A Reading Year

As the year changes, many are inclined to look backwards on the previous year and to assess whether or not it has been a ‘good year’. However, for me this last year was the one during which I reached one of life’s recognised milestones – achieving the age of sixty-five, and a deeper reflection seems to be called for.

I have always been a reader and for most of my life I have been an unconscious reader in the sense that the act of reading was far more important than what precisely, I chose to read. Of course, I had been instilled with an aversion to read ‘rubbish’ – my father, as an English teacher, had a very clear idea of what was and wasn’t ‘rubbish’, I however, am slightly less rigid in this view. I have long felt that one must at least sample the rubbish, in order to decide whether it is indeed, worthy of such contempt. I have also been fairly disciplined in my reading, to the extent that once having started reading a book, I do feel an obligation to see it through to the end. I give up on very few books, the graphic novel ‘Watchmen’ is a recent one that proved too much, some I put down temporarily, having been distracted by the prospect of some more instant gratification, only to pick that same book up later and finish it. This year, I finished Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ some forty years or so after having first picked it up.

Over recent years I have settled into the habit of having two books on the go at the same time, usually a work of fiction and a work of non-fiction. In addition I will have one or two books at hand in order to dip into as my mood dictates; poetry or drama, for example, and even a book written in a foreign language. So out of 46 books read completely within the last calendar year, here are seven that I would recommend:

Autobiography: A Journey by Tony Blair
Biography: Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter
Literary Novel: With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Modern Novel: What a Carve Up! By Jonathan Coe
Essay Collection: A Plea for Eros by Siri Hustvedt
Poetry: Frequencies by R S Thomas
History: The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Dehli 1857 by William Dalrymple

I recommend Blair’s autobiography because of both its innovative style and the insight it gives into a very large ego. The biography of Anthony Blunt is well researched and beautifully written. Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword is a rip-roaring historical adventure and deserves a new and more modern translation and a place among the wonderful range of Penguin Classics. What a Carve Up! is a superb satire and extremely funny. Siri Hustvedt is one of the very few American essayists that I consider worth reading. Nobody else writing in English evokes Wales and the Welsh better than R S Thomas. William Dalrymple, as ever, gives us a wonderfully balanced account of a very brutal period of British history.

2010 was a wonderful reading year for me and although I fell short of my target of reading 50 books in the year, I read very little rubbish. Happy New Year and enjoyable reading to all who happen on this blog.

The Vultures Are Circling Over The Coalition

With this afternoon’s statement from the Daily Telegraph revealing further comments made by Vince Cable in their ‘sting’ operation using undercover reporters posing as Lib Dem activists, it is becoming much clearer what is going on. This is an attempt by the Tory right wing, aided and abetted by Tory sympathisers among the press, to seriously de-stabilise the coalition government and force a general election early next year. They hope to catch Labour still in their state of policy confusion and the Lib Dems still being seen entirely responsible for the raising of tuition fees thus giving the Tories a realistic chance of winning this early election. As a party political strategy it is sound, as a broader method of doing politics, it is disastrous. It represents a return to bi-partisan confrontation and puts British politics back thirty years. Worse of all it undermines all notions of trust and decency in British politics. Strange that John Denham hasn’t realised what is going on, I thought he was cleverer than that.

Dubious Journalism

I must say that I’m rather relieved that Vince Cable is supposedly finding the coalition difficult. It was beginning to look a little too cosy, bearing in mind it’s the Tories who are the coalition partners. What is sordid is the way these revelations were obtained. It doesn’t say much for either Vince or the Daily Telegraph.

I would have expected Vince Cable to be able to recognise genuine Lib Dem activists by now, even the non-hirsute ones in proper shoes, and if he didn’t know these people wasn’t he rather unguarded in what he said? As for the Daily Telegraph sinking to the levels of the News of the World to gain information, well that’s hardly surprising I suppose, same old Tories. No wonder it’s known in some circles as the Daily Torygraph.

This episode may well have gone some way to reassuring some worried Lib Dem activists but the right-wing press has tasted blood now and will be thirsty for more. The coalition is under attack from the ‘raving Right’ as well as the ‘loony Left’, and it is the raving Right that is the more dangerous.

An Exquisite Torture

I frequently despair of our local journalists. I had a telephone call from one of them this week asking me if I was an ‘atheist’. Apparently he was looking for a bona fide atheist to comment on the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon’s Christmas message. Apparently Bishop John, for whom I have a lot of respect, had expressed some impatience at press reports of militant atheists attacking the biblical stories on which the Christian faith is based, especially at this time of year.

I was rather taken aback. It is rather disconcerting to be telephoned out of the blue and asked if you are an atheist. I thought it a far too personal a question and refused to offer any comment at all. I do firmly believe in the separation of Church from State and I believe that church schools should not receive state support, but that’s a long way from being an atheist, and I began to suspect that the journalist didn’t really understand the immense complexity of personal belief.

However, it set me thinking about the whole messy business of classifying people and then labelling them based on their beliefs. It’s part of this modern obsession with categorisation, much of which is done on very flimsy evidence. What a person believes in is the product of a variety of influences: family, upbringing, social conditioning, peer pressure, and I suspect rather more rarely, deep thinking and balanced consideration. I reflect on my personal experience of religion, Presbyterian Sunday School, Anglican choir, long period of being anti all forms of religion, confirmed as an Anglican as an adult followed by a gradual and inevitable scepticism reinforced by absolute contempt for the preaching and activities of religious fundamentalists of all persuasions.

If I am unable to resist being labelled then I want to choose my own label rather than have ignorant journalists jumping to stupid and ill-considered conclusions. I guess I am an agnostic, one who adheres to the view that nothing is or can be known of the existence of God. It is a difficult but honourable position. It’s like being perched on a knife-edge, unwilling either to make a leap towards the obvious safety net of blind faith or to rely absolutely on reason and reject any possibility of the divine. Either of these alternatives can seem very attractive; both offer certainty, community and comfort. But it is their very certainty that feeds the scepticism of the agnostic. How do they know that God exists or doesn’t exist? What evidence do they have? How reliable is this evidence? The questions are endless, but being a questioner ensures that one approaches the subject with an open mind, open to the possibility that God exists and open to the possibility that He/She doesn’t. Being an agnostic is an exquisite torture, but by way of compensation, it offers endless amusement at the activities and pronouncements of both militant Christianity and militant atheism.

Thinking the Unthinkable

With the continuing furore over university tuition fees, and the beggar-my-neighbour suggestions emanating from the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Governments, it is clear that the structure of British higher education needs a radical re-think. It is overly reliant on the support of the state and the state either doesn’t have enough money to adequately fund the sector, or is deliberately choosing to finance other things in preference to higher education. The quality of our best universities continues to rise, but they are struggling to attract adequate funding for undergraduate courses and in any case prefer to fund post-graduate studies and boost their international research ratings. So what’s to be done? Clearly, the impetus for ever higher fees to be charged to students is coming from the Russell Group of our 20 ‘top’ universities, they are the ones most concerned about their international reputation. So here is a suggestion.

Let the Russell Group of universities move into the private sector and charge what they feel the market will bear and compete with the best in the world. However, to ensure equality of opportunity, these private universities must ensure that the brightest and the best are able to attend regardless of their financial circumstances. So the state should insist that the Russell Group universities set up full scholarships to cover both tuition and living expenses for say 30 - 40% of their undergraduate places. These scholarships to be awarded to those potential students with the greatest financial need and biased towards applicants from the state school sector.

For the remaining universities, undergraduate students should have their tuition fees paid by the state and should also be entitled to a maintenance grant of about half their living costs with the balance coming from student loans. In addition, these universities should be encouraged to offer significantly more vocational subjects and more part-time and distance learning routes to a first degree with the emphasis on flexibility and choice of modules and allow such students the opportunity to take a break in their studies if so desired. Part-time students in employment would pay the full fee with their employers being expected to bear a minimum of half the cost of tuition for part-time students in employment. Graduates from state universities should be able to reduce the size of their debt on graduation by contracting to serve as teachers in developing countries for one or two years immediately after graduation and before embarking on their careers or post-graduate study. This would be financed from the overseas aid budget.

Yes, I know I’m suggesting a two tier university system, but this only formalises what is actually happening at the moment, and if we can have the private and public sectors working side by side in primary and secondary education, and in the health service, why not in university education? Above all the emphasis of higher education needs to be redirected towards increasing the quality of those who graduate rather than the number of students as measured by the percentage of school leavers accessing it. It does not make sense for the universities to be continually turning out more and more graduates when the economy is unable to provide them with employment opportunities commensurate with their levels of skills and knowledge.