David Cameron is a bit concerned, as you may have read, that we in this country are in danger of being “bashful about our Britishness”. In the wake of controversy over the reported Islamist influence on some Birmingham schools, the Prime Minister was vocal about the importance of promoting “British values”, though pinning down precisely what those are has not been entirely straightforward (there’s a very British understatement for you).
We’re heading west along the river on a bright June morning. Towards the prow of our Thames Clipper, under the aegis of the Museum of London, an excitable Dan Cruickshank is singing the praises of a city both divided and united by the Thames – and marvelling at the bridges that leap from shore to shore. “Audacious interventions”, the architectural historian calls them. He’s not wrong.
A review of Brian Turner’s memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country; Kevin Powers’ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting; and Phil Klay’s Redeployment. (And check out Bryan Cranston reading The Things They Carried for audible.co.uk)
“We knew our prelude would be different from the trenches of the First World War or the front lines of Korea,” Brian Turner writes in his fever dream of a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country. Turner joined the US army in 1998 when he was almost 31 – old, for a soldier – and served with Nato forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the close of the 20th century. From the end of 2003, he served in Iraq for a year with the 3rd Stryker Brigade.
The scene is an early supper at the Arden Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon. The time is just between the penultimate all-day Saturday performances of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the RSC’s adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker-winning novels; the shows will close here in a week’s time before reopening at the Aldwych, in London, in May. The cast round the table is composed of Hilary, her husband Gerald McEwen, her younger brother Brian, Mike Poulton – who crafted these plays in close collaboration with Mantel – and me. We are discussing how familiar most of the audience are with the books. Mantel remarks on the opening of the first play, which finds Thomas Cromwell and Cardinal Wolsey in conference; at the edge of the stage is a young man playing a lute. A few moments in to the scene Wolsey sends him off with an abrupt, “Enough now, Mark.”
“A woman just near me leaned over and whispered to her companion, ‘That’s Mark Smeaton!’ – she was very excited,” Mantel says. It is Smeaton who will, in Bring Up the Bodies, play a crucial role in the fall of Anne Boleyn. And indeed, on the Saturday I was there, although I didn’t hear a whisper, a distinct frisson of recognition ran through the sold-out Swan. And that is the genius of both Mantel’s novels and now their stage adaptations: yes, you know where this story is going – but you are no less glad to be along for the ride.
Henry Marsh is one of the country’s top neurosurgeons and a pioneer of neurosurgical advances in Ukraine. Erica Wagner witnesses life on a knife-edge.
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It is just after lunchtime on a wet Monday in February when Henry Marsh is finally able to return to the operating theatre in the Atkinson Morley Wing of St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, and begin the work that will save a young woman’s life.
Jenny is not long out of her teens; the previous week, she had collapsed – from a haemorrhage, the result of an abnormality in the veins and arteries of her brain. She had been close to death: late at night, Henry had operated to remove a blood clot and save her life. But a later scan showed that the abnormality remained. If the problem was not corrected, she could suffer another bleed at any time. So this will be the second time he has been inside her skull.
While Jenny is prepared, Henry paces the hospital’s long corridors. There is time for us to sit and have a sandwich. He is restless: he wants to get on. He didn’t get this right the first time. He needs to get it right now.
Let’s get Mumford & Sons out of the way, shall we? I’m chatting with Martin Simpson in advance of the 15th annual BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, which will be held for the first time at the Royal Albert Hall in London – the event’s largest-ever venue – on 19 February. Simpson, who turned 60 last year, is one of the stars of British music. He has been nominated almost 30 times since the awards were launched in 2000, more than any other performer, and for nine consecutive years he was a nominee for Musician of the Year (a prize he has won twice already and is now up for again).
The Virtues of the Table: How to Eat and Think, by Julian Baggini, Granta, RRP£14.99, 320 pages
Surely it’s not quite healthy, surely it’s not quite right, this obsession we have with – let’s be frank – stuffing our faces. Look, there’s The Great British Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood casting a scathing eye over a tottering croquembouche; there’s Nigella Lawson, gazing adoringly into the cornucopia of her fridge; and here you are, standing at the grocery store checkout with goat’s cheese and a goose egg in your basket and wondering, how did it come to this?
If you are looking for evidence of the reach, and breadth, of Viking culture, the Vale of York hoard is a fine place to start. Part of the British Museum’s forthcoming exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend, this remarkable collection of objects discovered in 2007 is one of the most important finds of its type in Britain.
I don’t know about you, but if you’ve just processed down to the harbour on one of Britain’s most northerly isles carrying a 6-foot flaming torch and proceeded to set a Viking longship alight, you might fancy a bowl of soup, mightn’t you?
I am given to understand that some folks, when they take a holiday, go to places where waiters in white jackets bring them cocktails on silver trays, and where breakfast, lunch and dinner emerge from kitchens which remain unseen to the relaxed vacationer — who has only to lounge in the bar, martini in hand, awaiting the call to table.
That’s not me.