Through a glass darkly

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

Through a glass darkly – 158

Drama on our doorstep yesterday afternoon. There was a major gorse fire on Arthur’s Seat, the volcanic hill just beyond the bottom of our garden. Our friends arriving from Lyon wondered if it was laid on for their entertainment. I set off to walk [limp] round the hill this morning. But it seems that some of the ground is still smouldering. A fire engine came past me in search of more water. And a police car told me that the top road was closed. So I walked to Duddingston instead.

Wilfred Thesiger: The Life of My Choice

Wilfred Thesiger was the last of the great British eccentric explorers, a product of the latter days of the British Empire. I have been reading his autobiography, The Life of My Choice, published in 1987. It’s the life of the man of a previous age.

Thesiger was born in Abyssinia where his father was the British Minister in June 1910. He was the first British child to be born there. His father had served as honorary Vice-Consul in Van during the Armenian massacres, had fought in the Boer War 1900-01 with the Imperial Yeomanry, and then rejoined the Consular Service to serve successively in Belgrade, St Petersburg, and Boma in the Belgian Congo. In 1909 he was appointed Minister in Addis Ababa. From his parents the young Thesiger inherited a close friendship with Ras Tafari, the future Emperor Haile Selassi, and a deep and abiding love for Abyssinia and its peoples. When he came to England for school in 1920 he found it strange to be in a country with no hyenas, no kudos, no oryx, and no eagles. He was the only boy at his prep school, St Aubyn’s, who knew nothing about cricket, and he was beaten regularly by the sadistic headmaster. During his second term his father died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty eight. His mother took a country house in remote Radnorshire.

Thesiger was at Eton, and then went up to Magdalen College, Oxford in autumn 1929.He boxed for Oxford for four years as a light-heavyweight winning three times against Cambridge. In the October 1930 he returned to Abyssinia as Honorary Attaché to the Duke of Gloucester to attend the coronation of Tafari as the Emperor Haile Selassie. Also present as a journalist was Evelyn Waugh, of whom Thesiger had never heard. “I disliked his grey suede shoes, his floppy bow-tie and the excessive width of his trousers; he struck me as flaccid and petulant and I disliked him on sight. Later he asked me if he could accompany me into the Danakil country, where I planned to travel. I refused. Had he come, I suspect that only one of us would have returned.”

After graduating at Oxford Thesiger returned to Abyssinia for a year. His first expedition was to explore the land of the Danakil, a murderous tribe among whom a man’s status depended on how many men he had killed and castrated. It was a ground-breaking journey made in the company of a small group of natives including armed soldiers. Thesiger had only rudimentary Amharic and basic Arabic, and relied on Omar, his trusted Somali headman. “Omar … would have been upset if I had shared meal with the camel-men … I had grown up accepting our servants as subordinates, distinct in colour, custom, and behaviour”.

After this first expedition Thesiger did a four-month course in Arabic at SOAS, and went out to join the Sudan Political Service, travelling up the Nile via Cairo and Luxor. From January 1935 he worked in the Sudan, initially based in Kutum in Northern Darfur, where he and one other official administered an area of sixty thousand square miles, inhabited by a mix of Berber, African, and Arab tribes. His role involved extensive travelling around the region, mainly by camel, building relationships with tribal chiefs, and dispensing justice. And shooting lions which were then regarded as troublesome vermin by Darfur herdsmen. Thesiger remained in Sudan until the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1938 he made an expedition to Tibesti, the little known mass of mountains on the border of Chad and Libya, which extend two hundred and fifty miles from east to west and contain the highest peaks in the Sahara. Again Thesiger travelled by camel with a small group, Idris Daud, his teenage headman and five other Zaghawa tribesmen. In remote French Equatorial Africa a local chief warned that Britain’s policy of allowing uncontrolled immigration of Jews into Palestine was laying up troubles for the future. A prescient warning from an unlikely source.

When war breaks out Thesiger is commissioned as a Bimbashi in the Sudan Defence Force. He serves under [Major] Orde Wingate, at that time best known for leading Jewish night squads against Arab guerrillas. Wingate was a passionate Zionist, regarded by military authorities as a security risk for passing information to Jewish leaders. Thesiger describes him as arrogant, ill-disciplined, and resentful of authority; an idealist and a fanatic. Who would have been better suited to the time of the Crusades. Later in the war Thesiger served with the SOE [Special Operations Executive] in Syria and with the SAS [Special Air Service] and the Long Range Desert Group in North Africa. In 1943 he resigned his commission to work as Political Advisor to Crown Prince Asia Wossen.

Thesiger’s best-known expeditions took place after the war. Between 1945 and 1950 he made unprecedented travels across the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, sharing the vanishing way of life of the Bedouin tribesmen. And he later lived among the indigenous peoples of the marshlands of southern Iraq. These experiences are described in his two best-known books, Arabian Sands [1959] and The Marsh Arabs [1964]. Both of which I read a long time ago. In addition he travelled extensively in Iran, French West Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He spent his latter years living among the Samburu tribesmen of Northern Kenya and writing a succession of travel books. Critics say that the quality of his books deteriorated. He died in Surrey in 2003 leaving a vast collection of photographs and negatives to the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Thesiger was a child of the British Empire. His father presided over the mud huts of the British Legation in Addis Ababa. His uncle was Viceroy of India. As a six-year-old he experienced the spectacular victory celebrations as Haile Selassie marked his conquest of the old ruler and received homage from the Abyssinian nobility and some sixty thousand fighting men. These early experiences gave him “a lifelong craving for barbaric splendour, for savagery and colour and the throb of drums, and … … a lasting veneration for long-established custom and ritual, from which would derive later a deep-seated resentment of Western innovation in other lands, and a distaste for the drab uniformity of the modern world.” Thesiger’s motives for enduring the torments of travel were complex and intriguing. He hated the materialism of the West and sought an alternative in the austerity of traditional Arab life. He wanted to experience freedom and comradeship, to test himself during hardship and danger in unexplored countries

Women are conspicuously absent from this book. Apart from his much loved mother on whom he doted. Like T.E. Lawrence, whom he greatly admired, Thesiger had close relationships with young Arab servant boys. In his Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lawrence had glorified “friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace”. Equally Thesiger’s books contain seductive photos of androgynous young Arabs. When a Vanity Fair interviewer boldly asked if he had been in love with them, he replied that he did love them, “as long as you don’t mean physical love”. His attachment was “the sort of love you give to your brothers and your family.” Some modern commentators are doubtful about this firm rejection of homosexuality. But I think for Thesiger celibacy was probably part of the penance of the desert. Which for him, as for Lawrence, was a place of purification. Remote from the uncleanness of the ‘civilised’ world.

Remembering Mrs Minchin

I’ve never been to Ethiopia and my personal experience of the British Empire is nil. But -when I was at Christ Church, Duns, in the 1990s, one of my regular Home Communion visits was to Mrs [Kathleen Winifred] Minchin, who lived at Easter Cruxfield, an isolated farmhouse out in East Berwickshire. Mrs Minchin [it never occurred to me to call her anything else] was a child of the Empire. Her father, Colonel William Molesworth CBE, had been Governor General of the Andaman islands and was subsequently Surgeon to the Viceroy. She had been born in Salem, Madras, but the family had a house in Poona. As child she was staying with her grand-parents in Queenstown in southern Ireland and recalled being taken out of the house to see the Titanic on her maiden voyage. Her only brother, William ‘Moley’ Molesworth, flew with Albert Ball in the Royal Flying Corps, was credited with 18 kills and won the MC and Bar.

She herself was married, in Simla, to Alfred Alyson Minchin, described by her as ‘a box wallah’. [I think her father would have preferred her to have married an Army Officer !] The marriage foundered, and she came home to Berwickshire to live with her father to whom she was very attached. Of their two children the younger , I think, [and favourite] son, Lieutenant Henry Desmond Penkivel Minchin, was killed fighting in Normandy in 1944. I used to have a slim volume of his not-terribly-good poetry. Privately published. There is an idealised portrait of him in a stained glass window in Christ Church. Mrs Minchin lived by herself in this big house until March 1998, and when she died at the age of 102, I buried her in the family plot at Preston [Edrom] in Berwickshire. I wrote an obituary of Mrs Minchin for The Berwickshire News when she died, but her surviving son Pat thought it best ‘not to make a fuss’ and so it was not submitted for publication. Mrs Minchin’s only grandson, Ronald, had died in his mid-fifties a couple of years earlier. Most probably from alcohol poisoning. Tragic. I took his funeral too.

August 2025

Through a glass darkly – 157

So, President Trump’s five-day golfing holiday here has come to an end. For his round at his Trump Turnberry course he seemed to be accompanied by an extraordinary number of golf buggies including possibly the world’s only armour-plated buggy, presumably a precaution against another assassination attempt. There were very few actual shots of his golf. Word is that he cheats at golf as in many other things. At one golf course he was known as Pele, a reference to his regularly kicking his ball back onto the fairway to a more favourable lie. His bulk and his headwear make him look increasingly like Robert Maxwell, another galloping crook. [Though Maxwell to his credit spoke half a dozen languages well. And, unlike Trump, inherited no money from his father.]

Trump and Keir Starmer are polar opposites in many ways. But I guess we should be grateful that they seem to have forged a decent working relationship. Which might help ramp up pressure on Trump as regards what is happening in Gaza. [And in Ukraine.] I can hardly bring myself to watch the television news from Gaza. I wrote a somewhat intemperate letter to the Church Times a week ago, criticising General Synod, and the House of Bishops, and the UK government for their pusillanimous response to what Israel and the IDF have been doing for many months. Glyn Paflin e-mailed me to check on my postal address. But they didn’t publish the letter. Disappointing.

Madeleine Bunting: The Model Occupation

One of the more interesting books that I was given for my birthday is Madeleine Bunting’s The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands under German Rule. Bunting, born in 1964, studied History at Cambridge and at Harvard, and then joined The Guardian where she worked as a news reporter, leader writer, religious affairs editor, and columnist. She is the author of five books of non-fiction and two novels. The Model Occupation, first published in 1995, was her first book.

German troops arrived on the Channel Islands in June 1940, a few days after the fall of France. Two British battalions had been withdrawn a week or two earlier. It had seemingly been assumed by the British authorities that the war would not reach the islands, and the German troops disembarked from their troopships unopposed. Preparations made by the German High Command in France for a battle for the islands proved unnecessary. Contrary to expectations, the German troops were received with polite deference by the islanders. Numbers were small initially, but by Christmas 1940 there were roughly two thousand Germans on Jersey and a similar number on Guernsey.

This was to be a model occupation, The cordial relations between the German commander and the island authorities were matched by the polite helpfulness of the islanders and the law-abiding soldiers. It soon became apparent that there was no need for German soldiers to carry weapons or to wear a steel helmet. After the fighting in Poland, and the Low Countries, and in France, and the tense expectation of an imminent invasion of England, the Channel Islands must have seemed like a holiday camp to the Germans. They enjoyed the white beaches and the bright blue sea. At the beginning there was plenty of food, and the shops were stocked with goods long unobtainable back in Germany – stockings, shoes, make-up, chocolates – to send home to loved ones. The island shop-keepers, glad of the custom, accepted their Reichsmarks happily enough.

But it was an occupation nonetheless. The bailiffs of the islands had instructions from London to take over the civil administration, co-ordinating with the German military authorities, while trying to ensure that their actions were in accordance with the Hague conventions. But to some people the bailiffs’ actions seemed more like collaboration. And some of their measures are disturbing. When some islanders painted V for Victory graffiti on road signs across the islands, the bailiff offered a £25 reward for information leading to a conviction. And when two German soldiers were killed in a modest British raid on the islands, the bailiffs agreed to supply a list of the names of two hundred British-born islanders, who were subsequently deported to internment camps in France and Germany. From 1941 came a series of anti-Jewish measures. Which included the forced registration of all Jewish residents of the islands. Three Jewish women were deported from Guernsey in January 1942 and all three died in Auschwitz.

The book received glowing reviews on publication. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote, in the Sunday Telegraph, that it is “a masterly work of profound research and reflection, objective and humane”. [I am a bit surprised that anyone took Trevor-Roper seriously in 1995 after he had, in 1983, as a director of The Times, rushed to authenticate the forged Hitler Diaries, which the Sunday Times had paid good money to serialise. A misjudgement that caused Private Eye to refer to him as Hugh Very-Ropey. Or Lord Facre.] Norman Stone wrote in The Times, “Madeleine Bunting is a superb chronicler of what happened … if you want a classic example of the dilemma of resistance, here it is”. But the book was highly controversial, and provoked a furious controversy on the islands, where some critics thought it was inappropriate to dig up details of what looked like a shameful past. In her Epilogue Bunting acknowledges that the story sits uneasily alongside the preferred, Churchillian post-War image of Britain as a country fighting alone ‘on the beaches and on the landing grounds’. The islands’ experience contradicted Britain’s complacent assumptions about the distinctiveness of the British from the rest of Europe. Under occupation the British had behaved much as the French, the Dutch, or the Danish.

Perhaps the saddest story concerns the fate of the several thousand slave labourers, Russian, Ukrainian, North Africans and Spanish Republicans, who were brought to camps on Alderney. About sixteen thousand prisoners were brought to the islands to work on the fortifications, and they lived and worked, and died, under appalling conditions. Bunting traces some of the Russian survivors who made it back with great difficulty to their home villages. Where as ‘repatriates’ they were accused of collaborating with the Germans and treated as traitors. Some were imprisoned in Stalinist camps and other conscripted into labour battalions.

It is an interesting and controversial book by a gifted writer.

Francis Beckett: Stalin’s British Victims

Earlier in the month, when I was still only in my seventies, I read this book by Francis Beckett.

In the 1920s and 1930s there were several hundred British and foreign communists living in Moscow. Among them was Bill Rust, a Communist journalist and subsequent editor of the Daily Worker, who moved there in 1928 to work for the Comintern. Beckett tells the story [the book was published in 2004] of four women who were victims of Stalin’s grim purges. Rose Cohen, born in 1894, was the daughter of Polish immigrants in the East End. She worked for the Labour Research Department under Beatrice and Sidney Webb, was a suffragette, a feminist, and a founder member of the British Communist party. She was beautiful [the love of Harry Pollitt’s life; he proposed to her on numerous occasions], but in 1920 she married Max Petrovsky, a Ukrainian Jew who worked for the Comintern. From 1927 they moved to Moscow. Cohen and Petrovsky both worked for the Comintern and for the Moscow Daily News, and were considered a golden couple by the expatriate community in Moscow. But Petrovsky disappeared in April 1937 and was shot later that year. Rose was arrested in August 1937 and shot in November. It was only in 1956, after the death of Stalin, that Cohen’s fate became known. And she was posthumously rehabilitated.

Rosa Rust, Bill’s daughter by his first wife, was abandoned in Moscow; and was caught up in the ethnic cleansing of the Volga Germans, spending time in a forced labour camp. She eventually escaped from a copper mine in Kazakhstan in 1943, and was repatriated to Britain with the help of Georgi Dimitrov. In England she first learned English, and then worked for Tass, the Russian news agency as a translator, and married George Thornton, a young communist historian. She and her husband lived happily in Yorkshire for fifty years sharing a love of drama and poetry, and cricket, and walking by the sea. She died in 2000, still speaking English with a strong Russian accent.

Beckett’s story is equally fascinating. His father, John Beckett, was a Labour MP from 1924 to 1931. But he was strongly opposed to Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, and joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, where he served as editor of the publications Action and Blackshirt. During the Second War he was interned in Brixton and on the Isle of Man, clashed with other BUF members and converted to Catholicism. Francis Beckett’s book on his father, The Rebel who lost his Cause – The Tragedy of John Beckett MP, was punished in 1999. Arguably another casualty of the 1930s.

Envoi

We have friends coming, from Gloucestershire and from Lyon, in the next few weeks. The grass needs cutting. And I am hobbling around, hoping to advance an appointment with a hip consultant. At present that first consultation still looks to be 32 weeks away, which will take us to January/February next year. Susie and I are looking with interest at the website of the Nord Orthopaedics Institute in Vilnius, Lithuania. Watch this space.

July 2025

Through a glass darkly – 156

I’m an octogenarian ! As of last week. It’s been a long time coming. And I scarcely feel a day over seventy nine. After considering some more up-market options [one restaurant had closed down, another did not open at lunchtime], Susie and I took the train across the iconic Forth Rail Bridge to Aberdour, a station which wins prizes for its flower arrangements.

And we met up with our friends Mike and Wendy, and had lunch at The Sands Cafe. It was excellent: good fish and chips, excellent service, home made ice-cream, and right on the beach overlooking the Forth. It was a glorious sunny day, and my nose has been peeling for the last week.

Celebrations

Susie and I celebrated my birthday and our Golden Wedding Anniversary with a party for seventy people at the former Priestfield Church on the Dalkeith Road. A mix of family and friends. My brother and his wife came from Birmingham, my sister-in-law and daughter from Leamington, the children flew up from down south, and several of Susie’s assorted cousins. Friends came from Edinburgh and from Duns, from Chantilly and Brussels, from Lyon and south-west France.

Priestfield worked well as a venue. The building dates from 1879-80, when it was built to house the Rosehall United Presbyterian Church. It is a complicated Lombardic building with stained glass by Mary Wood and Douglas Strachan. According to a plaque on the wall in a side-room, Susie’s grandparents, the Revd George Percy and Mrs Littlewood, were sent out from Rosehall as missionaries to Manchuria in the early years of the twentieth century. Followed in 1940 by Mr and Mrs Aylwin P. Littlewood, Susie’s uncle and aunt, also sent to Manchuria. It is a good building, and I’d like my funeral to be there. At some unknown future date.’

The church has been through several iterations down the years, most recently as Priestfield Parish Church. There are no longer any Church of Scotland services there following the amalgamation of Priestfield with Craigmillar Park and Mayfield-Salisbury earlier this year. But a Korean congregation worships there. And Newington-Trinity may well meet there for a few months when the heating system at Mayfield-Salisbury is replaced, though to be happening sometime next year.

People drifted in from about midday. The self-service buffet was provided by Nicci, of Butterflies at Marchmont Saint-Giles church. The wine came from Majestic [we have a dozen bottles left over which pleases Susie]. And the soft drinks came from Sainsbury’s. After we had sung Great is Thy Faithfulness, Charlie [Robertson] said Grace, and guests were guided in groups to the buffet.

I had long ago booked SoftShoeShuffle, a skiffle band who play a lot of Lonnie Donegan stuff. But one of them had a stroke, and in their place we had SwingCo, an all octogenarian jazz quartet. Astonishingly the bass player told us he was ninety-three. They played a mix of jazz classics, and Stranger on the Shore. And were excellent.

After which our friend Rebecca, originally from South Carolina but now living somewhere near Limoges, sang a collection from The Great American Song Book. Accompanied by Phil, who was at CH some fifteen years after me, and who was a one-time member at St Andrew’s, Linton Road, north Oxford. Mainly stuff by George Gershwin and Cole Porter. Starting with Summertime. And including True Love from High Society. Which encouraged us to release our inner Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. There is said to be a video of the whole event in preparation. Enormous thanks to Kenny, and to Carole and Michelle and Jade, and to David, who helped the event go so well.

Life Goes on

Since the celebration we have been to a couple of events at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. First to hear Hamish McGregor and Colin Steele and others pay a Tribute to Ball, Barber, and Bilk. Three of the best known bands of the British Trad Jazz revival of the early 1960s. Good, energetic, New Orleans style stuff. And then to the Classic Jazz Orchestra playing big band stuff by Duke Ellington and Count Basie and others. Both concerts were in the SpiegelTent in St Andrew’s Square. Good venue, but terribly uncomfortable chairs.

In the weeks ahead have three sets of friends coming from Lyon. And I am wondering whether to beg a lift up to Ullapool and Stornaway with my friend Pete in a few days time. It’s a tempting idea. The problem might be getting in and out of the car.

And I’m wondering whether to try and arrange my reading in a more disciplined way over the coming year. Is this the time to look at some of the dozen or more books on my shelves on the Spanish Civil War ? And should I embark on a complete re-read of the Le Carré corpus. A tempting thought. Meanwhile I’m back in the Psalms.

July 2025

Through a glass darkly – 155

Confessions of a pagan nun

Against a future downsizing from this house [but Don’t hold your breath], I regularly clear small handfuls of books off the shelves and take them to one of the charity shops. Often I can remember when and where I bought books and read them. But I recently came across Kate Horsley’s Confessions of a pagan nun, which was published by Shambhala, an obscure publishing house in the United States in 2001. Shambhala seem to specialise in Buddhist books. The book has a price sticker of 16,00€. But I have no recollection of when I bought the book and why.

Confessions of a pagan nun is beautifully written. The book purports to be the memoir of Gwynneve, a sixth century Irish nun who in her middle years works in a religious community, both men and women, transcribing the books of Augustine and Saint Patrick. In addition to this work she is recording memories of her pagan youth, and of her independent mother from whom she inherited a wild spirituality and a skill with healing plants. She looks back at her life and she mourns her lost druid lover. [Who may or may not have been abducted by tonsured monks.] Roman Christianity, she reflects, has brought improvements to the rural economy, with a greater variety of crops and of domestic animals, and has also led to a more literate population. But at the same time this new religion, imposed by incomers, has increased inequality, has substantially diminished the role and freedom of women, and has paid little attention to the beauty of nature. Disturbing events at the cloister bring Gwynneve into conflict with the abbot. Things do not end well.

Kate Horsley, I gather from the internet, is an American writer, who was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1952. As a college student she was involved in the civil rights movement and in anti-Vietnam war activism. She subsequently relocated to New Mexico, and is Professor of English at New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque. It seems that her move to New Mexico was inspired by her interest in Native Americans and she has published half a dozen historical novels.

Why I wonder did I buy this book ? I have little interest in feminist theology. [Though I do recoil with horror from the misogynist remarks of some Roman Catholic bishops.] And I have very little interest in what is loosely labelled as Celtic Christianity. Some thirty years ago I was at a Diocesan retreat on Holy Island, where the main speaker was David Adam, the then Rector of Holy Island, and the author of a dozen or so collections of Celtic prayers and meditations. It was a silent retreat. One afternoon I met [Bishop] Richard Holloway out walking. And I was unsure if and how to greet your diocesan bishop on a silent retreat. He hailed me enthusiastically from a dozen yards away: “Hello, Chris. What do you make of the speaker ? It’s complete rubbish isn’t it.” I love him.

Celebration

Susie and I are gearing up for a joint 80th birthday and Golden Wedding celebration in the former Priestfield Church. For a variety of friends from Edinburgh and further afield.

We look forward to seeing Andy and Kate, and Joan, from Christ Church, Duns; Diana from Lyon; Armin and Magdalena from Brussels; and Alain and Ann from Chantilly. And my brother and two sisters-in-law, and our children and grand-children , from down south. I had initially booked a skiffle group, but one of them had a severe stroke and they had to withdraw. Instead we have a jazz quartet, whom I’ve not heard play. Word is that their drummer played with Kenny Ball back in the day. And Rebecca Sergeant has come from south-west France to sing, a collection of songs by Gershwin and Cole Porter. She is encouraging us to essay a modest dance to go with True Love, reprising Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly from High Society. But I fear it may look more like a clip from They shoot horses don’t they ! We shall see.

July 2025

Through a glass darkly – 154

Last year I read most of Evelyn Waugh’s earlier books, the novels that is not the travel writing which has dated badly. The conventional wisdom is that the First World War produced great poetry, think Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Ivor Gurney and Isaac Rosenberg; whereas the best known writers of the Second World War produced mainly fiction, think Olivia Manning and Evelyn Waugh, and abroad Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Günter Grass, and Kurt Vonnegut. The Sword of Honour trilogy, based on Waugh’s own wartime experiences, are certainly Waugh’s most ambitious books. I believe that it is on this mature writing that Waugh’s reputation as a major novelist rests.

Waugh at War

With hindsight it is easy to say that Waugh was not cut out to be a soldier. His free spirit was not suited to the military life. But after the outbreak of the war in 1939 Waugh was proud to be accepted as a successful candidate into the Royal Marines. Initially he enjoyed the ceremonial trappings, the gastronomic quality of the mess, the reflection of the silver candelabra on polished mahogany tables, the ritual clockwise circulation of the port. Life in the Marines initially suggested that he might be able to be both an aesthete and a man of action. But his infatuation with life in the army lasted only a few months. In April 1940 he was temporarily promoted to Captain and given charge of a company of marines. But he was an unpopular officer, vacillating between strictness and laissez-faire with his men. His inability to adapt to regimental life meant that he lost his command, and instead became the battalion’s Intelligence Officer. In August 1940 he took part in the Dakar Operation, which was hampered by fog and poor intelligence which caused the troops to withdraw.

Operation Menace – the Dakar fiasco

In November 1940 Waugh was posted to a commando unit, Layforce, serving under Colonel Robert Laycock. In February 1941 Layforce sailed to the Mediterranean and were involved in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Bardia. Later in 1941 Layforce were involved in the evacuation of Crete. Waugh was shocked by the general air of chaos around the withdrawal, and by what he saw as loss of leadership and of cowardice among the departing troops.

The defence of Crete

Crete was effectively the end of Waugh’s active military service. In May 1942 he was transferred out of the commando into the Royal Horse Guards, but they struggled to find a role for an insubordinate and unmilitary officer. In January 1944, after being granted three months unpaid leave, he retreated to Chagford in Devon to write Brideshead Revisited, the first of his explicitly Roman Catholic books.

In July 1944 Waugh returned to service and was recruited by Randolph Churchill, a long-time acquaintance and occasional friend, to join the Maclean Mission to Yugoslavia. His relations with the Communist-led partisans were difficult, not helped by his insistence on referring to [Marshal] Tito as she. His chief interest became the welfare of the Roman Catholic church in Croatia, which he believed was suffering at the hands of the Communists and the Serbian Orthodox church. After his return to London in March 1945 his report was suppressed by the British Government in order to maintain good relations with Tito, now the head of communist Yugoslavia. In September 1945 he was released by the army, and returned to Somerset to Laura and his now five small children. The three volumes of his semi-autobiographical war trilogy, Sword of Honour, were published at intervals. between 1952 and 1961.

Men at Arms

In Men at Arms [pub. 1952], the first of the trilogy. Guy Crouchback, in his mid-thirties, [Waugh himself was 36 when the war broke out], from an old Catholic family, is determined to get into the war. It is essentially a question of honour, the need to prove himself. He takes a commission in the Royal Corps of Halberdiers, a thinly disguised portrait of the Royal Marines. Waugh’s move in January 1940 to Kingsdown Camp in Kent, a cavernous Victorian villa surrounded by the asbestos huts of a former holiday camp, caused his spirits to sink. But Kingsdown provided excellent material for a novel. Here Waugh encounters the formidable Brigadier Albert Clarence St. Clair-Morford: “He is like something escaped from Sing-Sing and talks like a boy in the Court Form at school – teeth like a stoat, ears like a faun, eyes alight like a child playing pirates, “We then have to biff them, Gentlemen”.” The Brigadier appears in an affectionate heroic guise as Brigadier Ritchie Hook in Men at Arms.

Another prominent character is Crouchback’s eccentric fellow officer, Apthorpe, memorably played by Ronald Fraser in the 1967 television adaptation. Apthorpe’s upbringing and pre-war life in Africa are surrounded by mystery. In an episode of high farce there is a battle of wits and military discipline between the Brigadier and Apthorpe over the latter’s mahogany thunder-box [portable toilet]. Before going overseas Crouchback attempts to seduce Virginia, from whom he is divorced, knowing that in the eyes of the Catholic Church she is still his wife. She turns him down.The book all ends tragically when the Halberdiers finally see action in the abortive Dakar affair. Apthorpe dies in hospital in Freetown, supposedly of a tropical disease. When it transpires that Crouchback had smuggled a bottle of whisky in for him, Guy is sent home having blotted his copybook. There are wonderful moments and comic characters. But I find that the overall sense is one of wistfulness.

Officers and Gentlemen

This is the second volume of Sword of Honour trilogy [pub. 1955]. After the abortive Dakar escapade, Guy is transferred to a Commando unit training on the Isle of Mugg. The unit is commanded by Tommy Backhouse, for whom Virginia had left him. There is plenty of whisky and high-stakes cards with fellow members of Turtles [based on Whites]. His fellow trainees include Ivor Claire, whom Guy admires as the flower of English chivalry. And also the seedy Trimmer, a former hairdresser on trans-Atlantic liners who becomes an improbable war hero. In a Glasgow hotel Trimmer embarks on an affair with Virginia, a former customer on the pre-war liners.

The high comedy turns to tragedy as Guy is involved in the humiliating defeat and withdrawal from Crete. Guy performs well, but no-one else emerges with much credit. He escapes from Crete in a small boat alongside the disquieting Corporal-Major Ludovic. Once back in Egypt Guy comes under the protection of the beautiful and well-connected Mrs Stitch [clearly based on Diana Cooper] who reappears from earlier novels. She arranges for him to be returned slowly to England, partly in order to avoid difficult questions being asked about Claire, apparently a deserter. The book ends with Guy back in London, asking around in his club about a suitable job.

Unconditional Surrender

This third volume of the Sword of Honour trilogy was not published until 1961, some fifteen years after the end of the war. After the Crete debacle Guy Crouchbank has lost much of his idealism. He is injured while parachute training at a centre run by the increasingly paranoid Ludovic. Who is afraid that Guy will expose his behaviour in the withdrawal from Crete. During his two years at HOO HQ in London Guy is brought back into contact into contact with his former wife Virginia, now pregnant by Trimmer. The couple remarry before he is posted to Yugoslavia, where his Catholic faith is offended by the Communist take-over. Guy tries ineffectively to minister to a ragged group of Jewish refugees, who then suffer because of his contacts with them. In London Virginia gives birth to Trimmer’s child, before she and Uncle Peregrine are killed in an air-raid.

In a short epilogue, set against the Festival of Britain, Guy has remarried, to Dominica Plessington, the daughter of an old Catholic family. I think we are to assume that Trimmer’s child will succeed as Guy’s heir. [Though different editions of the book have slightly different postscripts.]

Reaction to the books

Reaction to the books was mixed. Men at Arms won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1952. Reviewers were generally favourable. But Cyril Connolly, one of Waugh’s few male friends [caricatured in the trilogy as Everard Spruce], writing in the Sunday Times, complained that the middle part of the book was dull and that Apthorpe was an unfunny private joke. Waugh himself while writing the book had referred to it as ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary’, a BBC radio soap of the time [to which my maternal grand-mother was addicted].

Progress was slow on the two subsequent volumes. Waugh was financially secure but maintained an extravagant rate of expenditure, and was looking to his war saga to finance his old age. Waugh was a commercially successful writer, and when Officers and Gentlemen appeared, it sold 26, 000 in the first month. Reviews were mixed. Cyril Connolly spoke of “a benign lethargy, which makes for slow reading”, while praising the latter sections on Crete. Waugh wrote to Maurice Bowra, “I am awfully encouraged that you like Officers and Gentlemen. The reviewers don’t, fuck them.”

By the time Unconditional Surrender appeared, in 1961, reviewers were uncertain what to expect. Waugh himself was “as successful, complacent, and vindictively dotty as ever” [Martin Stannard’s verdict]. His last two books, an anthology of his pre-war travel writing, When the going was good, and Love among the ruins had been dull, and his gifts as a writer seemed like his health to be in decline. At the age of 50 Waugh was old for his years, selectively deaf and rheumatic, and reliant on drugs to counter his insomnia and depression. Disturbingly his son Bron, author of the successful first novel The Foxglove Saga, seemed to be overtaking him in the public eye. Journalists were already writing about Waugh Père et Fils.

Reviewers again divided into two camps, with arguments for and against Waugh’s vision of the war and the world. Kingsley Amis and Philip Toynbee again attacked him for his social prejudices and his snobbery. But Cyril Connolly, while expressing reservations about the “biliousness of Waugh’s gaze” [cue Everard Spruce], was moved to read all three volumes and declared that “the cumulative effect is most impressive, … … unquestionably the finest novel to have come out of the war”. He even revised his opinion of Officers and Gentlemen, describing it as “magnificent”.

Personally I think the books are the best of Waugh’s fiction. The are some parallels with Brideshead, but with rather less of the snobbish nostalgia. Now there is a rich cast of characters: the socially inept Apthorpe, the all action military hero Ritchie Hook, the impostor Trimmer. And Guy’s bachelor uncle Peregrine, who mistakenly thinks that Virginia has designs on him. The episodes of chaotic HOO training on a Scottish island, the Isle of Mugg, and the unsuccessful hunt for an abortionist in wartime London remind us of Waugh’s gift for farce.

Guy Crouchback is a decent man, a melancholic [in Yugoslavia he confesses to a priest that he wishes for death], who chafes at the inactivity and bureaucratic incompetence of war when he wishes to be leading his men into battle. Like Waugh himself, Guy’s failings as a military man, and the failures of the operations in which he is involved – Dakar and Crete, contribute to his growing sense of disillusionment. His Catholicism makes him reluctant to embrace Stalin as an ally, and he is concerned about the future for his co-religionists in Tito’s Yugoslavia. When the war ends with a great victory over Nazism Guy shows no signs of elation. He regrets rather that he had once imagined that private honour would be satisfied by military service and war. Guy’s marriage and his adoption of Trimmer’s child means that the Crouchback line will continue. But it is not clear whether there will be room for the old-fashioned virtues of loyalty and honour and decency in the coming post-war world. Guy Crouchback, like his creator, found little that pleased him in the Britain of the late 1940s and 1950s. It all seems a long time ago. But I’m glad to have re-read the Sword of Honour trilogy which I first encountered some five decades ago..

Envoi

Susie and I went down to Birmingham for the weekend. The furtherest we have been from home this year ! And the furtherest we are likely to travel. We were there for my niece Léonies’s wedding to Carlos, a mushroom grower from the Canaries. [Disgracefully I have no photos of them.] It was very good to see the family. Whom we probably don’t see often enough. The weather forecast was for 30º-plus. But the train journeys went very smoothly, both down with Cross Country Trains and then back up with Avanti West Coast. We had booked Passenger Assistance in advance which worked well. But our helper when we arrived back at Edinburgh Waverley was apparently disappointed that I wasn’t my namesake from Coldplay.

We are now back home in Edinburgh, rejoicing in a temperate climate [there are stories of killer heatwaves around the Mediterranean], wondering whether to cut the grass, and fine-tuning the arrangments for a Celebration next month

June 2025

Through a glass darkly – 153

Books can be evocative. I clearly remember being given a paperback copy of John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor, Sailor, Spy back in the mid-1970s by Mme Anne Warter, then Directrice of the Paris bookshop Nouveau Quartier Latin, and reading it with great excitement on the rather second-rate Silver Arrow train from the Gare du Nord up to Le Touquet. Later Le Carré books are linked to other memories. I read Little Drummer Girl while on a trip to an EFL conference in Groningen in 1983. And Single and Single during an ICS summer chaplaincy trip to Brittany in 1999.

These past few days I’ve been turning the pages of a book that has been on my shelves for some 50 years. Seeing the red dust-jacket brings back memories of the author. But until last week I had never opened the book.

William J. Fishman

Bill Fishman was born in Stepney, the son of a Jewish immigrant tailor and grew up in London’s East End. He was educated at the Wandsworth Teacher Training College [where my father did a one-year training course after the war], and then at the LSE. After the war he gained rapid promotion as a teacher, and became principal of what became Tower Hamlets College of Further Education. In 1965 he spent a year as Schoolmaster Student at Balliol, and in 1967 he was Visiting Professor of History at Columbia University, New York. He subsequently resigned his job at Tower Hamlets to become Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and then Barnet Shine Memorial Research Fellow in Jewish Labour Studies at Queen Mary College, London.

I never met Bill at Balliol. Which is odd since he was a distinctive character; tall with dark wavy hair, heavy spectacles, and a loud voice. But I got to know him during my time at George Allen and Unwin, as we had a publishing agreement with the Acton Trust who at the time were sponsoring Bill’s research into late nineteenth century labour history. Bill introduced me to Bloom’s, the longstanding kosher Jewish restaurant in Whitechapel High Street. [It closed in 1996.] After a lunch of well-done salt beef with chips and latkes, Bill would lead us on a tour of the surrounding streets drawing attention to the sites of long gone anarchist printing presses and of Jack the Ripper murders.

William J. Fishman: East End Jewish Radicals, 1875-1914

The publishing link with the Acton Trust did not survive my departure from George Allen and Unwin, and Bill’s book was published in 1975 by Duckworth, of the Old Piano Factory in Camden Town. [Duckworth, notable British literary publishers, was run at the time by Colin Haycraft, once described as “a one-man university press”, husband of the writer Alice Thomas Ellis, and the brother of John Haycraft, the founding director of International House language schools.]

East End Jewish Radicals tells the story of how London’s East End became the home to tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants, driven from Russia and eastern Europe by successive pogroms. They settled into the grim tenements of Whitechapel and Stepney and worked in tailoring sweatshops often under appalling conditions. Some of the immigrants had already been political radicals in Russia and they now sought radicalise and unite the Jewish workers of the East End.

Successive measures had eased the restrictions on Jews in public life: in 1833 Jews were allowed to practise at the Bar; in 1845 Jewish schools were permitted; from 1858 Jews could be elected to the Home of Commons; in 1871 the University Test Acts enabled Jews to graduate. But now in the 1870s the marked increase in the number of Jewish immigrants was a source of fear and embarrassment to Anglo-Jewry. Who felt threatened by the arrival of a mass of peculiarly clad, Yiddish-speaking paupers. A letter in the Pall Mall Gazette in February 1886 warned that “the foreign Jews of no nationality whatever are becoming a pest and a menace to the poor native-born East Ender”. The Jack the Ripper murders provoked a minor outbreak of Judophobia. After the third murder, an editorial in the East London Gazette declared that “no Englishman could have perpetrated such a horrible crime as that of Hanbury Street, and that it must have been done by a JEW – and forthwith the crowds began to threaten and abuse such of the unfortunate Hebrews as they found in the streets …”.

Against this background Jewish socialists and radicals assumed the role of fighting advocates for their people in the daily struggle against exploitation and prejudice. The earliest record of a Jewish workers’ organisation was a Union of Lithuanian Tailors founded in Whitechapel in 1872. In 1876 came the foundation of the first Hebrew Socialist Union. The secretary was Aron Lieberman, born in 1849 in the Grodno district of Russia, who had studied at the Petersburg Institute of Technology and at a rabbinical seminary in Vilna. Lieberman was a socialist prophet, fluent in Yiddish and classical Hebrew, rabidly anti-clerical, thoroughly committed to educating Jewish workers, and a scathing critic of the Jewish financial aristocracy. The brotherhood of man could only be achieved under Socialism. Lieberman subsequently moved to Berlin, was arrested in Vienna under anti-Socialist laws, and was imprisoned in Austria and in Prussia before being expelled back to England. Following an attractive [but married] young woman to New York, Lieberman was rejected by her and shot himself in a cheap lodging-house in Syracuse in November 1880.

Jewish immigration continued to rise between 1881 and 1891. The tolerance of the hosts diminished as numbers grew and the demands for work and for housing. In 1884 came the appearance of the Poilishe Yidl, the first Socialist newspaper in Yiddish. But this was supplanted a year later by the Arbeter Fraint [Worker’s Friend], a Yiddish monthly tabloid, open to all radicals, social democrats, communists, and anarchists. The paper was linked to an International Workers’ Educational Club, at 40 Berner Street, off the Commercial Road, which offered a base for radical and trade union movements in the East End.

The most influential leader in the decades before the First War was Rudolf Rocker, an unlikely phenomenon in Jewish life, born a Roman Catholic in Mainz in 1873, who for sixty years devoted himself to the Jewish working class and to Yiddish language and literature. As a young man Rocker was an apprentice bookbinder and a Social Democrat. His first contact with Jews and with Jewish radicals came in Paris in 1893 when he was invited to attend a Jewish Anarchist meeting. Anti-anarchist pressures drove him out of France. He came to London and in 1895 became Librarian of the First Section of the Communist Workers’ Educational Union [Marx, Engels, and William Liebknecht had been members]. In Shoreditch Rocker became intimate friends with Millie Witkop, an attractive young Jewish immigrant from Zlatopol in Ukraine. They thought to emigrate together to the States, but were held at Ellis Island as an unmarried couple. Rocker was a persistent critic of the bourgeois institution of marriage and a longstanding advocate of Free Love. The American Press was heavily critical of the Rockers, holding to the established American puritan ethic; and the couple were shipped back to England. Rocker became editor of the influential Yiddish periodical Germinal, a mouthpiece for libertarian socialism which temporarily replaced Arbeter Fraint.

Rudolf Rocker

Fishman interviewed men and women who recalled Rudolf Rocker as “a handsome presence – tall, blonde, sturdy, recognisably German … … he opened up the vision to us of a new society – no persecution, no hunger, only warmth and generosity.” Social evenings were held in the Crown Hall in Reddens Road. There would be classical opera and Edelstadt’s lieder accompanied by an anarchist pianist, and afterwards Rocker would lecture on some topic of political or literary interest. The Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution of 1905 brought new immigrants and political refugees. By 1906 the Rocker group opened a Workers’ Club in Jubilee Street, which included a gallery that accommodated 800 people, a library, adjoining classrooms, and a reading room.

Millie Sabel recalled some curious customers:

“I occasionally saw a small, intense man who sat alone at a table in the corner. He has slant eyes, balding reddish hair, drank Russian tea and spoke little. He was Lenin. There was also a handsome, dapper man who came later and helped paint the props at our theatrical – a quiet attractive comrade we called Peter the Lett. He was supposed to be Peter the Painter … … “ [subsequently thought to be the brains behind the robbery in December 1910 that led to the Sidney Street siege.]

The outbreak of war in August 1914 was a death blow to East End anarchism. As it was for the Second [Socialist] International. Though, as Fishman notes, in London’s West End French and German anarchists co-operated to open a Community soup kitchen to feed unemployed German workers. But shortly afterwards Rocker was interned for four long years, and was subsequently repatriated via Holland to Germany. His departure spelt the end of the London Jewish movement.

The siege of Sidney Street

There may be parallels to be drawn between radical Jewish immigrants who are the focus of this book and the radical Muslim immigrants of a century later. Firman notes the tension between the ideal of educative growth combined with militant action, as proposed by Kroptkin and Rocker, against the concept of ‘propaganda by the deed’ proposed by the men of violence. The murder of the three policemen in Sidney Street certainly forfeited a lot of support among the moderates. Though Peter the Painter became a legendary anti-hero in East End folklore. It is a fascinating and colourful story. But I fear that Fishman’s book scarcely does it justice. He was a lively and captivating speaker, but his writing style is rather dull. Which is why the book is now heading for the OXFAM shop.

Envoi

The garden looks a bit scruffy as we come to the end of ‘no mow May’. We have had ten days of strong winds and squally showers, and I am now waiting for a dry couple of days to cut the grass. But the roses are magnificent.

AbFab rose

We were sorry not to be away in Normandy with the family for summer half-term,, as we have been for the past three years. But we were delighted to see Craig and the girls, who were up in Scotland for a wedding. And delighted to share a big family meal with them for Amelia’s 14th birthday.

The girls, like all our grandchildren, are a delight. Joanna would be so proud of them.

June 2025

Through a glass darkly – 152

I’m often given books as presents, and sometimes I don’t want to read them. A few years ago I was given Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty First Century. And although I would like to have read it, I didn’t actually want to open it. And it sat reproachfully unopened on the shelves for a couple of years before I took it along to the OXFAM shop. More recently I was given a copy of a commentary on the book of Job, written in French by a conservative reformed pastor. I have looked at the early pages. But I know that I won’t live long enough to read the rest of it. And I’m aware that it may not sell very fast in the Edinburgh OXFAM shop. On the other hand I have just read, with great interest, a book that I was given for my birthday last summer.

Daniel Finkelstein: Hitler Stalin Mum and Dad

I am not predisposed to like a book by a Tory member of the House of Lords [elevated by David Cameron in 2013]. Who is also a journalist, political commentator, and supporter and director of Chelsea football club.

[Aside. When did it became the norm for politicians to make known their football allegiances ? Did it start with Tony Blair, who claimed unconvincingly to have bunked off school to watch the Newcastle centre forward Jackie Milburn ? He didn’t; the dates don’t work. The prolific Alastair Campbell, onetime journalist and Blair’s right hand man, is known as a lifelong Burnley supporter. David Cameron claimed to be an Aston Villa supporter, but in an interview confused them with that other claret-and-blue team West Ham United. [Or CSBJ, the Bourgoin rugby club ?] Keir Starmer claims to be an Arsenal supporter, like Jeremy Corbyn and Pritti Patel. He used to have a season ticket at the Emirates, though he may not have paid for it. Rishi Sunak supports Southampton – who have just been relegated. That sounds about right. I don’t think that Clem Attlee or Harold Macmillan ever talked about standing on the terraces at Highbury or at Villa Park.]

But Daniel Finkelstein’s family memoir is an extraordinary and gripping book. He tells the story, in some detail, of how his parents and grand-parents survived events in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. His maternal grand-father, Alfred Wiener, was a German Jew, born in 1885 in Potsdam. He was committed to the development of a modern liberal Germany and of modern Judaism, and saw these things are mutually supportive. After the First War, in which he fought for Germany and was decorated, he became General Secretary of the CV, the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith. The CV campaigned against anti-Semitism and sought to develop ideas of tolerance, liberalism, and social equality. But after Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Alfred realised that he would have leave Germany. He settled in Amsterdam where he was joined by his wife and their three daughters. The youngest, Mirjam Emma Wiener, Finkelstein’s mother, was born in Berlin in June 1933.

His paternal grand-father, Adolf Finkelstein [Dolu] was born in Lwow, in Poland, in 1890. The Finkelsteins were a wealthy Jewish family, fluent German speakers, partners in the dominant iron and steel business, who also owned property in Vienna. Prior to the creation of an independent Polish state, Lwów had been a provincial centre of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. Half of its population were Polish, the other half divided equally between Jews and Ukrainians. Dolu married Luisa, the daughter of wealthy landowners, and they had one son, Ludwig, Finkelstein’s father, who was born in 1929. The business prospered and Dolu because known as ‘The Iron King’.

What happened next is an epic tale of survival. Timothy Snyder and Anne Applebaum have written about the suffering of central European Jews under Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, under Hitler and Stalin, the two genocidal dictators of the twentieth century. Finkelstein retells the story in terms of his own ancestors.

Alfred Wiener spent his years in Amsterdam assembling documents and data about persecution in Nazi Germany. The collection eventually became the Wiener Library. He himself relocated again to London, and then to the United States, before the war broke out. He was preparing to bring over his wife and daughters when Germany invaded the Netherlands. His wife Grete and their three daughters are trapped in occupied Amsterdam. Their friends included Anne Frank and her family. Of their predominantly Jewish neighbours in Jan van Eijckstraat 90 were murdered in the camps, in Auschwitz and Belsen, in Sobibor and Mauthausen. In June 1943 Grete and her girls were rounded up and sent first to Westerbork camp and then to Bergen-Belsen.

Three years earlier, in April 1940, Adolf Finkelstein had been arrested in Lwów by Soviet troops and militia as part of a bigger round-up. He was held in prison in Poltava and in Starobelsk, and was then sent north to a Siberian gulag, a labour camp, near Ukhta. Very shortly afterwards the NKVD came for Adolf’s wife, Luisa, and their son Ludwig, and they were forcibly relocated to a remote settlement in eastern Kazakhstan to work on a sovkhoz, a Soviet state farm. It was a place of hunger and death. There Ludwig and his mother along with some 100 other exiled Poles survived the freezing winters in a primitive shed built from cow dung.

That any of his ancestors survived, and that some of them were reunited after the war, is a miracle. Though that is not a word that Finkelstein uses. It is a long story, and I was grateful for the four family trees at the start of the book. The book overlaps thematically and chronologically with Philippe Sands’ East West Street. The authors share a common past in Lwów/Lviv, and Finkelstein acknowledges that they are almost certainly cousins.

Through the detailed story of the Wiener and Finkelstein families, the book underlines the almost unbelievable suffering of the European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. It evenhandedly accuses both Hitler and Stalin of awful crimes against humanity. Very unfortunately, lingering western guilt about doing too little too late to halt the Nazi holocaust means that world leaders are again doing too little to bring an end to the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians, Which to me looks very like ethnic cleansing. As tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children are sacrificed to save the political career of the odious Benjamin Netanyahu. The book ends with the survivors leading unremarkable lives in the respectable north London suburbs of Hendon and Swiss Cottage.

As I write this, I realise how little I was affected by any of this history when I was younger. I remember that when I was hitchhiking in Europe in the summer of 1963, I went out for a drink in Munich with a Jewish girl from Canada. Who told me that 17 of her immediate family had died in the camps. But I didn’t really take in the horror, and I didn’t make much of it at the time. And I can’t now remember her name.

Envoi

Susie and I continue to limp around on poles, like senior citizens practising for a three-legged race. Unusually, on two successive Sundays, I have been preaching out of town at St Anne’s Episcopal Church, Dunbar. Squeezing into a tiny Car Club car is an effort. But it was lovely on sunny mornings by the sea. And the congregation were very welcoming. Closer to home the roses are coming out, the garden is as good as it gets, and has required regular watering. We have been casting about trying to find a [replacement] skiffle band for a Celebration in July. And we are looking forward to seeing Craig and the girls here next week. It will be Amelia’s fourteenth birthday on Wednesday.

May 2025