"It is well that war is so terrible." WWI revisited.

I have a suspicion of revisionist history. All too often it’s someone trying to make a name for themselves by courting controversy rather than revealing genuine new evidence or ideas. For example a few months ago, a writer on The Punch gave us a column taking on the great Australian cricketer Don Bradman, saying that Don had trouble dealing with some of his team mates to the point where they didn’t like him, and he was possibly involved in questionable business deals in Adelaide.  The writing suggested the journalist was being bold and iconoclastic. His content however was nothing you wouldn’t have read in any number of standard biographies of the man, even by an admirer. His column was perhaps twenty years too late to be brave or controversial.

However, the historical consensus can be wrong. In Australia of course, we have the example of the Aboriginals. When I was as school we learned about Aboriginal culture a bit, but it all just sort of stopped once Arthur Phillip stepped ashore. Nowadays, the relationship between Colonialist and Native from 1788 to today is one of the great themes of Australian history and society, a source of great argument and controversy and rightly so. So revisionist history has its place for certain.

An area that has been revisited with less fanfare is World War One. We all know about World War One, the pointless war directed by inept callous generals, using outdated tactics safe in their command posts while soldiers were slaughtered needlessly in mud and gas. General Douglas Haig, the Supreme Commander, was particularly inept, one of history’s greatest bunglers. We’ve seen ‘Oh What a lovely war’ and ‘Blackadder goes forth’ both of which encapsulate this view beautifully in popular entertainment.

However, this broad view, however popular and entrenched, may well be wrong. On one level, this makes perfect sense. Part of the popular view is how professional and good the German army was, yet they were defeated by the British army. To win the war, once the Germans has taken part of France, all they really had to do was stay there. Yet the inept British generals created and lead an army that drove them back to the point where they sued for peace. Mind you, if they had driven them all the way to Berlin as Haig and American general Jack Pershing wanted to, perhaps we could have prevented World War Two. But that’s history’s hypotheticals, another area all together.

In the last few years, more and more historians are suggesting that WWI was neither pointless nor badly managed. I’ve read a couple of books in this area, the latest being Mud, blood and poppycock: Britain and the Great War, by Gordon Corrigan, an ex-army officer. It’s a well-argued, clearly written book, taking a topical approach to subjects such as the causes of the war,  Britain losing a generation of men, life in the trenches, the cowardice and incompetence of the Generals, the small contribution by the US forces, justice in the army, and so on. I could explain some of these but it would be easier for you to read the book. Let one example serve: the lost generation. By use of population statistics, Corrigan shows that the number of men between 18 and 35 in Great Britain lost was not nearly as large as we think it was. You could not even say most of the men of this age were killed. However, the number of deaths in war was unprecedented for the British, if not for their European counterparts. Never before had Britain sent such numbers to fight and the number of deaths were commensurate.  Moreover, thanks to the Pals Battalions, where men from the same town or the same industry were allowed to stay together when they enlisted, places could lose all or most of their men in one day or one battle. So while in statistical terms, the myth is wrong, in terms of the psychological effect on Britain, the myth still has value. Corrigan is not a mindless iconoclast but an historian looking at evidence with a fresh eye.

And on a smaller note, Douglas Haig was never the Supreme Commander. Throughout the war, he was subordinate to the French who were the senior members of the Allied forces and his decisions, say to keep fighting on the Somme, were forced upon him by circumstances and military necessity.

Not that this makes everything okay. Bad mistakes were made, blunders that should have been seen at the time, not just with hindsight. Perhaps the worst day of the war was the last. Thousands of soldiers on both sides were killed between the time of the Armistice being signed early on the morning of November 11 and the time it came into effect. There were many reasons this happened, sometimes pure ignorance, but all too often the sheer bloody-mindedness of the commanding officers, sending men in to take land they could walk into a few hours later. I hope the spirits of the men who died that day rested heavily on the consciences of the men who sent them in.

"Look at me Leonard." Leonard Cohen

I have a friend, a professional musician (actually he’s a drummer, but I leave the jokes to you) who is (and this will be no surprise really) passionate about his music. I told him I had bought the Essential Leonard Cohen double CD. He said, ‘If you can find a dud track on that album, I’ll bash your face in.’ Luckily for my face, I found no dud track. (And yes, we’re both old enough to remember what an ‘album’ is.)

I was also lucky enough to see Cohen live on his latest tour. It was one of the greatest nights I have spent in a theatre. I have never seen a performer so free of ego. When Cohen gave the focus to the musicians or singers, he did not just step back but disappeared into the shadows. He genuflected to the audience and to his fellow musicians frequently, and seemed genuinely touched by the love that flowed from the crowd. When he played the simple one-fingered piano solo from ‘Tower of Song’ the crowd went nuts. His response: ‘You’re too kind.’ He is I think truly humble, in the correct sense of the word, one who knows his place in the world and the universe. In his 70s and after an almost three hour show, he literally skipped on for his encore.

I finished reading Anthony Reynolds’ 2010 biography Leonard Cohen: A remarkable life one Sunday morning and spent the afternoon listening to his music, performed by him and by Jennifer Warnes, KD Lang, Joe Cocker, Aaron Neville, John Cale, Nick Cave and the Klezmer Conservatory Band, among others. It was an afternoon well spent, and testament to the quality of this biography that it sent me back to the music. Had I Cohen’s poetry or novels to hand, I might well have gone there as well.

Cohen’s career began as a poet and novelist before he turned to music in the 60s, had almost petered out in the 80s but then came back with astonishing music. His fellow musicians have always respected his writing, with many cover versions done from his first album onwards.  Starting from the early 90s, his song ‘Halleluja’, almost overlooked on release, was everywhere. When his manager stole most of his money earlier this decade, he came back with a tour that is still going, cementing his place not as a nostalgia act but a musician and writer for our times.

He has always been ready to work in partnership with other composers, singers and musicians, who speak highly of him. The only person who seems to have a grievance is the Steven Marchat, the son and partner of Cohen’s manager Marty Marchat. They had a falling out over money and, it seems, Cohen’s reluctance to talk to Steven about his father. But even he concedes he likes Cohen.

Cohen has been called music to slit your wrists by, but this is an unfair, perhaps lazy, generalisation. His lyrics are much more literate and evocative than your average rock song, direct yet mysterious, and not without humour. His melodies are suited to his limited range so perhaps he is not the most melodic of writers, but songs such as ‘Hey that’s no way to say goodbye’ show he can write pretty melodies within these limitations. He self-deprecatingly referred to his gift of a golden voice, but as he has gotten older his unique (!) voice has gained depth, to the point where he sounds like an Old Testament prophet, if one was going to sing popular songs. It’s music that engages the mind as well as the ears.

It can also touch the soul. Cohen’s lyrics often reflect his spiritual journey. Cohen is a Buddhist monk but also a Jew who still has his traditional Friday night meal with family and friends. He has investigated and explored many of the major religious traditions and some of the more obscure ones. As he says in concert, “I have spent much of my life studying the great philosophies – but cheerfulness kept breaking through”. I think the nearest he comes to a single religious viewpoint in his song ‘Anthem’: There is a crack, a crack, in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.

He also writes with equal openness about sex and food and drink and women – especially women. On his latest album Dear Heather he says ‘Because of a few songs/ Wherein I spoke of their mystery/ Women have been exceptionally kind/ To my old age.’ From Suzanne on his first album to Heather on his last, women have been important figures in his songwriting, and his lyrics exploring this fascinating topic range from the mystic to the earthy, poetic and frank.

Which is why, I think, ‘Halleluja’ has become THE Cohen song. To me, it’s about a great love affair that had the intensity of religious ecstasy, which is now finished but has left the lover in a state of battered gratefulness. The two great themes of Cohen’s work come together in a song fusing the sensual and the spiritual into a coherent whole.

There is a crack in everything. Cohen’s money was stolen by his manager, which has forced him back on the road and back into the studio, which has given hundreds of thousands of fans the chance to see him live, for him to enjoy the love of his audience, and new music for the world. If you want it to put this down to the mysterious movement of God, or just a lucky variation of shit happening, I don’t care. It is a gift. Light got in.

PS Mark Steyn has just written a column this week on 'Dance me to the end of love', placing it within the great American songwriting tradition. It's worth a read.

"Only one life." Harvey Milk

I seem to have hit a biographical patch for some reason. Biographies are popular. For the famous and infamous, our heroes and villains, we want to penetrate their mystery. Where do artists and politicians and scientists get their inspiration, their ideas? (More than one artist, when asked this question, has responded “If I knew that, I’d go there.”) What makes one person become Abraham Lincoln, another Adolf Hitler? And then there are the people of whom we have heard something or come from a world we are only vaguely familiar with, if at all. Their biographies offer a way into their world and their work. In the end, the biography is yet another attempt to understand the puzzle of human nature, of existence. And so they will never entirely succeed. But the best of them make the journey worthwhile, even if we end up a little short of the destination.

Two biographies I’ve recently undertaken are Randy Shilt’s The Mayor of Castro Street: the life and times of Harvey Milk, and Anthony Reynolds’ Leonard Cohen: a remarkable life. On my to-read pile is Barney Hoskyn’s Lowside of the road: A life of Tom Waits, and the other day I bought Blood Kindred: W B Yeats; the life, the death, the politics by W J McCormack. I’ve finished the first two in this list and was going to write about them both but the entry was getting well above my self-imposed maximum of 1000 words. So here is my response to Shilt’s book, Reynold’s will be next and I’ll get to the others later.

I first came across Harvey Milk by watching a film about Dan White, the man who shot him and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Milk in this case was played by Peter Coyote, a good actor who has never become a star. My interest was piqued. I had never heard of Milk (in fact I remember thinking I was mishearing his name) and the manner of the murders and the trial that followed kept his name in mind.

Despite my interest, I have yet to see Sean Penn’s take on the character, but I found this biography on the shelf in my library, so decided to pick it up. And I’m glad I did. What an eye-opener it was for me, coming from a conservative Australian family in a nice suburban middle-class upbringing. I’m not complaining about my life, just observing it meant I did not knowingly encounter a gay man until I was about 21. Working in the theatre, as I do, I have since met a lot more. And in other places obviously. Indeed, dare I say it, some of my best friends are gay.

That said, while I had the occasional glimpse of what homosexuals have to put up with, I had no idea of the struggle they have undergone, or the distance they have come in social and legal acceptance within my lifetime. Obviously that struggle is far from over, but I had no idea of the life that the vast majority of homosexuals were forced to leave, if they could, before what was called the Gay Liberation Movement – repressed, secretive, dangerous, often fatal. If it is not easy to be gay now in our liberal society, being gay in the 50s or before was impossible. The idea that someone would choose that life is laughable.

But it is an idea Harvey Milk and many others had to fight, as well as others equally strange. (Sadly, you still hear it.)  Milk was a leading figure against a law trying to make it illegal for homosexuals to be teachers, on the basis that they would use that platform to recruit youngsters. Again this is not some medieval prejudice but within my lifetime! (41 years and about six months as of time of writing.) He lost that battle but the war went on. His chief message, the theme of his speeches, and one of his favourite words was hope. He saw himself as trying to give hope to those men and women who had none.

Milk achieved much in his short lifetime. If his only achievement was to be the first openly-gay politician elected to office he would be worth remembering, but he did much more. Most of his achievements came from community activism, working with gay and straight alike to achieve civil rights for homosexuals, long before he came to office. He is an inspiration for anyone who wants to change the world.

Milk was murdered and his murderer got away with manslaughter. It’s a depressing end to his story but almost inevitable. He was loud, confrontational and bold. He was always convinced he would be killed by the assassin’s bullet.  Indeed he spoke of it so often you can’t help wondering if it was he who inadvertently gave Dan White the appalling idea. And the trial was a travesty as if to prove how far gay liberation had to go, even in San Francisco. One witness remembers one cop patting ex-cop White as if for a job well done. The Prosecution didn’t present a strong case and White was free in a few years. But he killed himself a few years after his release. But injustices like this can give impetuous to the causes they are designed to repress, and this was no exception.

If as an eight-year-old, this whole story passed me by, it was not just because I was an eight-year-old in Australia. The big story the week of Milk’s death was the Jonestown Massacre, which also had its roots in San Francisco politics. It was an extraordinary time indeed.

Not long before Milk’s death he recorded a political will, which included the memorable line, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Closet doors and violence sadly still have their place in our world but we are progressing, thanks to people like Milk and the many others who followed. He was not alone in the struggle, and has his critics as well as admirers but they all have their voices heard in Shilt’s book. Definitely worth a read, if only to remind us of our recent past.

"All this is that." War comics and Margaret Atwood.

When I was a boy I used to read Commando comics and others of the type. I loved them. As I got older I still read them but I went through an ironic phase, noting the stock characters, (the cowardly private, the good German, the evil Jap, the stuffy officer, the renegade soldier, the younger son looking for redemption and so on and on), unlikely dialogue (‘You may be faster than us Fritz, but we’ll out turn you any day’ thus neatly giving us technical information about the relative performances of the ME109 and the Hurricane in naturalistic dialogue during a dogfight), formulaic plots, and characters that all looked the same, and then finally I stopped reading them altogether.

That said, their level of technical drawing in Commando comics was never less than superb which was a large part of their appeal to boys who made models of airplanes, ships and tanks, and played war in the playground. If the stories were Boys’s Own Adventure types and they never caused us to reflect on the futility of war, a) we were little boys who, quite rightly, hadn’t yet got around to considering the great moral questions and b) they were set in World War Two which is as near to a simple goodies versus baddies war as you’re likely to find.

As comics have gained more respectability as a literary form, Commando Comics have released big albums of their books. Each volume has twelve stories with a nominal theme, (Aussies!, Action! Spies! Etc – the exclamation marks are mandatory) are larger print than their original incarnation, and come with a handy attached bookmark. I’ve worked my way through two volumes now, one just recently and one a year or two ago, and I’m afraid my ironic teenage self was right. While they are aware of their own excesses, (their covers note things such as Europeans always screaming “Aaaauggh!” while Indians and Asians tend towards “Aieee!”) in the end they are poorly told stories (albeit sometimes with a good premise) and cluttered with clichés. On top of that the larger print makes these books unwieldy and subject to breakage. I can’t recommend these books except as an exercise in nostalgia, which, in their defence, is where they seem to be aimed. But nostalgia can be very powerful. I can’t remember if it was a British or German officer, but my brothers and I still giggle when we think of this piece of deathless narration: ‘He went quietly mad.’

From the ridiculous to the sublime: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. This is the second of Atwood’s novels I’ve had the pleasure to read and she has the happy knack, unusual for a literary novelist who has won the Booker Prize among others, of writing page-turners. The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a dystoptic world of a theocratic patriach totalitarian society in a constant war and suffering from falling fertility rates. The narrator is a Handmaid known only by her patronymic Offred, one of those whose job, and indeed sole purpose now, is to get pregnant to one of the society’s top strata’s male. If they do so, their life is safe; if not they could end up in exile or disappeared.

We hear the story in Offred's voice. We hear the details of her life, the prescribed dress, living conditions, social life,  even the regimented sex. We also get some information on her backstory, her marriage, her daughter, and how all this was stripped away from her with a brutal speed as the world was turned upside down. And the ending is ambiguous without being weak story-telling - a difficult trick to pull off.

Atwood has created a believable world with real affecting characters. Tim Blair, a right-wing Australian columnist, has invented Blair’s Law, “the ongoing process by which the world's multiple idiocies are becoming one giant, useless force". While in this case, it was two extreme groups coming together quite effectively to overthrow democracy.  The Handmaid’s world seems to be a bizarre result of religious fundamentalism fusing with radical feminism to create the society where women are simultaneously held in great esteem and confined to predetermined traditional roles without chance of change or escape except for the worse. The men too are trapped in strict strata.  Perhaps it’s more as Clint Eastwood put it: “If you go far enough to the right, you’ll meet the same idiots coming from the left.” 

It’s a superb novel. Once again I found myself torn between trying to find out what happens, and wanting the novel to last longer. Perhaps it’s not a novel you enjoy, but it stays with you. And it's certainly made its mark culturally, having been adapted both as a film and an opera.  It was Francis Trauffaut who said a masterpiece is something that has already found its definitive form. And so with this, as with other masterworks, it is best encountered in its original form. To be honest, I can only assume this, having seen neither the film nor opera. But I think it's a fairly safe truism that only second-rate novels make better films. Perhaps we have the odd exception (I understand both the play and opera of The Marriage of Figaro hold their place on stage) but go with me on this one. 

"Bobby dazzler!" Robert Helpmann

Robert Helpmann haunted my childhood. Forget Darth Vader, the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was much more frightening. Darth Vader frightened me in a dark cinema, the Child Catcher in a well-lit family room and followed into my dreams at night.

Helpmann is a major figure in the history of English and Australian ballet, as well as an actor, playing lead roles with the Old Vic and touring Australia and the United States, directed ballet, plays and opera, as well as choreographer and creator of ballets. Indeed, I see the Australian Ballet is doing The Merry Widow, which was created by Helpmann and was a major critical and popular success around the world. He appeared in Olivier’s Henry V and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (for which he also choreographed the ballet in the film.) He was created a knight and a major Australian performance award is named after him.

And yet I wonder if he isn’t a somewhat forgotten figure. Maybe I’m projecting my own ignorance onto the wider public (and my ignorance of ballet is almost profound in its totality) but I think Nellie Melba or certainly Joan Sutherland would have greater name recognition. Graham Murphy, who started as a choreographer under Helpmann, would possibly be our most recognised male ballet dancer and choreographer. And yet in terms of the depth and width of impact over a wide range of artistic endeavours, Helpmann leaves them all in the shade. No shame on them, but shame on us if Helpmann is not the well-remembered artist he should be.

This was all prompted by Anna Bemrose’s 2008 book Robert Helpmann: A servant of art. I’m afraid I’m going to have to call this a worthy book. The writing is dry and uninvolving. Though it covers Helpmann’s career and major works in good detail, Helpmann’s personality comes through only fitfully in glimpses. There is little or no mention of his private life which is fine but I don’t feel I know Helpmann, or indeed his inspirations and drive, any better for having read this book, and I wish I did. Perhaps a book of other people’s recollections of Helpmann might serve better in this respect, such as George Plimpton’s book on Truman Capote. It is only in the quotations from people such as Maina Geilgud and Margot Fonteyn that we see the man. Which was a little disappointing.

However, it is a sobering thought to realise on reading books such as this and John Bell’s autobiography just how young the professional performing arts companies in Australia are. I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with people who were part of the creation of the Queensland Theatre Company as well as other companies. Opera Australia was only created in the 1950s, Australian Ballet 1960s, the acting companies in the 70s. If we still have the challenge of finding audience and justifying ourselves to governments, funding bodies and the general audience, surely part of the reason is the profession’s relative youth.  If we are not part of the lifeblood of Australia in the same way sport is, we’ve been doing sport a lot longer. Maybe we will never make that grade, and will always be a niche market. Certainly theatre in all its forms is struggling all over the world. Stephen Sondheim in his book Finishing the Hat says he now wonders, as he once never did, if there will always be a place for live theatre. Australia has come to the game late, and maybe we are fighting the darkness, but sunsets can dazzle. For some people, it’s the best part of the day.

"I spy." Espionage in WWII

Being a spy is not easy, if you enjoy receiving credit. The better you are, the fewer people know about you. The best operations are the ones no-one ever discovers. (James Bond, by this standard, is one of the most hopeless spies ever. Everyone knows who he is.) Nor is much good for those who enjoy simplicity. You operate in a strange world of double-think and triple-think (“Now we know they know but they know we know they know but they don’t know that we know that they know we know they know, which gives us the advantage...") And you can never be honest, even with immediate family. The real world of spying seems to be a world of eccentrics and oddballs in a miasma of mistrust.

And the efficacy of espionage is one that is constantly under question. The better the information you gain, the more you tend to distrust it. Are the enemy playing with us the same way we play with them? Are they as good as us? Are they better? Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, I find true spy stories fascinating. In particular, stories from World War Two. These stories tend to have clear-cut goals and endings, which helps.

The greatest intelligence breakthrough of WWII was codenamed Ultra: the Allies broke the German code and were reading the bulk of all Axis communications. The Enigma machine was supposed to create unbreakable code, but thanks to the efforts and bravery of Polish soldiers, British sailors and the brains of an eclectic bunch of men and women at Bletchley Park, Axis secret communications had been compromised from the earliest days of the war. But this was kept secret for decades after the war had finished. (Incidentally, if you ever work out how the code-crackers did it, please let me know. I have read several accounts and still don’t understand.)

It is because of this official secrecy that old stories can be retold with more and better information. One of the greatest and most successful operations of WWII was Operation Mincemeat. A dead body with false plans for an invasion of Sardinia was floated ashore in Portugal, in hopes that the Germans would get a hold of them. All went to plan and many German troops, artillery and other materiel were transferred to Sardinia and were nowhere near the real attack on Sicily.

Once the war was over, rumours about this operation began to spread, despite it still being an official secret. As a result, Ewan Montague, the officer in charge of the operation, was given permission to publish an account of it, under the evocative title ‘The Man who Never Was’, which was a best seller then a successful movie. However, Montague was not able to tell the whole story. Much of their information on German activity was through the still-secret Ultra. Moreover, he felt a moral duty not to reveal the identity of the dead man who went to war as ‘Major Martin’.

Sixty years later and these restrictions no longer apply. Ben Macintyre, a British journalist, has written an exciting and fascinating account of the operation, under the simple title Operation Mincemeat. The bare bones provided by Montague are all present but now with more meat, complete with double-agents and cross-dressers. And the story of the man who became ‘Major Martin’ is pathetic and touching. It’s a great read and I recommend it, along with another of Macintyre’s book, Agent Zigzag.

Some of the men in Operation Mincemeat appear in this book too.  Agent Zigzag was Eddie Chapman, a thief and safecracker in England before WWII, who started the war in a Jersey prison and ended it back among the demimonde of London’s Soho. In between those times, he volunteered to spy for the Germans on the English, then was enlisted by the English to spy on the Germans. He lived in France, England, Norway and travelled to Germany. He proposed killing Hitler at a Nazi Party Rally in Berlin but his offer was knocked back. He got engaged to two women, one of which had his daughter but he married a third woman. He betrayed his German masters but had his spymaster at his daughter’s wedding years after his story became known. He wasn’t a dull man.

Like Operation Mincemeat, Chapman’s story has been a book and a movie but much information was suppressed. Again, McIntyre fills in the gaps and provides colourful background, including a German spy who studied Morris Dancing, and a concentration camp inmate who ends up butling for Clark Gable after the war. And it is filled with incidents that beggars belief. For example, in London in 1944 and coming to the end of his espionage career, Chapman asked his colleagues to help him find the girl he left behind in 1939. They were in a crowded restaurant and Chapman looked around to find someone who looked like her as a reference point. ‘That girl looks like her from behind. Actually that is her.” Not even Dickens would write a scene like that. Well, maybe Dickens, but no-one else.

And in the hall of mirrors that is espionage, nothing is ever certain. It is entirely possible that both Mincemeat and Zigzag were rumbled by German spies - spies who were quite happy to see Germany lose the war and so kept their suspicions to themselves. We will probably never know the entire truth.

World War Two continues to fascinate, as the flow of new books, games, movies and television attests. Despite the moral questions that have arisen, it is still clearly a war against an evil enemy, that we were right to fight and grateful to defeat. Mark Steyn in his column on ‘Saving Private Ryan’ rightly criticises the screenwriters for suggesting that defeating Hitler was not a sufficiently moral motivation for their characters. How moronic, how vacuous, how sadly desperate to show their liberal credentials, that the writers don’t like war. No-one likes war, soldiers least of all. Nor has anyone really written a pro-war book. Even the Illiad, which glories in descriptions of mythical battle, shows the gory reality of men thrust through with spears choking out their lifeblood in the dust, the poetry making the moment all the more visceral. And if we were all reasonable people, there would be no war. But we are not all reasonable people, and all of us are unreasonable at times. War shows humanity at its worst but also at its best. And for that reason, it will always fascinate.