to learn a few more words of Lithuanian. And if all else fails I brought some books with me to read.

October 2025

Through a glass darkly – 162

Autumn is here

Late windfall apples and leaves are down in the garden. It gets light later and dark earlier. And we are constantly tempted to override the heating soon after lunch. The fragile peace in Gaza is still holding. Thank God ! A reproach to people like me that doubted whether anything good could come from a meeting between Trump and Netanyahu.  A new Archbishop of Canterbury has emerged. Her great strength may be that she is not an Old Etonian. If the church was determined to appoint a woman, then I think that either the bishop of Chelmsford or the bishop of Gloucester would have been a more exciting appointment.  I don’t doubt that Dame Sarah Mullally will nail her colours firmly to the middle of the road. And that may not be wholly a bad thing.

Sunny Sunday lunch at the Prestonfield House hotel

Travelling

When I was growing up we never went abroad as a family. Holidays were spent with my grand-parents, first at Minety, between Swindon and Cheltenham, where my maternal grandfather was the station master on the GWR, and then after he retired at Bradford-on-Avon. Which in the 1950s and 1960s was a magical place with a Saxon church, and a chapel on the bridge, and a medieval tithe barn. And the river Avon and the canal. And lots of honey-coloured houses and not many people.

Bradford on Avon

I didn’t go abroad until Paul and I went to France in 1961. I was just sixteen, and we spent a week in a UNESCO hostel in Paris, in the 13ème, and then hitchhiked down to the Med and back. The whole three weeks was a revelation. Though we came back tired and hungry. And I think Paul had picked up a flea in the youth hostel at Fontainebleau. We  were away for exactly 3 weeks. And it cost us £15 each. At a time when there were between 12 and 13 francs to the pound.

For a few years after that I kept a list of the countries I had visited. Initially France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. A few years later I hitched to Istanbul, and added Yugoslavia, as was, and Bulgaria and Turkey to the list. And made a point of hitching back via Italy, as a girl I knew was doing a course in Perugia, and made a detour to take in San Marino. In subsequent years I haven’t added greatly to the list. Though in the past decade we have made a first trip to the United States, wonderful but never again, and to Ukraine. Which we left six weeks before the Russian troops invaded. 

In the past 18 months I’ve scarcely travelled out of Edinburgh. Apart from the Men’s Retreat down at Maresdous last autumn. Any travelling has been vicarious through a variety of books. In past weeks I’ve been frequently in Spain, with the International Brigades in the Jarama Valley. And then a few days travelling the length of the river Amur, the longest river in the world that I had never heard of. My companion along the river was Colin Thubron, much the same age as me, and author of a shelf of travel books mainly set along the Silk Road and in the former Soviet Union. The secret source of the river is in the Mongolian mountains, close to the birthplace of Genghis Khan, ruler of the biggest contiguous land empire in history. For much of its length the river is the border between Russia and China, traditional enemies who dislike and distrust each other. And it eventually it empties into the Okhotsk Sea opposite Sakhalin island. But –  in ten days time we shall be travelling ourselves, and breaking new ground for us, to Lithuania. 

River Amur

Richard Baxell: Unlikely Warriors

Continuing my looking back at the Spanish Civil War, I have been reading Richard Baxell’s book, Unlikely Warriors: the British in the Spanish Civil War in the Struggle against Fascism. This is a big book by an academic historian, based on a PhD thesis supervised by Paul Preston at the LSE. It reads  a bit like a doctoral thesis, and runs to 450 pages and to more than 2,000 footnotes. When it came out in 2015 it was the most recent and fullest account of the British who fought in Spain. [Spoiler alert: there is now a more recent book, sitting unread on my shelves.]

British Union of Fascists

The early chapters of Baxell’s book set the context in the UK with polarised politics and a desire to defeat the [Mosleyite] Blackshirts. The book reminds us that those who volunteered for Spain were  motivated as much by concern about what was happening in the UK as they were about the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. From 1933 onwards members of the Labour movement and trade unionists increasingly involved themselves in anti-Fascist demonstrations. Walter Gregory, who became a company commander in Spain, was injured while disrupting a British Union of Fascists meeting in Nottingham. George Watters, who fought with the British battalion at Jarama, was involved  in anti-Mosley demonstrations in Edinburgh. The biggest concentration of Jews in pre-war Britain was in London’s East End; and a number of those who fought in the Brigades were involved in countering the big Mosleyite march in East London in October 1936, the Battle of Cable Street.

The Battle of Cable Street, 1936

Baxell offers a detailed narrative of the history of the International Brigades: their early, crucial role in the defence of Madrid in December 1936; the long, bloody slog at Jarama, in February-March 1937; the fighting in bitter winter conditions at Teruel, December 1937 to January 1938; and the final costly fighting around the Ebro in the summer of 1938. The story is well told, though more maps would have been helpful for the reader Their last action, on the Ebro near Gandesa,  was as bloody as any that the British Battalion had fought. All that followed was a final emotional farewell parade in the streets of Barcelona in October 1938 in front of a huge, cheering crowd. 

The closing chapters of the book tell the story of what happened next for the Brigaders. Baxell notes that some remained in Nationalist prisons until after the end of the war. When they returned home many who had served in Spain were systematically excluded from joining the armed forces. John Longstaff, who resigned from his job as an engineer to join up, was told by the colonel in charge of recruitment “we are under instruction not to recruit anyone who fought with the International Brigade.” Likewise James Maley and John Peet, who both volunteered for the RAF, were both rejected because of their time in Spain. The policy was apparently put in place by MI5 in January 1939. 

Bernard Knox, an American working with the French resistance in Brittany was told by senior officers, “you were a premature anti-Fascist.” Tom Wintringham, the ‘English Captain’, called repeatedly for the creation of a citizens’ army; and set up a guerrilla training school in Osterley in west London, where the instructors included former Brigaders.  [I bought a Penguin Special on Guerilla Warfare by Bert ‘Yank’ Levy, a machine gunner in the British Battalion, in a charity shop in Morningside of all places a couple of years ago.]   Originally a private enterprise it was later taken over by the War Office. There is evidence that some of those who fought in Spain were recruited as Communist spies. Alexander Foote, a driver and courier in Spain, was recruited as a Red Army intelligence agent in Switzerland.

Malcom Dunbar, the Cambridge educated and very capable Chief of Staff for the Fifteenth Brigade, was drafted into the army as a private and never rose above the rank of sergeant. But Bill Alexander was recommended for officer training at Sandhurst, and served with distinction in North Africa, Italy, and Germany. The gifted linguist David Crook, though a known member of the Communist party, was interviewed [in French, Spanish, and German] by the RAF, and promptly offered an Intelligence job in the Far East. Those who served as doctors with the International Brigades were almost universally welcomed into the British Army. And sought to apply lessons learnt in Spain.

James Robertson Justice

Bernard Knox returned to Harvard, took his doctorate on Greek narrative tragedy, and became Director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. Nathan Clark, of the Clark’s Shoes family, invented the ubiquitous desert boot, supposedly based on the footwear he had observed while serving in Spain as an ambulance driver. Regardless of his record in Spain James Robertson Justice became one of the best-known faces of the British cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. Laurie Lee’s death in 1997 provoked a vigorous debate as whether he had ever fought with the International Brigade. There is evidence that he did serve in the Brigade, but his writings about his time in Spain are thought to be largely fictional. The death of Jack Jones, the powerful trade union leader, in 2009 revived the accusation that he had been a Communist agent. The accusation is unproven.

Laurie Lee

Cardiff postscript: meeting a Brigader

Back in 1972 or 1973 I went down to Cardiff to see an author who was writing a book for George Allen & Unwin on the National Giro. It was, I suspect, an extraordinarily dull book. By an academic who might have been called the Robert Maxwell Professor of Creative Accounting. But while I was there I went to call on a former International Brigader. He was living by himself in somewhat reduced circumstances, and had kept a cup of tea warm for me in a jam-jar next to the coal fire. He had been long-term unemployed in the 1930s, and through his union [I think] had signed up for the International Brigades. Now some forty years later he was writing his recollections of the war, writing in pencil in an old exercise book. What sticks in my mind is that he had been shot in the balls, and then invalided out with only one testicle. What he was writing was sadly unpublishable. [Though with a dedicated helper/editor, and with access to a picture library, it might have been possible to salvage something. But I was not that person.] I made some excuses, took him to the pub to buy him a couple of pints and a steak and kidney pie; and I dropped him off at the local psycho-geriatric hospital so that he could visit his wife. Who was a long-term resident there. We had no subsequent contact. I still feel guilty about the encounter.

October 2025

Through a glass darkly – 161

As a change from reading books about the Spanish Civil War, we had an occasional outing in a Car Club car. Susie drove, as I can’t get my left leg under the steering wheel. We took garden rubbish to the recycling centre, bought Green Goddess compost from Caledonian Recycling, and  some inexpensive wine from ALDI. Mainly Viognier and South African sauvignon blanc. And then we drove down to the cafe at Cockenzie House for lunch,  the world’s biggest sandwich. And had a little walk along by the sea to Port Seton.

The International Brigades

“Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,

On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fisherman’s islands,

In the corrupt heart of the city,

Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch

Though the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;

They floated over the oceans;

The walked the passes: they came to present their lives.”

W.H. Auden

I guess it was the International Brigades that first drew my attention to the Spanish Civil War. Specifically I think it was Julian Symons book on The Thirties, which I read at school, and then Jessica Mitford’s very readable Hons and Rebels. Jessica Mitford, always known as Decca, was the second youngest of the celebrated Mitford sisters. Partly as a reaction to her fascist-leaning sister Unity, known as Boud, she carved hammer and sickle emblems on the windows of the family home. In early 1937 she eloped with her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, a nephew of Winston Churchill, public school rebel and schoolboy editor of Out of Bounds. They were married at Bayonne. Romilly had made his way to Spain the previous year and had fought with the nascent International Brigades in the defence of Madrid and at the battle of Boadilla.

Jessica ‘Decca’ Mitford and Esmond Romilly

Vincent Brome: The International Brigades

Esmond Romilly and John Cornford, characterised by Val Cunningham as “two public school bruisers” both feature prominently in Vincent Brome’s book, which [published in 1965]  claimed to be the first comprehensive history of the International Brigades. [John Cornford, Cambridge educated poet and communist, was killed in December 1936 fighting at Lopera near Cordoba. Esmond Romilly survived Spain, returned to London later in 1937 to work as a croupier and as a copywriter, emigrated with Jessica to the United States in 1939, and was killed in November 1941 flying as an observer with the Royal Canadian Air Force.] 

John Cornford

The Brigades, Brome explains, were composed of thousands of volunteers who came, more or less spontaneously, from a variety of countries to fight against Franco’s Nationalist rebels.  Several people are credited with the originating the idea of the International Brigades; Thorez, the leader of the French Communist Party; Tom Wintringham, who was in Spain with a British medical unit; Dimitrov, the Bulgarian head of the Comintern. Early volunteers, including many Eastern Europeans who had been expelled from their own countries for revolutionary activities, were organised to travel via Paris. Josip Broz [later Marshal Tito] was at the main Brigade offices in rue Lafayette. In Britain there were recruitment centres at the Communist Party HQ in King Street, and at a cafe in the Mile End Road. Groups were escorted across Paris to nondescript hotels. Sometimes in French berets and dungarees. British and Americans were in the minority. Volunteers came from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Mexico, Latvia, and Yugoslavia. Groups travelled south by train, and were escorted in groups across the mountainous Pyrenees.

The first significant action of the Brigades was the Battle for Madrid which began in November 1936. The city was threatened by the Nationalist advance from the west. Then arrived the XIth International Brigade, roughly 2,000 men,  predominantly German, French, and Belgian. Including John Cornford. “Here in Madrid is the universe frontier that separates Liberty and slavery. It is here in Madrid that two incompatible civilisations undertake their great struggle: love against hate, peace against war, the fraternity of Christ against the tyranny of the Church  … … This Madrid. It is fighting for Spain, for Humanity, for Justice …” declared Madrid Radio. Later in November the hastily assembled XIIth Brigade arrived. Including Esmond Romilly. The Brigades were successful at a cost in holding the Nationalists in the battle for the university city. 

The British battalion went into action at Christmas 1936. Its leaders included George Nathan, a former British army officer, who had been the only Jewish officer in the Brigade of Guards; Fred Copeman, a former seaman who had been one of the leaders of the Invergordon Mutiny; Wilf Macartney, the first commander of the British battalion; to be succeeded by Tom Wintringham. In early 1937 the Nationalists made successive attempts to encircle Madrid and cut its major access roads.

Brome offers a broad narrative of the military involvement of the Brigades. They fought at Las Rozas on the Madrid-Corunna road in January 1937.  The British Battalion were heavily involved in the Battle of Jarama, in February 1937. Both sides lost about 20,000 men. With the International Brigades being hardest hit. Both sides claimed victory. The Madrid-Valencia road remained in Republican hands. Later in 1937 the Brigades fought at Brunete, where George Nathan was killed by a bomb; and then on the Aragon front around Belchite. Where Hemingway visited them.

Volunteers could not be expected to conform to the disciplinary standards of a regular army. Many Brigaders clamoured to be released from service. But requests were invariably turned down. Stephen Spender visited Spain in 1937 to try and secure the release of his friend Jimmy Younger, who had joined the Communist party and volunteered under Spender’s influence. Deserters from the Brigades suffered re-education and were occasionally shot. Brigaders were not allowed to go home in case they spread stories of widespread dissatisfaction.

From 1937 there were numerous political conspiracies between Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists. In November  1937 the Brigades were formally incorporated into the Spanish army. Brigaders were encouraged to improve their dress and appearance, to learn Spanish, and to salute officers. Not all of which was appreciated.

After their defeat and terrible losses in the winter fighting at Teruel, the Republicans decided in July 1938 to attack across the river Ebro, to restore communication between Catalonia and the rest of republican Spain. In spite of early successes, the attack was a failure.

The battle of the Ebro

As the battle of the Ebro approached its grim climax, there was an announcement that the International Brigades were to be withdrawn. In part a decision of the Non-Intervention Committee. On October 17th, 1938, reckoned to be the second anniversary of the International Brigades, there was a big parade in Albacete. Followed in November by a great farewell parade on Barcelona. The Communist La Pasionaria made a speech: “Comrades … You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy’s solidarity and universality. We shall not forget you …” The League of Nations Commission calculated that there were 12,673 volunteers in the Republican forces from twenty nine countries. Roughly half of them were repatriated by January 1939. When the Republic collapsed many of the remaining International Brigaders fled across the border in France. Some 5,000 Brigaders were held in basic camps round Argeles and Saint-Cyprien with inadequate water supplies and no sanitation. The Germans and Italians had no homeland to go to. Some made their way to Mexico. Others to North Africa.

Brome’s book is a good read. I was found a second-hand copy a few years ago, sold off by a college library in Aberdeen. But in truth the book is based on a rather thin set of sources, almost entirely in English, and it  deals really only with the British and American brigaders. There are other books, newer and, I hope, better, which I will get down to looking at in the coming weeks. 

William Rust: Britons in Spain

Bill Rust was the Daily Worker’s correspondent with the International Brigades in 1936-38. [He subsequently became Editor of the Daily Worker from 1939 to 1949, when he died of a heart attack at  the age of 45.] His book on the Brigades offers a sketchy narrative history of the British Battalion of the XVth Brigade, majoring on Jarama, Teruel, and the Ebro, with an incomplete Roll of Honour. The book was written before the end of the Civil War, follows the [Communist] Party Line, and minimises the in-fighting among the Republicans. The book ends with the tumultuous welcome of some 300 Brigaders at Victoria station in December 1938. 

Bill Alexander: British Volunteers for Liberty: Spain 1936-39

Bill Alexander [born in 1910] was a lifelong Communist and political activist. After doing chemistry at Reading University, he became an industrial chemist. He volunteered for the International Brigades in 1937, and fought with the British Battalion at Brunete and at Teruel. He commanded the British Brigade at the start of the Battle of the Ebro, but was badly wounded and invalided home in June 1938. He fought in North Africa during the Second World war, and then worked as a full-time organiser for the CPGB. His book on the British volunteers was published in 1982, some fifty years after the war.  The book is published by Lawrence and Wishart [like Bill Rust’s book], and follows the Communist party line. It is straightforward narrative history. He is very critical of the inadequate trenches of the Anarchists. The book contains a Roll of Honour of 526 volunteers who died in Spain. Mainly rank and file. In a final chapter, he asks ‘Was it all worthwhile ?’ And echoes La Pasionaria: ‘Better to die on your feet than to live for ever on your knees’.

A first  trip to Spain

Our trip was  conceived in the Museum Tavern, across the road from where I worked as a commissioning editor at George Allen & Unwin, down the street from the British Museum. This is the very early 1970s. David hadn’t been away on any summer holiday. And nor had I. He had an igloo-shaped, two man tent, with inflatable tent poles. I had a company car, a Monza Red Fiat 124. [Chosen by me instead of the standard company Cortina. It was a bad choice. The gear box collapsed within a year. And the job collapsed not very long afterwards.] So off we went.

The Museum Tavern

We crossed via Newhaven-Dieppe and headed south for the sunny Mediterranean. I did all the driving, and David sat in the passenger seat complaining of toothache.Our first night was in a Relais-Routiers somewhere south of Bordeaux. The food was OK, but the hotel next to the main road was very noisy. Our first night in Spain was at San Sebastian. There might have been a beautiful view from the campsite. But it rained all night, and in the morning there was a heavy, clinging sea mist. Like an Edinburgh haar, but more so.  We were obviously on the wrong side of the country. As we crossed Spain, we spent a night at Huesca. Where there was an unsuccessful, predominantly anarchist offensive in June 1937. George Orwell fought there with POUM. He was shot in the neck and scarred for life, but survived.We didn’t see him. But we did spend the evening with a bunch of Australian girls. All unaccountably called Frecks.

Mequinenza

The next day we passed through Mequinenza, on the borders of Aragon and Catalonia. There had been fierce fighting there during the Battle of the Ebro in 1938, and it looked as if nothing had happened there since. Nothing moved. We reached the Med somewhere near the Ebro estuary, grey clouds and a grey sea. After a couple of days camping in Peniscola, mainly spent drinking cuba librés and reading Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, I developed a recurrence of a pilonidal abscess. David as a onetime medical student cautioned against Spanish surgeons. “You don’t know where their scalpels have been.” We drove home through Barcelona. The cafe where we ordered omelettes gave us doughnuts. We didn’t have the language to complain. A couple of days later we limped back into London. I booked into the Nelson Hospital to have my abscess drained. While David, whose toothache was now miraculously cured, went climbing in North Wales.

Peniscola

September 2025

Through a glass darkly – 160

I’ve never consciously wanted to be a vegetarian. But we visited cousin David’s allotment the other week and he gave us some excellent tomatoes and some handsome beetroot. So I made beetroot crumble with shallots and goat’s cheese. And it was very good ! And then someone else gave us an handful of courgettes. And I made courgette bake with gruyère cheese and parmesan and lots of eggs. And it was delicious ! And I made it again. After all those vegetables it was a pleasure to go out to Sunday lunch for Ali’s birthday at The Canny Man in Morningside. And I had a generous plate of rare roast beef with roast vegetables and a Yorkshire pudding as big as a small spaceship.

Party Conference season

It is that time of year when the political parties gather their faithful remnant for party conferences. Which always used to be at Blackpool or at Brighton. Last week it was the Reform Party in Birmingham. I just don’t get it with Nigel Farage. Recent opinion polls give him a 35% share of the electorate, suggesting that if there were a general election tomorrow, which there won’t be, the Reform party would win a landslide victory with over 400 seats, the Labour party would have fewer than 100 seats, and the Tories would be virtually wiped out. Even sane commentators like Fraser Nelson seem to be talking of Farage as the possible next prime minister.

How can this be ? It is of course partly because support for the two old parties has slumped. The Tories have been on a downward spiral ever since Boris’s landslide victory back in December 2019. [It wasn’t my fault. I was in Ankara at the time. And my postal vote never arrived.] Boris’s time ended in disgrace, and things got even worse under the unspeakable Liz Truss. Whose brief tenure did lasting harm both to the Tory party’s standing in the country and to the economy. The Labour party since their electoral victory just fourteen months ago have promised more than they have delivered. They have failed to revive a stagnant economy. [Why does a Labour prime minister repeatedly state that his top priority is to achieve economic growth ?] Their decision to make public support for Palestine Action a terrorist offence was a grievous mistake, which may yet be overturned in the courts. And in recent days the resignation of Angela Rayner and the sacking of Peter Mandelson [see more below] have substantially damaged the party’s image. But even so …

Farage appeared on stage in Birmingham to drum rolls and clouds of dry ice. He purports to be a ‘man of the people’, promising like his friend Trump to drain the swamp of corruption and elitism. But during his years in the European Parliament in Brussels he was best known for silly stunts in the chamber, and for massaging the expenses he claimed from an institution he claimed to despise. Now back in the UK he has set up a private company in order to reduce tax liability on his substantial income from media work. Tax management ? Or tax evasion ? When his constituents claimed he was an absentee MP, he promised to buy a house in the constituency. Which he did. What he initially  failed to mention was that, since he himself has a reputed £3 million property empire, the house would be bought in the name of his partner in order to minimise stamp duty. Not very different from the behaviour of Angela Rayner whom he excoriated.

The Reform Party

Even if you think that Farage is a competent enough politician, which I don’t, the Reform Party remains essentially a one-man band. Much was made at Birmingham of a ‘major new defector from the Tories’. This turned out to be Mad Nad, Noreen Dorries. Better known for her previous iteration as a drooling cheer-leader for Boris. She lectured the conference on the importance of loyalty. 

The other high level former Tory woman present was Andrea Jenkyns. She came onto stage in a sequinned trouser suit shouting the word of a song she wrote as a teenager, I’m an insomniac. I wondered whether she was dyslexic and the song was really I’m some maniac. It was toe-crushingly awful. 

Glowering in the wings was Ann Widdecombe. A guest on Have I got News for You last week, recalling her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing, wondered, “Why was her partner mopping the floor with her ?” The ever pompous Jacob Rees-Mogg told the conference that he wouldn’t be joining Reform. But that he was happy to act as a consultant. Advising on what ? Gender fluidity ? Youth culture ? Tax evasion ?

Peter Mandelson

I don’t dislike Keir Starmer. And I wish him well. But he doesn’t seem to have the right political instincts. And he seems pliable in the hands of his advisors.

The questions surrounding Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Ambassador to the United States rumble on. Who knew what ? And when ? Lawyers will no doubt argue over the small print. But anyone who knew anything about Mandelson’s previous track record would know that he was an accident waiting to happen. 

Mandelson rose without trace [as Willie Rushton used say of David Frost].  He was born into a middle class Jewish family in Hampstead Garden Suburb in 1953, read PPE at Oxford, was a youthful Labour councillor in Lambeth Borough Council, and then worked for a few years as a television producer. In 1985 Neil Kinnock appointed him as Labour’s Director of Communications. In that role he commissioned a slick party political broadcast Kinnock – The Movie for the 1987 general election. Which Labour lost. He became MP for Hartlepool in 1992, and after John Smith’s sudden death he stage-managed Blair’s campaign for the leadership against Gordon Brown. In order to conceal his role he was given the pseudonym of Bobby.

In 1998 Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. But he was forced to resign because of a scandal involving an undisclosed loan from Geoffrey Robinson, a Cabinet colleague whose affairs his department was investigating. After a year in the wilderness Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. But early in 2001 he was forced to resign a second time following allegations that he had improperly canvassed support for a British passport application from a wealthy Indian businessman.

In 2004 Mandelson stood down as an MP, and became Britain’s European Commissioner taking the trade portfolio. During his years as a Commissioner there were a serious of complaints about inappropriate contacts; with Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft; with Diego Della Valle, a shady Italian tycoon; with Nat Rothschild; and with the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, on whose yacht he holidayed off Corfu. 

Mandelson may be a gifted public relations man with an impressive range of contacts. But he is a slippery customer, with a well documented taste for the company of very rich people of doubtful morals. And economical with the truth Hence his friendships with Trump and with Jeffrey Epstein. Fawning on Trump clearly came easily to him. But as Ambassador he was always a high risk appointment.

Envoi

I am working slowly through a shelf of books on the Spanish Civil War. Of which more anon. After near drought conditions for months I am now waiting for a dry day or two to cut the grass. And the triffid-like chincherinchee on the upper patio is now taller than Susie.

September 2025

Through a glass darkly – 159

The summer is ebbing away. It was good to see Roy and Shona, the third and last set of Lyon visitors. Susie and I limp around each of us with a set of walking poles. We have both been preoccupied with the idea of going to the NordOrthopaedics clinic in Lithuania for a hip replacement. They have a very professional website, and our friend Robin, in Northern Ireland, has been there for two knee replacements and speaks very highly of them. They offer a package that includes surgery, followed by accommodation and daily physiotherapy for about a third of the cost of similar treatment in the UK. Stop press news is that they have just declined to take me on as a patient. On the grounds of age and various health conditions. But Susie is hoping to be taken on for surgery this month or next. Conveniently Ryan Air fly direct from Edinburgh to Kaunas. And I will hope to go with her as prime carer. And tourist.

Meanwhile we were at Dunbar again last Sunday for me to lead worship and preach at St Anne’s. As I told them, it is the only place where I have been invited to preach this year. Which suggests that they are very discriminating ? Or possibly bit desperate ? Dunbar is said to be the sunniest seaside place in Scotland. Which may be true.

Spain

Spain for many people means beaches, sand and sunshine and Sangria. And maybe sex. But when I was growing up, for me Spain conjured a more sombre picture. My attention was taken by images of the Spanish civil war; street fighting in Madrid, the German bombing of Guernica, the retreat of the Republicans across the river Ebro. My imagination was caught by a variety of writers and artists who supported and fought for the Republicans and the International Brigades; John Cornford and Julian Bell and Esmond Romilly. And George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. It was a long time before I realised that most of the men who fought for the International Brigades were unemployed workers from Glasgow and from Tyneside. Rather than Cambridge intellectuals.

Hugh Thomas’s substantial book on The Spanish Civil War was published in 1961. It was his first book and the first comprehensive history of the war in English. Generally the reviews were very favourable. Though some thought the author had paid little attention to the Spanish archives.[And some critics doubted his competence in the Spanish language.] And some critics thought that he had favoured story telling over historical analysis.  I remember that I read it while I was still at school, but I retain little of the detail.  My paperback copy disintegrated some years ago. But I have a dozen or so books on the Spanish Civil War on my shelves, many of them relating to the International Brigades. And it is time that I looked more carefully at them. Starting with Antony Beevor’s 1982 book, which like Thomas offers a sweeping narrative history of the war.

Anthony Beevor: The Battle for Spain, 1936-39

The book starts with a summary history of the Old Spain and the Second Republic. Beevor stresses this war was not just left versus right; it was also state centralism v. regional independence, and authoritarianism v. freedom of the individual. The nationalists were more coherent because they were right wing, centrist, and authoritarian at the same time. Whereas the Republic embraced a host of mutual suspicions; communist authoritarians v. regionalists and libertarians.

In February 1936 the Popular Front  won a very narrow electoral victory. Which they interpreted as a mandate for revolutionary change. Violence and assassination attempts followed. In response, in July, the generals planned an uprising starting in Spanish Morocco. Franco was flown from the Canary Islands to Casablanca in French Morocco. Aeroplanes were needed to transport the Army of Africa to Spain. Hitler supplied Junkers 52s; the first such airlift in history. General Sanjurjo, a potential Nationalist leader, was killed in a plane crash in Portugal.

What might have been simply a contested coup became a lengthy civil war. The Nationalists’ greatest asset was the 40,000 men of the Army of Africa, plus para-militaries, making a total of c.130,000 officers and men. The Republic counted on some 50,000 soldiers, 22 generals, and 7,000 officers, plus para-militaries; a total of c.90,000 men. At the start the Republic had the advantage of the large cities, the mining areas, most of the navy and merchant navy, two-thirds of the mainland territory, the gold reserves, and the citrus fruit export trade from Valencia, a major currency earner.

There were violent killings on both sides. The ‘Red Terror’ was directed against the Church. But not universally. In Ronda victims were thrown over a cliff. The killings in ‘White Spain’ were primarily directed against trade union leaders, officials of the Republic, civil governors and other officials. The worst killing was by Colonel Yague’s troops in Badajoz. Which became the first great propaganda battle of the war.

By August 1936 it was as if two separate nations were at war. The rebel generals needed rapid victories to demonstrate their success to the world. The most important factor was the effective campaign of the Army of Africa. Colonel Yague, the most dynamic of the nationalist leaders, was to drive north along the Portuguese border and then north-east on Madrid. By contrast the republican militias lacked cohesion and training and self-discipline. They were also short of arms and ammunition. The republican commanders had little to offer except for outdated ‘big offensive’ strategies left over from the First World War.

The Civil War becomes International

Both sides needed weapons from abroad. But Eden immediately declared an arms embargo without waiting for other countries to respond. The Nationalists turned to their natural allies, Germany and Italy. Mussolini immediately sent a squadron of bombers, transport planes, and a ship-load of fuel and ammunition. Within a fortnight it became clear that while the nationalists would receive aid from Germany and from Italy, the democracies would refuse arms to the Republic. Which could count only on support from the USSR and Mexico.

The Nationalists needed a formalised state structure. In October 1936 France was invested with powers as Head of the Spanish State in a ceremony at Burgos. For the next 40 years October 1st was celebrated as the ‘Day of the Caudillo’. The Non-Intervention Committee met in London in October. Its existence and every action served the cause of the Nationalists.

In autumn 1936 the defence of Madrid became a rallying call for anti-fascists throughout Europe. The USSR sent quantities of tanks and fighters and ammunition; paid for by the gold reserves of the Banco de Espana. Alongside supplying materiel, the Comintern oversaw the recruitment of volunteers for the International Brigades. Across the whole war some 30,000-plus men from 53 different countries served in the Brigades. Much publicity was given to the middle-class intellectuals who were killed – John Cornford, Julian Bell and others; the vast majority of British volunteers were manual workers or had been unemployed. Soviet tanks and the International Brigades contributed to the defence of Madrid. Which settled into a cold, hungry siege.

The fighting continues

Winter 1936 saw fierce fighting to the west of Madrid, the Battle of the Corunna Road. Where John Cornford and Ralph Fox were killed. The Nationalists were reinforced by the German Condor Legion, 4 squadrons of German fighters and 4 squadrons of German bombers; and by a corps of Italian infantry. In January 1937 the Nationalists made attempts to cut the Madrid-Valencia road, leading to the Battles of Jarama and Guadalajara. They were held by the militia columns now re-formed into a more conventional army and by the International Brigades. 

Beevor is good on the military campaigns that followed for the next two years. The Nationalists made good progress in the north The speed of their victory in the Basque campaign was much aided by the German Condor Legion. Who mercilessly bombed the undefended, historic city of Guernica in April 1937. The destruction of the city had a tremendous effect internationally. But Bilbao fell in June 1937 leading to the Basque surrender. German engineers moved into the Basque factories and steel mills. What they produced now went to Germany to pay the Luftwaffe’s expenses for destroying the region.

The offensive in the Guadaramma, in May 1937, was the first major Republican offensive of the war. There was unrest among the International Brigades who felt they were being sacrificed for little benefit. Losses among anarchists and POUM were very heavy. George Orwell was wounded, with took him out of the war. The following Republic offensive, in July, at Brunete was a failure. George Nathan, commander of the British battalion, and Julian Bell were both killed.

The route to disaster

By the end of 1937 the superiority of the Nationalists was evident. For the first time in the war they had parity in numbers; between 650,000 and 700,000 men on each side. But their conquest of the Cantabrian coast brought industrial and economic prizes.  Their troops were better led. And their air force was greatly superior both in numbers and in quality.

In December 1937, in snowy, Siberian conditions the Republicans took Teruel. But after bitter fighting in winter weather the city was retaken by the Nationalists in February 1938. In April 1938 the Nationalists pushed east to the sea, cutting the Republic in two. The Republic sued for peace in April 1938, but Franco demanded unconditional surrender and the war raged on.

In July 1938 the Republicans launched an all-out offensive to reconnect their territories, the Battle of the Ebro. They mustered some 80,000 men, but lacked artillery and air support. The offensive failed when the republicans failed to exploit their initial success. By August the attack was a failure.

Elsewhere the sacrifices on the Ebro were virtually ignored by Europe, as it moved to the brink of war over Czechoslovakia. The Munich agreement ended the hopes of Negrin that Britain and France would intervene to aid the Republic. In September Negrin announced the unconditional withdrawal of the International Brigades. In October there was a dramatic farewell parade down the Diagonal in Barcelona. They left behind 10,000 dead and 7,600 missing.

In January-February 1939 Franco’s forces conquered Catalonia in a whirlwind campaign. Barcelona fell in January, Girona in February. In February the UK and France recognised the Franco regime. Only Madrid remained in Republican hands. In March 1939 there was a mini civil war within the civil war. By the end of March the Nationalists occupied Madrid. The war was over.

Some reflections

The Republicans, soldiers, women, and children streamed across the border into France. Where they were treated with great suspicion and held in internment camps, on stretches of coastline with minimal food and facilities. Koestler wrote of Le Vernet “from a point of view of food, installations, and hygiene, it was worse than a Nazi concentration camp”. After the Occupation of France in 1940, Franco asked Pétain to extradite 3,600 Republicans leaders. The Vichy regime agreed to extradite a very few, some of whom were executed. Franco was sympathetic to Germany during the Second World War, and sent a division of Falange volunteers to fight Russia alongside the Wehrmacht. In July 1945 Franco issued a decree which conceded a general pardon for prisoners from the civil war. On April 17th, 1948, Franco formally ended the state of war in Spain.

As Beevor notes, it is a rare war in that it has been written about more by the losers than by the winners. The violence of the war created a great impression abroad. Many left-wingers and intellectuals saw it as an early struggle agains Fascism, which thus anticipated the Second World War. The cults of virility and death went hand in hand. The support for the Nationalists  of the Germans and the Italians, especially the Luftwaffe Condor Legion, were crucial. The Junkers 87 was the most important psychological weapon. Soviet intervention helped save Madrid in November 1936. But the People’s Army was badly led, relied exclusively on set-piece offensives, and was a victim of its own propaganda. The British-inspired policy of Non-Intervention was a hypocritical failure, which generated much passion and criticism. Neither side could be terrified into submission. But the end of the war was perhaps inevitable after the catastrophic defeat of the Republican forces on the river Ebro in the summer of 1938.

Envoi

I’ll be reading my way through a small collection of books on the Spanish Civil War in the coming months. Most but not all of them about the International Brigades. And remembering my first sight of the country, a disastrous late summer holiday trip to Spain in the early 1970s along with my friend David. And I’ll be looking at a Lonely Planet Guide to Lithuania, in the hope that Susie can book hip surgery at the NordOrthopaedics Clinic in the next month or two. Of which more anon.

September 2025