A New Start

FT: MArmalade

 

Kitchen stories: Oranges are the only fruit

By Sybil Kapoor

Published: January 7 2011 22:01 | Last updated: January 7 2011 22:01

Testers at the Marmalade Awards in Cumbria

 

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Caff culture - Jan-14

The trend: iPhone food apps - Jan-14

The taste test: detox teas - Jan-14

Some like it haute: Jean Ducloux - Jan-07

FT Foodies: Tom Daley - Jan-07

The Corporate Diner: brunch at Bupa HQ - Jan-07

Like most avid marmalade makers, Dr Yen-Chung Chong’s methods are very particular. The retired biochemist, based in Brighton first squeezes the juice from Sicilian blush oranges and some lemons. Then he filters the liquid overnight through a jelly bag, reboils the debris with water and adds hand-cut rind. The liquids and zest are boiled with white cane sugar and home-made Seville orange pectin; finally, he pours in campari.

This quirky recipe won Dr Chong the “double-gold” laurels at last year’s World’s Original Marmalade Awards, held annually in Cumbria. Established in 2006 by Jane Hasell-McCosh, this sticky celebration has shown that home cooks and small artisan makers are doing much to change a delicacy that has been made in Britain for more than 300 years, but has made little progress save for switching from a dinner-table treat to a breakfast toast staple.

“I love marmalade and I really wanted to do something to try and improve its quality,” Hasell-McCosh says. “Amazingly, it’s taken on a life all of its own. Last year we had over 800 entries.” British shops sell Seville oranges in the last three weeks of January, so the festival is held over a weekend in mid-February at Hasell-McCosh’s stately home, Dalemain Mansion, crammed for two days with tables laden with amber- and russet-coloured jars.

Hasell-McCosh receives entries from all over the world, including a yuzu marmalade from Japan, which is “definitely an acquired taste”. To meet demand, she has added three new categories to the competition – International, Inventive and Family Affair. All of which might sound a little eccentric, until you realise that Hasell-McCosh is a natural marmalade marketing genius. Amateurs can enter myriad groups, from Military and Clergy to Bed and Breakfast. The entry money goes to charity.

Everyone from Michael Bond (author of the Paddington Bear books) to manufacturers such as Thursday Cottage are involved. As Pam Corbin, judge and author of The River Cottage Handbook No 2: Preserves, says: “it’s a marvellous meeting place for marmalade makers, and it’s gaining momentum year on year.”

A competing marmalade

Jonathan Miller, a buyer at Fortnum & Mason, is also interested. “Fortnum’s wants to encourage small niche makers who use small-batch, open-pan methods,” he says. “Last year, the festival’s artisan category had some brilliant marmalades including a kumquat marmalade from Museu de la Confitura in Spain and a Wake-Up Marmalade made with a little chilli from Wild & Fruitful in Cumbria.” The latter is now sold in Fortnum’s, alongside Ludlow Food Centre’s dark Lady Windsor’s Marmalade, made with molasses.

Everyone who enters gets feedback. Lord Henley, who entered the Peers & Political category, managed to improve his marmalade to such a degree that last year he won his group prize, beating a Scottish MP. Victor Gubbins, ex-Royal Dragoons and winner of last year’s best Military marmalade, is not afraid of the strong competition involved, even within his own household: “As my wife also enters the festival, I make my marmalade after she’s gone to bed.”

The range of methods is extraordinary, from the traditional formula of cooking whole Seville oranges to simmering the cut peel in an Aga oven. “I still find it amazing that just by cooking citrus fruit and sugar in a pan you get such variety and complexity,” Miller says. Clearly, this is just the start of a British marmalade renaissance.

The 2011 festival runs February 12-13 (entries must be in by February 7); www.marmaladeawards.com
 

Paddington Bear's favourite marmalade buns

Published: July 19 2008 03:00 | Last updated: July 19 2008 03:00

Paddington is one of an illustrious line of hungry bears in children's literature and many youngsters are first introduced to marmalade by his passion for it. One of the joys of coming to London from Darkest Peru, where marmalade is scarce and regarded as a special treat, is that he is allowed by the generous Brown family to have marmalade every day (and honey on Sundays). So Paddington is able to buy his favourite marmalade buns with his pocket money, take marmalade sandwiches to the theatre and bring a jar of marmalade to the seaside.

While marmalade sandwiches may be too much of a good thing for younger palates, marmalade buns are more gently orangey. So here is a recipe for marmalade buns that would appeal to Paddington. The kind of bun he might enjoy for elevenses with his good friend Mr Gruber, who keeps an antique shop on Portobello Road in London: "Mr Gruber usually had a bun and a cup of cocoa in the morning for what he called 'elevenses', and he had taken to sharing it with Paddington. 'There's nothing like a chat over a bun and cocoa,' he used to say, and Paddington, who liked all three, agreed with him even though the cocoa did make his whiskers go a funny colour."

How wonderfully cosy sounding and utterly irresistible.

RECIPE

This recipe is very flexible and can be made as buns (small sponge cakes) or a single cake in a loaf tin. I ice my buns/cake with icing sugar and fresh orange juice but they are also delicious without icing - and make far less mess in suitcases. It's worth reinstating elevenses simply as an excuse to eat them. It makes one large cake or 12 small buns. You need a 12-bun tray and 12 paper cases or a large (25x11x7cm) loaf tin, greased with butter and lined with baking parchment.

Ingredients 175g butter

175g soft brown sugar

3 eggs

Grated zest of 1 orange (unwaxed)

Juice of ½ orange

2 rounded tbs thin-cut marmalade

175g self-raising flour

For the icing

200g icing sugar

Juice of 1 orange

Orange food-colouring paste (optional)

Method

*Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Place the paper cases, if using, in the bun tin.

*In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one until fully incorporated into the mix. Add the orange zest, juice and marmalade and stir in thoroughly.

*Add the flour and fold in gently with a metal spoon.

*Divide the mix equally between the paper cases and place them in the bun tray or spoon it into the loaf tin.

*If you are making one cake, bake for 40-50 minutes but check after 35 minutes. Use a metal skewer or sharp knife to test if it's ready. Insert it in the cake and if any trace of uncooked mixture comes out on the skewer or knife the cake is not fully cooked. Return it to the oven and bake until the knife or skewer comes out clean. If you find your cake is browning a little too quickly, place a sheet of foil on top to prevent it burning.

*If you are making a dozen small buns, bake for approximately 20 minutes.

*Transfer the tin(s) to a wire rack and leave the buns/cake to cool. Do not begin to ice them until they are completely cold.

*To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add half the orange juice and a tiny amount of orange food-colouring paste, if using, and mix. Add as much juice as it takes to make the icing thick and glossy and spread the icing over the buns/cake.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

BT: Connecting the dots in S'pore condo prices

Published January 28, 2011

Connecting the dots in S'pore condo prices A study has found that prices (in psf) increases by 3% for every 1km closer to the CBD   By KLAUS SPREMANN AND WEINI ZHANG   WHEN property owners or investors make their decisions to buy or to sell, they usually form expectations of how prices of property are changing in general over time. These changes are driven by common perception of the scarcity of land, the number of developments in the pipeline and estates under construction; by shifts in the rate of interest or inflation; and by political measures.   Choc-a-bloc: An interesting finding is that for every 10 per cent increase in percentage of private properties in the neighbourhood, the price of a condominium increases by about 4 per cent. Buyers might perceive a neighbourhood with high concentration of private properties as a form of prestige Such factors put property as an asset class in bright sunshine, or at times, in dim light. But concluding whether a particular real estate object is to be considered cheap or expensive requires a second line of reasoning. In Singapore, like in all other countries, property is a heterogeneous asset class. Although condos can have up to a thousand units, the units differ in size, view, and other characteristics. Among the many estates in Singapore, their heterogeneity refers to the location, to the age, the reputation of the developer and other features of the condominium. Such particularities are mirrored in relative prices. Relative prices, for example, consider the multiple of the per square foot (psf) of a condo in the central business district to the psf in suburban areas. Likewise, relative prices reflect the relation between the psf of a freehold condo to one having a 99-year lease or the typical relation of the price of a condo in walking distance to a MRT station, to the psf of a condo that is further away from public transport facilities. Thus, a prospective owner or investor should also take note of whether the condo under consideration looks cheap or expensive with respect to the typical relative prices. Relative prices appear to remain stable over a longer period of time, although they might be different in Hong Kong or London from Singapore. Relative prices can be determined with hedonic models, which were developed by American economists 30 years ago. Although hedonic models are regularly used to explore particularities of the real estate markets in America, England, Hong Kong and other markets, we can present a few new insights by adopting the model to Singapore. Our model considers structural attributes such as the age, project characteristics such as tenure and facilities, the type of sale (at launch or subsale), and characteristics of accessibility and neighbourhood such as the distance to the Central Business District (CBD), to schools and shopping centres. All 9,029 transactions (2009) of 470 different condominium projects, reported by the Real Estate Information System (Realis), have been used as inputs to the hedonic model. The study confirmed that distance to the CBD is among all other factors the most important characteristic in influencing the price of a condominium. Based on the results, the price of a condominium (in psf) increases by 3 per cent for every 1km closer to the CBD. In addition, prestige of the neighbourhood, age and tenure of a condominium are found to be major determinants in explaining condominium prices. An interesting finding is that for every 10 per cent increase in percentage of private properties in the neighbourhood, the price of a condominium increases by about 4 per cent. In other words, buyers are willing to pay 4 per cent more for a condominium if the percentage of private properties in the neighbourhood increases by 10 per cent.Buyers might perceive a neighbourhood with high concentration of private properties as a form of prestige or they take this as a signal of more lifestyle facilities being nearby. Launch discount As expected, the price of a condominium decreases by about 1.5 per cent per year on average as it ages. This could be due to depreciation of the condominium such as its design and electrical systems, thus incurring higher maintenance, renovation and repair fees. The difference between freehold or 99-year leases accounts for 8 per cent. Our study also revealed the magnitude of the price discount associated with buying at launch. In Singapore, it amounts to 7 per cent. A person who is buying later in a subsale has the advantage of selecting condos with successful launches. Thus, the price discount of 7 per cent compensates the early bird for the uncertainty of how a development will be accepted during the several launches. Our research also looked at proximity to premier primary schools. The price of a condominium located within 1km radius of at least one primary school is on average 3.9 per cent higher than one without close proximity to a top primary school. A subject of many discussions in Singapore is low-rise versus high-rise. The model shows that the ground floor condominium is subjected to a price discount, meaning that home buyers on average are less willing to pay for a ground floor condominium compared to other floors. Furthermore, home buyers are willing to pay more for high-floor units (16th floor and above), compared to middle floor units (7th to 15th floor). We also confirmed that superstition for unlucky floor units is capitalised into the price of condominiums. The number four is commonly known as an unlucky number among the Chinese. The price discount could also be explained by the fact that home buyers avoid staying on an unlucky floor as they are worried that it may harm the future resale price of the unit. There is only weak empirical confirmation of the hypothesis though, that selling a unit on the eighth floor yields a hefty extra premium in a subsale. If you are not superstitious and plan to sell in a subsale, don't pay a fee for the eighth floor when you visit a launch event. The writers are, respectively a professor at the University of St Gallen and an analyst at Goldman Sachs

ST: Boogie nights in the heartlands

Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Hot > Story

Jan 30, 2011

Boogie nights in the heartlands

The alternative nightlife scene is flourishing as partygoers flock to clubs in neighbourhood estates and the boondocks

By Cara Van Miriah

Grandmother-of-two Christina Quek keeps fit and trim on the dance floor with family friend Moses Quek at Scarlet City. -- ST PHOTOS: LAU FOOK KONG, DESMOND WEE, ASHLEIGH SIM

View more photos

 

Think Balestier Road and late-night eateries offering bak kut teh (pork ribs in tea soup) and zi char (cooked dishes) come to mind.

But visitors to the nondescript Balestier Complex are in for a surprise. Amid the food joints is a bustling Indian-themed nightclub, Jeanz Live. The club, on the first level next to a gaming centre and several dingy watering holes that attract the less fashionable, stands out effortlessly with its hip party crowd.

Jeanz Live features a modern contemporary interior accentuated by revolving disco lights and is among several heartland nightspots offering an alternative nightlife scene.

Unlike big-name clubs downtown, they feature Indian music and dangdut - popular Indonesian bands - and some social dancing nights.

Once the haunt of babyboomers in their 50s and 60s, such nightspots are seeing an increase in the number of partygoers in their 30s.

Take Jeanz Live. From midnight, people mainly in their 20s and 30s start streaming in. The main attraction is a 10-piece resident band from Chennai, India, that plays Tamil and Bollywood hits.

It comprises four singers, two keyboardists, a bassist, a drummer and a percussionist, with 55-year-old Anand Amalnathan as the band leader.

Partygoer James S., a 28-year-old sales executive, says: 'Although the club is off the beaten track, the party vibe is fun and unpretentious. It's a good change from the mainstream club scene in town.'

Over at Jest D'Place in Choa Chu Kang Centre, young and old partygoers jive to pop-inspired and nostalgic dangdut music by the six-piece Kalahari band from Singapore every Friday.

Nostalgia is also big at Scarlet City in AMK Hub in Ang Mo Kio, where you can cha-cha, rhumba and swing to Mandarin and Hokkien songs performed by five Chinese singers in a minus-one set.

NTUC Club runs both Jest D'Place and Scarlet City, while local businessman V. Ramu owns Jeanz Live.

Jeanz Live operations manager George Matthew says the club moved to Balestier Complex due to the intense competition among Indian-themed clubs in Circular Road. And to draw young working adults, it raised the age limit from 18 to 23.

Band leader Anand, who has been performing in Singapore for 18 years, says: 'In the 1990s, the band played an equal mix of old and new songs. Now the younger crowd prefers to listen to recent hits such as Vaada Vaada Paiya and Kacheri Kacheri. My band members change into different outfits during the sets, which we didn't do before.'

And it is the repertoire and musical arrangement that is also drawing the younger set to Jest D'Place. Its Dangdut Night on Fridays is a popular draw.

Kalahari band leader Roseli Mahmood says: 'Besides dangdut, we also play a mix of English ballads and rock numbers from Deep Purple. This way, it appeals to both the young and old.'

Kalahari have been on the music scene since 1988. Roseli, 44, adds: 'Younger people prefer the new dangdut songs as they have rock, samba and salsa influences, such as the song Goyang Inul by Indonesian artist Inul Daratista.'

These days, partygoers are heading to Scarlet City to show off their dance moves since their former hangout, Happy Days nightspot in Bishan Street 13, moved to Princess Theatre Building in Bedok last year.

The move saw Happy Days morph from a social dance venue to a chill-out pub and wine bar.

Scarlet City club manager Zann Sulaiman says: 'The weekends draw about 200 people a night and a large percentage are former Happy Days patrons.'

The 47-year-old, who ran Happy Days in Bishan for seven years, adds: 'The profiles of customers have also changed as Scarlet City now draws 30 per cent of those in their 30s, many of whom are new walk-in customers.'

In a sign of the times, she adds: 'We used to see many customers in their 60s. Now, most of our patrons are in their 40s and 50s.'

On the dance floor that day, 51-year-old retail assistant Christina Quek is showing off her flamboyant moves. She is dressed in a pretty, low-cut blouse and a short skirt.

She says her 54-year-old husband, an assistant engineer, is an introvert who prefers to spend time on the computer at home. They have two children.

Her dance partner is family friend, Mr Moses Quek, 54, who works at the National Parks Board.

Madam Quek, who has been dancing for nine years, jokes: 'I was among the youngest when I first danced in Happy Days. I still feel youthful and energetic. Dancing has kept me fit and trim.'

Asked if she feels she is upstaged by younger dancers, the grandmother of two says: 'I have just as much stamina. I can boogie up to two hours on the dancefloor each time.'

caravm@sph.com.sg

WHERE TO FIND THE NIGHTSPOTS

JEST D'PLACE

Where: Choa Chu Kang Centre, Choa Chu Kang Avenue 4, 03-01, tel: 6765-9433

What: Dangdut band, Kalahari, play on Fridays. Various Chinese acts perform Mandarin and Hokkien hits on Saturdays and Sundays, and from Tuesdays to Thursdays

Entry: Pay for first drink at the door

Opens: Tuesdays to Thursdays, and Sundays (6pm to 1am), Fridays and Saturdays (6pm to 3am), closed on Mondays

Nearest MRT: Choa Chu Kang

 

SCARLET CITY

Where: AMK Hub, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, 04-02, tel: 6582-4145

What: Chinese acts perform throughout the week: Nostalgic hits on Mondays, Chinese love songs on Tuesdays, Mandopop night on Wednesdays, Canto night on Thursdays, Popular Top 40s hits on Fridays, and social dancing on Saturdays and Sundays

Entry: Pay for first drink at the door

Opens: Daily, Sundays to Fridays (6pm to 2am) and Saturdays (6pm to 3am). Karaoke rooms open at 2pm

Nearest MRT: Ang Mo Kio

 

JEANZ LIVE

Where: Balestier Complex, 262 Balestier Road, 01-17, tel: 6256-6569

What: A 10-piece live band from India plays Tamil and Bollywood hits. A DJ spins between live sets

Entry: $30 (women) and $35 (men) on Fridays and Saturdays. Women get free entry and drinks on Wednesdays, men pay $35. Free entry on other days. Cover charge includes one drink

Opens: Daily, Sundays to Fridays (9pm to 3am) and Saturdays (9pm to 4am)

Nearest MRT: Novena. Walk to the bus stop at Revival Centre Church in Moulmein Road and take bus number 124. Alight at Balestier Towers and walk to Balestier Complex

Grandmother-of-two Christina Quek keeps fit and trim on the dance floor with family friend Moses Quek at Scarlet City. -- ST PHOTOS: LAU FOOK KONG, DESMOND WEE, ASHLEIGH SIM

View more photos

Think Balestier Road and late-night eateries offering bak kut teh (pork ribs in tea soup) and zi char (cooked dishes) come to mind.

But visitors to the nondescript Balestier Complex are in for a surprise. Amid the food joints is a bustling Indian-themed nightclub, Jeanz Live. The club, on the first level next to a gaming centre and several dingy watering holes that attract the less fashionable, stands out effortlessly with its hip party crowd.

Jeanz Live features a modern contemporary interior accentuated by revolving disco lights and is among several heartland nightspots offering an alternative nightlife scene.

Unlike big-name clubs downtown, they feature Indian music and dangdut - popular Indonesian bands - and some social dancing nights.

Once the haunt of babyboomers in their 50s and 60s, such nightspots are seeing an increase in the number of partygoers in their 30s.

Take Jeanz Live. From midnight, people mainly in their 20s and 30s start streaming in. The main attraction is a 10-piece resident band from Chennai, India, that plays Tamil and Bollywood hits.

It comprises four singers, two keyboardists, a bassist, a drummer and a percussionist, with 55-year-old Anand Amalnathan as the band leader.

Partygoer James S., a 28-year-old sales executive, says: 'Although the club is off the beaten track, the party vibe is fun and unpretentious. It's a good change from the mainstream club scene in town.'

Over at Jest D'Place in Choa Chu Kang Centre, young and old partygoers jive to pop-inspired and nostalgic dangdut music by the six-piece Kalahari band from Singapore every Friday.

Nostalgia is also big at Scarlet City in AMK Hub in Ang Mo Kio, where you can cha-cha, rhumba and swing to Mandarin and Hokkien songs performed by five Chinese singers in a minus-one set.

NTUC Club runs both Jest D'Place and Scarlet City, while local businessman V. Ramu owns Jeanz Live.

Jeanz Live operations manager George Matthew says the club moved to Balestier Complex due to the intense competition among Indian-themed clubs in Circular Road. And to draw young working adults, it raised the age limit from 18 to 23.

Band leader Anand, who has been performing in Singapore for 18 years, says: 'In the 1990s, the band played an equal mix of old and new songs. Now the younger crowd prefers to listen to recent hits such as Vaada Vaada Paiya and Kacheri Kacheri. My band members change into different outfits during the sets, which we didn't do before.'

And it is the repertoire and musical arrangement that is also drawing the younger set to Jest D'Place. Its Dangdut Night on Fridays is a popular draw.

Kalahari band leader Roseli Mahmood says: 'Besides dangdut, we also play a mix of English ballads and rock numbers from Deep Purple. This way, it appeals to both the young and old.'

Kalahari have been on the music scene since 1988. Roseli, 44, adds: 'Younger people prefer the new dangdut songs as they have rock, samba and salsa influences, such as the song Goyang Inul by Indonesian artist Inul Daratista.'

These days, partygoers are heading to Scarlet City to show off their dance moves since their former hangout, Happy Days nightspot in Bishan Street 13, moved to Princess Theatre Building in Bedok last year.

The move saw Happy Days morph from a social dance venue to a chill-out pub and wine bar.

Scarlet City club manager Zann Sulaiman says: 'The weekends draw about 200 people a night and a large percentage are former Happy Days patrons.'

The 47-year-old, who ran Happy Days in Bishan for seven years, adds: 'The profiles of customers have also changed as Scarlet City now draws 30 per cent of those in their 30s, many of whom are new walk-in customers.'

In a sign of the times, she adds: 'We used to see many customers in their 60s. Now, most of our patrons are in their 40s and 50s.'

On the dance floor that day, 51-year-old retail assistant Christina Quek is showing off her flamboyant moves. She is dressed in a pretty, low-cut blouse and a short skirt.

She says her 54-year-old husband, an assistant engineer, is an introvert who prefers to spend time on the computer at home. They have two children.

Her dance partner is family friend, Mr Moses Quek, 54, who works at the National Parks Board.

Madam Quek, who has been dancing for nine years, jokes: 'I was among the youngest when I first danced in Happy Days. I still feel youthful and energetic. Dancing has kept me fit and trim.'

Asked if she feels she is upstaged by younger dancers, the grandmother of two says: 'I have just as much stamina. I can boogie up to two hours on the dancefloor each time.'

caravm@sph.com.sg

JEST D'PLACE

Where: Choa Chu Kang Centre, Choa Chu Kang Avenue 4, 03-01, tel: 6765-9433

What: Dangdut band, Kalahari, play on Fridays. Various Chinese acts perform Mandarin and Hokkien hits on Saturdays and Sundays, and from Tuesdays to Thursdays

Entry: Pay for first drink at the door

Opens: Tuesdays to Thursdays, and Sundays (6pm to 1am), Fridays and Saturdays (6pm to 3am), closed on Mondays

Nearest MRT: Choa Chu Kang

 

SCARLET CITY

Where: AMK Hub, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, 04-02, tel: 6582-4145

What: Chinese acts perform throughout the week: Nostalgic hits on Mondays, Chinese love songs on Tuesdays, Mandopop night on Wednesdays, Canto night on Thursdays, Popular Top 40s hits on Fridays, and social dancing on Saturdays and Sundays

Entry: Pay for first drink at the door

Opens: Daily, Sundays to Fridays (6pm to 2am) and Saturdays (6pm to 3am). Karaoke rooms open at 2pm

Nearest MRT: Ang Mo Kio

 

JEANZ LIVE

Where: Balestier Complex, 262 Balestier Road, 01-17, tel: 6256-6569

What: A 10-piece live band from India plays Tamil and Bollywood hits. A DJ spins between live sets

Entry: $30 (women) and $35 (men) on Fridays and Saturdays. Women get free entry and drinks on Wednesdays, men pay $35. Free entry on other days. Cover charge includes one drink

Opens: Daily, Sundays to Fridays (9pm to 3am) and Saturdays (9pm to 4am)

Nearest MRT: Novena. Walk to the bus stop at Revival Centre Church in Moulmein Road and take bus number 124. Alight at Balestier Towers and walk to Balestier Complex

---

ST: Defending ancient treasure in the face of looters

Jan 30, 2011

Defending ancient treasure in the face of looters

-- PHOTO: AP

 

Protesters marching in front of an army tank, past the Egyptian Museum in Cairo yesterday.

The Egyptian army secured the famed antiquities museum early yesterday, protecting thousands of priceless artefacts, including the gold mask of King Tutankhamun, from looters.

The greatest threat first came from the fire engulfing the ruling party headquarters next door on Friday night. Then dozens of would-be thieves started entering the grounds surrounding the museum.

Suddenly, other young men - some armed - formed a human chain outside the main entrance in an attempt to protect the collection inside.

Eventually, four armoured vehicles took up posts outside the massive building in downtown Cairo and soldiers moved inside to protect the artefacts.

FT: Survival of the Fattest; The Taste of War

 

Survival of the Fattest; The Taste of War

Review by Andrew Roberts

Published: January 14 2011 22:04 | Last updated: January 14 2011 22:04

The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food, by Lizzie Collingham, Allen Lane, RRP£30, 656 pages

There have been plenty of histories of the second world war that have sought to explain its outcome by concentrating on the part played by weaponry, economics, ideology, grand strategy and so on, but this is the first to view the struggle entirely through the prism of food. It argues that the side that somehow managed to continue consuming acceptable amounts of protein, carbohydrates, but above all fats, won. This fascinating calorie-centric history of the greatest conflict in world history is scholarly and well-written but, above all, wholly convincing. In a curious inversion of neo-Darwinist Nazi philosophy, the second world war was a case of the survival of the fattest.

Lizzie Collingham, a former research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, estimates that 20m people died from starvation and malnutrition during the war, slightly more than the 19.5m military deaths. In a total war, controlling access to food is power so, as Collingham says: “Food was the fundamental basis for every wartime economy”. The Germans well remembered the first world war experience, when the Royal Navy’s blockade broke morale, and were determined to ensure that, in Hitler’s phrase: “If anyone has to go hungry, it shall not be the Germans but other peoples.”

EDITOR’S CHOICE

David E Hoffman’s ‘The Dead Hand’ - Jan-14

John Szwed’s ‘The Man Who Recorded the World’ - Jan-14

Karen Armstrong’s ‘Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life’ - Jan-07

Mark Stevenson’s ‘An Optimist’s Tour of the Future’ - Jan-07

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending’s ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion’ - Jan-07

Fruitlands - Jan-10

In the course of her research, Collingham has uncovered a new Nazi monster whose name will not be as familiar as those of Goebbels, Himmler and Goering, but who was just as evil. Herbert Backe was an agronomist who in early 1941 devised the “Hunger Plan” that concentrated on using the Soviet Union to solve the problem of Germany’s food shortages by “diverting food from the towns of the Soviet Union, which was estimated would result in the death by starvation of 30m Soviets”. Food production and consumption had always been the primary consideration behind Hitler’s plans for seizing Lebensraum (Living Space) in the east, and Backe’s plan would solve two of the Fuhrer’s problems simultaneously: it would annihilate the right number of Russians while feeding the right number of Germans. Hitler appointed Backe as his acting minister of food and agriculture in May 1942.

Backe argued that German agriculture alone could never produce the 3,000 calories per man per day needed by an active Wehrmacht, which at its peak numbered 9.5m men, a staggering one-seventh of the German population. Germany had already been forced to cut its bread ration by 600g in July 1940 and a further 400g the following June, and by early 1943 the Wehrmacht was consuming 62 per cent of all the meat in the Reich and 40 per cent of its grain. To close “the meat and fat gap” for the civilian population, Backe told Hitler and Goering that “the war can only be continued if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia”. The campaign to exterminate “useless eaters”, as the Nazis termed them, such as the Polish Jews, can in part be traced to these calculations, and Backe’s obsession with gaining what he called, in a Nazi euphemism, the Reich’s “nutritional freedom”. In fact, the Allies, by careful management of resources, managed to keep fats in their soldiers’ and civilians’ diets, whereas the Axis often failed to; Collingham estimates that an astonishing 60 per cent, or 1m of the total Japanese military deaths of 1.47m, were caused by starvation or the diseases associated with malnutrition. By contrast, no Allied armies starved to death.

Meanwhile, Britain introduced butter, sugar and bacon rationing in January 1940. That March it was extended to meat, a ration that was set at 14oz a week the following year. The US introduced meat rationing at 28oz per week in March 1943, extending it to canned goods, fats and cheese the following month, but meat rationing was lifted by May 1944 and thenceforth the sheer abundance of American food can be seen as an index of its coming global hegemony. The US ended all food rationing the very day after Japan surrendered, whereas Britain was actually forced to introduce it for bread and potatoes in July 1946, and all food rationing did not end until July 1954.

A second world war poster, issued by the Ministry of Food

Although Britain made heroic efforts to increase food production, by November 1942 the Ministry of Food began to panic when in that month alone 860,000 tonnes of merchant shipping was lost to submarines, aircraft and mines. Without imports of flour, meat, sugar and fats, it warned the cabinet and US food officials, Britain could only hold out for four to six months. By March 1943 the ministry was forced to halve that figure. It is fair to say that food riots were high on the list of threats that Churchill feared could lose Britain the war, which explains his postwar statement that the U-boat threat during the battle of the Atlantic had been the only thing that had ever kept him awake at night.

It is in that light, and of course the military threat that Japan posed to India, that one should judge Churchill’s reluctance to divert military and other resources to alleviate the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, which claimed up to 3m lives. Collingham rightly spreads the blame far more widely than some modern revisionist historians, who try to explain the famine in terms of the prime minister’s supposed hatred of Indians. “In June 1943, when the famine was at its height,” Collingham tells us, “Sir Chhotu Ram, the revenue minister of Punjab, instructed his farmers not to sell their grain to the government under a certain price,” and “the provincial government of Bengal was in Indian hands at the time, and while British district officers might have been incompetent in responding to the developing crisis, the old structures of welfare and charity among the Indian wealthy had also broken down.”

Starvation was used as a military tactic in the far east; the callous requisitioning policies employed by the Japanese were responsible for killing 2m Vietnamese in the district of Tonkin alone in 1943-44, and between 2m and 3m in Hunan, China. Countless Chinese prisoners of war were deliberately starved to death by their Japanese captors who, by their surrender in 1945, could only find 56 alive to release.

The story is horrific but, after this book, no historian will be able to write a comprehensive history of the second world war without putting the multifarious issues of food production and consumption centre stage. It also provides a salutary antidote to anyone who genuinely thinks we are presently living in an “age of austerity”.

Andrew Roberts is author of ‘The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War’ (Penguin)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

FT: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

 

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

Review by AN Wilson

Published: January 7 2011 22:02 | Last updated: January 7 2011 22:02

Representatives of the Catholic, Buddhist and Muslim faiths at a prayer rally, Manila University, October 2007

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, by Karen Armstrong, The Bodley Head RRP£12.99, 224 pages

The religious slanging match that divides the media of the western world – Dawkins v Creation, Allah v Hitchens, however you like to define it – disguises the actual state of play in the world at large. Many regular attenders at synagogue or church are agnostic in belief. And many non-practisers of a faith recognise the truth and sagacity of the greatest religious texts of the world.

Karen Armstrong, who has been a Roman Catholic nun, and then a non-believer, and then a sort of theist, is now an ambassador for all that is best in the great religions of the world. She is a guide for those who want to be more compassionate without subscribing to some of the more arcane doctrines and propositions of organised religion. She quotes with approval the Dalai Lama’s saying: “Whether a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.”

Lately, Karen Armstrong won a prize from TED, the lecture and conference organisation committed to “ideas worth spreading” (the letters stand for technology, entertainment and design). Now, with the help of those who could be called, in a benign sense, the usual suspects – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Rabbi Julia Neuberger et al – Armstrong has launched her Charter for Compassion. This book is a distillation of 12 steps that readers can follow to become more compassionate persons and hence, it is to be hoped, the moulders of a more compassionate world.

No decent person could quarrel with that, surely, and so we set out with eagerness on Armstrong’s 12-fold path towards enlightenment. The Buddha, it will be remembered, began his path to cure the world’s pain by donning a mendicant’s robes and leaving his grieving parents. Tolstoy likewise donned a peasant’s smock, Francis a beggar’s rags and Gandhi a loincloth. Followers of the Armstrong way are given the more prosaic injunction: “As an initial step, it might be helpful, as a symbolic act of commitment, to visit www.charterforcompassion.org”.

If this provokes a smile, so too will the author’s occasional lapses into management jargon. We are urged to “think outside the box” and to remember that all great religions “put suffering at the top of their agenda”. And true, there is something a little absurd about such figures as Armstrong and the Dalai Lama flying around the world to conferences and book launches as a way of promoting wisdom.

Yet the contents of this book surely deserve our attention. I for one am not too proud to acknowledge that I need to be more compassionate, less ego-driven. And one of the charming things about Armstrong’s book is its deliberate descents into bathos. We move from the high thoughts of the old sages to the demands of everyday life, from Confucius to the checkout girl in the supermarket. In the chapter on empathy, we move from an exquisitely intelligent exposition of Sophocles’s Oedipus Tyrannus to a meditation upon how we might overcome a personal dislike of a colleague or family member.

As Armstrong reminds us, Greek tragedies began as collective religious experiences. By the end of the Oresteia, Aeschylus hopes we will have moved from the tribal-based cult of revenge to a polis-based, civilised respect for the law. Obviously, we modern readers can gain some wisdom from reading these plays in paperback but it is an experience different from witnessing the tragedies in an amphitheatre in 420BC.

The individualism that Armstrong’s do-it-yourself approach releases is surely cause for rejoicing. Gratefully aware of the riches of Buddhism, the Greek tragedians or the Hebrew scriptures, she does not want to make us into Buddhists, Athene-worshippers or Jews. She speaks with quiet eloquence to those of us who will never feel able to “believe” in the way that our ancestors believed.

Indeed, seeing the bad behaviour inspired at times by organised religion, we would often rather side with the unbelievers than be like that. But we recognise, partly thanks to Armstrong, that we do all wish to lead more compassionate lives, and these old sages can help us.

Armstrong has tried to devise a way of conducting what Socrates called compassionate discourse. This does not mean, as she reminds us, “trying to bludgeon other people to accept our point of view”. (I’d like to add: maybe the way of wisdom abandons any “points of view”, especially opinions that relate either to the unknowable, such as theology, or to other people’s sex lives). Armstrong more simply wants us to call to mind our common human nature.

In one of his notebooks, Henry James wrote six words: “Be kind, be kind, be kind.” That great man, who was in some ways a bit silly and a bit snobbish, surely achieved his aim. He was kind, and he was wise, and he had no obvious religious views, not even views as mild as those of his equally lovable brother William.

Armstrong ends her book by remembering the Iliad; she calls to mind the nobility of Achilles who, after much hatred and fighting, hands over the dead body of Hector to his grieving father Priam. Maybe part of our turning over a new leaf and resolving to be more compassionate would involve making a resolution to read more Greek literature. And (not that Armstrong mentions him) more Henry James.

AN Wilson is the author of ‘Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II’ (Arrow)

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FT: The new power of the press

 

Put excerpts here

==

The new power of the press

By John Lloyd

Published: January 7 2011 17:50 | Last updated: January 7 2011 17:50

Jon Stewart, host of ‘The Daily Show’, business secretary Vince Cable and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

In the past year journalism, which in the west sees itself as beset by decline, has vastly increased its power. Three large developments have made the implicit, yet huge, claim that journalism, our way of knowing what is happening in our complex world, is essentially a matter of competing high-decibel political dispute and total transparency.

Taken together, these developments – the takeover of US politics by the broadcast media; the revelations about governments around the world from the WikiLeaks website, and The Daily Telegraph exposé of business secretary Vince Cable’s true feelings about the UK coalition government – ensured that the media ended the year with large victories over politics and politicians. What’s more, all three were claimed in the public interest. Yet it could as easily be said that they were morally indefensible. At the very least, each demonstrated that the line between public interest and moral indefensibility is thin and getting thinner.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Britain: what lies ahead? - Jan-07

Being Marco - Dec-17

On the edge - Dec-17

Oprah Winfrey: out on her own - Dec-10

Arianna Huffington: new media entrepreneur - Dec-10

Wangari Maathai: Africa’s green star - Dec-10

These journalistic innovations are seen by their champions as greatly expanding the scope and power of journalism. This is correct. But they can also be seen as three great reducers; each reducing the worlds it describes to simple formulas and ignoring a complexity that journalism, by its nature, already struggles to capture. What are the effects of these new sources of power? And can such power, used in such a way, really be said to be in the public interest?

. . .

Journalism began to exert real power from the mid-19th century and from the first its ethics were held in low regard. Fictional representations, such as those found in Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-1844) and Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1875) were particularly scathing. Its ethical norms, fraught at the best of times, were and are most tested in its coverage of politics and politicians, subjects that lie at the core of the democratic mission it claims for itself. The two professions were bound to clash. They fish in the same pond, civil society, for the same fish – called voters by politicians, the audience by the media. Both now also fight, with increasing intensity, for the right to define the public interest.

The public interest is often defined as that which aids the citizen to be more fully a citizen – from information on votes cast and public money spent to revelations of state or corporate corruption. In more than 30 years of journalism, mostly for this paper, I’ve seen this concept develop; from a view that ferreting out as much information as possible was good for society (as well as for one’s career), to one framed in much more aggressive and polemical terms. In the labour and industrial correspondents group of the 1980s – a club of reporters covering British industrial relations and policies – three of my colleagues were Peter Hitchens, Trevor Kavanagh and Richard Littlejohn. As their careers moved from reporting to comment, each developed popular, highly charged newspaper columns that worked best when skewering ministers and other public officials, generally of the left. Their opinions expressed a depth of contempt that, in modern times at least, was unprecedented. But they became models to be followed.

During this period, investigative journalism became in some hands – John Pilger’s in the UK and Michael Moore’s in the US – not just revelation but condemnation. I was at a meeting of Guardian journalists when a distinguished investigative reporter, with a record of revelations that on any criteria were in the public interest, argued that British parliamentarians should, in principle, be regarded with suspicion. The public interest has, more and more, come to be defined as that which can be shown to damage public figures.

. . .

The first of last year’s great reducers did not begin its work in 2010 but did reach a kind of apogee then. In the US, a journalism of extreme polemics has, under the heading of free speech, progressively built broadcasters such as Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart into major political figures. Political discussions for broadcast, once characterised by polite if insistent interviewing, developed under ratings pressure into a forum in which “shock jock” presenters would encourage guests into frenzied mutual denunciation.

In August last year, Glenn Beck, the most prominent of the rightwing talk-show hosts on Fox News, organised a “Restoring Honour” rally in Washington for his followers, aimed at reviving pride in America and its values. In October, Jon Stewart, liberal comedian and host of The Daily Show, organised a “Rally to Restore Sanity” as a counter to Beck. The interventions by these two contrasting media figures into the nation’s capital, still the world’s most potent political centre, made for a quite unsubtle joint statement: these broadcasters, more than the parties or the leading politicians, perhaps even more than the president, represented the masses and their interests.

The effect of their prominence on politics is clear. It reduces government by comparison. The implicit message, especially from Beck, is that governance is a simple matter of political will. Once this is in place, reform can be achieved with ease. In this environment, journalism becomes a high-decibel slate of complaint and tenuous assertion, much of it directed at President Barack Obama. Its protagonists constantly assert that it is a way of holding power to account and, therefore, in the public interest. There is no question that these rival polemics have stirred up much public interest. But as representative politics is itself represented as a betrayal of a free people, politicians in the centre must worry that they are being displaced not just in rhetoric but in function.

. . .

In November, the WikiLeaks website, which earlier in the year revealed huge numbers of documents on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, published its latest data on the workings of US diplomacy. The material provided fascinating glimpses into the views of diplomats and those on whom they reported.

WikiLeaks, which was launched in 2006, is not journalism but it works under its rubric – of free speech, the benign effects of revelation, holding power to account – and it depends on established institutions, such as The New York Times and The Guardian for publication of its material. The ideology that inspires this not-for-profit “media organisation”, developed by its founder Julian Assange, also claims the high ground of the public interest. Officials and politicians, Assange has written, work “in collaborative secrecy to the detriment of the population”: the weapon with which to fight them is exposure. Yet in the case of the diplomatic cables, the revelations blew apart the convention that some diplomacy must be secret because it pursues ends that cannot be spelt out until all the actors involved are marshalled, separately and secretly, into the possibility of an agreement. Michael Fullilove, the Australian foreign policy commentator, argued that “with this dump WikiLeaks is not uncovering a particular secret; it is outlawing secrets altogether ... Would the world be safer, saner or more pleasant if nothing could be held in confidence? How could wars be averted in such a world? How could peace negotiations take place? Would news sources talk to journalists?” That last question is more than rhetorical: journalism has depended on a web of private comments, understandings and leaks. Without these, it withers.

Investigative reporting has been one of the strongest developments of postwar journalism, illuminating government deceit, corporate fraud and criminal activity. The reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein for The Washington Post in the early 1970s on the illegal efforts of Nixon’s White House to destabilise the Democratic party remains its defining moment: but through exposures such as The Sunday Times on the effects of Thalidomide in the 1970s, The Guardian on bribery scandals in British Aerospace in 2003 and The New Yorker’s revelations about abuses in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, there is a long roll of honour that has produced huge public revulsion and government reforms. Now, WikiLeaks publishes confidential information on the grounds that government is a conspiracy, and publication redresses the balance in favour of the public. By its sheer volume, however, it reduces investigative journalists to bit players whose job is to redact the output and provide context. More, it gives itself the right to decide what might or might not be dangerous for the individuals named or identifiable in the revealed documents. This is a perilous power to have.

. . .

WikiLeaks also sets a high bar for ordinary journalism – tempting it to shock and awe through more intimate revelation. Last month The Daily Telegraph revealed that Vince Cable, the business secretary, had given frank and pejorative assessments of his Conservative coalition partners. He also declared himself “at war” with media mogul Rupert Murdoch. These, like WikiLeaks, were undeniably interesting – but perhaps not as interesting as the fact that Cable’s thoughts were given to two young women reporters posing as constituents of his. Their journalism invaded a space assumed to be largely private – that occupied by MPs and the people they directly represent.

Journalists have used undercover disguises before. The most well known case is The News of the World’s Mazher Mahmood, who is known as the fake sheikh after frequently posing as a wealthy Arab businessman to embarrass and expose those under investigation. But the disguised intervention into the relationship between a member of parliament and his constituents pushes these tactics further into the upper levels of political power than Mahmood ever went. In doing so it asked politicians a question more urgently than before: to whom can I say what I think?

The newspaper, and others, argued that to know a senior government member’s private views is in the public interest, since it allows citizens to understand what the real tensions are within the government that they elected and pay for. The grounds for this view have been prepared – for politicians private space has already shrunk to a few defensible areas, such as family grief. But the Cable episode is still an innovation: editors and political writers have historically understood and accommodated some wriggle room between the public statement and the private sigh. Not now, though. The implication of the Telegraph’s journalism is that having its reporters lie about their identity is justifiable where it reveals that a politician’s semi-private statements clash with those made in public. The further implication is that private doubts, boasts and assurances ought always to accord exactly with public ones, and that when they do not it is shocking enough to require exposure. This definition of the public interest would hold that we – the public – should not only know as much as possible but as many facets of our representatives as possible. After all, everything that is private could be shown, under certain conditions, to have some public consequence.

In one view, both the revelations of WikiLeaks and of the Telegraph would, if they became the norm, encourage a more truthful public sphere. Conscious that everything was potentially transparent, we – and especially our leaders – would develop into super-rational beings uncomprehending of the notion of mendacity. Politicians would give the whole range of their thoughts on every subject, in support of their party or otherwise; officials would make public their plans at every stage; diplomats would reveal all conversations and the public would have the maturity to understand and take no unfair advantage of these disclosures. But no conceivable society could live in such transparency. It is more likely that a transparency culture simply causes a displacement of the semi-private into the wholly private – with public figures relying more on public relations to act as a shield, and turning an increasingly bland face to the outside word.

There is no question that WikiLeaks and Cable’s indiscretions engrossed a vast audience: Whatever you say about the public interest, they interested the public. In conversations about these revelations – especially those on Cable – I was struck to find that almost no one criticised the journalism that produced them. The interest was in the content. With this discovery journalism has struck a mother lode, which at a time of falling audiences, it surely needs. These innovations will not go away.

. . .

Journalism is, of course, a great reduction to begin with. Any journalist not too full of himself to admit it realises, sooner or later, that the trade demands a facility for simplification that squeezes the most complex events, trends and characters into a limited form with limited, stereotypical narratives.

Within that 1980s labour and industrial correspondents’ group, there was a self-deprecating joke, adapted from the concluding line in an old US cop series: “There are eight million stories in the Naked City,” it went, “and we can’t get one of them.” It was wry recognition of the smallness of our efforts in the face of a deluge of facts, claims, declarations, private discussions, secret understandings and contradictory data.

Despite these limitations, journalism has acquired a great power in our lives. But it is also embattled by technological change, the loss of long-profitable business models and the fracturing of audiences.

In its search for new sources of power and influence, it has produced a more reductive vision of itself, and of politics, than previously.

One common claim of the three great reducers I have discussed here is that the public can gain a greater grip on the actions that are taken in their name through being an audience for untiring media polemic and huge revelations. In different ways, each also holds conventional politics in contempt, either explicitly or implicitly. As such, they are all very much the product of contemporary media mores, even while they appeal directly to the classic, centuries’ old ideas that underpin journalism – the right to freedom of speech and the press, the duty to expose falsehood in public figures. In doing so they are redefining the relationship between political and media power, and giving a new and radical interpretation of how the public interest is served by journalism.

John Lloyd is an FT contributing editor and director of journalism at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford

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FT: Cultural narratives go from the subprime to the ridiculous

 

Cultural narratives go from the subprime to the ridiculous

By Gillian Tett

Published: January 7 2011 23:28 | Last updated: January 7 2011 23:28

Who is to blame for America’s housing mess? This question has provoked much debate in the past three years. And as the economic pain has piled up – around 5m American homes are in foreclosure or at risk of it – there has been no shortage of culprits to blame, including politicians, regulators, bankers, mortgage brokers, economists and credit rating agencies. A great new book by two US business journalists, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, called All the Devils are Here holds up many a “sinner” for consideration, including Lloyd Blankfein, head of Goldman Sachs, Angelo Mozilo, the disgraced former Countrywide Financial chief, and many in between.

Amid all this finger-pointing, it is also worth glancing at the work of anthropologists, many of whom these days forsake exotic, glamorous climes to study the rituals of the western world, even in prosaic places such as Michigan. Anna Jefferson of Michigan State University, for example, has been analysing how mortgage foreclosures are unfolding.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Full text: Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling - Jan-06

FT Alphaville: Court challenge on securitisation - Jan-07

Bond insurer sues Goldman for $120m - Jan-07

US mortgage foreclosures rise sharply - Dec-29

In depth: US banks - Dec-02

Her findings are fascinating. When she arrived at her “fieldsite” three years ago, as the housing crisis got under way, citizen groups involved in the housing market were buzzing with tales of homeowners killing themselves just before being evicted from their homes, seemingly as an act of revenge and despair.

So far, so horrifyingly tragic – and inevitable. Or so it might seem in a country where foreclosures are rising and the unemployment rate has recently jumped to 9.8 per cent . (In Michigan 90 per cent of mortgage defaults are sparked by job loss.) Yet, when Ms Jefferson started investigating, she discovered something odd: while tragedies existed, few were linked solely to eviction. Indeed, the number of suicides was far more modest than the urban legend implied.

So was this just media hype? Perhaps. Yet Ms Jefferson thinks something more interesting is also going on. In the past 100 years, American culture has developed a well-entrenched, commonly shared national narrative to explain and justify success – the “American dream”. But, observes Ms Jefferson, while “the American dream narrative explains upward mobility . . . we have fewer cultural narratives to help us understand and cope with downward mobility”. Thus, widespread foreclosures pose a “narrative challenge”; there is no commonly agreed national way to explain these events. Different groups are fighting to control the story.

During the first phase of the housing downturn, Ms Jefferson found many informants blamed homeowners themselves for their woes, since they were perceived to have recklessly taken on loans. So did the local media and online web groups. But then, as foreclosures increased, another narrative emerged: borrowers were seen as victims, crushed by the banks and a profoundly capricious, irrational and inhuman foreclosure system. So suicide tales circulated.

Yet at the grassroots level, Ms Jefferson found eviction increasingly portrayed as a quasi “liberation” from a warped, consumerist society. “Former homeowners sometimes present losing a house as virtuous – shedding the shallow affliction of consumption to remember ‘what’s really important’,” she writes, adding that the language that has been wrapped around the foreclosure process in all three narratives has become increasingly emotive, borrowing heavily from religion.

Narratives may shift again – as Americans remain uncertain and divided about how to explain downward mobility. Despite McLean and Nocera’s book, they do not have an identifiable set of “villains” to help draw a line under the saga. So politicians rail against bankers, while bankers fume about “the lack of blame being put on consumers and politicians” – and consumers just feel confused. Little wonder, that the political mood is so volatile and contradictory. Times of shifting national narratives are also moments of potentially important change. In Michigan, as elsewhere.

 

gillian.tett@ft.com

 

 

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FT: Let Huck Finn tell it as it was

Racist books are not used in any American classrooms, so fury tends to be directed at books that merely mention race. These are invariably anti-racist books.

 

But one thing it does even more reliably is to protect the moral hauteur of whites, shielding them from the evidence that their ancestors were ever that way and the suggestion that they themselves ever could be.

Let Huck Finn tell it as it was

By Christopher Caldwell

Published: January 7 2011 20:43 | Last updated: January 7 2011 20:43

“That is just the way with some people,” says Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s eponymous novel, published in 1885. “They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.” Huck was talking about the Widow Douglas’s disapproval of smoking. But his point applies more generally to the legions of American parents and political activists who have lately sought, with considerable success, to ban or censor Twain’s work.

Huckleberry Finn is not the world’s greatest novel, but it is the most American of the world’s great novels. It follows Huck on a rafting voyage down the Mississippi with Jim, a runaway slave. Along the way, with subtlety, wryness and explosive humour, Twain deflates the ideology of racism as Americans lived it in the 19th century. For US adolescents, the book has been an irreplaceable bridge from juvenile into adult reading. Its page-turning picaresque draws the reader towards deep questions of the human condition. Unfortunately for present-day sensibilities, it does so in the dialect of Missouri in the 1840s. Twain’s characters use the word “nigger” at least 200 times.

Over the last half century, Huck Finn has therefore awakened the sleeping giant of American prudery, which today stalks racial questions as it once stalked sexual ones. New York City scrapped the book for elementary and junior high students as early as 1957. New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, condemned it in 1976 as “degrading and destructive to black humanity”. It has been assailed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the heyday of political correctness in the 1990s, it ranked fifth on the American Library Association’s list of “Frequently Challenged Books”, four notches above Heather Has Two Mommies. It has fallen to number 14 only because it has been scratched from so many curriculums.

Until a few days ago, the case for sanitising Twain tended to be made by those who despise the author, rather than those who love him. But now Alan Gribben, a prominent Twain scholar at Auburn University in Alabama, has announced he will bring out an edition of the book that changes “nigger” to “slave” and (rather pointlessly) “Injun” to “Indian”. Teachers do not feel they can teach Huckleberry Finn any more, Mr Gribben says. “For a single word to form a barrier,” he told Publisher’s Weekly, “it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs.” Mr Gribben has been accused of bowdlerisation.

There is no serious way to defend him against the charge. He is doing just what Thomas Bowdler did in 1807 when he produced a Family Shakespeare with the dirty parts left out. Let us not dismiss Bowdler as a mere life-hating obscurantist, though. Elevating moral instruction above the imparting of knowledge is a defensible choice, as long as one realises that that is what one is doing. Given the moral climate in parts of late-Georgian England, certain children would either read a censored Shakespeare or no Shakespeare at all.

So it is with Huck Finn. The very thing that makes the book so attractive to teach – its mix of juvenile plots and adult themes – also makes it especially challenging. Twelve-year-olds “identify” with a character their own age who is dealing with social questions for which they lack context. Attempts to provide that context have not been successful. Birdville, Texas, faced protests four years ago when a 17-year-old was made uncomfortable not by Huckleberry Finn itself but by a pre-teaching session meant to sensitise students to the word “nigger”. There is a case, then, for a bowdlerised Twain in the classroom. But it applies only in the classroom, and the book that results will not be Huckleberry Finn – it will be Huckleberry Finn for Younger Readers.

American discussions of race are as constrained by taboos as discussions of sex were in Bowdler’s day. In one respect, they have also broken free of logic. Racist books are not used in any American classrooms, so fury tends to be directed at books that merely mention race. These are invariably anti-racist books: not just Huckleberry Finn but even Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a sentimental anti-slavery tract. A high-school English teacher from Washington state urged a couple of years ago, in a much discussed article, that Harper Lee’s novel of racial injustice, To Kill a Mockingbird, be cut from the curriculum. He explained: “Atticus Finch, the heroic attorney in Lee’s novel, tells his daughter not to use the N-word because it’s ‘common’. That might’ve been an enlightened attitude for a Southerner during the Great Depression, but it is hopelessly dated now.”

So it is not just racism that has no place in the politicised schoolroom. Neither does anti-racism, if the person expressing it falls short of moral perfection. The upshot is that it is hard to have a serious discussion of race in an American classroom at all. Whom is that supposed to serve? Twain, striking a Tolstoyan note, described his novel as defending “a sound heart versus the ill-trained conscience”. The Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy once wrote of Twain: “By putting nigger in white characters’ mouths, the author is not branding blacks, but rather branding the whites.” It is an excellent point. Cutting the word “nigger” out of Huckleberry Finn is generally urged as a means of protecting the self-esteem of black students. In some cases it may achieve that aim. But one thing it does even more reliably is to protect the moral hauteur of whites, shielding them from the evidence that their ancestors were ever that way and the suggestion that they themselves ever could be.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

ST: Books are decorative, literally

Life!

Home > Life! > Life News > Story

Jan 15, 2011

Home & garden

Books are decorative, literally

Home owners are using books to dress up their interiors, never mind if they are not for reading

With cosy seats and hundreds of books, it is no wonder one can spend hours in the Four Seasons Residences library in Austin, Texas. -- PHOTOS: NEW YORK TIMES

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New York - Book lovers, you can exhale. The printed, bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community.

In this Kindle-and-iPad age, architects, builders and designers are still making spaces with shelves - lots and lots of shelves - and turning to companies such as Mr Thatcher Wine's Juniper Books for help filling them up.

It took Mr Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-coloured leather-bound books for a 'gentleman's library' in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager.

Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheepskin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Mr Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative 'book solutions', as he puts it, in his warehouse.

He had to search long and hard to find clean copies of authors such as Thackeray, Galsworthy and Conrad. For this client was after more than pretty bindings: He wanted the option of being able to read his books.

The young Upper East Side clients of Ms Jenny Fischbach, a design partner at a Manhattan decorating firm, were similarly inclined - they wanted literary classics mixed with art books for a silver-inflected art library.

So Mr Wine chose works by Kate Chopin, Jane Austen and Robert Browning and wrapped them in matt silver paper to match the silver hardware in the room.

Not all of his clients, who include hotel designers and high-end builders, are so fastidious about content.

For the spa in Philippe Starck's Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, he was asked to wrap 1,500 books in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a 'textural accent' to the space.

He chose mass-market hardcovers that flood the used-book outlets - titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson, he said - because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size.

Mr Bennett Weinstock, a Philadelphia decorator known for his English interiors, still shops in London to find just the right leather-bound look. 'Some people will insist that they be in English because they want them to look as if they could read the books,' he said. 'Others don't care what language the books are in as long as the bindings are beautiful.'

Some designers are finding ever more elaborate ways to tweak books their clients already own.

New York architect Peter Pennoyer is designing wooden boxes that look like perfectly bound books to contain an unruly-looking collection of literary classics owned by a client.

'A book,' he pointed out, 'is a meaningful, sensory experience. If we buy her all new Trollope, then she is suddenly looking at a volume that's foreign, that doesn't smell right or have the typeface that's familiar. If she doesn't have the memory of having read the book, it's not going to mean the same thing.'

Other designers say their clients are asking for more personalised content: colour-coordinated regional histories, for example, or Western- themed titles with punchy, early 20th-century jackets.

'I don't think anyone says blatantly, 'I don't care' anymore,' said MsFischbach. 'There are always parameters, even if it's what I jokingly call the typical intellectual collector's library.'

As it happens, the-book-as-relic was forecasted by marketers.

Ms Ann Mack, director of trend-spotting for marketing and advertising agency JWT New York, noted: 'Here's what we said: 'The more that objects become replaced by digital virtual counterparts - from records and books to photo albums and even cash - watch for people to fetishise the physical object.

'Books are being turned into decorative accessories, for example, and records into art.''

She added that she was working with a decorator to 'refresh' her own Manhattan apartment and was hoping to decorate lavishly with books. She wondered if she might stack her books and turn them into legs for a coffee table.

'Then,' she said, 'I can put my Kindle on top.'

New York Times