Finito Issue 11

STEPHEN FRY THE RENAISSANCE MAN

Editor:

Christopher Jackson

Editor-at-large: Claire Coe

Contributing Editors: Emily Prescott, Meredith Taylor

Lord Ranger CBE, Liz Brewer

Advisory Board:

Sir John Griffin (Chairman), Dame Mary Richardson, Sir Anthony Seldon, Elizabeth Diaferia, Ty Goddard, Neil Carmichael

Management:

Ronel Lehmann (Founder & CEO), Colin Hudson, Professor Robert Campbell, Christopher Jackson, Gaynor Goodliffe, Julia Carrick OBE

Mentors:

Derek Walker, Andrew Inman, Chloë Garland, Alejandra Arteta, Angelina Giovani, Christopher Clark, Robin Rose, Sophia Petrides, Dana JamesEdwards, Iain Smith, Jeremy Cordrey, Martin Israel, Iandra Tchoudnowsky, Tim Levy, Peter Ibbetson, Claire Orlic, Judith Cocking, Sandra Hermitage, Claire Ashley, Dr Richard Davis, Sir David Lidington, Coco Stevenson, Talan Skeels-Piggins, Edward Short, David Hogan, Susan Hunt, Divyesh Kamdar, Julia Glenn, Neil Lancaster, Dr David Moffat, Jonathan Lander, Kirsty Bell, Simon Bell, Paul Brannigan, Kate King, Paul Aplin, Professor Andrew Eder, Derek Bell, Graham Turner, Matthew Thompson, Douglas Pryde, Pervin Shaikh, Adam Mitcheson, Ross Power, Caroline Roberts, Sue Harkness, Andy Tait, Mike Donoghue, Tony Mallin, Patrick Chapman, Amanda Brown, Tom Pauk, Daniel Barres, Patrick Chapman, Merrill Powell, Kate Glick, Lord Mott, Dr Susan Doering, Raghav Parkash, Marcus Day, Sheridan Mangal, Mark Thistlethwaite, Madhu Palmar, Margaret Stephens, John Cottrell, Victoria Anstey, Stephen Goldman, Sheridan Mangal, Patrick Timms, James Meek

Business Development: Rara Plumptre

Digital: Stephen James

Creative Director: Nick Pelekanos

Photography: Sam Pearce, Will Purcell, Gemma Levine

Public Relations: Pedroza Communications

Website Development: Eprefix

Media Buying:

Virtual Campaign Management

Print Production: Marcus Dobbs

Printed in the UK by: Micropress Printers Ltd, Reydon Business Park, Fountain Way, Reydon, Southwold IP18 6SZ

Registered Address:

Finito Education Limited, 14th floor, 33 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PW, +44 (0)20 3780 7700

Finito and FinitoWorld are trade marks of the owner. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited submissions, manuscripts and photographs. All prices and details are correct at time of going to press, but subject to change. We take no responsibility for omissions or errors. Reproduction in whole or in part without the publisher’s written permission is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved. Registered in England No. 9985173

FOUNDER’S LETTER

You know that you are getting old when close friends and contemporaries start talking about their retirement. For me, it comes at a time when there is a campaign to get more people back to work. As the percentage of employed workingage Britons is at its lowest point since 2015, reportedly due to a surge in people on long-term sick leave as well as an increase in the number of students, other comparable nations have experienced a rise in employment since 2020.

According to the official data, 9.4 million Britons aged 16 to 64, which is 22% of that age group, are neither working nor unemployed. This number has increased from 8.55 million just before the pandemic. Among them, 2.8 million are long-term sick, and 206,000 are temporarily ill. The Prime Minister said welfare benefits in the United Kingdom had become a "lifestyle choice" for some, causing a "spiralling" welfare bill for the country. He said: "We need to be more ambitious about helping people back to work and more honest about the risk of over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life."

I find that after dinner speaking can be a bit of an ordeal and like an interview with prospective employers. It is a performance which must be prepared for, rehearsed, perfected, and then hopefully delivered with great aplomb. There is an important moment for humour too as guests always want to be regaled with funny quips. Often, after the occasion, self-doubt begins to creep in and you wonder whether anyone noticed your nervousness, that is until you receive the validation and

feedback from others which you yearn for, and which spurs you onto accept future such engagements.

One man who needs no introduction is the celebrated subject of our front cover main feature, Stephen Fry, whose use of language is a masterclass in oratory. “Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright.” he famously expressed. He is the maestro and best mentor for public speaking.

The whole country was recently transfixed by Luke Littler, a fearless 16-year-old from Warrington, who managed to become the youngest darts player in European tour history. Like Emma Raducanu who was previously featured in our magazine, he has inspired a generation with his dedication and commitment to a sport many parents might not want their sons or daughters to seek a career in.

If darts isn’t your thing, we were all blown away by Emma Kok who at 15 years old performed Barbara Pravi's song Voilà with André Rieu and his orchestra, live at Vrijthof Square in Maastricht. If you haven’t watched this, you really must and join a global audience who have already streamed. Sadly, she suffers from a chronic illness “gastroparesis” and yet her determination pervades every note and expression.

On a lighter note, after a delicious dinner at The Bull Freehouse in Troston, Bury Saint Edmunds, I asked the waiter to bring me the bill. He presented it and looking at me remarked to my great surprise, “Don’t I know you, are you a celebrity… no you are a rock star.” Before I had a chance to respond about whether he was seeking an enhanced tip for the wonderful service, my partner in crime responded to much hilarity, “He is not cool enough and far too old to be a rock star.”

INTRODUCING THE SHADOW PLEDGE

The employment market can be a bewildering place for hirers and job-seekers alike, As a rule, the people who leave school, college and university who know exactly what they want to do are lucky – and rare. Not everyone can be a doctor, an architect or a lawyer where the path is set, and the profession regulated to make life easier for the entrant.

The rest of us are encouraged to apply for internships and work experience - and we do so in droves adding to the general confusion. This is highly competitive and, although the Old Boys’ network is not as powerful as it once was, the chances of success still all too often revolve around who you know. Of course the difficulty works too well. Employers routinely point to recruitment as one of the most difficult areas of business. Organising work experience placements requires time that many small employers simply do not have.

Given that today’s workers are likely to need two or three careers with reskilling and lifelong learning becoming the norm, the fight to get experience or even find out what is out there will become even more important. With AI increasingly involved in the job application process, candidates are often left rejected, dejected and without really knowing whether the job would have been right for them in the first place. Employers may be screening out the best person for the job who has an amazing attitude to work because they do not tick all the algorithmic boxes.

But what if we dd this another way? At Finito, we always encourage candidates to select a minimum of three separate career paths. This focus is best tested by shadowing someone in the sector to rigorously check their suitability and commitment. This is why Finito has

decided to join forces with the MP for Stroud Siobhan Baillie and campaign for the Shadow Pledge.

The brainchild of Finito CEO Ronel Lehmann, the Shadow Pledge is a simple idea: anybody over 18 years old can shadow someone who is employed, and most workers can spend that time with a shadow without it negatively impacting their week. While there are strict HMRC rules about payment for internships and work experience, there is no requirement for funding, remuneration or travel expenses because the candidate is simply shadowing.

The benefits of this are innumerable. There is no need for parental chaperoning, extensive risk assessments or insurance issues (save that certain roles such as manufacturing, engineering or jobs involving children may still require additional steps). It would be up to the employer to set the rules and requirements like providing a CV in advance. The simpler for all involved, the better.

As a result of the Shadow Pledge, people of all ages can gain a new sense of understanding about the workplace and opportunities at the right time in their lives to foster ambition. Meanwhile, employers will acquire not only the pleasures of short term mentoring but also advance knowledge of potential candidates and spot key employability skills that a computer may miss. The Shadow Pledge will enable us to shape and win the future of work.

This is why we’re asking all businesses pledge to offer half a day of shadowing every year for all levels of their team: normal time in the life of CEOs, secretaries, HR assistants, plumbers, teachers, drivers, journalists, MPs,

dentists, supermarket managers –including the boring bits. For the rest of us, the request is that we normalise shadowing. We can start encouraging everybody to ask for shadow placements whether or not there are jobs going at the time and regardless of background and lack of connections.

This would be the shift in our work culture, one which is badly needed. It will provide a sorely needed flexibility – to job-seekers and employers alike. Happily the idea has already met with some high-profile endorsements. The legendary Rob Halfon MP endorsed the idea, even while he was Minister for Skills and Apprenticeships. Meanwhile, the Rt Hon The Lord Mayor, Professor Michael Raymond Mainelli (Alderman) has offered Mansion House to get the square mile engaged. The Department for Work and Pensions has also backed the idea.

We live in a world of too much regulation where people feel stymied by lack of opportunity. The Shadow Pledge is an idea intended to connect us and it is on the basis of this connectivity that the future should be built. This is the way to start to do that.

As we now move towards a July 4th General Election, it’s important to realise that this is a cross-party idea, which we commend to all sides of the political spectrum. The Conservatives might be the self-styled party of work, but Labour has always championed social mobility, and at its best has been able to welcome new ideas which give opportunity to all. This is what the Shadow Pledge is designed to do and. as a new phase beckons in British politics, we shall continue to advocate for young people regardless of which party occupies Downing Street.

IN PRAISE OF ROBERT HALFON

The departure of Robert Halfon MP from Parliament at the next election, which was announced while we were producing this issue, will leave a huge gap: by turns charismatic and passionate, Halfon has for over a decade been one of the most likeable figures on the political scene.

It has been an extremely impressive career. The outgoing Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, has served as the MP for Harlow since 2010. But this was the sequel to over a decade on the front lines of the constituency which he has devoted so much of his life to: he was selected as the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Harlow in 1999 and subsequently fought two elections, reducing Labour’s majority on both occasions.

Announcing his departure, Halfon said: “It was a childhood dream to be an MP. It has been the honour of my life to be the longest-serving MP for Harlow –being part of the Harlow Conservatives is like being part of a family. However, after almost three decades as the

Parliamentary Candidate and as MP, I feel that it is time for me to step down.”

Halfon will be remembered also for his brilliant chairmanship of the Education Select Committee, a role which he fulfilled with great gusto, always championing the vulnerable.

What Halfon brought to Parliament was, quite simply, a belief that things could be changed. His campaigns as a backbencher included the Petrol Promise and his campaign to scrap hospital car parking charges. His passion for apprenticeships was another thread in his career: he was the first MP to employ an apprentice in his office. There was perhaps an air of throwback about Halfon: during his great tenure of the chairmanship of the Education Select Committee, Halfon proved himself to be in that line of other great parliamentarians which goes all the way back to Joseph Chamberlain and Edmund Burke: those who speak from the back benches with that air of authority which means ministers have to listen.

This is not the place to consider his many achievements – but it is a moment to pause and thank a politician who has vividly fought for many important causes. Above all, what sets Halfon apart is his personal and approachable manner: ever kindly – and from the journalistic perspective, delightfully quotable – Halfon never approached the media with fear but with trust, and so always found a way to get his message out. He also has a passion for literature and journalism, and perhaps he shall have more time for reading now.

As to the future, Halfon has reassured his friends: “Please be assured that I will continue to work hard and do all I can for Harlow until the election, and will continue to champion education, skills and apprenticeships in and out of Parliament.” All this remains to be seen, but there seems little doubt that he will go on to greater and greater things. For now, it feels as though the House of Commons will be an emptier place after the next election.

THE OTHER PORTFOLIO

Itused to be that when you heard the word ‘portfolio’ you started thinking about stocks and shares. But now, it can equally refer to the idea of careers. A portfolio career is, for many, the goal nowadays. Gone are the days of schlepping to the same office for 40 years. As we increase our knowledge of the human brain, we are ever more

aware of the awesome capacity of the human brain and many have a desire to explore their gifts broadly. Of course, there are figures in history, most notably Aristotle and Plato in the ancient world and later, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarotti, who realised that there are no boundaries in life. That’s why it’s fitting that Stephen Fry should be on our cover as today’s

Renaissance Man. Writer, film director, actor, poet, broadcaster, naturalist, humourist, traveller, thinker – Fry has never seen any limits for himself, and nor should Finito candidates.

Throughout this edition of Finito World readers will meet those who are doing more than one thing – and doing them all well.

Johanna

THIS ISSUE

FEATURES

Christopher Jackson meets his

How do we make the most of our careers? 60 GRANT SHAPPS

An interview with the Defence Secretary

64 THAT OLYMPIC SPIRIT

What can the Paris Games teach us? 70 RENAISSANCE MAN 2.0

The rise of the portfolio career

PHOTO ESSAY

Raphael Holt on Exam Anxiety

THE WRIGHT STUFF

Lessons from the world’s most famous architect

Dr Susan Doering

Letter from Sicily p60 Grant Shapps p24 Michael Gove

Nick Cave

Sir John Griffin

IANUSHKA SHARMA

THE FOUNDER OF THE LONDON SPACE NETWORK ON CAREERS IN SPACE, TRAVELLING TO MARS, AND TAKING TRAINERS TO THE MOON

left politics in 2012 to work in the Olympics, and that was the start of my self-employment journey. Many years before, I’d done a computing degree. But 2012 was the year the UK Space Agency was formed and that began my passion for space. In 2014, I applied for NASA Social, and took myself over to America for two weeks in January 2015. Here were everyday people who were passionate about space, and able to engage in it. My core skill is bringing people together and that’s why five years ago I set up the London Space Network, which brings together people from every walk of life to discuss space. We now have 1500 members on our list, and events sell out within 48 hours.

When we think about humans and navigation, and travel on earth, we’ve always used the stars to navigate but the opportunity of building a human presence on Mars and icy moons is a different thing altogether. It presents the possibility of the foundation of our human future. At the moment, only nation states through their agencies have managed to land on the surface of the moon: Japan, India, China, Soviet Union, America, and attempts from Israel which failed. But that’s all changing and it’s now important for us to raise awareness about careers in the space sector.

The growth of the private space sector means that a barrier has been removed and space agencies can now focus on the science. As our presence in space grows, tourism, trips to the moon, and trips round the orbit of the moon and back, will become the norm. As the cost comes down it will open up huge markets of growth. Who doesn’t want to wear a pair of trainers

wearetechwomen.com

that have been in space or products which have orbited the moon?

Ithink our space journey will be part of a much broader narrative of innovation which our children will benefit from. Take water processing as an example. If we can solve the question of clean water on earth, then why can’t we have it on the surface of the moon. The opportunities have never been more wonderful. You could do a Master’s degree in AI History of Art on galleries on the surface of the moon in 100 years’ time. This will impact every career. Human beings are curious by nature. We would be so bored if we didn’t think beyond our planet.

As we look ahead in this sector, it’s important to fight for everyone and make sure it’s as inclusive and open for everyone as possible. Currently there’s this duality whereby the rich can access those trips to Mars. It could create planetary political differences between those who chose to go to Mars and those who stayed on Earth. These ethical implications are the reason the

space community needs to be as open as possible and engage with people from every background.

Looking ahead, I think we’ll see a lot of international collaboration deals between America, India, Japan and the European agencies. By 2040, we’ll have more of a human presence on the moon, but more of a robot presence too. We’ll also have a UK astronaut in orbit in the next decade. We’ll make headway in going to the icy moons of Europa. In the next 100 years, we’ll certainly have a presence on the moon and on Mars and will be acquiring rare earth minerals in an asteroid mining process.

I’d like to see a United States of Space. We already have the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.. We’ll only do well if we work together. If we don’t we’ll just be transferring conflict into space. Let’s not forget that space has been used for warfare during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. We have to think ethically about our access to space.

Meet the Mentor: MERRILL POWELL

FINITO WORLD MEETS MERRILL POWELL, WHO DOES IMPORTANT WORK, USING HER TELEVISION BACKGROUND TO PREPARE CANDIDATES FOR INTERVIEWS

You’ve had a long and varied career in television. Can you talk a bit about your career, and how you use that experience to help mentees today?

All the skills I learned in television can be passed onto Finito candidates and, believe it or not, they are absolutely relevant for whatever job a candidate is applying for. The prime one is to be able to make points succinctly so that you say what you want to say, clearly – and, above all, concisely. A couple of minutes of TV time is a long time for the viewer, but not for the speaker! The skill is to hold the attention of the listener and to make the points you need to make in a short time.

Another important point to understand is that you will never have enough time to say all you want to say, so you must learn to prioritise the important points. It’s a discipline that is particularly useful with so much in the business world happening on Zoom. I should also say that at Finito we work as part of a team, therefore if a candidate needs extra help in a particular area, another mentor will let me know so that I can focus on the weakest areas. That gives comprehensive training and practice. All of which allows the candidates to grow in confidence and self-belief. The most watchable people on television are those who are so experienced that they look relaxed, it isn’t an easy job but they make it look easy. It’s the same with an interview. The better prepared, the greater the chance of not letting nerves overtake you.

Presentation seems to be partly down to how we dress, and partly to do with our speech and manner. What factors are you especially looking at when a candidate first comes to you for mentorship and advice?

Zooms can be unforgiving, and people can become very slack about how they present themselves being at home. I notice if someone is slouching, chin cupped in hand, too relaxed, or sloppy. All negatives. When I am mentoring I prepare for the Zoom as I hope a candidate will. I look smart, notes ready, background prep done, proper chair and I sit up. In other words I am ready for business. One candidate seemed barely awake so I asked if she was alright. “Oh yes, sorry,” came the reply, ‘but I had a glass of wine before we started.” Not a Finito candidate I should say, but it shows how not to treat a Zoom. You can give yourself an edge by making sure you look groomed, are alert and ready to take the meeting/interview very seriously.

I am very straightforward – and strict – when I’m mentoring. If a candidate has annoying habits such as constantly playing with their hair, chewing a pencil or letting their eyes wander everywhere I say so, because those irritants are highlighted on Zoom. I must say so as it’s part of the preparation, which is to showcase the best of yourself and it often needs a third party to spot improvements which need to be made.

You have one chance to get it right, so be prepared. I’m there to help you get

it right, to showcase your talents, make sure you are on top of the job description and are able to articulate why you are the right person for the position.

What are the most common mistakes which prospective candidates make when it comes to presenting themselves at interview?

The most common mistake anyone makes during any kind of interview or presentation is to speak too quickly. Speaking slowly and clearly is essential and very few manage it without training. The brain often works faster than the mouth so the result is a waterfall of words rushing out as speech struggles to keep pace with thought.

Clarity of communication is essential, particularly in a remote interview. Most personal touches are absent – handshake, eye contact, body language, natural energy. These are important nuances that create a sense of the person you

Merrill Powell

are speaking to in a physical meeting. Therefore, other ways need to be found to create an authentic and complete portrait of the candidate – that is through words and the skilful use of articulating experiences, ambitions, and understanding.

Obviously preparation is very important, but how can candidates protect themselves from being overprepared and too robotic during an important interview?

Preparation is essential. I never worry that someone will be over-prepared. That’s because preparation is necessary to best showcase personal talents, experience and ability in a concise, cogent way. The one way to ensure that the candidate is never robotic is to ban written notes. Reading out prepared answers is a disaster. Bullet point reminders can be useful but each answer should be straight from the head and heart, not learned, which means they are slightly different each time therefore authentic. It’s all about building confidence.

You’ve been extremely active with Women2Win helping female Conservative through the arduous process of winning seats. Can you talk a bit about how the presentational skills required for major roles are changing during the social media age?

It has been a huge privilege training political candidates standing for public roles such as Police Crime Commissioners, Councillors, MPs. They all begin from the same position: asking people to vote for them. To win that vote, they must appeal to the electorate. As we would say, it’s about winning hearts and minds. That means asking for trust, having integrity

and empathy as well as intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard. If you are asking people to trust you with their future and the future of their families, look as if you deserve and can carry that trust. You must know your area so that the constituents don’t have to, because you are there to serve them.

The greatest modern change and challenge has of course been social media and I think many of my colleagues would agree that nowadays any public servant can be subject to terrible online trolling. A robust character is therefore probably more essential now than ever before. There are many skills required to take on a public role but again it remains imperative that candidates present their arguments cogently and persuasively.

Social media equally offers wonderful, cheap and easy opportunities to connect with all levels of the community. It has transformed communication. Whether it’s about a local area forming a group to complain about potholes or rubbish collection, or Coronation celebrations, everyone can have a voice. The candidate has to be completely conversant with all means of communication. It’s a huge job. I expect to see many Finito students stepping up later in life!

Zoom interviews are an increasing trend. What are the pitfalls with Zoom, and conversely what are the opportunities?

During lockdown Zooms took off. I was able to train remotely scores of candidates without any of us leaving home. That also meant that a huge amount of research and mentoring happened without any travel costs incurred. That is a huge consideration for so many where high travel costs can often limit ambitions. It enabled many to be trained online who previously could not have afforded travelling to training centres.

We all discovered how to communicate easily with the outside world and the benefits were enormous. Our parameters changed for good. But there are also pitfalls to Zoom: there will always be those personal meetings that can only happen in an office where ideas spark because of proximity. We must never underestimate the exponential value of personal interaction. It’s healthy for humans to mix too. The challenge with Zoom is to try to make an impersonal tool personal, to learn to use it to show what kind of human being you are. That’s much harder on Zoom than in person.

My aim is to build confidence in a candidate so that they feel sure-footed enough in their answers to let their own personality, their own unique sellingpoint, shine through.

COLUMNS

Our regular writers on employability in 2024

SIR TERRY ON TOO MUCH MATHS: Is government policy too reductive?

EMMA ROCHE: DEGREES OF MEANING Should you study philosophy?

ENDURANCE TEST: The trials of Vicki Anstey

The Humanitarian SIR TERRY WAITE

THE RECENTLY KNIGHTED ADVOCATE FOR PEACE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY

I have been observing the government’s education priorities, which currently place particular importance on maths. It is important that we focus on this subject, of course, but we shouldn’t do so at the expense of others: most importantly we are almost at the point where we begin to find that history doesn’t matter – and yet, of course, it matters very much.

That’s because you have to know where you have come from, and what has happened in the past. For instance, I have just been reading about and understanding the Churchill family. If you do that you discover that John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, was an extraordinary general – perhaps the most famous in Europe, in the pre-Napoleon era. He was instrumental in winning the Nine Years’ War against King Louis XIV. If you read about Marlborough’s command of his troops, you see an almost exact parallel with his ancestor Sir Winston Churchill who would play such a prominent role as Prime Minister during the Second World War. History is full of such lessons, and we can learn from these links and correspondences.

Our problem appears to be that we don’t take the trouble to learn from history – and especially the past mistakes that have been made. In a society which seems not to place sufficient value on history, we tend to carry on regardless, creating havoc, misery and mayhem in so many parts of the world. Unfortunately, we have arrived at this rather stupid idea that aggression and warfare is going to

resolve our problems. It doesn’t resolve our problems; it increases them. When you consider the suffering and disaster that is continually being meted out to millions of people, you realise we need more politicians and people in positions of leadership who have this understanding.

“IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT IF WE DON’T GIVE SOME THOUGHT TO THAT, THEN WE ARE HEADING STRAIGHT INTO THE ABYSS.”

This is not to say that this kind of historical awareness alone will solve matters. It is extremely complicated to know how to deal with international conflict and to know what structures both domestically and internationally might be required. It goes without saying that if we don’t give some thought to that, then we are heading straight into the abyss. By that light, history isn’t just a mere curiosity – it calls to us with urgent importance.

Russia-Ukraine remains a very difficult situation. I think we should be making active attempts to seek a negotiated agreement but it is extremely difficult when you have a person such as Vladimir Putin in charge. The fact is, he has committed himself and if he fails, he may well recognise that he will follow the destiny of previous leaders who overreached. Russia has a history of getting rid of its leaders: if you are a leader in Russia it’s unwise for you

to go to the top floor of any apartment and keep well away from the windows.

In a sense it’s not only that Putin is fighting this war, he is also fighting for his life. When someone fights for their life they become desperate and this fact alone will make a negotiated settlement extremely difficult. But this doesn’t mean this goal should not be worked towards. We need the best brains to help resolve this particular issue – not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because of the scale of what might go wrong if we don’t. Of course, for a long time now, there has been the threat of nuclear warfare over our heads and though it would be extremely stupid for that to happen, if we have to admit the possibility then that increases the urgency of the need to find a resolution. We have a lot facing us in the future. If I might conduct some basic mathematics, since I’m 84, I am old enough now to say I’ve only got a few years left. Much of this will be for future generations to know – and I hope that they will have both maths and history at their disposal in order to meet these many challenges.

Sir Terry Waite

FRANCES D’SOUZA

THE FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS ON THE FUTURE OF CHINA AND TAIWAN

There are three questions that come to mind in considering post-election Taiwan in a changing world. These will focus on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in relation to the Indo Pacific Region but most especially, on Taiwan itself.

The questions are as follows: What does China want? How does it aim to achieve its goals? Will it succeed? As readers will know only too well, the West, by which I mean the UK, US and Europe, have consistently viewed the PRC through the prism of western democratic standards and an internationally accepted rules-based order. I’m not sure this is the most fruitful standard to analyse the PRC and its domestic and foreign policies if we want to understand China’s intentions.

Looking at the various statements issued by the increasingly powerful President Xi Jinping over the last decade and more, the PRC is almost entirely focused on a Sino-centric approach – meaning that every policy, both domestic and foreign, is designed only to benefit China. Thus, Xi believes that the existing world order is biased against China and would be greatly improved if it evolved to embrace Chinese leadership – which he, and the greater majority of the population, see as an inherent force for good.

This vision of China goes back to ancient history and aims to see China once again as the centre of civilisation, engaging with the world on its own terms, spreading knowledge and providing material benefit. Xi wishes to recreate the world order thereby

righting an historic wrong and putting China’s interests and values above those of the rest of the world. The belief in the supremacy of Chinese systems and thought is in President Xi’s DNA and helps us to understand better, if not condone, some of the more aggressive actions of recent years. For example the ‘We Are One People’ mantra justifies the regime’s actions against the Uyghurs – with a complete disregard of the UN’s characterisation of forceful assimilation as a crime against humanity and possibly constituting genocide. This Sino-centric approach is presented to the world as altruistic, moral, and inclusive but is in fact self-centred, hierarchical, illiberal and coercive.

So, the prevailing philosophy is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and this ‘dream’ Xi has said will be achieved by 2050. Make China Great Again! The overriding condition for this rejuvenation is regime security, which Xi is taking to a new level, in order to formulate, implement and adjust Chinese foreign policy. Addressing new recruits to the People’s Liberation Army, Xi has said their principal task is to enable China to ‘reclaim its place in the sun’, and this in turn entails recovering ‘lost territories’, establishing regional hegemony and furthering China’s global ambitions. His global ambitions are considerable. Xi argues that all countries must respect different political systems and assert that democracies are not superior to authoritarian regimes and therefore have no right to criticise the latter, especially on human rights and governance. He also aims to deter, or

even defeat, the pre-eminent economic position of the USA, which would in Xi’s view substantially alter the global balance of power and establish China’s standing as a superpower. Finally, he wishes to extend the ‘soft power’ of Belt and Road initiatives especially in poorer countries, to gain leverage and control in loan repayments.

Xi has spelt out and continues to refine an ideology to be accepted by the world. His pronouncements set out China’s direction of travel for the next decade and more, and is having a major impact on the world generally, but the Indo-Pacific region in particular.

Again, you will be familiar with what China wishes to achieve in the short term: connect more closely with adversarial regimes such as Russia and North Korea and play an increasingly influential leadership roles in multilateral forums such as the UN, CPTTP and ASEAN.

And then we come to Taiwan: in 2021

Baroness Frances D'Souza

Xi said: ‘No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s powerful determination, will and ability to defend state sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ Recovery of Taiwan is vital for China’s geostrategic defence and offence but more than this, it is regarded as sacred territory, and this legitimises all the intimidation to which it is subjected by China.

“ THE THREAT IS REAL, AND WE ARE WARNED BY SERIOUS CHINA SCHOLARS THAT WE SHOULD NOT TAKE THIS LIGHTLY. ”

Mechanisms include legal, political, and psychological warfare; endless cyber-attacks, military harassment and brinkmanship, aggressive attacks in the South China sea, economic espionage, and regular spreading of

disinformation. They also include isolation of Taiwan on the international front, including threatening those countries which have hitherto enjoyed diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The brutal National Security Law now being implemented in Hong Kong together with the astonishing offer of a bounty of $1 million for defectors, or promoters of freedom beyond Hong Kong, is a chilling reminder that the ‘one country, two systems’ promise is truly dead. In all these actions China is continuously testing the readiness of the international community to hold it accountable to international standards.

Given the CCP appears intent on taking over Taiwan, how real is the threat, what is being done, what does the new administration in Taipei have to offer and what must it avoid? Furthermore what is the wider impact in the region and what can be done?

The threat is real, and we are warned by serious China scholars that we should not take this lightly. Admiral Aquilino, head of the US Indo Pacific Command, said at a Congressional hearing that in

his view the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would be able to attack Taiwan in 2027, even by force if necessary.

China not only has a far-reaching strategy but tactics to which President Xi requires conformity by every citizen. The problem is that neither the US nor the UK appear, as yet, to have a strategy but have instead what some have defined as a muddled and inconsistent approach. The US policy of strategic ambiguity virtually encourages the CPP to test the West’s resolve to strenuously oppose any armed threat aimed at Taiwan. There are very few clear red lines.

Is the future bleak for Taiwan and indeed for many other countries in the Indo-Pacific region? Would it be a good idea to wait until, as one expert has said, the Chinese Communist Party falls under the weight of its own internal contradictions? Another commentator writes that China faces a near-existential dilemma over its macroeconomic strategy due in large part to its over-reliance on property and infrastructure development.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of China Xi Jinping having tea at an informal setting at the garden of Zhongnanhai in Beijing. (www.kremlin.ru, Wikipedia.org)

The accumulated debt by property developers and local government infrastructure expenditure has reached $2.5 trillion. It could take many decades to eliminate this debt. It is difficult to predict how the economy can improve dramatically in the next decade due to the possible overproduction of manufactured electronic items flooding international markets. And, of course, China also faces the looming problem of an ageing population dependent on pensions, with an ever decreasing work-force.

Let me summarise, China is intent upon usurping the supremacy of the USA and will restructure its economic policies and military strategies to control the international shipping lanes and control, and therefore influence, trade, to its own advantage. It aims to subdue neighbouring states or, as in case of the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka, secure long leaseholds on geostrategic territory. The economic about-turn as articulated by Premier Li Qiang focuses on economic growth underpinned by advanced manufacturing. In steering rapidly

away from infrastructure development, the President has forbidden any public building in at least 10 provinces. This will have consequences – particularly for employment. Let us not forget that the legitimacy and stability of the Chinese Communist Party is almost entirely dependent on a successful and growing economy.

Given the future dangers the country faces, I have to say that I would not relish being the new President of Taiwan. Nor am I in any position to suggest a way forward. However, I note that President Lai will have greater difficulty in getting innovative laws through the legislative Yuan – given the DPP’s loss of a majority. This will be especially the case for divisive issues such as defence spending and strategy, and will likely be exploited by the PRC.

I am perhaps better placed to suggest what a new government in the UK could do; in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine, we have woken up to the real danger China poses in this region. The task is to make it abundantly clear that we will take

action including: public and frequent condemnation of ‘grey zone’ attacks; the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions against selected Chinese officials; reducing the number of Chinese students accepted for further study in the UK; strict prohibitions on the importation of any technology capable of surveillance including electronic cars and all cellular IOT modules; and establishing full diplomatic relations with Taiwan. This would undoubtedly provoke retaliatory action from China, but would also signal to the world that the de facto independence of Taiwan must progress toward a de jure state.

We must also impose strict criminal sentences on any attempts to kidnap, or harm in any way, Chinese citizens, whether from Hong Kong or defectors. Finally, we all know that co-ordinated action is more effective and thus the UK, in its international relations, must help to build a body of consensus among nations to resist Chinese encroachment on freedoms. There will be an economic cost to all trading partners but the cost of not taking multilateral action now will be far, far greater.

The overall message to the PRC must be first, that the world will not allow the Chinese destiny of territorial acquisition, nor the bullying and flouting of the existing rulesbased order, to prevail and that the consequences of gross intransigence will be severe. Second, a war between the West and China would be an unmitigated catastrophe affecting China as much as it would the entire world. This is the reason why China’s territorial ambitions must be confronted.

This is an edited version of a talk given at the Graduate Institute of Journalism, Taiwan, Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club in April 2024.

Presidential Office Building, Taipei (Wikipedia.org)

ROGER BOOTLE

THE CHAIR OF CAPITAL ECONOMICS ON THE FUTURE IMPLICATIONS OF AI

The whole question of AI interviews is a bit like warfare really. Every technological advance on the side of offence is met by technological advance on the side of defence. Similarly, there are now algorithms that prepare candidates how to approach AI interviews.

I suppose in the early stages of the interview process there is something to be said for going down this route, although I must say it is completely against my own instinct. When I was actively running Capital Economics a lot of my time was taken up interviewing people which was one of the most important jobs that a CEO like me could do in a small firm to make sure that the people were really good. In those days, I was aware that what I was looking for wasn’t necessarily straightforward so I would have loathed giving up that initial sifting to AI. For a start you get a bunch of paper CVs in and I could tell very quickly whether a person was plausible or not. I could sift very quickly. When you come to the next stage, and you have got rid of all the implausible applications, you certainly wouldn’t want an AI algorithm to take over.

Really it goes back to this whole question of being human: although a lot of people will resist this, particularly in small organisations, hirers will be very motivated by whether they think they can get on with this or that person. This is especially important in a small outfit, though I accept things might be different for a bigger company. If you are working at close quarters in a small company and

you really don’t like a person, that’s an important negative. How is your algorithm going to pick that up?

It’s quite possible therefore that AI interviews will never really take hold for smaller companies. Whereas with those big companies, where there are hundreds if not thousands of applicants, that basic stage could be very time-consuming so employers might find it efficient to get AI to tackle that. You might miss the occasional good person and let through the occasional duffer but you can sort that out later. In a small company, this sort of thing matters so much more.

For reasons I won’t go into, I happen to own a pet shop and dog grooming salon. It’s a niche business, and so it’s very difficult to recruit staff. We happened to need a new manager, and we advertised for the role. The manager is critical – a good manager will take the burden off me and make the business thrive. It was 2020, I happened to be in France and I conducted the interview by Zoom. I rejected the candidate who everybody else thought was the best of the bunch, and hired someone over Zoom who turned out to be a disaster. Zoom obviously isn’t AI, but it is similar in that I didn’t have the sort of human contact that I would normally have in an interview process of meeting someone in person.

In a similar vein, there is also a fair amount in my book The AI Economy about education. Some AI enthusiasts say that there aren’t going to be any teachers any more because people can learn remotely from various programmes and so forth. I strongly reject this idea. I would recommend

Sir Anthony Seldon’s book The Fourth Education Revolution. According to Seldon, there is scope to use AI a lot in the education process, but the system of the teacher standing up in front of a class of sometimes hundreds of people and the students taking notes is ludicrously antiquated.

Instead, I suspect education will proceed along the lines of the tutorial system whereby we will have more one-on-one sessions which are about discussion and interaction, in addition to seminars where you have got a small number of students discussing and interacting. Under that system the ratio of teachers to pupils or students in aggregate may not change that much but the ratio in individual teaching sessions will change dramatically.

AI won’t change our lives anything like as much as the enthusiasts claim because we’re human beings and we will always crave some degree of human contact across every area of our lives.

The AI Economy by Roger Bootle is published by Hachette UK and priced £20

Roger Bootle

DR. SUSAN DOERING

THE FINITO MENTOR EXPLAINS WHY A CAREER TRANSITION NEED NOT BE HARD

If the transition has been forced upon us, then there will probably be negative emotions at play. But I remember one client who was made redundant when the private bank he worked for folded. He reflected that he was in the prime of his life and career, the bank had folded through no fault of his own, and he had all the right expertise and experience. We decided he should reach out discreetly and with optimism to potential employers to let them know he was available for discussions, and then he sat back and waited to be headhunted. He went swimming every morning, read the books that had been piling up on the coffee table and devoted his energy to his church community. Within 3 months he had a new position in the Treasury at the national regulatory bank.

This is a tale of positive mindset, which is the foundation for a career transition.

There are five key components to making the move successfully and fairly smoothy. If you have time to reflect and prepare with these components in mind, much else will fall better into place.

First, know what you value and what you are passionate about. What do you want to get up in the morning and do? What do you want to change about the world? Many people are moving from a corporate setting which they feel no longer matches their values and purpose in life. If you choose a career path that does, you will be more motivated to stay with it and feel more fulfilled.

Second, play to your strengths. Know what your strengths are and talk about them, aligning your passion with what you are good at. It is important to be able to articulate what value you will bring in your next career phase.

Third, get support from family and friends, and from professionals who can provide information, open doors, make connections and create contacts. These may be people in your profession, mentors, coaches, or any manner of people who can help and support you and offer the right kind of advice. A big mistake is to believe (hope) you can make a successful career move on your own. Whether you are thinking of moving within your profession/industry to the next level, or doing something different, or moving from an organisational environment to setting up on your own, you will need a lot of support.

A word about being realistic and recognising when you need support and reaching out to get it. Women, particularly, often lay themselves open to trying to do everything themselves, which only leads to frustration and, sadly, failure or burnout. Sometimes it’s necessary to delegate stuff.

Fourth, do your research. This is the practical, nitty gritty preparation part of a career transition – but it’s also fun! This is where you gather as much information as you can about potential work environments by web-based research and by talking to people. Social media sites such as LinkedIn are a useful resource, but nothing beats talking to real people, so go to conferences (thankfully back to in-person!), industry meetups, and

all kinds of networking opportunities. Networking is a two-way activity: you gather a lot of information and at the same time are becoming more visible to potential employers/clients/ sponsors. Then research the companies, research their track record, research how they manage their talent.

And finally, believe in yourself. We started off by asking: How hard is a career transition? Every change is a challenge, and how we react to change often goes back a long way to how we saw our parents face change. If we were taught to be cautious and wary of change, we may have adopted that mindset. But as adults we can say: “That was then, this is now. I have all the resources in me, I have done my research, I’ve got my support network. I’m moving towards my vision of where I want to be. I can do this.”

For further information go to http://www.doering-training.com

Dr. Susan Doering

The Secretary of State

MICHAEL GOVE

THE GREAT MINISTER ON WHY THE 4TH JULY ELECTION IS NOT A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

When I hear the pessimistic talk about the upcoming General Election, I think back to the 2017 vote during which the Conservatives went more than 20 points ahead in the polls. Everyone thought that it was going be a landslide. In fact by the time we got to election day, we ended up forfeiting our majority and managing to govern with the support of the DUP.

At the moment people are telling you that the next election is a foregone conclusion since Labour are 20 points ahead, and that there is an automatic inevitability regarding what will happen in the next election. However, there's a lot we can still do: we can ensure that Labour are facing the kind of scrutiny that they have managed to evade for the last four years and see that the holes and weaknesses in their policy prospectus are held up to effective attack.

Of course, if we are going to do that, we have got to move the conversation on from some of the introspective chatter to which Conservative MPs can sometimes be prone. We need to start by being proud of our achievements. For instance, the education reforms that we brought in in the early years of Conservative-led government were bitterly contested. We were told that those reforms would make no difference and that we were on an ideological jolly that would end in tears. Thirteen years later, and we have seen a decisive move towards higher standards for all of our children and for those of us who care about social mobility. One of the most striking

things, is that it’s not just the case that school standards have improved – it’s also the case that the poorest children have benefitted most. When we came to power in 2010, more boys from Eton went to Oxford and Cambridge than boys eligible for free school places. Now we have a dramatically increased number of children from disadvantaged backgrounds at our best universities than at any time since the Second Wold War.

It is not just strength and confidence in our record that we need. We also need to make sure that we go into the next election with a manifesto which is based on hope. We have to show that, as a party that believes in capitalism, the next generation has the chance to acquire capital and a chance to acquire the homes that they will grow their families in and pass on to the next generation. We also need to make sure that we have policies on the provision of infrastructure – on liberating industry and enterprise, on having a tax structure that makes sure that people will put in that extra effort in order to make this country great. Thirdly, we need to make sure that people understand the risk of Labour as well. In many areas Labour are weak, where their policy mixes are either entirely toxic or entirely absent and it is our responsibility to make sure that at the next election rather than it being simply a referendum on this government, it becomes a choice between the chance to extend opportunity and a Labour party who will put everything that we have achieved in the last 13 years in jeopardy. Let’s take the welfare system as an

example. Under the Conservatives this has been reformed though universal credit, and this was another policy which was vigorously contested by the opposition. It has resulted not only in operational success but it also meant that during the Covid-19 pandemic we were able to get help to those who most needed it remarkably quickly. Under Labour between 1997 and 2010, a million more people became unemployed. By stark contrast, we have created more than a million new jobs while we have been in power. To my mind the best thing that any government can do is to provide people with a route to independence; ultimately, the enduring way of tackling poverty is to ensure that people have the skills and the support to make their own life and make their own choices, rather than being dependent on the state.

“UNDER LABOUR BETWEEN 1997 AND 2010, A MILLION MORE PEOPLE BECAME UNEMPLOYED. BY STARK CONTRAST, WE HAVE CREATED MORE THAN A MILLION NEW JOBS WHILE WE HAVE BEEN IN POWER.”

One of the problems that we have sometimes as Conservatives is that we risk being seen as administrators and not evangelists. That’s a criticism which is often levelled at ministers. The word narrative is overused, but politicians do need to tell a story. They need to explain why it is that we are taking this difficult decision, or moving in that particular way. We need to have a vision of how individuals can flourish in the country we want to build and that means being able to respond instinctively and coherently to new challenges.

Everybody in Westminster is fascinated and interested by politics. Most people in the public at large are wise enough not to waste too much time paying attention so when we do have their attention during a General Election campaign, we have got to be clear. During the Brexit referendum, the “Take Back Control’ slogan encapsulated a set of arguments which you could then unpack in a variety of areas to make the arguments that you needed to make. The best simple sentences are the product of careful thought and the careful thought can then be unpacked once the simple sentence is valid.

Of course, we need to do all this while also facing inflation. It is simply the case that as inflation increases, interest rates increase, and access to capital becomes more difficult for people. That has ramifications in my Department: house builders themselves will build fewer homes during an economic downturn because they want to keep the price of the product that they are selling from falling too far. We should not be passive in the face of those challenges. Firstly, we have to make the planning system work, and balance the desire that people have to protect the quality of life which they have in particular communities. One of the big challenges that we have in England particularly is that our cities – which is where many young people, of course, want to live and work – are much more geographically spread out

than comparable cities in Europe or in the US. There are a huge number of brownfield sites and buildings which are suitable for turning into new housing. Many of these are currently either prevented from being turned into new homes by the obstruction of the Mayor of London, or by difficulties with the effectiveness of the planning system.

In tackling all of these things, we have got to have a series of solutions that deal with the geographical challenges that the housing market faces in different parts of the country. More than that, we also need to change some of the incentives: at the moment the incentive is very much for many local authorities to turn down housing. We need them to welcome it by making sure that they get a bigger share of uplift that comes from planning permissions being granted: it’s only when you create those incentives that you can begin to let local politicians and local people see the double benefit that comes from new development.

An emphasis purely on quantity is the biggest problem. If you have someone who is thinking about a new development – whether that is digging an existing brownfield site in one of our great cities or expanding a settlement – if they think about that development in terms of making it beautiful then it gives real life to a community and creates an attractive destination. Take Poundbury as an example, which I’m aware not everybody likes. But the King deliberately set out to build a new suburb with Leon Krier who is a very distinguished neo-classical architect. He got in landscape architects like Kim Wilkie and he thought: “We are going to make it beautiful.” As a result now, even though it was derided by the fashionable end of the architectural community, houses in Poundbury fetch more on the open market than houses in Dorchester itself. It is rare that you have a new development attached to an existing town where the new homes are more attractive and more valuable.

We managed to do this in Edinburgh in the 18th century. We managed to do it in parts of London. We have been less good at it recently but it seems to me that while not everyone would wish to live in Poundbury and it’s not necessarily to everyone’s taste it is certainly far more to their taste than many of the developments that have been created elsewhere.

“ THIS ELECTION WILL BE TOUGH BUT WE ARE ABSOLUTELY CAPABLE OF WINNING IT.”

We have time now to reflect on some of the mistakes we have made, and be honest with the electorate about what they are. But we also need to be clear about what we have achieved and what our values are. We don’t have much time but we do have just enough to be able to do that and for me it’s bracing to think about the essence of the argument. Keir Starmer does not have a programme or a platform. He does not have a thought-through sense of where he wants to take this country. So this election will be tough but we are absolutely capable of winning it.

Michael Gove

Question of Degree EMMA ROCHE

WHY A PHILOSOPHY DEGREE MIGHT BE MORE WORTH YOUR WHILE THAN YOU THINK

Iremember,aged 14, reading Socrates’ famous dictum ‘’the unexamined life is not worth living” in the book Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner and feeling inspired by it. The book was written as an introduction to philosophy. I was always curious. I wanted to ask the “big” questions. Philosophy made sense to me. I enjoyed knowing there was a body of wisdom spanning two millennia to help me think about what really mattered. This passion for the subject led to my successful campaign to get philosophy on to my school’s A Level syllabus.

Simply translated philosophy means the “the love of wisdom”. It gets a bad reputation for being an abstract and opaque subject. Yes, it is a subject with a long history, but it is not outdated. Its concepts have a timeless application: rational reflection and analysis. It can be criticised for not being a science and therefore not providing definitive answers. This is to misunderstand the position as in practice philosophy provides the framework which enables problem solving.

Philosophy is also a broad field that covers a wide range of topics. It informs ethical debate, political theory, the function of language/communication, the relationship between the mind and the body and more recently artificial intelligence. It asks questions such as: What is the nature of justice?; What is the good life?; What is truth?; What should you do and why?.

When discussing the subject, I am often asked“..but what can a philosophy undergraduate really offer future employers?” or “How can I convince my parents that philosophy is a worthwhile

use of three years at university?”. To help answer these questions, I reached out to Dr Stevie Makin, who was one of my philosophy lecturers at Sheffield University. He recently retired after 32 years of teaching philosophy undergraduates. His response to the question was both unequivocal and enlightening. He said “Employers want people who can think. Problems are best dealt with by thinking. And philosophy teaches you how best to think - clearly, critically and carefully. That's what employers are after. The actual content of the job, what it is that they want you to be good at thinking about, is down to whatever career you are drawn to, be it

law, school teaching, accountancy, social work, healthcare ... whatever. They all require people who are good at thinking. Indeed, if a career path didn't require good, clever, creative, flexible and trained thinkers, then that career is likely to be shunted off to AI in the coming years”.

When philosophy is presented in these terms its value seems more obvious. What employer would not want an employee who (a) had chosen a degree which encourages rigour of thought and problem solving and (b) is the kind of individual who is drawn to examining and interrogating ideas for the benefit of the employer/colleagues or clients.

Emma Roche

“PROBLEMS ARE BEST DEALT WITH BY THINKING. AND PHILOSOPHY TEACHES YOU HOW BEST TO THINK - CLEARLY; CRITICALLY; CAREFULLY.”

Philosophy is therefore a great foundation for a range of careers. I read philosophy at university knowing I wanted to be a lawyer. It was the sage advice from my cousin (who at the time was a criminal barrister) that I should read a subject that I was passionate about and would enjoy. I therefore read philosophy at university knowing that on completion I would immediately begin my legal qualifications (at the time about 50% of newly qualified lawyers were non-law undergraduates). I am still, to this day, very grateful for this advice because philosophy is a discipline that I have used throughout my life both professionally and personally. It is important to think about your choice of degree in a wider context.

Whilst a degree in philosophy enabled me to pursue a career in law it can equally provide the foundational skills which would be relevant to a full spectrum of career options from law, accounting or finance through to careers such as a government ethicist, filmmaker, journalist or a computer scientist. Philosophy helps to facilitate meaningful discussion, to step outside normative beliefs and to disagree agreeably. These are really useful skills for any career.

It is also interesting to anticipate the future of AI and the role philosophy may play in a career with it. Aristotle wanted to understand the nature of

beings and their functions. He might view AI as a fascinating artefact of human ingenuity, perhaps seeing it as a tool that extends human capacity for communication and knowledge retrieval. He may categorise AI inventions like ChatGPT within his framework of "techne" or craftsmanship, considering it as an example of human beings using their rational faculties to create something useful.

However, Aristotle might also raise questions about the limitations of AI. He might inquire into the extent of its understanding and its capacity for moral reasoning, and suggest that it is something we may end up relying on too much rather than thinking for ourselves. Aristotle emphasised the importance of practical wisdom and virtuous action, so he might question whether AI could possess such qualities or merely simulate them.

Philosophy graduates could help navigate the complexities of our rapidly evolving technological landscape. They are armed with a nuanced understanding of ethics, critical thinking and human values. It means they can serve as stewards of ethical AI development, advocating for transparency, accountability, and the protection of human rights. Their expertise in philosophy of mind could contribute to discussions on the nature of consciousness and the ethical implications of creating sentient machines. Philosophy graduates could therefore facilitate meaningful human-machine interaction, designing AI systems that prioritise empathy, inclusivity, ethical decision-making and possibly even AI rights!

Putting degree choices to one side for a moment, we must not forget that philosophy is also an important and practical tool to help us live well and in ways that we can flourish. It helps us think about purpose, what we value and our own moral compass. Socrates,

Plato and Aristotle were the first psychotherapists, psychologists and life coaches. You only need to look at how popular the Stoic movement is becoming with various celebrities such as Adrian Edmonson and athletes such as Mark Tuitert practising and advocating Stoicism as way of life. It is for this reason that, alongside being a lawyer, I qualified as a philosophical life coach. I wanted to learn how to use the philosophical art of inquiry to specifically help people find the courage to understand themselves, find purpose and also to have a different sort of impact on the world by connecting with it more meaningfully.

“ULTIMATELY PHILOSOPHY TEACHES US TO THINK CRITICALLY, TO BE OPEN TO AND TO RESPECT THE FACT THAT THERE MAY BE MORE THAN ONE WAY TO VIEW A PROBLEM.”

Ultimately philosophy teaches us to think critically, to be open to and to respect the fact that there may be more than one way to view a problem. In an age that is so information-rich, philosophy teaches us that wisdom and knowledge are different. Knowledge is the accumulation of facts, information, and skills acquired through education, experience, or learning. Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge and experience to make sound judgments, decisions, and choices. It involves deep understanding, insight, and discernment about the complexities of life, human nature, morality and the universe. Philosophy teaches us to love wisdom.

Relatively Speaking JOHANNA MITCHELL

THE CEO OF LUMOS EDUCATION RECALLS HER CHILDHOOD

Ihadno idea that I would work as an education consultant until I was in my mid-30s, running a small school for the Lawn Tennis Association. The education part I got from my father and my sense of optimism from my great aunt, Pat. My own experiences of education made me want to help other children. When parents ask me to find a ‘leading’ school or university for their children, I always ask what they mean. If it doesn’t cater to the specific emotional and social needs of their children, it’s leading them nowhere.

My father was an academic. A North Londoner, he attended Haberdashers, after failing the 11+. Prior to this, he was told by his prep school head that he would amount to nothing. Like many young men, he started to thrive at aged 13-14 and went on to have a career in food technology. He was said to have developed the recipe for Quavers crisps whilst at Unilever. His colleagues described him as the Patrick Moore of the food science world. He was the archetypal mad professor and was often to be seen on stage, trying in vain to put his hands into the pockets of his insideout lab coat. His secretary remembers him telephoning her regularly from airports to ask: ‘where am I going?’.

Whilst my father was secular, my Roman Catholic mother was the major force behind my schooling. My father confided that there were two things that filled him most with trepidation: one was the nuns and the second was women, of a certain age, telling Peter Jones’ customer services that they were ‘cross’. The head of my first secondary school, a convent, was the formidable Sister Mary Angela. At parents’ evenings, she would send my father into a spin. At Sister Mary Raymond’s funeral, an elderly piano-teaching nun

with six fingers on one hand, Sister Mary Angela marched to the altar and slammed her coffin lid shut, exclaiming ‘thank God she’s gone!.’ It was pointless getting on the wrong side on Sister Mary Angela.

“I WAS EXPELLED, WITH MY FRIEND ISOBEL, FOR POSTING QUESTIONABLE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE HEAD’S DOOR.”

A gentle soul, who didn’t hold with too much authority, my father sneaked a replacement tape player into my boarding house, right under the housemistress’s nose. My old one had been confiscated for playing Pink Floyd’s The Wall loudly. Later, at another school, I was expelled, with my friend Isobel, for posting questionable photographs on the head’s door in the middle of my night. My father was summoned and when Father President handed him a manila envelope, containing said photographs, my father took them out, examined them and burst into laughter. I loved him for that. Priests didn’t frighten him as much as

Johanna Mitchell

nuns. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the added female dimension. Or the veil.

After this, I had to sit my A levels as an external candidate, at schools which had the same specialist papers. Oakham School was very kind. My father decreed that I would have to self-fund part of my private tuition by working in a launderette and waitressing. I know how to operate a dry-cleaning machine and am a dab hand at silver service. It was a challenging period. Despite being predicted straight As, I lost all my university offers, and had to take up a clearing place. In my work with Lumos Education, I feel an affinity with children who have experienced ruptures in their education.

Post university, I went to live in Paris for a few years, teaching English, working as a fille au pair and doing a postgraduate at the Sorbonne. I wanted to be an academic, like my father – maybe in English or French literature. He himself said he would have liked to have been a Bond hero. Or perhaps, a politician. He saw both as more glamorous. His own father had overseen general election campaigns for Conservative Party central office. So he had some understanding of politics. His one and only student job was delivering Conservative Party campaign leaflets throughout Hampstead and Finchley. No launderettes for him!

Back in London, I joined the civil service. Sir Humprey stalked the corridors of my first department. I remember one senior civil servant telling me that I could only handle confidential files if I put on the pair of white gloves which were in the cabinet, with said files. I didn’t double check invites that had been printed for the Science Minister inviting his guests to the Zuckerman Science Lecture that year, and afterwards to a buffet supper. The letters went out inviting guests to a ‘buffer supper.’ Although this seemed quite appropriate, given some of the audience, the minister was, understandably, not happy.

In London, I began to spend more time with my great aunt Pat, whom I hadn’t known well as a child. She divided her time between London and Sydney, was from the Irish/ Australian branch of the family and a real bon viveur. Unfailingly cheerful, she lunched most days at Frantoio on the Kings Road. Three months pregnant with my youngest daughter, I arrived for a pre-lunch drink and she filled a half pint glass with brandy. When I refused the drink: ‘lily-livered all your generation are! All vegetarian,’ she said. Once her back was turned, I tipped the brandy into a pot plant (which was conspicuously absent on my next visit). Both Pat’s sons had pre-deceased her, but she was just incredibly resilient. Her family history was both entrepreneurial and tragic. Her grandfather, my great, great grandfather, was Charles Yelverton O'Connor, the engineer who constructed Freemantle Harbour. He rode into the sea and shot himself after being criticised, for his work, in the Times. There are two statues commemorating him in Freemantle. Her aunt, my great, great aunt, was Charles’ daughter, Kathleen O’Connor, the celebrated Australian impressionist artist who defied the patriarchy surrounding women artists of her time and lived into her nineties. Pat had some of her paintings in her Chelsea home. My husband and my daughters enjoy painting. Pat lived until 100 and, even in her nursing home, she shared a bottle of good red with her fellow residents every night. I learned a lot from her- mainly that your glass should always be half full.

Some of my dearest friends today are from the civil service, school and university. Interestingly, in my time there, there were a lot of civil servants who had been raised in the Catholic church. Whether or not you continue the religion into adulthood, it does give you a sense of service. I love helping families to navigate global education systems which can seem incredibly complex. Pastoral care is so much better

now and we understand more about the emotional health of the child. There are still key improvements to be made in education, but it's far cry from my experiences in the 1980s.

My father and aunt Pat were givers. Dad loved to help others, young academics and children whom he tutored in chess. He sponsored a young girl’s education in India and, despite being an incredibly busy man, he wrote to her regularly. He didn’t give a fig for money, rank or power. He always said ‘be kind, for others are fighting a harder battle.’ I didn’t understand exactly what he meant then. I do now. We have a picture of Plato on our kitchen wall, with his quote below. My daughters have stuck a moustache on poor Plato. Having both studied ancient Greek, they should know the importance of this great philosopher.

My father was also a man of his generation, without much freedom to express his emotions. He would have had more emotional freedom now. I remember him crying three times: when his first marriage fell apart, when he watched a programme on Siege of Leningrad and on the day of the Brexit referendum result.

I’ve made so many mistakes and continue to do so. So did my father and my aunt. It’s essential to learn from them. And to hold ourselves accountable when things go wrong.

Staying in one’s integrity, and treating people well is not always easy - but it’s the most important thing. My father understood this. With challenge comes growth.

Ancestral lines are not just linear. Their branches grow thick and dense with our colourful ancestors whose loves, hopes and losses were not so very different from ours. When asked, most people can’t remember the names of their great grandparents. How quickly we are forgotten. A reminder to live for now and to do our best work.

Ten Thousand Hours

VICKI ANSTEY

THE COACH AND ENDURANCE SPECIALIST RECALLS HER VARIED LIFE

Igrew up in a tiny village in a fairly remote part of North Yorkshire. I went to Bristol University and really thrived there; I read French and loved it and lived in France for a year as part of that degree. I then went straight into the world of advertising and worked both agency side and then, more latterly, on the client side.

I spent about a decade in advertising, but got to a point of burnout. I started to neglect myself and invest a bit too heavily in the slightly hedonistic lifestyle that advertising involves. I was leading Ikea’s advertising strategy at the age of 24 and managing multimillion media and production budgets. It was a huge upward learning curve and I thrived on that but it was also a lot of pressure. I moved sideways out of advertising for a little while, and joined a social enterprise called We Are What We Do. Their whole ethos was about engaging people in small actions. It was a wonderful organisation and felt so much more fulfilling, but I still hadn’t really found my groove.

I ended up taking a U-turn and going into the fitness industry largely because I had discovered this incredible method called Barre based on ballet movement which literally transformed me physically.

Barre is a strengthening and conditioning component of ballet, and essentially consists of all of the movements that a ballet dancer would do in order to prepare themselves to dance and to develop, build and maintain the right kind of structures and posture in their bodies. I stumbled on this methodology and was completely hooked. With my advertising hat on, I realised that more people needed to know about this incredible methodology and if it could change me and my physique then it could also change the lives of other people.

I therefore took a bit of a gamble on setting up a studio here in London in Richmond and that was the first dedicated Barre studio in the UK. Nobody had ever heard of Barre and I was taking a huge risk. I took on an old office space in Richmond and created a studio that felt like a home from home. People came – and they queued around the corner to be a part of it. I ran that business for 12 years.

However, over the course of that 12-year period I left a very long term relationship. I had been in that relationship for 20 years, married for 12 and I found the relationship stifling, and more latterly quite coercive. It didn’t enable me to be the best version of myself and it took a really long time for me to get the courage to leave. My childhood had conditioned me for that kind of relationship. I grew up thinking I had to live up to a certain narrative and stay in my lane and live quite a gendered expectation of how I would go on to live my life.

After I left the relationship, I heard that SAS: Who Dares Wins was inviting women to apply for the programme. I mentioned this to a few people and I was encouraged to apply for it which I did and then I ended up on that

programme and really discovering what my capabilities were. It was quite a lifechanging experience and I got through to the final stages of the show. There was a lot of press surrounding it because it was the first year that women participated so there was a lot of expectation and speculation about how we would be treated and whether it was right or not. Even the team of special forces operatives who run the show weren’t quite sure how it would all work out. I had to face fears I had had throughout my life, such as heights and water. I had to really believe in myself.

What I realised from doing the show was that embracing vulnerability is a very powerful thing. The idea of facing my fears became quite intoxicating and I entered this phase in my life where I said yes to everything. I was at a press event for Who Dares Wins and someone asked me if I would like to row an ocean and I just instinctively said yes. I had grown up with this fear of deep open water as I had had a near drowning incident when I was 12 with my sister and just avoided going in deep water my whole life.

To take on this new task, I ended up doing cognitive behavioural therapy and open water swimming coaching. I had various panic attacks along the way trying to deal with the underlying reason for that fear in the hope that my fear responses wouldn’t threaten my life or the lives of others that I was on the boat with. Then I embarked on this huge campaign to row across the pacific from San Francisco to Hawaii for a distance of 4,000 kilometres. We got the boat ready, and raised £70,000 worth of sponsorship. We packed our boat up with all of the kit and supplies that we needed – and then Covid happened and the race was cancelled.

Vicki Anstey

That was soul-destroying. The two crew mates who I was meant to row with, and who I had known for a significant period of time, didn’t defer their places so they weren’t able to do it at any further point in the future. I had the choice either to walk away from the whole thing or to find new crew mates. There were too many people involved to let down. It’s not easy to find people with the resources and capabilities and flexibility to do something like that but I did eventually find them. Since we were in lockdown, I didn’t meet one of them until we got to the start line in 2021. We had to go through all the processes of taking on skills and assimilating knowledge that you need to do an ocean row through lockdown. The gyms were all closed so we trained in our living rooms. You have to learn chart navigation, you have to master radio communication, you have to do first aid at sea courses. All sorts of courses were required for participation so we did a lot of that on Zoom.

We set off at the end of May 2021 and we arrived 60 days, 17 hours and 6 minutes later. Sadly, the team dynamic from the start was really problematic. There was some really bad behaviour – a lot of psychological game-playing, stonewalling, and bullying isolation tactics. I found it a very difficult experience. It’s important to remember that in the run up to the row we also hadn’t had the opportunity to spend time together, and therefore to explore our reasons for doing it, and to share our insecurities and fears. It was a really hostile environment. I was also seasick for 23 days which was very debilitating. When I was off the oars I felt horrendous. The truth is that you can’t let conflict escalate on a tiny boat in the middle of an ocean so I really had to just tolerate and accept the situation I was in. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable but we did pull together as a team at times and ultimately we got the world record.

I learned a lot through that process, not least about how to manage your thoughts and emotions and how to tolerate really

emotionally challenging situations where there is literally no way out. As a result of my experiences, I have become a stress and resilience coach. I am a qualified coach of a mind-set methodology that was developed for the All Blacks Rugby team back in 2001 when they kept losing at World Cup Finals. I have become really fascinated about how our brains work with thought and fear and stress and how we are more in control of that than we think and how important choice and autonomy is. For people in toxic environments it is helpful to be reminded of the fact that we are ultimately in control of our lives however difficult and challenging our situations might be. One thing that we are always in control of is how we think about things and therefore how we influence our emotional responses.

“FOR PEOPLE IN TOXIC ENVIRONMENTS IT IS HELPFUL TO BE REMINDED OF THE FACT THAT WE ARE ULTIMATELY IN CONTROL OF OUR LIVES.”

The thing I try to make really clear is I am not advocating that emotionally challenging workplace situations should be tolerated but if there is a situation that you can’t get out for a period of time – as I couldn’t on that boat – then there are some really useful strategies that you can employ to get on top of your thoughts. It’s about understanding how our stress responses work. We can regain perspective, take a step back, and choose what kind of head state we want to be in in a given situation. That’s a skill. You have to practice it. It’s not something that you master and conquer and become an expert in for the rest of your life. What makes a difference is having

that little bit of biological literacy, and understanding of basic neuroscience. If we don’t do that, we can be really hard on ourselves. These days, we get extremely stressed about things that are not life threatening at all so our stress responses are completely at odds with reality. If we understood that, we would be able to cut ourselves a lot more slack.

After I did the row I was left with a sense of lost faith in teamwork, and brought the whole campaign to an end. I made myself a promise that I wasn’t going to become this person who had to keep doing more and more crazy things but apparently I have become that person. I just kind of knew that I needed to put some things right. So I asked a friend if she would run across the Arctic with me. We did a 250 kilometre footrace carrying everything that we needed to survive and it was an incredible experience in minus 35 degree temperatures. You literally couldn’t stop or you would get hypothermia or frostbite so it was very much about regulating your pace, and not getting too hot, or getting too cold. I have also done another ultra-distance run covering 250 kilometres across Kenya – in obviously, completely different conditions.

I am now training really hard to do The World’s Toughest Bike Race (The Race Across America) which is a 3000 mile West to East Coast race. It’s quite established in the US, but not that well-known in the UK. We are a team of four women, and hoping to beat the world record which is 6 days 15 hours. That’s fast. We have to do an average of 19.3 miles per hour, so it’s non-stop 24 hours a day, with the four of us on a shift rotation pattern. We will get to sleep a bit but only in vehicles that are constantly moving. I am not a cyclist any more than I was a rower so for me it’s all about showing people that they can do anything and train capabilities that perhaps they didn’t think they had.

Tomorrow’s Leaders LUCY EPPS

THE NUTRITIONIST EXPLAINS WHY CEOS NEED TO WATCH THEIR EMPLOYEES' DIETS

Iwasbrought up with a really strong food ethic. My mum always worked in food, and understood its importance even before organic became trendy. She always discussed its importance for health. By my 20s, like most people, I thought I was invincible. I was working long hours in TV, often into the small hours.

I ended up getting an autoimmune disease called Graves’ disease. With this disease, your immune system produces antibodies which attack the thyroid gland, a hugely important gland that effects practically all cells in the body. The symptoms include a very high heart rate – sometimes as high as 200 – leading to weight loss and anxiety. Sometimes my hand would shake so much I wouldn’t be able to put the phone on the receiver on my desk. I remember fearing anyone that wanted to discuss a project with me at my desk because I couldn’t point to anything on my computer screen because my hand was shaking so much.

I didn’t understand what was going on and it was affecting my eyes - one of them was closing and the other one was open wider than it should be. I ended up getting diagnosed via an ophthalmologist at Moorfields. I then went on the medication which suppresses your thyroid gland but obviously it doesn’t do anything to your immune system which is where the problem is. Over time I got my thyroid levels under control.

I was feeling a lot better but always knew deep down that this was masking the actual problem. I had to re-evaluate things, and look at lifestyle. I went on sick leave, and looked into diet. I thought I knew a lot about food because of my mum, but I realised that I didn’t and there is so much science in it as well. My degree

had been in English literature and I always thought that was how my brain worked. I didn’t think I was sciency at all. There was so much information online with all these different people telling you what to do. It was confusing so I went to sign up to study nutritional therapy for three and a half years, which included a year of Biomedicine and clinical training. I now see clients on a 1:1 consultation basis online.

This is a different area to being a nutritionist. A nutritionist works in public health in a nutshell. You have dieticians who work in hospitals and for conditions such as kidney disease where patients are on dialysis or with acute cases in intensive care. I went to the College of Naturopathic Medicine. There were some amazing lecturers who were very evidence-based; as

I was studying I became more and more committed to a science-based approach, which my clinical approach is informed by.

There are a bewildering array of media stories out there surrounding food. As a general rule, if anyone is talking in a reductionist way or very explicitly about things, it’s best to be cautious about that report. The dose makes the poison with any food. For example, we know that processed meat and red meat is associated with an increased risk of colon cancer and cardiovascular disease but that doesn’t mean you can’t include them as part of a wider dietary pattern. Often the headlines will grab parts of a study essentially they will cherry pick something but they won’t look at the finer details of the study.

Lucy Epps

“ THROUGH DIET, I MANAGED TO PUT THE GRAVES’ DISEASE INTO REMISSION.”

Through diet, I managed to put the Graves’ disease into remission but what I really noticed was that it’s not just about food. Your overall lifestyle is so important too, and to do with sleep, stress levels, and physical activity. These other pillars are really important alongside nutrition and are integral to nutritional therapy.

In terms of the work landscape, once you leave you’re on your own. I am registered with BANT which is the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine and I am registered with CNHC – Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council. BANT are doing lots of work with NHS doctors, pharmacists and other health practitioners to get our names out there. I think it is being more and more recognised there does need to be more of a dialogue between nutritional therapy and the mainstream.

My practice focuses on cardiovascular health and women’s health. Sometimes men can have a more transactional

relationship with food than women. If you grew up in the 90s, you had Kate Moss heroin chic. If you look back on the models they are very underweight and that is all we saw. I think a lot of women are not nourishing their bodies the way we should be because of how society views the shape a woman’s body should be. Even before the 90s, you had Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. It’s so damaging to the body, as well as to reproductive health and to bone health. Then they think they should look a certain way and in terms of exercise its cardio because they think that will burn the most calories and there is nothing about health and nourishing the body which would be resistance training.

I knew I had to be entrepreneurial, so I began doing corporate talks for banks and law firms as well as 1:1 consultations. It’s been a steep learning curve in marketing!

“DELOITTE ESTIMATES THAT POOR MENTAL HEALTH IS COSTING EMPLOYERS £56 BILLION ANNUALLY.”

I have provided corporate talks on the relationship between diet

and mental health, specifically the gut:brain:connection. Deloitte estimates that poor mental health is costing employers £56 billion annually. Meanwhile, 48 per cent of workers say their workplace hasn’t checked on their mental health in 2022. It’s a very complex area and the research is really scratching at the surface of the gut microbiome but we now know there is a bi-directional relationship between the gut and the brain. Our guts contain trillions of bacteria and broadly speaking, high numbers of favourable aka “good” bacteria and lower numbers of less favourable bacteria have been associated with healthy individuals. When we eat fibrous foods such as wholegrains, pulses and veg, we are essentially feeding our commensal gut bacteria as they ferment these fibres and as a result produce by products that are known as short chain fatty acids. These fatty acids are intrinsic to the health of our colons but also have far reaching beneficial effects of our bodies, including our hormones, skin, immune system, cardiovascular system and mental health.

“SCIENCE IS CONSTANTLY EVOLVING, AND WE ARE NOW AT THE POINT WHERE WE CAN MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE TOWARDS OUR HEALTH.”

Science is constantly evolving, and we are now at the point where we can make a real difference towards our health and prevent many chronic diseases with the right dietary patterns. We need to think about what it could do for ourselves, the NHS and our economy if we were to pay more attention to diet.

To book a consultation with Lucy go to lucyeppsnutrition.co.uk

Lucy Epps

Those Are My Principles MICHAEL MOSZYNSKI

FOUNDER AND CEO OF LONDON ADVERTISING ON HOW GOVERNMENT CAN SHAPE THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT

Iamnot a fan of Government trying to ‘pick winners’ in the economy (remember DeLorean?) but it does seem to me that some help to encourage people to start-up new enterprises is a good thing, especially when our economy was flat-lining in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Launching a new global ad agency, LONDON Advertising, two weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, my partner and I received no financial assistance from the then Labour

Government, so we had to risk our posttax savings to fund our new enterprise. So, along with a number of other business people, I lobbied the Government for this to change and in 2012 was delighted to see George Osborne introduce the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme to encourage investment in start-ups (the most risky stage of any business). This was the most rewarding incentive for investors to put money into new companies anywhere on the planet.

Unfortunately, Osbourne’s 2012 budget was overshadowed by the ‘Pasty Tax’ row and the SEIS announcement was not featured in the news. I rang the Business Editor of the Times to complain and was astonished to find out that even he was not aware of it. So, on the spot I made a proposal that my start-up firm would put up £100,000 to fund another start-up if the Times would cover the story.

“

I MADE A PROPOSAL THAT MY START-UP FIRM WOULD PUT UP

£100,000 TO FUND ANOTHER STARTUP.”

He got his Editor to agree, who then invited me to speak at The Times CEO Conference. This enabled me to persuade the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to announce it at a business event at No.10. The next day, the front page story of the Times Business Section led with “Clarion call for the next big thing comes all the way from Downing Street” with details of our a prize of £100,000 to fund a new digital agency and how people could apply for our Dragon’s Den-style competition. In fact over 1,400 people answered the call from over 60 countries, including Iraq, Moldovia and Vietnam. The winners were two young UK graduates who had the idea of automatically turning tweets into video messaging, using tags linking specific words to relevant Getty stock footage. To cut

Michael Moszynski

a long story short, our £100,000 SEIS investment helped the company secure £4m of investment to build and launch the product, making it the most funded tech start-up in Europe. We named it “Wordeo” and in its first week it secured more users than Snapchat did in its first six months. Unfortunately, whilst hundreds of thousands of people tried Wordeo, it did not achieve ‘product market fit’ so we did not get the repeat business to fuel our ‘rocket’.

“

SINCE 2012 OVER 53,000 NEW BUSINESSES

HAVE USED THE SEIS SCHEME, GENERATING OVER £50B OF NEW INVESTMENT IN THE UK.”

But our initiative did help promote SEIS and the early stage investors in Wordeo benefited from up to 78% tax rebates on their losses. Since 2012 over 53,000 new businesses have used the SEIS scheme, generating over £50 billion of new investment in the UK, and many of them have found longterm success.

So, whilst any dream of becoming a tech billionaire was put on ice, it was fortunate to still have the day job of running the ad agency, which we had built to become a robust business.

The challenge running a small to medium sized business is how can the Founders be rewarded for all their investment, risk and hard work and reward their staff without selling out to a bigger company?

Well, in 2014 the Conservative Government introduced Employment Ownership Trusts (EOT), with the objective of helping to create more

employee-owned businesses.

For the owners, it means they can take any unpaid dividends and future profits (to the value of the business) without paying any income or capital gains tax. Plus they can continue to run the business without working for a new boss. For the employees, there is absolutely no downside – and they even can access a tax-free bonus whilst the founders are being paid out of the profits. Once the founders have been paid, the Trust can issue the profits as dividends to the staff. Or, if the company is sold in the future, then the value is shared out between the employees. And for the business, it has a brilliant mechanism to attract and retain great staff, retain its independence and create a true legacy for its founders.

My partner and I sold 100% of our shares to our own EOT (you can choose the amount with a minimum of 51 per cent) in 2018 and last year completed our five-year earnout period.

We survived a terrible time under Covid when we lost 80 per cent of our revenue in one month and in our recovery plan set out financial targets which we have met and allowed us to pay all our staff a one month bonus at year end. As I explained to our team at our end of year party, if we achieve the same result over the next three years my partner and I will have had the value of our shares paid off and the value of their bonus in year three will be worth a year’s salary each. You could describe it as the ultimate win-win.

The third area which I believe this Government has helped successfully grow is our tech sector, which is now the third largest in the world, with our tech startups valued at £996 billion. This is the result of the quality of our educational institutions, the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs and underpinned by the SEIS scheme. As we have seen with the recent Microsoft announcement of its £2.5 billion

European AI hub in the UK, we are well placed to embrace the benefits of AI. I believe Rishi Sunak is correct to identify that the UK can take a leadership role in the technology which will help us grow our productivity. Only by growing our economy will we be able to fund services to help the less fortunate in society. I am witnessing AI’s impact through my advisory role with one of the world’s most successful AI companies. This business is dramatically changing the financial performance – and significantly reducing the carbon footprint – of many of the world’s most energyintensive businesses. Of note this is a US company that decided to co-locate in London. This is another win-win outcome that can in time be extended to all sorts of business activity and help not just make more profits, allowing for more investment and jobs, but also make the world a greener place.

So in conclusion, whilst I believe Government should not be a crutch that businesses rely on to support them, I do believe Government can help create a positive environment to help unleash the country’s entrepreneurial potential.

And if you were wondering what we did to transform our fortunes when we almost went out of business during Covid, please click on this QR code to watch a short video of our campaign which Sky news described as “for a very unusual client”.

GUY OPPERMAN AND SIOBHAN BAILLIE AT THE EAST INDIA CLUB

It’s not often you have three heavyweight politicians in one room but that’s what happened at the East India Club where the great and the good turned out in support of Guy Opperman and Siobhan Baillie, both of whom will face competitive reelection campaigns, in July. Hosting the event alongside Finito was Robert Halfon, the outgoing Apprenticeships and Skills Minister. The event was kindly sponsored by Lorenzo Zaccheo, the owner and founder of the international haulage company Alcaline.

Baillie began by telling the room the story of her ascent to Parliament. “I grew up on a council estate and

flunked all my exams,” she recalled, before attributing her success to love of hard work. “What I do like is to work – I will work and work until I achieve something.” Looking ahead to the General Election, Baillie said: “It is a genuine pleasure to work for Rishi Sunak. He is always incredibly thoughtful. What we are doing is solving quite a few long term problems but not necessarily getting the air time on the news.”

“IT IS A GENUINE PLEASURE TO WORK FOR RISHI SUNAK.”

When Baillie handed over to Opperman, he was realistic: “Let’s be honest. There are very few of you in this room who think the Conservatives are going to win the next general election. Most of you would like that, but at the moment you think it’s not going to happen. But the race is not over until it has been run. I admit that it is year 14 of the marriage and we are not quite as attractive as we were. Furthermore, it is a factual reality that we have dealt with 12 per cent inflation. There are three wars of real significance that are affecting this country but who is best placed to take us back to growth and prosperity?”

Guy Opperman and Siobhan Baillie

At which, Opperman and Baillie took questions, beginning with Zaccheo, who outlined a major problem in the haulage industry. He explained that there is currently a 90/180 day rule for travellers to the EU/Shengen area which is hugely impacting drivers’ ability to carry out their jobs. As things stand, Zaccheo pointed out, the Border Force penalties are not fit for purpose and provide zero incentive to drivers or hauliers to report clandestine entrants. It is only the innocent and not organised crime that are being penalised.

“LET’S BE HONEST. THERE ARE VERY FEW OF YOU IN THIS ROOM WHO THINK THE CONSERVATIVES ARE GOING TO WIN THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION.”

Opperman replied, plainly taking the problem seriously. “I am acutely aware that there is an issue here and we are very conscious of it. It relates to regulation in the Treasury. So bear with us: we are working on it to try and find a way forward.”

Zaccheo also raised the question of cabotage which isn’t being enforced effectively by the Drivers and Vehicles Standards Agency (DVSA,) and therefore taking work away from UK haulers. In addition, Zaccheo argued that very low pay in parts of the EU for HGV drivers is driving the movement of clandestine entrants into northern France. There low-paid eastern European drivers are easily convinced to transport immigrants from the east and the south and drop them in supposedly “secure” parking areas in northern France where they then gain access to UK vehicles.

This led to a discussion on immigration with all three MPs having recently voted for the Rwanda Bill. Baillie explained “we can’t be squeamish when it comes

to dealing with the problem, but let’s not forget that this is a very kind and compassionate country. We’re not going to be able to express our values if we’re not tackling illegal immigration hard. The Conservatives are being battered on the BBC, but it’s not compassionate to do nothing.”

Baillie spoke also about her successful campaign to extend the childcare provision. “The reality for families at the moment is that childcare is a second mortgage,” she explained, before adding: “Housing is the big ticket issue which needs to be dealt with.”

“THE

REALITY FOR FAMILIES AT THE MOMENT IS THAT CHILDCARE IS A SECOND MORTGAGE.”

Opperman took a question on the apprenticeship levy. “The apprenticeship levy is very easy to announce but really tough to deliver and it takes years and years. Most of the product of Robert Halfon’s great work won’t be seen until 10 years from now. Childcare’s the same: we’re subsidising childcare to get more people back to work to get more taxes in the long time. It’s about policy – we have to deliver the reality on the ground.”

Siobhan Baillie

Guy Opperman

Once the questions and answers had happened, Halfon had the floor. “After 25 years both as candidate and as an MP I’ve decided to step down. In 2008, I went into a constituency in Harlow. I walk into a grim concrete building on a rainy day, and sit down with people from the Prince’s Trust and Catch-22. They start talking to me about skills and apprenticeships and how they’d love to do them, but the opportunities weren’t on offer. I came out of that building and said to myself, if I get elected, I’d make it my mission to champion apprenticeships and skills.”

“WHAT WE’VE DONE ON APPRENTICESHIPS AND SCHOOLS IS SADLY THE BESTKEPT SECRET IN GOVERNMENT.”

Fast forward 25 years and Halfon has been as good as his word and can look on an impressive array of achievement. “What we’ve done on apprenticeships and schools is sadly the best-kept secret in government. Now we have apprenticeships for everything from aeronautics to zoology. Further education used to be called the Cinderella sector; I hated that name with every fibre of my being. I went to visit FE colleges all over the country. I always used to say that Cinderella became a member of the Royal Family and we need to banish the Ugly Sisters of snobbery and underresourcing which we have done.”

What the future holds for these three MPs only time will tell. But there’s no doubt that these are parliamentarians of rare passion, who show that politics can be a fulfilling and exciting career where there’s a real chance to make a difference.

The event took place at the East India Club

Judith O’Driscoll and Rara Plumptre

Tim Clark and Spencer Pitfield

Jacopo Moratto and Ethan Harries

Stephen James

Event sponsor Lorenzo Zaccheo

Jamila Robertson

Guy Opperman, Siobhan Baillie, Robert Halfon and Lorenzo Zaccheo

Ronel Lehmann

FEATURES

Deep dives into the issues which matter

Raphael Holt on the elephant in the room

How do we discover meaning in our careers? 54

WORK WOES

Wikipedia.org

64

78

OLYMPIC SPIRIT

Lessons from the greatest show on earth

Wikipedia.org

FRANKLY SPEAKING

Lloyd Wright’s tragedies

HOW STEPHEN FRY WENT FROM COMEDIAN TO THE NATION’S MENTOR

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

Growing up is necessarily a provincial experience. It has to be: such a small proportion of the world is presented to us at that time. As a result, something like the following seems to happen: we come into the realisation gradually that our family’s experience 0f life, while it might be informative in numerous respects, also has to be a sort of red herring: we are not them and are not meant to be. Instead our obligation is to grow in some new direction in order to be ourselves.

What this all has to do with Stephen Fry I shall come onto in a moment. For now it is enough to say that predicament of youth can engender bafflement, even acute forms of anxiety. It was the novelist Sir Martin Amis who pointed out that nothing is so usual as what your father does for a living. He knew that from rich personal experience, his father being the equally famous novelist Sir Kingsley Amis. But many people have the opposite sense that one’s essential narrative might lie elsewhere. If this is one’s suspicion then what you badly need are clues as to what that might realistically consist of.

For me, growing up in rural Surrey in a good-natured suburb of lawyers and accountants, the existence of a group of comedians in the 1980s came as thunderbolts. Looking back, I realise they were also signposts. The moment I saw Rowan Atkinson on our TV screens as Mr Bean, and saw my parents crying with laughter, and felt the first true belly laughs I’d known rushing through my being, I felt a new scope rush in. This must be a very common experience: here we are in our quotidian home, trying our best and seeking to be good; but out there, on the screen is another kind of life, which seems so hilarious, and so silly – and therefore somehow kind, and decidedly blessed. It is the world of celebrity and laughter. When we are young, it can seem like the most desirable thing in the world – full of high definition colour, and pitch perfect

performance, a sort of paradise where outcome is in accordance with aim. Of course what happens at that time in our lives is a broad revelation – what Philip Larkin calls ‘the importance of elsewhere’. It’s only later that you examine its particulars; how the sheer scale of possibilities relates to oneself. When I saw Rowan Atkinson terrified to dive off the top floor of a swimming board, I didn’t, as the world can now see, decide to be a slapstick comedian. But I think I did decide around that time not to be an accountant. This decision was further crystallised when I saw John Cleese in Fawlty Towers, the frenetic clockwork pace of that sitcom, causing an escalating delight. It was shored up further by other experiences: French and Saunders, Smith and Jones, and later Harry Enfield.

“IT WAS A FORM OF PROCLAIMING OF THEMSELVES BEFORE THE WORLD – THEY COULD CAUSE LAUGHTER IN YOU WHILE MAKING YOU MORE INTELLIGENT.”

But then there was another pair who spoke to me in a different way, and opened up, I now see, far larger possibilities: this was a pair of Cambridge graduates called Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Hugh Laurie seemed to me then – and still does –just about the most gifted person on earth. He is funny. He is a brilliant actor (see especially House). He plays piano, sings, and plays guitar beautifully. Almost unnoticed, he is the best comic songwriter of his generation (‘I don’t care if people laugh/I’m in love with Steffi Graff’). His novel The Gun Seller

is a delight. He was also responsible for A Bit of Fry and Laurie, my vote for the greatest sketch show of all time. It was Laurie who made me pick up guitar and piano, and later write music. But of the two it was Stephen Fry who really interested me, and who pointed a more definite way. In this country, the trajectory is told everywhere from the life of Shakespeare to the novels of Dickens: you’ve got to get from where you are to London. And it’s from London that I write this.

What was it about Stephen Fry? It was partly because however troubled he was, he was so obviously kind – though over time I would find out that he could be rather hard on himself. But I don’t think it was primarily that. For me, it's all to do with his use of language, which came as the most wonderful and joyous surprise of my life. It seemed astonishing to me that people could speak like this, bequeath you a vocabulary as they made you laugh. It was a form of proclaiming of themselves before the world – they could cause laughter in you while making you more intelligent. If you were receptive to it, it had to form you; Fry and Laurie made you want to be them, because it looked like an awful lot of fun. But not just that, it made you feel that if you could enter a little into their world, that you would know some special set of secrets. That way maybe you could build a life –one that was somehow true to a high set of possibilities.

These sorts of suspicions can only take you so far. Because pretty soon, life happens to you. As Mike Tyson beautifully put it: “Everybody has a plan until someone punches you in the face.” What happens is that life punches you in the face – and anyway, the world our heroes inhabits nowadays has so little to do with the one we end up entering. We specialise in the vanished paradise and the discarded Eden.

Nevertheless my preparations for a world which would have gone by

the time I got there were unusually thorough. I think I must have been 11 or 12, when my younger brother Tim – who would have been nine or ten –began learning and performing Fry and Laurie sketches to family and friends and sometimes to perfect strangers in restaurants. One particular sketch which we performed entailed Stephen Fry as a pompous late night talkshow host, talking on and on in the most preposterous way: “Is our language too ironic to sustain Hitlerian styles? Would his language simply have run false in our ears?” My younger brother would play a baffled Hugh Laurie, who can’t understand what on earth the Stephen Fry character is saying. Amusingly, as

I look back on it now, I had absolutely no idea what the language meant. This created a situation of considerable amusement when I performed before elderly relatives the following:

“Language is my mother, my brother, my father, my whore, my mistress , my niece, my check-out girl. Language is the dew on a fresh apple. Language is a creak on the stair. Language is a ray of light as you pluck from an old bookshelf, a halfforgotten book of erotic memoirs.”

I had no idea what any of it meant but I loved the music of it. It was the idea that language is a kind of music, that we can have fun with it, and play with it – and therefore, I suppose, that it has

glorious function. It means that we can burst pomposity in this sketch, but of course, if you accept its use, then you must also admit that it can lead you onto new worlds. It can prise things open.

“HE LOVED THINGS SO MUCH THAT HE HAD TO ENACT THAT LOVE.”

As I continued my studies in Stephen Fry, I found in him an educator –indeed, a sort of a remote and unpaid mentor. The power of this mentorship seemed to me no less important simply because he didn’t know who I was, and would almost certainly never know. This didn’t matter one iota so long as I was receptive and so long as Fry continued to build his career around the communication of the things he loved. It is this love of things which I think defines Fry; it is a generosity in him which keeps spilling out. As I would go on in life, some people in the public eye would also give me great gifts. Amis, who I mentioned earlier, would give me Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov; Julian Barnes, whose books I could never get on with, offered up Flaubert in almost every interview he gave; Gabriel Garcia Marquez recommended me Virginia Woolf and Juan Rulfo; John Updike showed me Henry Green and so on and so forth. It is perhaps the loveliest of all lessons for young people to know that in life, as in literature or art or music, there are a series of invisible threads to be grasped and which lead to pleasures you never could have imagined.

But Fry, I think, was different to all these people. He loved things so much that he had to enact that love. He didn’t just tell you in no uncertain times that he loved PG Wodehouse; he played Jeeves on television. He didn’t just love the novels of Evelyn Waugh, he directed a film of Vile Bodies, replacing it with

Alamy.com

the far better title Bright Young Things. And then there was Oscar Wilde, who he rather resembles, and who he often seemed to embody in his chat show appearances, and then on film in Wilde, the role which he was born to play, and which he played beautifully. The world is a catty place and some would say that Fry has always been in some sense derivative. The argument runs that he has borrowed these personas and that there is accordingly some sort of gap within where the real Stephen Fry ought to be. The somewhat churlish columnist Peter Hitchens has called Fry ‘the stupid person’s idea of an intelligent person’. I dislike this remark not just because he repeats it in print regularly with a kind of calculated cruelty, but because it isn’t true. Fry didn’t write The Importance of Being Earnest, it’s true, but he has done more than anyone to proclaim Wilde’s genius at his having done so. I don’t think Fry, clever as he is, has ever made gigantic claims for himself; others have done so, seeing his value. In time, the nation reached something like a consensus around this. They loved to hear him talk – but I think they loved really to hear him talk about his loves. These seemed to have no obvious limit: in addition to Wilde, Wodehouse, and Waugh there was cricket, Paddington bear, nature, taxis, Abba, Sherlock Holmes, Ancient Greece, poetry, London, America. Really, we began to realise, he loves, or is capable of loving everything. This spirit, I note, is far closer to the Christian ideal than anything I have seen in the public domain written by Peter Hitchens. Hitchens’ remark also lacks empathy. We now know what Fry was going through, and that he has suffered all his life with bipolar disorder which can lead him into manic moodswings; he has lived all his life with suicide as a realistic possibility. Here again, he has done more than anyone to raise public awareness about this health condition in his very important documentary The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive which

aired in 2016, some four years before the pandemic when mental health really began to top the agenda.

“WE NOW KNOW WHAT FRY WAS GOING THROUGH, AND THAT HE HAS SUFFERED ALL HIS LIFE WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER WHICH CAN LEAD HIM INTO MANIC MOODSWINGS.”

His condition, which wasn’t widely understood at the time, was most obvious when Fry famously left the cast of the Simon Gray play Cell Mates in 1994. In the days before mobile phones, there was genuine worry about his whereabouts and the fear that something appalling might have happened to him. Gray was upset at the time that his play had been, quite literally, upstaged, and wrote about it at book length in Fat Chance (1995). Nowadays, I doubt Fry would get to the end of his street without his whereabouts being broadly known; in those days, when he left the play midrun, there was a genuine fear among

his friends that he had vanished for good. Today, he is one of those people so famous, that he will never again be allowed to go missing.

If I were to compile a list of Fry’s dislikes, I feel I might reduce it to one thing: cruelty. His friend Christopher Hitchens has sometimes been called the hater par excellence, but I think Fry is a greater purveyor of dismay at human cruelty than Hitchens was, because, on the flipside, I think Fry’s kindness is more active. The only kind of successful hate involves consistently pivoting to love, and my sense has always been that Fry is good at this. One early article which influenced me was his great defence of Freddie Mercury which is collected in his 1992 collection of journalism Paperweight, where – I am quoting from memory here since I can’t find the article online – he speaks of Mercury as having entertained with a ‘chutzpah bordering on genius’ and takes to task those who found his lifestyle immoral. Its tenor was really ‘judge not less ye be judged’ – and again, one feels that Fry is always actively generous in spirit in a way which ties in with the Gospels far more than one might expect from a man who shared the stage in religious debates with Christopher Hitchens.

His career grew in so many directions that it cannot easily be summarised. It has proceeded along novels (I especially

Alamy.com

recommend the first two The Liar (1991) and The Hippopotamus (1994), memoir (Moab is My Washpot (1997) may in fact be his best book) broadcasting (his best work here may be his brilliant hosting of the BAFTAS, which he did 12 times, finally giving up in 2018), TV shows (Jeeves and Wooster, Kingdom), a marvellous poetry handbook The Ode Less Travelled (2005) which was instrumental in my ever publishing any poetry myself, as well as a host of illuminating TV documentaries, TV interviews, podcasts, blogs, posts, tweets and many other things besides. Fame is difficult to quantify but by any measure Fry is among the most famous people in the UK today.

My fame however is very easy to quantify: it is nil, and I am currently doing all I can to keep it so. However, just because I have ended up lucky enough to spend a lot of time carrying out interesting journalistic assignments,

I must admit that it has involved meeting famous people of many different shapes and sizes all for the purpose of interviewing them. Some of them, from Sting and Andre Agassi to Sir David Attenborough, have been very famous indeed. Some like Sir Tom Stoppard, Clive James and Sir Anthony Gormley have a mystique to those who mind about literature or art. Others aren’t famous at all to almost everyone, though they might be revered in their field. Out of all the categories of people I have come to most dread, I would single out those who are just a tiny bit famous as the ones to watch: amid the dim lights of that particular inferno, ego can be at its most pronounced.

At any rate, as you go through your journalistic career, you realise as you go on in your work that you are starting to meet your heroes. But even then, I never thought I’d meet Stephen Fry. What exactly is going on psychologically

when we meet our heroes? Dr Paul Hokemeyer, the brilliant author of The Imposter Syndrome, tells me: “Our fascination with and attraction to heroes is primal and hard-wired into our central nervous system. This is because heroes become like celebrities who occupy elevated positions of prestige and power in our society. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are instinctively drawn to people who will take care of us and from whom we can learn vital life lessons to protect us from dangers and advance our station in life. Because this draw is so primal and integrated into our central nervous system it often overrides our critical and rational thinking.”

In short, when we meet someone well known, we have a tendency to say stupid things. What is happening in the brain at such times? “As this relates to our neuroanatomy, being in the presence of a celebrity floods our central nervous

system with a host of intoxicating hormones that override the intellectual reasoning found in our prefrontal cortex. Such disequilibrium causes us to say silly, often nonsensical things which place us further in a subordinate position to the celebrity.”

And how does this all play out from the point of view of the celebrity. Put simply, it’s not great for them either. “Too often, however, celebrities become exhausted from the weight of this elevated and never-ending dependency. People become only able to see them as resources to advance their station in life.

They become like parasites sucking their life force and preventing them from finding any relational nourishment. In this regard, people become a source of danger and cause them a great deal of anxiety. This is one of the reasons why people of wealth, power and celebrity lead such isolated lives. They lack not just a circle of peers but also people who

they can look to for nurturance and protection,” says Hokemeyer. What seems to happen is that a journalist – just by virtue of what he does for a living – comes into a slightly different position when it comes to the famous. It might be that someone who isn’t battle-hardened when it comes to the sheer oddity of celebrity will meet someone, and the encounter may go badly because they will end up saying something just a bit odd in order to impress, or to draw attention to themselves. They feel the gulf between the famous person’s fame and their own obscurity too keenly and end up drawing attention to it.

The famous person, who will be by their position, extremely experienced in this sort of mismatched encounter, will sometimes try to amend the awkwardness but at other times they won’t. This might be personal (they’re tired and/or having a bad day) or it may

just be that the encounter cannot be rescued. The famous person may then resign themselves to the thought that maybe it’s just easier to spend time with other famous friends. Almost always when someone moans that so-and-so in the public eye isn’t pleasant to meet I suspect that there will be some element of this completely understandable lack of expertise which has intervened on the encounter and spoiled it.

What’s interesting is that the way to remove the awkwardness of the encounter is not to care at all about fame, but to care about the person in front of you. This is not to say you should pretend they’re not famous as that would be to deny reality, but to treat fame as perhaps the least interesting thing about them. Sometimes I have seen, in the middle of an interview with someone known, the person themselves, and there one sees something deeper and truer which has nothing to do Alamy.com

with the construct of celebrity, though it will also almost certainly give clues as to why that person was driven to become well-known and also why the public reciprocated that wish. I am not saying that I am a master of this art. I would not expect myself to behave with absolute equanimity if Elton John were to knock on my window as I write this, and offer up a private concert in my living-room. But it is what journalism teaches you, and it amounts to something like an inherent lesson of the profession.

Hokemeyer explains: “What such a person is doing is modelling humanity. By pre-empting the biological calibration that occurs around the power dynamics inherent in a celebrity identity by engaging in your intellect and rational mind, a journalist is levelling the playing field. You pre-empt the hijacking of your intellect by grounding the relationship first in the prefrontal cortex and then allowing your central nervous system to catch up. For most people, the calibration of psyches occurs in reverse. The central nervous system leads. Too often the intellect never catches up and the relationship becomes fuelled by unrealistic fantasies and harmful stereotypes.”

Quite by chance, on the 27th July 2023, I presented myself at the Oval Cricket Ground at the Micky Stewart Pavilion. I had, to put the matter as politely as possible, more or less had my fill of famous people. I am anxious here not to sound tiresomely world-weary since I have always been mindful of my luck in terms of meeting so many interesting people. However, it would be wrong to omit the fact that the encounter between famous person interviewee and non-famous interviewer is always on some level a sapping one, for the simple reason that by creating fame, and especially televisual fame, we have plainly released a set of completely crazy energies into the world. I wave my ticket at the security people,

a piece of paper which conveys the unlikely, but true, story that today I happen to be attending the final test of the Ashes courtesy of the Duchy of Cornwall. Instead of the interrogation I half-expect, I am waved through to the Oval, scene of some of the great climaxes in Test Match history. Here in 2005, Kevin Pietersen hit his magical 158, with Shane Warne bowling his heart out. It is also a place of significant goodbyes. Here it was that Alistair Cook scored 147 during his final innings having been short on form. Here too Don Bradman was famously bowled for a duck, when needing just four runs to end with an average above 4. Unknown to me, in a few days’ time, Stuart Broad will retire from international cricket having hit a six from his last delivery and a wicket with his last ball.

“THE OVAL IS A PLACE WHERE TIME IS PRISED OPEN A LITTLE, AND YOU FEEL A SENSE OF CRICKETING HISTORY.”

Inside, all is cricket lore – a lesson in black-and-white pictures and old news clippings about the history of cricket. The Oval is a place where time is prised open a little, and you feel a sense of cricketing history. Perhaps it is more forceful in this respect than Lords, because the so-called Home of Cricket is always cumbrously reminding you of its importance. Here the past seeps in almost casually.

I walk up the stairs and am asked to find my name on the guest list and sign in. As I scroll down the second page, I glimpse the names on the guest list: Sir John Major; Sir Trevor Macdonald, Chris Tremlett. My name must be on the first page, and there just down from my own, it reads: Stephen Fry.

I am given a name tag and move through to the bar area. Now, it is important to convey a little about the Micky Stewart Pavilion. As I understand it, one of the most interesting things about becoming the Prince of Wales, and thereby coming into the possessions of the Duchy of Cornwall, is to discover all the things which one suddenly owns. One of these possessions is the Oval Cricket Ground. This means that if by some curious chance one is invited to the Micky Stewart Pavilion you are there to some extent because the Prince of Wales doesn’t mind you being there, or hasn’t noticed, or in my case, by a stroke of good fortune. In such places there is curious sense that everybody assumes you have some sort of validity just by being there at all.

As I walk in Sir John Major walks by and, ever the politician, he reads my name badge and says: “Hello, Chris, it’s good to see you here.” We talk briefly about the great sadness of the weatheraffected draw the week before, which certainly meant we’d be coming into this match with the scores level at 2-2. I am always struck by the charm of senior politicians; I wasn’t able to vote in 1997 when Major was last on the ballot, but he has secured my vote retrospectively. We sit down for the opening session, and sit away from the bar in the stands. It only occurs to us once we have sat down that the green seats nearest the bar are for everybody to sit in. We might just as well, had we had the inclination, sat next to Sir John.

But what is the proximity of an elderly prime minister compared to a good morning’s cricket? Australia chose to put England in, in the justified belief that overcast conditions would make the ball swing. However, England put up a spirited performance, led by a swashbuckling 85 by Harry Brook. As we head inside to the pavilion for lunch, Fry is seated next to the door and smiles congenially at us – he looks like someone who, should the moment arise,

wouldn’t mind a conversation.

We head inside and there is a bit of mingling before lunch. Chris Tremlett towers above the company, looking like he could still take a wicket if suddenly summoned down to the pitch. By accident I find myself chatting to Fry, and I mention to him that my grandfather had grown up in the same village as him in Booton, in Norfolk.

“Booton!” he cries, delightedly. I can see how much he enjoys saying the word –which is, indeed, rather fun to say now I think about it.

I add that my great-grandfather was the rector of the church there. “Oh, I remember that cold church,” he says. “Were your family the Fishers?”

I say they were the Jackson.

“Ah the Jacksons!” he says, cheerfully, though I suspect that he can’t remember them and they may have been before his time.

“IT IS WORTH SAYING AT THE OUTSET THAT A GOOD PLACE TO MEET YOUR HERO IS AT THE CRICKET: THE RHYTHM OF THE MATCH CAN INTERWEAVE WITH YOUR CONVERSATION.”

After lunch, we head out and find Fry sitting alone on the green seats, and in a moment of curious madness, decide to sit next to him. It is worth saying at the outset that a good place to meet your hero is at the cricket: the rhythm of the match can interweave with your conversation, and it is less adversarial

than the typical interview.

Early in our discussion, we talk a bit about our favourite Australians and I mention Clive James, who Fry knew well, and who I interviewed once towards the end of Clive’s life. I mention that I liked his poetry and that I was due to talk to him about The River In the Sky, one of Clive’s last publications. “Yes, I rather like Clive’s poetry too. He was a very good poet – when he wasn’t reading the whole of Western literature.” I mention that I was invited to Clive’s house for the launch of the book when I had committed to a press trip. Fry sympathetically winces: “That’s unfortunate.”

We then discuss Sir Tom Stoppard and I mention how kind he had been to me when we interviewed him for this magazine. I say it is often difficult to know how much one should thank someone well-known. “Oh, you always should. Christopher Hitchens always used to say that – thank your heroes.”

STEPHEN FRY EDUCATION

24th August 1957

Born in Hampstead, but grows up in the village of Booton, Norfolk, having moved at an early age from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where he had attended Chesham Preparatory School.

1964

Attends Uppingham School in Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius.

1977

Despite a brief period in Pucklechurch Remand Centre after stealing a credit card from a family friend, he passes the Cambridge entrance exams, and is offered a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge, for matriculation in 1978, briefly teaching at Cundall Manor School.

1973

Expelled from Uppingham half a term into the sixth form, and is moved to Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, where fails his A-Levels, not turning up for his English and French papers.

1978

At Cambridge, he joins the Footlights, where he meets Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson among others.

1981

Wins the Edinburgh Perrier Award for the Cambridge Footlights revue Cellar Tapes.

Does he miss Christopher Hitchens? “Hugely.” I ask him if Hitchens would have supported Trump or Clinton in the 2016 General Election. “It’s a wellframed question,” he smiles, “as if there was one thing for sure about Christopher it’s that he absolutely loathed the Clintons. But Trump? I think that would have been a step too far.”

He then tells me a lovely story about Tom Stoppard at a cricket match which Fry attended. The party were discussing collective nouns – a parliament of birds, a pride of lions and so on – when

Harold Pinter and Stoppard walked in. Fry wondered aloud what the collective noun for playwrights would be and Stoppard immediately replied: “A snarl of playwrights.” We discuss Leopoldstadt, Stoppard’s most recent play, which Fry has just been to see in New York. He asks if I have seen it and I say I have only read it but that the ending affected me deeply. Fry is wistful, no doubt thinking of the extraordinarily touching end scene, which I shan’t give away here: “Yes, I wonder what it would be like only to have read it.”

Stoppard, Fry recalls, used to play cricket for Harold Pinter’s XI. “It was called The Gaieties which has to be the worst name for an XI of all time – and not a very Pinteresque name.” I recall to him an essay in Paperweight that he had written on chess and playwrights, and how the story of styles in the 20th century theatre mirrors chess-playing styles around the same period. “Well that’s just the sort of pretentious stuff I would write.”

I have throughout a sense of Fry which is rather touching. That is, even here,

wikipedia.org

Alamy.com

wikipedia.org

EDUCATION TIMELINE:

1986

The BBC commissions a sketch show that was to become A Bit of Fry & Laurie. It runs for 26 episodes across four series between 1989 and 1995. During this time, Fry stars regularly as Melchett in Blackadder.

Alamy.com

1995

Fry is awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D. h.c.) by the University of Dundee.

1999

Awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters (D.Litt. h.c.) by the University of East Anglia

2017

The bird louse Saepocephalum stephenfryii is named after him, in honour of his contributions to the popularization of science as host of QI.

2010

Made an honorary fellow of Cardiff University, and on 28 January 2011, he was made an honorary Doctor of the University(D.Univ. h.c.) by the University of Sussex, in recognition for his work campaigning for people suffering from mental health problems, bipolar disorder and HIV.

www.cardiff.ac.uk

Wikipedia.org

2021

Fry is appointed a Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix by Greek president Katerina Sakellaropoulou for his contribution in enhancing knowledge about Greece in the United Kingdom and reinforcing ties between the two countries.

wikipedia.org

when he doesn’t need to be a performer. One senses the need to be loved, and that he is therefore always moving to make life easy for you in conversation –to make sure you’re at ease.

Down on the pitch, Stuart Board, I note, is trying to anger himself into greater pace, and this prompts a discussion on the importance of anger in fast-bowling. ‘Bob Willis is the great example there – he always bowled better when angry,” says Fry. He also quotes Mike Brearley: “Anger always brings presents.” As we talk, Fry explains that he is

trying to do more to carve out time for the cricket, and that it was part of his motivation. “I have a lot of difficulty saying no,” he says, “which is why this summer has been so lovely.” It has been a time to pause work and spend some time with friends. “Hugh loves the cricket – he came along for a day,” Fry says.

Talking of fast-bowling greats turns us inevitably to Shane Warne. I ask him if he’s read Gideon Haigh’s great biography of Warne, and Fry is enthusiastic. Fry has also a kindly way of finishing your sentences for you as a

way of making you feel you are being listened to and understood. When I begin to say there have been times when I’ve considered getting a subscription to The Australian only to read Gideon Haigh, I find that Fry has said the last five words on my behalf. Did Fry get to know Warne? “Yes, I did a bit – a lovely man.”

But of course you realise that however many people you might have met, Fry has known everyone. It comes with his position. Since we are here thanks to the Duchy of Cornwall we briefly

discuss the Prince’s disinterest in cricket as opposed to football. Fry frowns in a comic way: “Well, yes, I have known for some time that the Prince is not especially interested in cricket. Prince George though when I saw him last talked of having ‘just been in the nets’ so perhaps things will be somewhat different in the next generation.”

It is a lovely thing to let the conversation flow as the cricket changes. At one point, Fry jokes about Todd Murphy, the Australian off-spinner. “Well, he’s got the off break, and then there’s also the off break. And if that doesn’t work, at least he’s got – the off break.”

At another point, enjoying the batting, I mention John Arlott’s description of

Jack Hobbs, as what having made him great was his ‘infallible sympathy with the bowled ball’. Fry repeats it: “Oh Arlott! An infallible sympathy with the bowled ball. Marvellous!”

“PRINCE GEORGE THOUGH WHEN I SAW HIM LAST TALKED OF HAVING JUST BEEN IN THE NETS.”

There is time also to reminisce. I mention how Fry and Laurie caused me such delight as a young boy, and even tell my story of reciting his work as a boy, and not knowing what the words

meant. When he asks which sketches we used to recite, I tell him: “There’s this sketch where you play a pompous interviewee on late night television. “Sounds like me,” Fry says swiftly. When I recite the sketch, I am able after all these years to thank him for it. To my astonishment, I see he is visibly moved to have had this impact. “We didn’t know the effect back then – it was like dropping a coin into a well. Every now and then with Fry and Laurie someone would stop you in the street – but it was very occasional indeed.”

I had heard a story of Paul McCartney, which I mention to Fry. Apparently, when he seeks to hire someone he always gets his driver to befriend someone lower down in the organisation he wants to hire, so as to be sure that they’re kind to their subordinates. “Did you ever get to know David Tang?” Fry asks and I admit I’ve never heard from him. “I loved him he was an incredibly kind man. But he could be extraordinarily rude to his subordinates. On more than one occasion David was so rude to his driver, that I had to get out of the car.”

As the conversation continues – and it was one of those rare giddy days in Test match cricket where wickets fall at regular intervals – I also get the opportunity to thank him for The Ode Less Travelled, his poetry handbook, without which I never would have been able to publish my own poetry books. I tell him this, and I also add that the poet Alison Brackenbury is an admirer. He is thrilled by this: “Alison Brackenbury! Well, I love her poetry so that means the world to me.” Later I mention this to Alison and she replies: “How wonderful! We never know where our writing goes. I do think Stephen must be fantastically well-read to have found my poems. I have tried hard over the years to scatter them in the most unlikely places, but I doubt if even the amazing Mr Fry ever read the now defunct Tewkesbury Advertiser.”

I remind Fry that he says he writes poetry in The Ode Less Travelled , and tell him I think he should publish a volume of verse. He says: “Well, I did think during lockdown that I ought to compile that and I began it, but then I stopped.” How long would it be? He smiles: “Well that would depend on triage. Most likely it will probably have to wait for my will and then everybody will say: “What on earth was he thinking?”

The afternoon drifts on, cricket always intertwining with talk. At one point Fry jokes that we must ‘avoid clichés like the plague.” He talks of his admiration of Rowan Atkinson (‘no one else can convey a line like him’). He spends some time on cricket trivia, reminding me, for instance that Alan Knott wasn’t a wicket keeper at first but a bowler – and that being so good at the latter craft helped him become so brilliant at the former. His beloved Wodehouse gets a mention: “Wodehouse was told that he was most read in hospitals and prisons and first

thought it a bad thing but then decided there could be no greater compliment to an author.”

And now I’m afraid I must go and do a talk in central London. He turns to me and says: “You’ve made an old man very happy.”

And then he’s off – having made me happy too. But the curious thing is I think he means it – and I wonder about the isolation celebrity must bestow. Hokemeyer tells me: “Occupying a rarefied position in the world is incredibly isolating. There are very few people who can look through the celebrity veneer and see the human being who resides below the power and sparkle that defines a celebrity identity.” Later I think back to the look Fry gave us as we walked past him – it was the look of someone who wanted conversation.

Do we perhaps all to some extent suffer from Imposter Syndrome? Hokemeyer explains: “Many celebrities, including male celebrities such as Tom Hanks

and Ben Affleck have spoken publicly about their struggles with imposter syndrome. This is because attaining the status of celebrity on the scale that they have is akin to winning the lottery. It's nearly an impossible goal that comes to too few. Being such a rarefied existence, their central nervous system can't quite integrate it. As such, they live in fear that they will fall from grace and become irrelevant.”

I don’t think this will happen to Fry, but his charm seemed to be something allied to a sort of need: I don’t think it can be external approval which he is seeking, or external love even, since he has both in such abundance. It is internal, and I think fame and celebrity have a terrible way of wreaking havoc with that. Yet who could be better to watch cricket with? They say don’t meet your heroes. In general, I’d agree with that – unless your hero happens to be Stephen Fry.

NOTES TOWARDS A MEANINGFUL

CAREER

GEORGE ACHEBE

Illustration by Andrew Prescott

Illustrations by Andrew Prescott

LatelyI have been thinking about something rather fundamental: the meaning of work. This is, after all, something which at Finito we seek to secure for our candidates: a meaningful career. But meaning, after centuries of philosophy, tends to have a somewhat slippery nature. Sometimes we glimpse it more vividly by its absence: ‘Well, that’s just meaningless,” we might confidently assert, implying as we do that there is some realm where meaning might reside. Sometimes, we are lucky enough to receive some clear sense of intuition: “I really must do that,” and it is an interesting question, though outside the scope of this article, as to why these prompts do seem to arrive in human beings.

All these matters, however, become no less straightforward when we come to consider the question of meaning as it relates to careers. This is not too surprising since work is what we spend such a large part of our lives doing – so much so that the two are hard to separate.

And yet it is a very common wish: I just want to do something that matters. Similarly when we say: this isn’t for me, what we’re typically pointing towards is the lack of perceived meaning in a particular role from our own perspective. Sometimes, this might be valid: we burn inside to paint a great picture but destiny has cruelly landed us with a data entry job. On the other hand, as we shall see, we must be careful not to assign meaninglessness to a role without first having its explored its possibilities, and what it can teach us.

Nevertheless, I ask the revered psychologist Dr Paul Hokemeyer what in his clinical experience constitute the most common mistakes when it comes to forging a meaningful career. “Personally and professionally, I've discovered one of the biggest mistakes people make regarding career choice motivations comes from the blind pursuit of power, property and prestige,” he tells me. When I ask him for examples he becomes autobiographical. “I found this to be the case in my own life

when, straight out of university, I decided to go to law school and become an attorney in America. While I actually loved the process of studying law, working as an attorney with a big American law firm was not suitable or sustainable for me in the long term. I also find this to be the case with my patients. Decisions made purely for external validation and the promise of riches tend to lead people into jobs and careers that while gratifying in the short run, are unsustainable or cause them to engage in unhealthy coping behaviours in due course.”

“THIS RINGS TRUE. POWER HAS, AS RISHI SUNAK MAY SOON DISCOVER, A FUNNY WAY OF EVAPORATING IN THE HANDS OF THE SUPPOSED HOLDER: IT’S LIKE TRYING TO GRIP

SMOKE.”

This rings true. Power has, as Rishi Sunak may soon discover, a funny way of evaporating in the hands of the supposed holder: it’s like trying to grip smoke. More generally, there are people one sees, sometimes at the bar at conference season, who seek power but if it were to be granted them, wouldn’t for an instant know what to do with it in any meaningful way. In fact, when we consider past UK Prime Ministers, the ones we think of as having the most success usually had a relatively developed sense of the potential meaning of them holding that office, and the skills with which to see it through. William Pitt the Younger understood that the public finances must always be on a proper footing for Britain’s prestige to remain intact – and he ensured that it was so, with considerable longevity in office as his reward. Churchill in his first term had a very clear mission –

to defend the nation from Nazi Germany. But there was less purpose to his second administration other than perhaps to remain in office, and so we tend not to study it for the simple reason that there is less meaning to extract from it.

And what of the current administration? When I talk to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt about the meaning of the current government and whether he should be going for more attention-grabbing tax cuts, say council tax or stamp duy, he says, referencing his budget earlier in the year: “I chose national insurance because it is the tax cut which is most going to grow the economy. My cuts in national insurance will mean that 200,000 more people will enter the workforce. There are 900,000 vacancies in the economy so these are the most progrowth tax cuts you could have.”

Hunt implies that meaning within our work is simply to be found in honestly doing our work as well as possible, regardless of how one is perceived. But, of course, he can sometimes seem blithely unaware that his ability to continue to conduct the work beyond the next election is intimately bound up with precisely those external factors which he goes onto disavow: “To the argument that I could have done a tax cut which was a bit more retail, I think the electorate are alert to chancellors trying to and bribe them for the election. If I’d done that I don’t think it would have worked. The reason people vote Conservative is because they trust us to take the difficult decisions. Sometimes there isn’t a magic bullet and you have to do the hard yards. Making sure we have economic credibility is far more important than trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

For someone like Hunt, the meaning in his work is to be found in carrying out his position responsibly, and I respect his desire to operate according to this sort of internal gauge of what is right. But what of the other potentially false motivation Hokemeyer points to: money. The Finito mentor Sophia Petrides agrees with Hokemeyer that this is a

potentially dangerous motivation for a career: “Pursuing a career path primarily for financial gain can lead to dissatisfaction if the individual does not have a genuine interest or passion for the work. Additionally, high-paying jobs often come with long hours, intense competition, and high levels of stress, which can negatively impact our physical and mental state.” But for Petrides, prestige and status are also potentially dangerous metrics by which to choose a path in life. “Some individuals are attracted to careers associated with high social status or prestige, such as becoming a doctor, lawyer, or CEO,” she continues. “While these professions often garner admiration and respect from others, pursuing them solely for their prestige can lead to dissatisfaction if the work itself is unfulfilling. Over time, this lack of gratification can result in boredom and loss of motivation, which can be detrimental

to one's performance and success in the business world. Additionally, the pressure to maintain a certain status can contribute to stress and burnout, impacting both mental and physical well-being.”

Of course it is possible to make a lot of money, and then around that achievement to create permanent structures with which to be useful and kind, as many of our bursary donors at Finito have done. Furthermore, it may be that one is actually constructed to take an interest in economics or the markets. Warren Buffet is, for instance, someone who plainly has a fascination with the orchestral nature of markets – an orchestra which at his best he obviously found some inner meaning in conducting. But it must be said that the world isn’t exactly stocked with passionate bankers. There aren’t many that I’ve met who fit the caricature of the Dickensian villain; more generally the danger is that

certain high-flying types, who have placed money at the centre of their being, exhibit a certain thinness. They are what TS Eliot, a banker himself, called ‘the hollow men, the stuffed men’.

There are other mistakes which people make when it comes to finding meaningful work. Hokemeyer pinpoints one: “Another mistake is when people make career choices based on what other people, especially parents, think they should do with their lives. Typically, these parents are well meaning. They want their children to be financially secure and hold prestigious jobs. Sometimes, however, parents are more motivated by their own self-interest or narcissistic personalities. They have created a legacy business they want to see continued, or they find ego gratification from the external successes of their children.”

“ANOTHER MISTAKE IS WHEN PEOPLE MAKE CAREER CHOICES BASED ON WHAT OTHER PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY PARENTS, THINK THEY SHOULD DO WITH THEIR LIVES.”

Petrides agrees: “Choosing a career path based on the expectations of others rather than your own interests, while this may initially provide a sense of approval, validation, and belonging, can lead to resentment and unhappiness if the individual feels trapped in a career that doesn't align with their true authentic values and interests.” We all know the trope: the unhappy banker whose father was a happy banker. In such instances –especially common among the children of the successful – what appears to happen is that a person lacks confidence to feel that meaning might be personal to them, and

not somehow an aspect of one’s identity as a family member. It can amount to a crisis of confidence at the level of the soul, and is greatly to be discouraged. Whole lives have been wasted this way. Philip Larkin wrote that it can take a lifetime to climb free of your wrong beginnings.

Allied to this, again according to Petrides, might be another major reason for pursuing the wrong line of work: fear of failure. “When we live our lives in fear of failure and uncertainty, it can lead to avoiding risks and challenges in our careers, limiting opportunities for growth and advancement,” she tells me. “We may stop being creative and innovative, which hinders our ability to solve problems effectively. This complacency can lead to procrastination and a feeling of being stuck in our careers. In the long-term, this can result in stress, anxiety, and burnout, which have disastrous outcomes for our physical and mental health.”

This fear of failure is almost always allied to seeking approval from a false source. Petrides argues that external validation isn’t something which we should permit to be in the equation when it comes to carving out our path in life. “Seeking external validation or approval through one’s career choices, such as wanting to impress others or prove oneself, can lead to a lack of authenticity and personal fulfilment. Relying on external validation for one’s sense of worth can make it difficult to find genuine satisfaction and purpose in the chosen career path.”

Meaning therefore needs to begin with an inward assessment. For some people, the answer as to what really constitutes meaning for oneself will be quite obvious: I simply need to paint, or be a lawyer, or play the harp. Such people are in receipt of very clear instructions, and then it becomes a question of how to do it and this will involve study, and perhaps some form of networking. None of this is to be underestimated in today’s interconnected and highly competitive world, but the task is certainly made a lot easier when an individual is certain what they want to do.

With this in mind, I ask Hokemeyer about the healthy motivations people assign to their careers and why some people are simply better at strategising their lives than others? His reply is extremely interesting: “People who are successful at strategising their careers are good at knowing what motivates them and what will hold their interest over the course of say 50 years. They are also able to balance this selfawareness whilst being practical about the costs of living life and putting together an investment portfolio that can sustain them if and when they want to step back from work. It's a melange of passion and practicality. They find something they are passionate about that they can grow into a solid commercial endeavour over time. They don't pretend that money doesn’t matter. They get paid to do the work rather than doing the work to get paid.”

It is common to find artists particularly falling on the wrong side of this wager –they love their work but precisely because of that they somehow keep getting snookered into working for very little. It is quite common for the knowledge that one is working in an exploitative situation to chip away over time at what was once a precious inner meaning. One thinks of the musician who felt a certain fire within looking with vexation at their household bills while each Spotify play earns them around 10p in royalties. A lofty and dismissive approach to healthy finances will ultimately injure one’s sense of meaning, since the energy one needs to enact meaning will likely disappear in stress.

Yet many fail to do this, and lots of people in fact live out their entire lives with a very limited sense of what they might have been capable of. Somehow the moment of internal reckoning is put off, and put off, until it never comes. Either a mediocre occupation is arrived at, and stuck with for financial reasons. Sometimes because of a certain unaddressed internal fear, no move is seriously made at all throughout one’s existence. A wealthy child may, for instance, live off their parents’ wealth, depleting that wealth in the process for future generations. Alternatively, someone

may choose to live off the state. Unsure as to what move to make, they end up making none whatsoever. This is tragic because ultimately one has failed to be of use to society, and more broadly, to the universe.

I ask Hokemeyer why it is that we often fail to examine our core reasons for doing even quite major things, such as what career path to take? Is it that we’re in some fundamental sense asleep and need to wake up? He replies: “Human beings are herd animals. This explains why large numbers of people blindly act in the same way at the same time, following others and imitating group behaviours rather than making their own autonomous decisions. Right now there is a trend for young university students to want to major in computer science. This, even when they are best suited to more romantic interests such as philosophy and art history. When asked why they stay in a major that gives them no joy, these young adults will say that they want to make a 'ton of money' and be the next Steve Jobs. Based on this, they struggle in a hyper competitive major and waste the precious opportunity to study something in which they can excel and that will bring them joy throughout their entire lives.”

“ THIS OPPORTUNITY FOR JOY IS PRECIOUS – AND FOR MANY IT IS AN ALL-TOO BRIEF WINDOW.”

This opportunity for joy is precious – and for many it is an all-too brief window. It is a reminder that we must go to considerable lengths to make our own autonomous decisions and to really ask ourselves if we are acting out of the right values, and whether we are actioning our best selves. Tracey Jones is an advocate of mind management and she tells me that she feels the thing which we miss in our society today is ‘introspective reflection’. So what is this? “It refers to the process of looking inward, examining one’s own

thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a deep, contemplative, non-judgmental manner. It involves self-examination and self-awareness, whereby individuals reflect on their values, beliefs, goals, and actions to gain insight into themselves and their lives.”

Jones’ business, called Tracy Jones Life, is wide-ranging and is all about imbuing lives with meaning: “Navigating complexities of introspective reflection is the main part of my work, where individuals can often reach a tipping point of burnout, and struggle with diverse life transitions. Whether stemming from work-related challenges, media exposure, financial changes, selling a business, or transitioning from a specific career. Providing support during these critical moments brings me a profound sense of harmony as I impart knowledge and wisdom, empowering individuals to introspect, realign, reassess, and ultimately progress equipped with a stronger toolkit.”

For Jones the benefits of this approach are many: “Understanding the mind in this way can indeed contribute to creating a stronger and more cohesive society and it can help individuals navigate conflicts more effectively. By understanding cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and communication patterns, people can approach disagreements with greater

understanding and seek constructive solutions.”

However, in a complex and vast system like human civilisation today, it is impossible that everybody ends up in their so-called dream job. However, for such people, there is a sort of second chance if you read a fascinating little book by a remarkable philosopher called Dr Wilson Van Dusen. Van Dusen has a completely different perspective. He regards human beings not so much as herd animals but as beings implicated in a broad and far-reaching pattern – and knowledge of this pattern can be activated at the level of the individual with tremendous results. He would, like most people, wish for people to be fulfilled in their work, but he points out that it is possible to maximise the meaningfulness –or as he would say the usefulness – of every station in life. He gives, for instance, the following example:

Two men own and operate a clothing store. Outwardly they do the same thing, sell men’s clothes. Look closer. One quickly sizes up the customer’s wants. The customer likes this color, that style. Let’s see — perhaps this is what he wants? Everyone is different, and the salesman enjoys finding and serving these differences. He is pleased to see the clothes he sold appearing here

and there around town. The other clothing salesman pushes this or that, touts it as a bargain. The profit-making sale is his end, not the customer’s needs. He serves only himself. The first salesman serves himself and the other person. It is a mutual benefit. So the question of whether each clothing store owner really wants to be a clothing store owner isn’t paramount for Van Dusen. Their core motivation may perhaps have a bearing on their attitude to the role but the point is that once in a role you can choose to see its value or not – and choose also whether to maximise your usefulness within that position. Great rewards attend anybody who takes on a new role, and looks around and tries to fill it with as much creativity, empathy and other positive states as possible. Many people may read Van Dusen’s book and think: “Well, I wouldn’t mind being a clothes store owner – that’s a much better job than mine, and I don’t see how I can make the best of it.” But Van Dusen has pre-empted this response with the following example:

I am reminded of the Zen monk whose job it was to clean toilets in a monastery. The whole purpose of life in the monastery is the enlightenment that is a seeing into God and All There Is. How does this jibe with cleaning toilets? Fortunately, he used his menial task as The Way at hand for him. At first in the cleaning he was taught much of cleaning so that he probably produced some of the cleanest toilets of all time. He was also shown much of his own nature and faults. Then he began seeing general principles in his work. Finally, after all this step-by-step preparation, he found the One, the design of all creation. God came forth and cleaned through his hands. His wisdom became apparent and he was elected abbot of the monastery. But he loved The Way that had opened for him, so he continued to clean the toilets.

This might seem far-fetched, but I can attest it is certainly worth a try. You might perhaps have been putting off paring back the lavender for the past few weeks. A plant that really ought to be providing pollen for bees, and therefore, by the success of bees,

improving the diet of certain bird species and so and so forth up the food chain has, under your dubious watch, ceased to do that. It starts to annoy you and you don’t like the feeling so you do nothing. You also might tell yourself you’re busy and don’t have the time. But what if, one day, you make the time and prune the lavender? You might be a bit surprised at how that goes. Suddenly the feeling of guilt has gone away. In a month or so, you will see bees in your garden. And Van Dusen’s point is that all jobs are crying out for use in this way.

Interestingly, Jones also took a visit to Nepal in 2023, and there watched Buddhist monks engage in ‘Monastic Debate’. She was struck by the atmosphere at the monastery: “Monks present and defend their viewpoints, challenge each other’s assertions, ask probing questions, and engage in critical analysis. The atmosphere is one of mutual respect, seeking truth, clarifying concepts, and sharpening one’s own understanding.”

“

THE

PRACTICE

OF DEBATE ALSO ENCOURAGES

ACTIVE

LISTENING,

EMPATHY, AND UNDERSTANDING OF DIFFERING VIEWPOINTS.”

Jones drew the following lesson: “The practice of debate also encourages active listening, empathy, and understanding of differing viewpoints. By engaging in respectful dialogue and considering diverse perspectives, monks cultivate compassion, tolerance, and open-mindedness, which are essential qualities for building strong relationships. Whilst I would watch these debates, it made me highly aware that we could learn so much from these ancient traditions.”

She’s certainly right about that and it all amounts for a new place to look for meaning – not in some external placement

or vacancy but in a place you can actually control: yourself.

This understanding of uses, based perhaps around the sort of cultivation of compassion which Jones describes, ought to form part of any mentoring relationship. We ought to not think about we might become more successful, wealthier, and people of greater prestige: we ought to consider how we might be of use. Petrides has direct experience of this in her mentoring: “A mentoring relationship can be a powerful journey of shared exploration. Instead of solely guiding, a coach/mentor acts as a sounding board and a partner in discovery. We embark together on a quest to understand the client’s values, passions, and aspirations. Through open

conversations, we challenge each other's perspectives and assumptions. The client might question my experiences, prompting me to re-examine my own approach. This constant exchange fosters deeper selfawareness for both of us.”

So it’s a collaborative searching for meaning. “Yes, and it goes beyond goal setting. It's about uncovering the "why" behind those goals. The client’s journey of fulfilment becomes a mirror reflecting my own purpose as a mentor. As their understanding of their place in the world unfolds, it inspires me to re-evaluate my own guiding principles. In essence, the mentoring relationship becomes a transformative experience, enriching lives.”

DEFENCE SECRETARY GRANT SHAPPS: “PUTIN

ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT WIN”

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON INTERVIEWS ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING AND TALENTED FIGURES IN MODERN POLITICS ABOUT RUSSIAUKRAINE, DEFENCE SPENDING, AND HIS OWN CAREER

GrantShapps is only 20 minutes late for my interview with him, but is nevertheless apologetic when he comes online. I tell him that, given the range of threats in the world today, I don’t mind at all being kept waiting by the Defence Secretary. He laughs: “At least you know we’re on it.”

Throughout our interview, the 55-yearold seems boyish and cheerful. Although one hears a lot about how tired this government is meant to be, my experience tends to be somewhat the opposite: in general, we are presided over now by

highly experienced Cabinet ministers who enjoy the jobs they’re in, and who have learned to wear power lightly. They are also determined to use this moment to solve the problems the country is facing.

In the case of Shapps, who has held numerous roles at the top of government, in addition to serving as the MP for Welwyn Hatfield since 2005, the impression is of someone with seasoned nous who knows how to run things.

Shapps begins by telling me about his day: “It’s been busy. It started with the Yemeni

Prime Minister which is always going to be an interesting conversation. ‘So about your country which we’re bombing?’ And later today I have my New Zealand counterpart coming – so it’s another day at the MoD.”

The Secretary of State is talking to me on the back of a major victory, having last month secured a 2.5 per cent increase for his department from the Treasury – a decision arrived somewhat against the Treasury’s inclinations. The story, as told by departed minister James Heappey, is that Jeremy Hunt initially offered

Shapps’ department the same 2.5 per cent increase but suggested the money would be spread over the course of two parliaments. For Shapps, who understood the urgency of the need, this was unacceptable and he made it clear that he would rather have nothing than accept such an offer. It was a calculated high stakes gamble, and it paid off.

As a result of this win, Shapps is now in a position to deliver a boost to the economy. The day before I talk with him, he has announced the building of six new amphibious warships in a widely covered speech at the Annual Sea Power conference.

But this, it will turn out, is just the tip of the iceberg. I ask him if the budget increases represent a chance for small businesses to step up? “Massively so,” he replies. “There are 400,000 people involved in the defence sector, in a range of areas from manufacturing to science. Obviously, you’ve got the so-called primes – the BAEs of this world – but actually there’s an enormous supply chain under that and there’s now more opportunities than ever for SMEs to get involved. That’s partly because a lot of what we need now are not the big things like ships – although we do need those, as you saw yesterday. But we also need clever tech – drones, and all the best kit. The two biggest drone companies were start-ups, although I think a couple have been snapped up by the big boys now.”

Meanwhile, as the UK makes these internal deliberations, conflict seems to be a more or less constant aspect of life on this planet. The Russia-Ukraine situation continues to drag on with all the appearance of a miserable stalemate. At the same time, the situation in Gaza continues to feel intractable as it has done throughout most of our lifetimes. If that weren’t enough, many predict that the next theatre of conflict will be in the South China Sea and involve China making a claim on Taiwan.

Shapps has naturally visited all these zones of actual and potential conflict. I ask him

what might surprise us if we were to, say, visit Ukraine and see for ourselves. He gives a thoughtful answer. “Last night, I saw the reporting of Jonathan Beale who is the BBC’s Defence Correspondent. He was wearing a bright jacket next to burned out buildings. He was touring a part of northern Kharkiv. As you look at the ruins on his report, it would be very easy to get the impression that that’s what Ukraine is like.” So it’s different? “In truth, I’ll go to Kiev and it’s a coffee society. You could be in Prague or Paris for the most part, although the scene is regularly dispersed by air raids – but even then, people usually go to the air-raid shelters in not too much of a panic.”

Shapps is anxious not to minimise the overall situation, especially in the east of the country. “Obviously, if you go to Odessa near the Crimea, that’s a different story,” he continues. “When I was last there, I had to call off a visit to Odessa. I discovered that President Zelensky had been 300 metres or so from a Russian missile attack, though I think that was by chance. At the same time, I received notice from Defence Intelligence that the Russians knew I was travelling to Odessa and it seemed an unnecessary risk to take. So clearly there are parts of the country you wouldn’t go to. But there are vast parts of this huge country where you wouldn’t see anything unusual at all, and which have had no physical effects arising out of the invasion.”

This feels an important perspective, and makes one hope that one day the reconstruction of Ukraine won’t be such a daunting project as we sometimes imagine it might be. I also rather like this image of people having coffee in Kiev. Does this make us understand what we might be fighting for? Shapps goes further: “In a sense coffee culture is what we’re fighting for – it’s a way of life. Free peoples in democracies must decide their own futures and not be driven over by terrorists in the case of Palestine – or autocrats in the case of Ukraine.”

Nevertheless, the battlefield in Ukraine

continues to feel frustrating. Brooks Newmark, a former MP and minister, who has been heavily involved in helping refugees in war-torn eastern Ukraine, tells me about the crucial tactical nature of the Kerch Bridge. This has been damaged at intervals during the war but so far always rebuilt by the Russians. But if we were to destroy it, Newmark tells me, we would strike a severe blow since it is Russia’s link to its supply lines. Under circumstances where it was damaged beyond repair, then Putin would be brought to the negotiating table.

So why haven’t we done that, one wonders? Newmark tells me that there are two missiles which can destroy the bridge: the German Taurus and the MGM-140 ATACMS-38. Our own Storm Shadows are unfortunately not quite so powerful to damage the bridge. When I put this to Shapps, he says: “In actual fact, the Taurus is exactly the same as the Storm Shadows, which have been devastating in the Crimea, and we allowed them to be used. The Germans sometimes talk up the Taurus but it has the same potential to cause damage as the Storm Shadows.” So how can we destroy the bridge? “I can’t really go into too much detail for obvious security reasons but the Kerch is a well-protected bridge – in fact, I can confidently say it’s the best protected bridge in the whole world. It’s not quite as simple as it sounds. Obviously Ukraine will be looking at the supply lines into their occupied country all the time, and how they can disrupt them.”

Newmark is not alone in wondering whether it is time to lay the ghost of Iraq aside and put boots on the ground. Is that something the government would ever consider? Shapps is firm. “Putin absolutely must not win. But we must be crystal clear: we’re not considering putting boots on the ground as that would put NATO at war with Russia which would seem to me to be not a smart move.” He adds, clearly moved by the courage of our ally: “That’s the amazing thing about our brave Ukrainian friends and allies: they’re prepared to do the hard part which is to

do the fighting. We need, consistently and reliably, to do whatever Ukraine needs to win this war.”

Despite this, I can sense that the vacillations by the American Congress, which caused significant delays in weapons delivery this year, have been a major frustration, with the war having gone more Putin’s way this year than many would have liked. “Last time I was in Kiev, I was warning that the world has been caught napping: this was two or three months ago during the hiatus over sending weapons,” Shapps recalls. “I saw it as being a real problem. I warned them that we’re sleepwalking into something much worse.” And sadly, much of what Shapps feared has come to pass. “Unfortunately that delay has enabled attacks on Kharkiv which wouldn’t have happened if the package had come sooner. The situation is stretching the Ukrainians but ultimately I’m confident Russia won’t get into Kharkiv in the short run. But it’s an unnecessary distraction and we can’t allow anything like that to happen again. It’s unthinkable for me to have Moscow decide the boundaries and borders of modern European democratic nations.” Shapps is also firm on the role which Ukraine’s near neighbours have to play. He continues: “But we don’t want Washington to dictate those borders and boundaries either. We want European countries to step up to the plate, and I think the UK has done this. In terms of our own financing package, we’ve gone from £2.3 billion to £2.5 billion to £3 billion. So we’ve been consistent in our approach while also providing increasing funds.”

I ask Shapps a question from the philanthropist and businessman Mohamed Amersi, who wonders how prepared the country is for a potential new theatre of conflict over the China-Taiwan issue. Shapps is keen to link the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine conflict with whatever might be simmering in the Far East: “The best way to prevent an autocrat thinking it’s okay to take over some land that’s not theirs is to make sure Putin

doesn’t do exactly that in Europe.” But he also has another point to make: “We have hugely invested in the Indo-Pacific region to make sure we can maintain the world order. For example, until recently we didn’t have AUKUS, which sees the UK, the US and Australia working together to provide nuclear-powered submarines. We also have the Global Combat Air Programme, a joint initiative between Britain, Italy and Japan to develop jointly a sixth generation stealth jet fighter. Thirdly, we have a permanent presence in the IndoPacific, both in terms of ships constantly in the area, and the Carrier Strike Group is going back next year. Our purpose in being active in the region is to make it clear that freedom of navigation is nonnegotiable and that countries shouldn’t be invading non-democratic countries.”

Carl Hunter, the Chairman of Coltraco Ultrasonics, has observed that the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent in CASD and its strategic conventional deterrent in UK Carrier & Littoral Strike both depend on SSN submarines, the fleet size of which has been largely configured for the Euro Atlantic. I ask Shapps when the submarine force will be expanded to cater for its equal Euro Atlantic and Indo Pacific commitments and the probability of a maritime war in the South China Sea? Shapps responds: “We don’t comment on our operations there – but I can say that we do operate our subs all around the world. The good news regarding this is that as a result of the announcement of new ships yesterday, we’re increasing that number. But when it comes to our SSN submarines or our Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBNs), we don’t advertise their locations.”

Turning to the state of the armed forces, I mention to Shapps that recent reports have highlighted that 54 per cent of potential recruits abandoned the Army recruitment process last year. Given the shrinking size of the armed forces by over 7,000 personnel in the last year, what immediate steps is the Ministry taking to improve recruitment and retention during this period of global uncertainty?

Shapps is sympathetic to the question: “Recruitment certainly has been a big problem, and applicants have been far too slow to get through the system. However, for that reason, we’re currently working through the 67 recommendations put forward by the Haythornthwaite Review of Armed Forces Incentivisation. Yesterday, when I was talking about the Navy, I was able to announce that we have the fullest training facilities for eight years. More and more people are coming into the programme. We’ll get that turned around.”

Part of the poor retention figures may be to do with poor accommodation. In particular, a concerning report from King's College London recently exposed the substandard conditions of UK armed forces’ accommodation. With many families living in substandard conditions, I ask Shapps what specific initiatives are planned to upgrade urgently these facilities, and how will these improvements be prioritised in the defence budget? “On the accommodation, I completely agree. This 2.5 per cent that I’ve won is enabling us to do lots of things including put £4 billion into our accommodation to make it lot better.”

These worries also come against a backdrop of worries around pay in the forces, where some argue that pay rises fail to address satisfactorily the scale of current inflation. Again, Shapps is sympathetic but also keen to highlight how much progress has been made: “Inflation has obviously been high, but last year we had the biggest pay rise of anyone in the public service. The lowest paid are getting another 9.7 per cent which is an increase very much designed to recognise that problem. I also think that this is helping to attract more people so we’ve got 10-year highs in terms of our applications for military services.”

Stephen Morgan, an ex-serviceman himself, asks about a recent article in The Guardian referring to the UK’s ‘very limited air defence systems’. He asks whether, in an era of complex and emerging global threats, the Ministry

is addressing these critical gaps in our national defence capabilities to ensure readiness against potential aerial threats? Shapps replies: “We have more in that respect than people often realise. For instance, we have Rapid Response Defence Systems. We have some missiles from land, and some missiles from our Type-45 destroyers at sea. We also have other measures in place which I can’t go into because they’re secret. But we’re also in NATO so that we have 31 other countries coming to our defence in the event of an attack which is something that countries like Israel don’t enjoy and that makes a huge difference. That said, I’m working with our European partners on a sky shield approach as well so there’s a lot happening across the board on this.”

That makes me feel safe enough to make the last section of the interview not about the nation’s defence but about him. How is it that he’s managed to hold so many different high-level roles across government? “In my case, I came to Defence via Transport, the Home Office, Business, and Energy so it wasn’t that straightforward,” he laughs, referring to the turbulent transition of power from Boris Johnson via Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak. “But the process of running big things tends to be the same: government

departments are all similar. You have a civil service, a permanent secretary and a private office – and then you have mechanisms to get the work through.”

On a day-to-day level, a Secretary of State is confronted with a huge flow of data and Shapps explains that a successful minister will need to learn how to sift that.

“The big question when you come into a department is: ‘How do you get your head around everything and understand the subject in the first place?’ Well, I’m not entirely new to any area of public policy, as I’ve been thinking about politics for a long time, so there is that. But I will confess that it is a hell of a lot of reading. I’ve got better over the years, and I learned to speed-read early in my career.”

Everything comes down to time management, Shapps explains: “It’s twice as fast to write and read something as to have people tell you it: people speak slower than you can read, and if they write it down they have to think through what they put in.” He attributes his approach to government to his background.

“I think some of this – completely counterintuitively – is because I don’t have a degree or even an A-Level to my name, so I slightly self-educated myself in terms of doing things. I hope that makes me less given to groupthink than some

other politicians. If you want to stand out in politics or in any other area of life, you have to have a unique approach, and be able to come to conclusions on your own.”

Given the murders of Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, I mention that many would-be politicians might worry about the safety of becoming an MP. I ask Shapps if it’s a career path he’d recommend to young people? “Well, it’s very sad that we’re talking on the day when the Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico has been shot. We have had killings of MPs, which have been rare but which are nonetheless concerning. In the role of Defence Secretary you have a different level of protection all the time, but I wouldn’t let it put people off. For the most part, we live in a country where guns aren’t as big a thing as they would be in the US, and so the risks are more moderated. Threats seem to come online by social media and I deal with it largely by not reading it. Do have someone reading it, as these things do need to be reported, but it doesn’t need to be you.”

With that he has to go and vote, and I have a moment to reflect that Shapps is an extremely impressive minister, whose story ought to inspire many young people to follow him into politics.

LESSONS FROM THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT

BY IRIS SPARK

Itis always a boost to look up from whatever one’s doing to see that the Olympics are just round the corner. That’s the case this year with the Paris Olympics – the 131st incarnation of the Games – due to begin on 26th July and finish on 11th August. One sees them in the calendar with that same delight with which one sees other rare occasions such as the Football World Cup, or the Ashes. Their regularity is sufficient to generate familiar feelings of affection, but the gap between Olympiads is never too narrow as to lead to weariness. The Olympics get to anybody who can be gotten to. In being able to do that, they have a way of joining us together.

It is worth noting that most sporting events are of more interest to some countries than others. While there has been a noticeable increase in American interest in soccer these past years, it still isn’t the sport which the country’s premier athletes tend to opt for, preferring the dizzying financial prospects of baseball, basketball and American football. China, perennially second in the medals table at recent Olympiads, has only appeared in one FIFA World Cup in 2002, losing all matches and scoring no goals. Similarly the Cricket World Cups are of interest predominantly to nations of the Commonwealth who were taught under Britain’s transient dominion the undoubted virtues of the sport – but it doesn’t travel much beyond that.

But alongside the sense of international carnival, each Olympiad is also an opportunity to focus in on the host country. We became honorary Brazilians when the Olympics were held in Rio in 2016, and will be honorary Frenchmen this year when the greatest show on earth reaches Paris. Everybody in this country remembers Danny Boyle’s marvellously mad opening ceremony, which celebrated everything from James Bond to the NHS. France, too, has a vast amount to celebrate. A brief list might include: l’escargots, steak bavette, Claude Monet, the first cathedrals, Les Miserables, the

Napoleonic Code, wine and champagne (the latter invented by Benedictine monks), as well as Joan of Arc, Descartes, Pascal, the Tour de France and, if one were inclined to see past that famous headbutt, Zinedine Zidane. That’s quite a lot to be going through as a first draft of an opening ceremony.

Nevertheless, the global excitement is one of many differentiators between our Olympiad and the ancient games held at Athens. The political situation in Ancient Greece was inevitably provincial compared to ours, but before we feel superior to them, we might remember that sport in those days was part of an integrated vision of life which can shine a light on our somewhat atomised approach. For instance, the Greeks tended to announce political alliances during their games, and one of the greatest poets Pindar wrote predominantly around sporting themes. I know of relatively few good poems about sport – certainly compared to its apparent importance in our lives.

“THE OLYMPICS OPEN UP ONTO HISTORY AND COMPLICATED QUESTIONS ABOUT MEANING AND WHY WE DEEM TASKS TO BE WORTH DOING AT ALL.”

Even so, there is still something marvellous about the way in which the Olympics provides one of our links to the deep past. The Olympics open up onto history and complicated questions about meaning and why we deem tasks to be worth doing at all. Today, sport too often seems to be about more than just who wins and who loses; we have made it limited and reductive when it is actually capable of opening up onto exciting realms of meaning.

But before we broach all that, what makes the Olympics so interesting is that winning and losing seems to mean more at the Olympics than it does anywhere else. There are two reasons for this. One is the occasional nature of the Games, meaning that even a great athlete may only compete in several Olympiads. It is quite possible to be the best athlete in the world at your discipline, and somehow, either due to nerves, injury or bad luck, not get that CV-defining gold medal. Colin Jackson was perhaps a bit like this – a great hurdler who fell just short. Conversely, it’s possible to be a rank underdog and by some mix of cunning, gumption and adrenalin-fuelled raising of one’s game, win through. Our Olympic long-jumping champion Chris Rutherford is an example of this: I remember vividly in 2012 his own surprise that he had seized a moment which nobody had especially expected to be his.

When it comes to the Olympics, such narratives feel enlarged and cannot be replicated in, say, our weekly football matches, where this week’s defeat can be remedied by the following week’s improvement, and even a disappointing season at least cedes, after a brief lag, to the next set of opportunities in a new calendar year.

But the other reason for it all mattering so much is that many of these sports are weird and wonderful and hardly watched at all by the general public in the period between Olympics. It is a rare delight to find one’s interest in, say, equestrian activities, peculiarly re-emerge every four years, and how swiftly one reacquaints oneself with a connoisseur’s eye for dressage. Every four years I am always interested to mentally re-enter the swimming pool, consider again the plight of the lonely Olympic archer, wonder at the dedication of the weightlifter, feel exhausted as I watch the muscled striving of the rower, and look on with amazement at the life decisions of the top table tennis players. I am therefore thoroughly delighted to see

that breakdancing makes its debut at the upcoming Games, and shall be tuning in with particular interest to that.

“IT IS THE LONELINESS OF THE ENDEAVOUR WHICH GIVES IT ITS HEROISM.”

What makes these quixotic heroes so remarkable is that they have found purpose in activities from which they are unlikely to make much money: this lends a certain purity to their endeavour which feels admirable. It’s incidentally a reason why one never quite buys into the idea of golf or tennis as Olympic sports: we can’t quite believe in Novak Djokovic or Rory McIlroy as feasible visitors to the Olympic village, since they are no doubt en route to their five star hotels. They may have suffered once for their art, but they have been too amply rewarded since really to qualify in my mind as Olympians. Most athletes that

partake in the Games strive in the almost certain knowledge that they will never be rewarded. It is the loneliness of the endeavour which gives it its heroism. Besides, it’s the stories you don’t see which really form the essence of the Olympic experience. I remember sitting in the track and field stadium in East London when the Olympics came to London in 2012. I was watching the heats for the women’s 100 metres. I noticed one athlete – I have never been able to discover her name –who was defeated in her heat, and I found myself reflecting that her entire Olympic experience had lasted just over 10 seconds. I watched her long walk back to the changing room, already in some way manoeuvred into her post-Olympics life, head bowed and thoughtful. The cameras do not take us there – they need minute by minute drama. A dramatic defeat might make their highlights reel, but not the prosaic ones. Yet to me she had a kind of dignity and decency which made my heart go out to her. She had done what she had to do.

One wonders sometimes about the voices which prompt these athletes to follow these paths. We can only imagine that there is an authentic need here, a wish to take part and belong to something larger than oneself – to strain, to go on a journey of discovery, to compete and to learn to live with defeat or acquire the taste of victory. I hope that that athlete who lost in qualification may over time have come to reflect that she had much more than that ten second sprint by which to remember her Olympic experience: she could think back with pride on her time of training and the camaraderie that would have entailed; on the excitement of arriving at the Olympic village and the great spirit of mutual joy which pervades it; of the wonder of partaking in the Opening Ceremony; and then, in the experience of defeat, a certain humility and selfknowledge which couldn’t have been arrived at by any other set of experiences. If we consider that every single one of the athletes at the forthcoming games is embarked on such a journey then perhaps we can enter vicariously into the spirit of

Michael Phelps celebrates with his teammates after winning his 8th gold medal (Wikipedia.org)

the Games with even greater delight. Even so, the Olympics have down the years bequeathed their particularly memorable dramas, and these all seem to correspond to lessons which we can learn from. Everybody knows that Jesse Owens in 1936 thwarted the racialist ideology of Adolf Hitler when the Games were staged in Berlin. That win reminds us of the point of competition: our bodies, in their measurable capacities, open up onto reality in a way in which the dark fantasies of dictators do not. This is the health of sport: each discipline is calculable, and the fact of an agreed upon set of rules makes us pay attention and leads us onto truth.

Those who win all teach us something about how we might find something extra in our own lives, no matter what it is we have been called upon to do in our work. I remember the extraordinary career of Michael Phelps who in 2008 broke Mark Spitz’s record by winning eight gold medals at one Games. In his seventh win he seemed to be losing in the 100 metre butterfly to Serbia's Milorad Čavić and somehow in the last stroke made a great

lunge forward to win the race by one hundredth of a second. It was a lesson on the very fine margins between success and its antithesis, but also opens up onto the possibility that we may all have something more within ourselves: it is a question of searching – and in this case, having the ability somehow to summon up precisely what you need when you most need it.

Usain Bolt was a different sort of athlete altogether. He made his element pure showmanship, and I doubt any Olympian ever bestowed so much joy per minute. I expect if you totted up all his races across his career, you’d arrive at about five minutes of entertainment. Yet he changed the world because he showed us how to compete without arrogance, yet in celebration at what we’re capable of. There was nothing self-effacing whatsoever about Bolt, but everybody could see his good nature – his delight was never aimed at his rivals in any negative way. Instead, it went outwards with the honest intention of delighting the crowds.

Everybody who comes before us in the Olympics can feel transparent in that

way – under the microscope of our collective observation. We feel we know this procession of athletes: Simone Biles with her agility and her occasional lapses into mental fragility; Daley Thompson’s slightly embittered determination; Steven Redgrave’s nearly humourless bloody-mindedness. Each of these, and so many others, present themselves for our inspection and we can admire their strengths, consider their foibles. Here is success to be reached for with a certain inner uncertainty (Biles), to be grimly and sometimes glumly striven for (Redgrave) or loftily assigned to oneself (Thompson). Personally, I can never get over the straightforward delight of Dame Kelly Holmes as she realises what she’s done in winning the 800 metres in Athens in 2004. I have written several drafts of this article, and each time when I get to this paragraph I have paused to watch that race, and felt the same tingle when the bell for the last lap rings. Each time, I find myself muttering, “Go on, Kelly” on the final stretch even though I know the result of the race. So much that is precious about the Olympics and humanity is contained in

Kelly Holmes wins gold in the womans 800m final in Athens 2004 (Alamy)

her expression when she sees she’s won: she can’t believe what she’s done as she didn’t know what she was capable of – until she gave it a try.

Despite this, defeat can sometimes be more vivid than victory. Consider, for instance, the story of Derek Redmond who was running in the semi-final of the 400 metres, with a very good chance of a medal should he reach the final. Sadly, he tore his hamstring, but decided to finish the race, evidently in extreme agony. His father came down from the stands to assist him and help him finish. Nobody who has seen this very moving footage can doubt that there is something here in our own lives which we might emulate. We all go through our lives, vaguely aware that it is in our gift to help each other. But this is an illustration of what help often looks like. I imagine Redmond’s father may briefly have wondered if he was allowed to cross over the stands and help his son, and yet chose to overcome that impediment. It is a reminder that there are always reasons we create for ourselves not to help.

Whenever I watch any montage of Olympic highlights, I start to wonder what it’s about. What is it that makes human being create these disciplines and perfect them? Does it matter if we ever run 100 metres in under nine seconds? Did it matter that Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile? From one standpoint, it can seem oddly futile – the balls going back and forth; the bodies in their postures; the weights being lifted; the heights being hurdled or vaulted. And yet there is something good for us about learning to do things well: at our best, it seems that by determined efforts we reach some kind of higher freedom, where we are in some better relationship with natural law. Besides, it is unthinkable to permit a world without play.

It was the great scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg who said that when the angels play in heaven, they play far harder than we do here. The only right response to the advent of the Paris Olympics is to emulate that.

Usain Bolt wins the gold for Jamaica in the Men's 4 ×

Andrew Prescott

THE RISE OF PORTFOLIO CAREERS:

COULD THIS BE THE ERA OF THE NEW RENAISSANCE MAN?

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

I’vebeen lucky enough to go often to Florence, more than any other the city of the Renaissance man. Each summer the crowds gather outside the copy of the Michelangelo David beside the Palazzo Vecchio, and I wonder how many people there know that its creator also wrote poetry, and designed the stairs to the Laurentian Library about half a mile away. They queue around the block for the Ufizzi galleries, and when they’re inside they long to see Leonardo’s Annunciation. But it isn’t widely known that Leonardo was also a fine musician and for his time, a mean palaeontologist. People often feel they are dreaming when they come to Italy, because the past has such a strong pull. But we must also ask ourselves why they have that pull. It’s because these figures have a reach and potential that, however clever we might think we are, demonstrably exceeds our own: they were the Renaissance Men.

For myself, sometimes I’ve taken a moment to sit on the benches in the square Santa Maria Novella, the façade of which was produced by the man who is sometimes said to have started it all Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Alberti might be better known if one were better able to pinpoint who he was – but that’s just the point, he was the original owner of what today we call the portfolio career. However he seems to have gone out of his way to make his identity as difficult to define as possible. He was by turns an author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer. Alberti is probably now a little in the shadow of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo, both of whom could do almost anything, and perhaps you might say, could do all those things a little better

than Alberti. But there is a daring about Alberti which is part of the Florentine spirit. Perhaps he is a more fitting emblem of the Renaissance than Michelangelo and Leonardo, those superb outliers. Alberti embodies the opportunities of doing lots of little things, but perhaps in a way some of the drawbacks.

“IT IS SOMETIMES SAID THAT GOETHE, WHO DIED IN 1832, WAS THE LAST PERSON ALIVE TO KNOW THE ENTIRE STATE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AS IT WAS

AT THAT TIME.”

It is sometimes said that Goethe, who died in 1832, was the last person alive to know the entire state of human knowledge as it was at that time. Nobody who has studied him can ignore that for Germany’s most famous poet he knew an awful lot about physics – and architecture, art, plants, geology and everything else. Others have observed that Joyce’s Ulysses, that massive work published in 1922, showed that its author had arrived at something close to a complete knowledge of the world as he found it at the start of the 21st century.

Received wisdom is that this is no longer possible. The story goes like this. In the 21st century it became quite impossible to arrive at any overall view of things, because everything from poetry to mathematics became almost outrageously

specialised. You might just about get your head around Nils Bohr’s physics, but it would come at the cost of not being able to understand The Wasteland. I must admit that I have rather tended to dislike this reductive and unambitious way of living. It was Saul Bellow who in The Adventures of Augie March (1953) had its hero say: “This is an age of specialisation and I am not a specialist.” In my own life, I’ve found myself writing books about figures as disparate as Theresa May and Roger Federer – and also had a stab at a long book on American democracy, and fiction and poetry too. I’ve also wanted to mentor, start magazines, edit, paint, and play piano. It is a moot point as to whether I have ever done these things well: but I know this tendency within myself to lie so deep as to amount to a fact of my life.

This restlessness, you might say, or perhaps inquisitiveness, can be punished by the world. It doesn’t make one easily categorisable. It was something which the late Clive James, who insisted on his right to appear on television, while also translating Dante and learning the tango (and speaking about ten languages), used to complain about. Today it can still look rather peculiar on CVs to have wheeled about continually: he speaks of lack of staying power, and can raise doubts (often justified ones) about the extent of one’s commitment to any one thing.

One such person is Anushka Sharma, the founder of the London Space Network, who tells me of her own portfolio career.

“I worked in politics but then left in 2012 to work in the Olympics,” she recalls.

“I then went into self-employment and began working in the start-up ecosystem, before realising my passion was space. I

was building up a network, doing a lot in the space sector, and people would say: ‘You’re doing so much in space but not telling anyone.”

Life for Anushka was somewhat unpredictable. She recalls: “I was straddling one six-month contract with one and then another, getting a break in between, getting access to the space community. I was network mapping and looking at the opportunities. I’ve definitely had a portfolio background.”

But this, she says, has brought both huge benefits and certain costs. “I’ve followed what I love and what I’m passionate about. My CV was rejected by so many jobs. Prospective employers would assume I’d get bored, or they’d say they didn’t understand my story. It’s only now in retrospect that all this makes sense.”

Finito mentor Sophia Petrides has seen this regularly with her candidates: “I see this a lot in my work as a coach. Clients who are feeling burned out and stuck often come to me for help in navigating this difficult time and figuring out their next career move. In many cases, a portfolio career can be a good solution. It allows them to leverage their skills and experience in a way that is more fulfilling and sustainable.”

She attributes the trend to a range of factors. The first is a desire for flexibility. “Many individuals seek greater flexibility in their work lives to pursue multiple interests and accommodate

personal commitments,” Petrides explains. “A portfolio career allows them to design a work schedule that fits their lifestyle.” This, she continues, carries with it possible financial benefits, in particular diversification of income: “With the rise of the gig economy and freelance opportunities, individuals may choose a portfolio career to diversify their sources of income. This can provide greater financial stability and resilience against economic downturns or job loss.”

“A PORTFOLIO

CAREER ALLOWS INDIVIDUALS TO PURSUE MULTIPLE INTERESTS

AND PASSIONS

SIMULTANEOUSLY,

LEADING TO A MORE FULFILLING AND VARIED WORK LIFE.”

Of course there’s risk attached too in that one’s roots across different sectors may somehow be shallower than is the case with somebody who becomes highly expert in a single, durable career. People with portfolio careers are best advised to make sure that they are following their passion – or passions – otherwise the risks of this path may not seem worth it. Petrides continues: “A portfolio career allows individuals to pursue multiple interests and passions simultaneously, leading to a more fulfilling and varied work life. This can lead to greater job satisfaction and a sense of purpose. Furthermore, some people have a diverse set of skills and interests that may not be fully utilised in a traditional career path. A portfolio career allows them to leverage all their talents and expertise across different roles or industries.” We’re also, she points out, at a point in time where all this is possible and so why not give it a try? “The nature of work is evolving rapidly

with technological advancements and globalisation,” she explains. “A portfolio career offers individuals the opportunity to adapt to these changes by continuously learning new skills and exploring different opportunities.”

However, while these benefits are real, they will likely fit a particular sort of person – and even that sort of person might want to be aware of certain potential drawbacks. “On the downside of a portfolio career, juggling multiple roles or projects can be challenging and may lead to income variability as you constantly chase the next job,” Petrides adds. “Balancing different commitments can also be overwhelming, potentially leading to stress and burnout if not managed effectively. Additionally, you may lack benefits such as health insurance or retirement plans.” All in all, like everything in life, it’s a choice: “In today’s uncertain times, having a portfolio career can offer advantages by making individuals more agile, resilient, and adaptable to change. It allows them to find joy in life by pursuing diverse interests and maintaining a flexible work-life balance.”

But how to know whether this path is for you? Petrides outlines certain personality types who might be particularly suited to a portfolio career. Her first category are those who are curious and creative, adding that “those who enjoy finding new solutions and exploring different ideas are likely to thrive in a portfolio career. The variety of work can help them stay engaged and motivated.” But she’s also keen to point out that this is no walk in the park. She adds that you’ve got to be self-disciplined (“managing multiple projects and clients requires strong time management and organisational skill” as well as adaptable (“the ability to learn new skills and adjust to changing markets demands is essential for success in a portfolio career”). It’s also important to work on your networking skills. So are we perhaps evolving in this direction? Dr Paul Hokemeyer, an admired psychologist who has built up an

Leon Battista Alberti (Wikipedia.org)

impressive practice and client base, thinks that’s possible. “Human beings are born to evolve,” he tells me. “In 1859, Darwin noted that it wasn’t the strongest species that survived, but rather the ones who could adapt to changing circumstances. Over a half a century later, Sartre wrote eloquently about how existence precedes essence. In our modern world, this applies to one’s professional successes and fulfilment in life as well. In my experience in working with young adults and nascent professionals, I’ve found in our rapidly changing world, people are best served by developing a welldiversified set of professional credentials that change over time.”

So are we therefore in the era of Renaissance Man 2.0? Hokemeyer is enthused by the idea. “I love the promise of Renaissance Man 2.0. In it, we recognise that life is meant to be lived, relationships nurtured and our earth, honoured. One of the central features of the original Renaissance Man was that it was grounded in an ethos of abundance, a recognition that the world contains more than enough resources to provide a safe and equitable place for everyone. Given that today science has turned its attention to issues relating to longevity and reversing the aging process, I welcome

a renewed focus on issues relating to an embrace of all knowledge and an intentional focus on developing one's capacity to its full potential.”

However, as exciting as all this is, I’ve also sometimes wondered whether my own tendency to do lots of different kinds of things might perhaps open up onto fear of failure. It was Sir John Mortimer who was amusingly open about this. As both a barrister and a writer – and a writer across many genres – he only half jokily observed that having lots of projects on the go was a useful wager against failure. Hokemeyer finds this plausible: “There is of course the potential that adopting a scatter shot approach to life is grounded in unhealthy personality and mental health issues. Typically, these include things like imposter syndrome, commitment issues related to poor self-concept and low selfesteem, and issues such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and addiction issues. For people who suffer from these aforementioned conditions, their ability to attain success in or mastery over a professional area will be compromised due to their reactive rather than intentional nature.”

So perhaps it can really be a sort of ‘covert laziness’? “I think there is something

to it for sure but I don’t really see the archetypical ‘layabout’ trying different things. They tend more towards the victim mentality. They lay about bemoaning the ills of the world rather than doing anything to change them.”

“THE WORLD IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING, AND THE SKILLS THAT ARE IN DEMAND TODAY MAY NOT BE

IN DEMAND TOMORROW.”

Petrides is not so sure that the motivations for the portfolio career are usually bad. “While restlessness might play a part for some, the core of a portfolio career lies is taking control of your work and shaping it to fit your goals and aspirations.” However, she does concede that there is ‘a danger in not specialising.” Why is this? Petrides explains: “Specialisation allows you to develop a deep understanding and expertise in a particular area. This can make you more valuable to employers and can help you to advance your career. However, there is also a danger of overspecialising. The world is constantly changing, and the skills that are in demand today may not be in demand tomorrow. If you are too specialised, you may find it difficult to adapt to these changes.”

All of which means there’s a necessary balance to be struck. We no longer expect to spend our lives at the same firm or even in the same profession for our entire working lives. We now have the ability to move about and try different things, and as curious creatures, we are naturally inclined to explore these new opportunities. However, as the world develops swiftly in this new direction, we must also be aware of the need to pursue a portfolio career with a certain measured caution, and be sure above all that we’ve embarked upon it for the right reasons.

Charles Darwin (Wikipedia.org)

RAPHAEL HOLT: A GUIDE TO ANXIETY

HOW THE ENGLISH EXAMINATION SYSTEM TESTS

STUDENTS’ MENTAL HEALTH

The English education system is broken. It damages everybody in it. This is why: summing up 15 years of education with a string of high stakes exams is a ludicrous way to judge what a young person is capable of. Forcing them to memorise and regurgitate vast tracts of facts is not education...

I initially created my photo book for my A-level photography exam. Now, I revisit the concept with a year’s experience working as a full-time English tutor in a secondary school. As a student, I watched helplessly as my friends’ mental health collapsed, many of them being told to drop out of courses they aspired to study at university.

As a tutor, I felt the pressure to enforce the inhumane, robotic nature of the curriculum onto mentally drained students.

So what’s wrong?

The first major problem is the lack of personal development and creativity the education system offers. Once young people go out into the real world they find that employers are increasingly recruiting people without looking at their qualifications. Instead they are setting their own challenges. They are looking for people who can think creatively, work with others and show empathy and persistence.

The second major problem, from the perspective of someone who has

studied and worked in a state school in Camden in North London - is the lack of funding, as well as the stark contrast between private schools and state schools.

At school we used to joke about why we can’t afford glue sticks, but the bleak reality is that we can’t afford support for at least 20 per cent of students with learning difficulties; just up the road from us Highgate private school is constructing and expanding its buildings with Monopoly money.

I will now introduce you to a range of students who I interviewed in and around their exams. Basing their shoots around their words, I was attempting to visualise their feelings.

Raphael Exams in one day

"I guess my coping mechanism is to have a hot bath - it provides a release to all that built up stress and anxiety."

Katie Exams in two weeks

"The pregnancy came at the worst possible time - going through an abortion weeks before my exams."

"I was in hospital losing blood and I was still anxious and thinking about my A-levels."

“I just sit in bed for a couple hours and just lie there - I'm not even on my phone, I just stare and the wall and cry."

Maud Exams in two weeks

"No, no it's not fair that some students are not getting the same quality of education as others. All students deserve equal opportunities to succeed and reach their full potential."

“I have anxiety and depression - a lot of it stems from the stresses of school and the pressure of it. The education system makes it feel like your worth is dependent on your grades.”

Noah Exams in one month

"My OCD gets worse during these periods...It's quite lonely."

"Separating yourself from it (OCD) is the most important thing. You know who you are but you also don’t. It’s like some sort of barnacle stuck to you.”

“To them (the exam board) it’s not about the individual, it’s just numbers on a sheet of paper.”

Remy

Sat A-levels in 2021 - During Covid-19

"It was a vicious cycle of stress."

"When you say how did I cope... I don't really know if I did, just time went on, I carried on stressing."

"Nothing really put my anxiety at ease, maybe just the thought of them being over.”

Jay Exams in one month

"I feel that pcople are expecting me to do well, perform a certain way. So then what happens is my obsessive thoughts sort of say to me “I’m not going to let you do that, I’m going to make it hard for you.” So that expectancy breeds my OCD.”

“It sounds silly but my coping mechanism is probably a hot shower and a cup of tea.”

Matthew One year until A-levels.

"I feel like I've never really fitted in at any school I've been in."

"It always feels like doing art isn't what they want - they want you to be academic."

WHAT THE ARCHITECT FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT TEACHES US ABOUT ADVERSITY

RAYMOND HAVEL

Portrait photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright, (New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Al Ravenna, Wikipedia.org)

Whenwe look at the famous or the successful, graciously hosting television cameras in their comfortable home, it is easy to assume that they have found themselves inoculated from what Hamlet calls ‘the shocks and arrows of outrageous fortune’. There is the sense that all that is difficult or troubling has been brought to heel somehow.

One early example of this genre concerns the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, approached in 1953 with the reverence with which someone in medieval England might approach a King by NBC Chicago’s Hugh Downs. This interview is in many respects a ridiculous affair. Wright is treated – and clearly regards himself – as not just a great artist but a seer and a sage. He may well have been all those things, but he is also plainly a self-regarding one. Throughout the interview, he sits with a large book inexplicably on his lap, like some vast Bible, which the viewer is invited to assume must be a compendium of his drawings. His answers are philosophical and one can never be sure if he is definitely looking Downs in the eye – certainly the impression is that Downs has come to Parnassus to address a higher form of life.

Many will perhaps agree with Frank Lloyd Wright’s estimation of his own abilities while thinking he could have been more modest about them. Wright is one of those few architects who we can certainly say changed architecture, though it could sometimes be a bit tiresome to hear him point this fact out so often. It suggested perhaps that he had something to hide, and I think he did: his moral self, which was, biographers agree, by turns slippery, cunning, abusive, untrustworthy and arrogant.

This queasiness one feels about Wright is something we need to get out of the way before we discuss his genius, which is far more interesting and surprising than the news that well-known people often behave badly.

More interesting – and it is especially worth considering for anyone who happens

to YouTube the NBC Chicago interview – is Wright’s vulnerability, arising out of a lifelong familiarity with tragedy. In fact, looked at closely, Wright’s career involved a regular collision with adverse circumstances – some of them fairly typical and at least one of them unthinkable, which we shall come to in a moment. A book published in 1993 The Seven Ages of Frank Lloyd Wright, written by Dennis Hoppen, observed that Lloyd Wright had a remarkable ability to absorb reversals and over time convert them into new periods of creativity.

It is this which makes Wright worth studying. The patrician who was never short of a word of self-praise ought not detain us. These traits probably had to do with a difficult upbringing: trauma created a sort of outer person which was secondary to the much more interesting inner creative life by which he really lived. In interview, we meet this outer self; in his work the far more interesting central force. Regardless, his life has a fascinating rhythm to it: Hoppen’s book shows that Wright experienced surges of creativity which were routinely checked by disaster. But these disasters seem to have gone deep into him, and by some mysterious creative process, engendered over time great leaps forward in his art.

“SHE DECLARED WHILE FRANK WAS STILL IN THE WOMB THAT HE WOULD GROW UP TO CREATE BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS.”

Wright would often state that he didn’t decide to be an architect, his mother made that decision for him. She declared while Frank was still in the womb that he would grow up to create beautiful buildings and was so proactive in what was then a distant likelihood as to adorn his nursery with pictures of the great English cathedrals. Wright would later make it clear that he didn’t think anybody had taught him

architecture telling Downs with his usual slightly prim arrogance:

“I'm no teacher. Never wanted to teach and don't believe in teaching an art. Science yes, business of course..but an art cannot be taught. You can only inculcate it, you can be an exemplar, you can create an atmosphere in which it can grow. Well I suppose I, being an exemplar, could be called a teacher, in spite of myself. So go ahead, call me a teacher.”

Wright’s initial degree was in civil engineering but his ambition was to make it to Chicago; in fact, he left university just before completing his qualification. He may not have felt he needed a teacher. But a mentor, one feels, can be a quite different thing and in Louis Sullivan, of the firm Adler & Sullivan, that is what Wright found in spite of his own irascibility and the perennial failure to get on with people which would often crop up in his career. Though Wright would make a habit of disparaging his contemporaries, Sullivan would be remembered fondly by Wright –though by no means so fondly as to make anyone think Wright himself was anything other than number one, or in his own confident estimation, “the greatest architect who ever lived, or will live.”

The trouble with Wright’s arrogance is that the architecture does tend rather to bear out his own high assessment of himself. Even as a young man he had already by 1900, almost single-handedly, invented prairie architecture, with a series of four houses which showed a completely undaunted sense of the possibility of American architecture, and by association American life. The European ideal, from Wright’s perspective, was all very well, but the greatness of European art had been arrived by being true to the history and values of that continent. Mightn’t something new be possible in this vast country?

And if something was possible, then what distinguished the American case from the European? The first thing was the sheer size of the country and therefore the space assigned to each individual.

Europeans, and especially British people, have long since found themselves living on top of one another. Any visitor to the towns of America feels how different the demographics are: we feel the country’s enormity, its abundance, and tied to these things, the sense that Americans can live differently, which of course means in different buildings. Prairie architecture was Wright’s first attempt to be true to what now seems to us a fairly obvious reality. Many of these houses still stand today as he always said they would. The great innovation here is the horizonal line which mirrors the great outstretched nature of America. For Wright, European architecture was pre-democratic or even anti-democratic and characterised by boxed rooms, which are ideal for establishing hierarchical systems. One thinks of the servants’ quarters, or the cutoff luxury of, say, the master bedroom in a typical European castle. Wright’s houses are different: the open floor plan which would go onto dominate, in another setting, office life, is really his invention.

But these insights were built on a deeper intuition which had to do with the need to respect landscape, making Wright the purveyor of what he called organic architecture. This meant that his architecture was meant to embody the essence of the land. Most famously, he once expounded his views on hilltop or hillside architecture: “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” Wright’s architecture belongs to the land – and he accentuated this idea by building often in stone and wood. The prominent central chimneys in these houses are intended to relate to the human heart – and there is perhaps the sense that Wright’s buildings correspond not only to the landscape they’re in but to human beings themselves: they are, perhaps, attempts to create functional counterparts to the American soul.

It all amounted to a great vision of democracy by a man who in his life was

“NO HOUSE SHOULD EVER BE ON A HILL OR ON ANYTHING. IT SHOULD BE OF THE HILL. BELONGING TO IT. HILL AND HOUSE SHOULD LIVE TOGETHER EACH THE HAPPIER FOR THE OTHER.”

Frederick C. Robie House (Wikipedia.org)

actually rather authoritarian. It is possible to find a contradiction in his life between his sense of himself as the isolated Great Man, and his oft-stated belief that American architecture cannot thrive unless it takes into account its founding principle of democracy.

These promising – indeed, exceptional – beginnings were soon to be upended by unthinkable tragedy. Wright, though married, had conducted a controversial affair with a married woman – and the wife of one of his clients – Mamah Borthwick. The press got wind of it all, and Wright built Taliesin in its first incarnation in order to shield Borthwick from the press. Then on August 15, 1914, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados, set fire to Taliesin, and then murdered seven people, including Borthwick and her two visiting children. It is hard to imagine what this must have been like for Frank Lloyd Wright, who happened to be away on business. But in time his reaction was remarkable: Is release from anguish in action.

Anguish would not leave Taliesin until action for renewal began. Again, and at once, all that had been in motion before at the will of the architect was set in motion. Steadily, again, stone by stone, board by board, Taliesin the II began to rise from Taliesin the first.

It is a splendid lesson about how to deal with setback: creatively. As Taliesin II was rebuilt, Lloyd Wright was working on a new phase in his career, when he accepted a commission to design the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. This looks so different as to not seem to be from the hand of the same architect, but of course it’s in a different country and Wright was committed to an architecture which, to a near obsessive degree, took into account place. Wright had thought through the viability of the structure – although sometimes this has been exaggerated a little. The structure did survive the Great Kantō earthquake of 1st September 1923 and Baron Kihachiro Okura sent Wright the following telegram: Hotel stands undamaged as a monument

of your genius hundreds of homeless provided by perfectly maintained service congratulations[.] Congratulations[.]

Wright being Wright, he wasn’t about to keep this telegram from the press and the story did a fair amount to embellish his legend. In actual fact the central section had fallen through, and several floors bulged. It certainly wasn’t the least damaged building in the earthquake.

But Wright had moved onto another phase, which is sometimes characterised as ‘monumentality’. His block houses such as Ennis House fall broadly into this category. One wonders whether in their scale and grandeur they reflect a growing awareness of America’s imperial destiny: they feel like houses which belong to a powerful people, and in the wake of the First World War, where American involvement had decisively tipped the scales towards the Allies, America’s self-image had shifted. It would be the world power, and here was the architecture to prove it.

Front side of the Ennis House in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California. (Mike Dillon, Wikipedia.org)

But further disaster was round the corner, in the shape of another fire at Taliesin. On April 20th 1925, Wright noticed smoke billowing from his bedroom, and though on this occasion he was on site and able to call for help quickly, it was a night of high winds, and Taliesin II was destroyed along with much of the superb art collection which its owner had acquired while working in Japan. But again he was undaunted and took this loss as inspiration for Taliesin III which still stands today:

“And I had faith that I could build another Taliesin! A few days later clearing away the debris to reconstruct I picked up partly calcined marble heads of the Tang-dynasty, fragments of the black basalt of the splendid Wei-stone, Sung soft-clay sculpture and gorgeous Ming pottery turned to the colour of bronze by the intensity of the blaze. The sacrificial offerings to — whatever Gods may be. And I put these fragments aside to weave them into the masonry — the fabric of Taliesin III that now — already in mind—was

to stand in place of Taliesin II. And I went to work.”

“THE HOUSE OF MODERATE COST IS NOT ONLY AMERICA’S MAJOR ARCHITECTURAL PROBLEM, BUT THE PROBLEM MOST DIFFICULT FOR HER MAJOR ARCHITECTS.”

There is something very magnificent about the simplicity of that sentence: “And I went to work”. In its confident forward movement we get very close to the essence of the man. From here, Wright would go on to his so-called ‘desert architecture’ phase – it was a difficult time for Wright personally and financially and he was forced to take on smaller projects such as Ocotilla and San Marcos in the Desert.

This must have been relatively humbling, and of course the 1929 Great Depression was round the corner to humble him further.

By 1929, he could have been forgiven for thinking he’d had a life entirely comprised of setbacks. This huge decline in productivity led to another fallow period and then a period of low cost architecture characterised by his Usonian houses – small houses very private from the front and open at the back usually aimed at the middle class. The first such house is usually considered to be the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House. Though this house, with its horizontality, and little carport, was perhaps a rather humbling project for a man to undertake who considered himself the equal, and indeed the superior, to the architects who made the Pyramids, Wright couldn’t quite refrain from couching it in the grandest terms possible: “The house of moderate cost is not only America’s major architectural problem, but the problem most difficult for her major architects. As for me, I would rather

Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House (James Steakley, Wikipedia.org)

solve it with satisfaction to myself and Usonia than build anything I can think of at the moment.” Usonia, incidentally, was Wright’s somewhat ludicrous term for America, but these houses are extremely beautiful and subtle. They feel as though they contain an earned wisdom. Indeed, perhaps as one looks at the wonderful Usonian houses, one can reflect that humility wasn’t a bad thing for Frank

Lloyd Wright to get to know a little.

But humility wasn’t to be for the architect in the long run. The second half of his life contains fewer setbacks and much of his greatest work, especially the magnificent Fallingwater was still ahead of him, and that superb office space the Johnson Wax Headquarters, with its famous lily pad columns. Wright always said that it increased productivity. As

impediment fell away, and a greatness exactly like the one imagined for him by his mother was assured, Lloyd Wright settled into the grand and arrogant persona which Hugh Downs would come to visit in 1953, some six years before his death. But what’s more interesting than the man at the summit he became is the way in which he surmounted so many obstacles to get there.

Fallingwater at Mill Run, Pennsylvania (Wikipedia.org)

Taliesin West, Scottsdale, AZ, USA (Photograph by Greg O'Beirne, Wikipedia.org)

THE PRIME MINISTER CALLS: AN EXCERPT FROM ALAN HALSALL’S LAST MAN STANDING

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT OF HIS NEW MEMOIR ALAN HALSALL RECALLS THE NIGHTMARE HE ENDURED AT THE HANDS OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION

Thesteaks were about to go on the barbecue when my mobile phone rang.

It was 7th May 2020 and lockdown, in that anomalous period when we were confined to our homes – and in that first year the weather was surreally beautiful even in Lancashire. Every day we woke to the strangeness of the Covid situation, and the weird balminess of the springtime. News of the virus had begun to seep into our collective consciousness late the previous year but at first it had seemed as though the misfortunes of Covid-19 had been confined to China. 2020 had swiftly disabused us of that notion as the virus had ripped through Italy and into the UK, leading the Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose lockdown in March. We seemed to have entered some other reality.

Given the last few years, I knew what that felt like: these had been challenging years for me – in fact, difficult beyond measure. My reputation had been called into question by the Electoral

Commission thanks to a completely unexpected – and, to me it seemed, vindictive – investigation into the finances of Vote Leave. Covid-19 had felt in some sense secondary and so long as the police investigation was hanging over me, nothing else could really command my attention. If you’re ever under investigation by the police, knowledge of your innocence doesn’t do much to alleviate the stress.

Besides, I was worn out: for the past four years or so, I’d been dealing with the criminal investigation and attacks not just from the Electoral Commission, but hectoring from journalists like Carol Cadwalladr, and the complaints of MPs like Ben Bradshaw, Tom Brake, and Caroline Lucas.

“ESSENTIALLY I WAS ALONE, FIGHTING A CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.”

I still had my family and my good friends in the Vote Leave campaign for support such as Matthew Elliott, Jon Moynihan, Antonia Flockton and Daniel Hodson. But essentially I was alone, fighting a criminal prosecution – plus I had already spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of my own money in legal costs. It was also the eve of the 75th anniversary of VE Day – a day to think back on those who had sacrificed themselves during the Second World War, and to give thanks for our victory in

that appalling conflict. There were some people who I couldn’t help thinking of at that time: my uncle Donald Halsall, who had died early in the war in an operation in Norway; and the impact of that death on my dad David Halsall (1924-1984), and my grandfather Robert Halsall (1890-1942) who had died at 52, probably from a broken heart at Donald’s death. But for everybody of my generation, VE Day has its ghosts. There was to be a Bank Holiday, a fly-past and somewhat muted celebrations due to Covid-19.

The memory of what this country went through during the Second World War is one of the few things which can still bring people together in a country which has, since the European Referendum in 2016, seemed divided. This division was probably an abstraction for many people. Maybe it could take the form of a family argument here or there, or a strained friendship. For me, it was far more visceral than that. I had been living and breathing the stress which can arise out of partisanship for years now and, as with most traumatic events, you never really feel it’s going to end. It was Abraham Lincoln who always uttered to himself during the unimaginable strains of the American Civil War: “This too shall pass.” But when you’re in the thick of it, you never feel it will.

As the Responsible Person for Vote Leave it had been down to me to sign off the spending declaration of our successful campaign for Brexit, a task which I

Alan Halsall

had executed faithfully. But since my declaration had been lodged, I’d been hit by years of questions from the Electoral Commission. I was sure of my innocence, but I was also sure of what I’d been through: letter after letter; accusation after accusation. When the Electoral Commission had referred me to the police, there had been a deepening sense of alarm and a constant anxiety which had been almost impossible to live with. A sort of fear had woven itself into my life – a fear which had to do with a sense of ongoing injustice. There had been a terrible illogic about the whole thing, and there seemed to me no reason why, if the nightmare could happen at all in the first place, why it shouldn’t continue indefinitely.

During the years of the investigation, I had begun to develop an unhealthy relationship with my phone. It was an almost tormenting source of information. All that had been bad about the past few years had emanated out of this device: the pompous and absurd emails from the Electoral Commission; apologetic bulletins from expensive lawyers about the latest twist; the pious complaints of Remainer politicians who had an alleged commitment to democracy which had somehow reversed itself when they had lost. Yet my phone, I knew, might also be the messenger of better news one day. This meant, of course, that I was

tethered to it: the addictive nature of our modern gadgets had never felt so acute to me, so full of pain, but also of a curious potential.

And it was this same device which, on that beautiful summer’s evening of May 7th, was still ringing, demanding that it be answered. I moved across the garden of our Lytham home to pick it up.

During the long trial of that investigation, sometimes I would think back to the night of the Brexit vote, and our victory. I have a picture of me with the likeable Labour politician Gisela Stuart, who had chaired the Vote Leave board: we look astonished and happy. I now know from reading Tim Shipman’s All Out War, that our delight

was mirrored by dismay in Downing Street – the image of Cameron, Osborne et al. sequestered with their heads in their hands can, I confess, cause me some pleasure even now. But as happy as we were – and why should we not have been, given the mountain we had climbed? – I can sometimes feel wistful when I look at that picture of me and Gisela. That had seemed like an ending of sorts, but we had no idea what was coming down the track. I sometimes thought of Kenneth Wolstenhome’s famous line of football commentary: “They think it’s all over…it is now!” I smile at that now. It wasn’t all over at all; for me the nightmare was just beginning.

“THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER…IT IS NOW!” I SMILE AT THAT NOW. IT WASN’T ALL OVER AT ALL; FOR ME THE NIGHTMARE WAS JUST BEGINNING.”

Perhaps we underestimated the extent to which the Brexit vote would open up such bitter fault-lines in society: it was in retrospect a process which might have been designed to create new resentments, and stoke dormant ones. We had

Alan Halsall

Matthew Elliott

assumed that once the result came in, we would tie up some loose administrative ends and close our offices. I would return to chairing the Moorlands Learning Trust, and to reading Hardy’s novels and at last finishing Alanbrooke’s War Diaries. That reasoning still seems like it should have proven sound. It had been for us to run the campaign. It felt an implicit part of the arrangement that the likes of me would have little say over what happened in the highest echelons of government when it came to executing – or failing to execute – the result. I accepted that, of course. I am not a politician and have never aspired to be one; I’m a businessman who found during his career that the regulatory environment emanating out of Brussels was produced by anonymous remote EU civil servants and was usually adverse to small businesses. My interest in politics was in that sense fairly specific.

I remember as I reached for the phone I saw with a shock that the call was from Ian Burton, the senior partner at BCL Solicitors. Why would the senior partner,

of my lawyers, be calling at 6.30pm on the eve of a Bank Holiday? Usually I worked with his assistant Julian Hayes, my brilliant lawyer throughout my tribulations with the police. If Ian were calling me, I knew what this might be: an update on the police investigation. I felt a rush of energy, like being in a highly pressurised air cabin.

Was he calling to tell me the police had chosen to prosecute? What would be the next steps if they did?

I had known this feeling before. I used always to enjoy listening to the Today programme, going back to the days of such excellent presenters as Brian Redhead and John Timpson.

I had always felt that Radio 4 – and especially the Today programme – gave an unbiased view of the world and the UK. It came to you with an almost medical precision to tell you the nation’s pulse on any particular day. But that version of the BBC was in the past, and it had been changing long before the grim morning on July 17th

2018, when I had found myself as the lead bulletin on the 7am news and all other BBC news reports for that morning. On that occasion I had felt the same sudden sense of disorientation which I felt now, when I saw Ian’s name on my phone. Over the past years especially – and probably predating the 2016 Referendum – the Today programme had barely been able to contain its mounting hostility to rightwing causes. It had become essentially a creature of the Establishment, or the blob. It might possibly be that it has always been that way inclined but now, in a world of stark choices – Do we really intend to see through the Brexit vote? – the producers at the BBC saw less of a need to hide their editorial views.

“LITTLE HAD I KNOWN THAT I WOULD BE LEADING THE NEWS AT 7AM WITH THE STORY THAT VOTE LEAVE HAD BEEN FINED.”

When I had awoken on 17th July 2018, I had known that there was likely to be a piece in the media about me some time soon. Little had I known that I would be leading the news at 7am with the story that Vote Leave had been fined and that I (alongside Darren Grimes of the BeLeave campaign) was being reported to the Metropolitan Police to be investigated for potential crimes that I had allegedly committed in my role for the Vote Leave campaign, and Darren in regard to his BeLeave campaign. When I say this had been a shock, I am putting it mildly. I couldn't believe the massive blitz of publicity the Electoral Commission had presumably organised with the BBC. It had been devastating for me and for my family and friends.

Steve Baker waits for the referendum results

By May 2020, I could still shudder at the memory of that day – and I still do as I write this. That day had begun with a massive blitz of publicity on the results of their investigation, as their report was suddenly released, presumably in a bid to blindside us. This was hardly the behaviour of the solemn and impartial regulator obviously envisaged by the legislation which set up the Electoral Commission. Clearly, everything had to be done with maximum fanfare. They wanted their equivalent of the perp walk of shame. This had meant that Vote Leave had been given only 15 minutes notice of the timing of the broadcast itself, though they must have set up the Today programme at least a day before. This was a pattern: throughout my ordeal, the media always seemed to know before I did what was about to transpire.

On that day in 2018, a live interview with Claire Bassett, the CEO of the Electoral Commission, had followed at 7.10 am in which she had claimed amongst other things that no one from Vote Leave had been willing to attend an interview. This

was shockingly untrue, and I still find it hard to know why Bassett ended up saying this on live radio. Had she been poorly briefed? Had she made a mistake due to nerves at being live on air? Or had she deliberately lied? It is impossible to know for sure one way or another.

As with the Supreme Court or the ministerial code, the Electoral Commission is essentially the invention of the Blair government. Its establishment was not predicated on any particular evidence of failure in the previous system, where multiple stakeholders, including the Home Office, local councils, and registration officers, oversaw the electoral process. Instead, it was part of a wider fetish for assigning democratic functions to allegedly independent bodies. The purported independence of the commission is illusory, as evidenced by the former statements of many of its commissioners.

The Today interviewer had put the matter to Bassett: “They say that you yourselves, at the Electoral Commission,

did not follow the proper procedures. Basically they [ie Vote Leave] say they weren't given a chance to state their case.” Bassett replied: “We would strongly disagree with that. What we've published today is a 38-page report that sets this out in great detail. So, for example, over a three-month period we actually made attempts to interview Vote Leave and we were unable to.”

“HOW ON EARTH HAD IT COME TO THIS?”

How on earth had it come to this? This was provably false – it seemed to me, powerlessly listening to the broadcast, like a deliberate misleading of the public. The pressure which ensued had been immense: the subsequent police investigation dragged and dragged, and my legal costs rocketed. Valuable police time was wasted which ought to have been spent on other things. For me and my family, for years the ground note

of existence had been dread, and this feeling had always to be met in a state of exhaustion on the back of sleepless nights. It was no way to lead your life.

I remember as I picked up the phone to Ian, with all the previous thoughts swirling round my head, knowing that I was about to receive very important news. My life seemed to have two distinct paths: it must be either that the police had chosen to prosecute me, or that I had been exonerated.

Ian’s voice was unusually jovial.

“I’ve got some very, very good news,” he said.

I felt relief flood through me.

“ALAN, I’M PLEASED TO BE THE ONE TO TELL YOU THIS: THE MET HAVE DROPPED THEIR INVESTIGATION OF YOU.”

“We’ve just been emailed by the Met,” Ian continued. “Alan, I’m pleased to be the one to tell you this: the Met have dropped their investigation of you.”

I could hardly believe it. My long and tortuous ordeal was at an end. Suddenly, I had a prospect before me which I hadn’t known in three years: a good night’s sleep.

At such times, it’s possible to feel the joy of the moment hampered by exhaustion. But on this occasion I felt pure happiness. It was as if I was tasting freedom all over again and for the first time. Suddenly the world had shifted and everything was utterly changed. I phoned some of my colleagues from Vote Leave including Matthew Elliott, Jon Moynihan and Daniel Hodson to give them the good news. With the weather so beautiful, my wife Irene and I had invited her sister Elaine over to our house for the barbecue. Under such

circumstances, I immediately decided to open a bottle of champagne.

Then as our merriment rose, my mobile rang again.

This time it was Dominic Cummings, formerly the mastermind of Vote Leave, and now the prime minister’s right hand man – arguably the second most powerful man in the country, and according to certain wags in the press who wanted to have a go at Boris, the most powerful. I’m not sure how he had heard the news – it may perhaps have been from Matthew Elliott – but he said he wanted to congratulate me directly now that my ordeal was at an end.

I have always liked Dominic. He sometimes gets a bad press, but he’s incisive, genuine, and loathes phonies. He told me how badly he felt the Electoral

Commission had behaved and that he had somebody else who wanted to talk to me. Then, all of a sudden, I was speaking to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

I had met Boris before, but never when he had been Prime Minister, and I felt rather nervous at first – something to do, I suppose, with the enormity of the office he occupied. During the Brexit campaign we had been on the famous Brexit battle bus together, but this was different. There’s probably never been a PM so known to the nation at large by their first name. Whatever else he’s been – Mayor of London, a fidgety Foreign Secretary or the Covid Prime Minister – to the British people he’s always been Boris. I remember calling him by his Christian name and then, realising my mistake, apologising and calling him

Boris Johnson (Wikipedia.org)

Prime Minister. I hope he didn’t mind –I doubt he did.

Whatever you think of Boris Johnson, he knew exactly what to say. Boris made it clear to me that he was appalled by what the Electoral Commission had done, and again I felt he meant it.

At the end of the call, he told me he had to go outside No.10 to clap for our nurses. Of course, that was personal for him, as he was clapping for the profession that not too long beforehand had saved his life when he himself had come down with the virus.

I put the phone down, stunned that Dominic and Boris had taken time out of their hugely busy day to speak with me. It meant so much. After that, we finished the champagne and then went onto my favourite red wine – but I doubt the drink had much effect.

My nightmare was over. I could get my life back. And the steaks were good too.

Last Man Standing will be published by Finito Publishing in June 2024

Alan Halsall and Dominic Cummings

Alan Halsall and Gisela Stuart

FINITO BURSARY UPDATE: JOHNNY WINDSOR-CLIVE

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON INTERVIEWS FINITO CANDIDATE, WHO IS MAKING A HUGE DIFFERENCE AS AN ANALYST

One of the most underrated traits in our frenetic world is the one which many of us need more than we realise: patience. It is perhaps not surprising that having constructed a society based around the swift flow of information, and in encouraging the rush of activity, that we may have collectively forgotten this valuable attitude. But all the signs are that it’s an important thing for the job-seeker to cultivate. The world rarely works in a linear way, and it is as well to know that. Certainly, if we don’t do that, reality can disappoint and discourage us from getting anywhere.

All these thoughts came to me as I considered the case of Finito bursary candidate Johnny Windsor-Clive. It’s

hard to imagine a more likeable and gentler soul than Johnny: he’s the sort of person you find yourself rooting for before he’s even opened his mouth. But despite his obvious benevolence and decency, his career search hasn’t always been easy.

In fact, Johnny has had some definite headwinds to face. Ronel Lehmann recalls hearing about Johnny: “I was told that Johnny has mild Asperger’s Syndrome and when I met him I found myself warming to him immensely as someone with a kind and considerate manner, who nevertheless might not succeed in the same way without Finito’s help. Mild Asperger’s can lead to awkward movements, sensitivity to light and difficulty understanding other people’s perspectives – and yet I could see his potential.”

From the outset, then, it was a fascinating assignment. I ask Johnny first about his upbringing: “My parents live in Marlborough and I grew up there,” he tells me. And his parents? “Dad is an estate agent. He has his own company which specialises in country estates – and he does that globally.”

I ask Johnny if he’d ever considered following his father into the property sector? “I am aware from various sources that the whole property sector is going through a period of change,” he tells me. “Traditionally, the role of the agent was to bring something extra to the process – but nowadays, if you have a standard residential property, the role of the estate agent can largely be done because of the internet by the client themselves. An example of that

Johnny Windsor-Clive

is Purple Bricks where they actually cut out the estate agent almost entirely so that everything is negotiated between the seller and the buyer.”

Sometimes, knowing what you’re not going to do is as important as knowing what you will do – especially when it comes to a successful parent.

What about Johnny’s education? At school, he showed strength in history, geography, economics and politics, before going on to study politics at university. “After prep school, I went on to attend Oxford Brookes. Since that time, I have done various things, working for an MP and mostly doing data analysis political work. I found it really interesting, and then went on to work for an MP called Henry Bellingham. I also worked with Danny Kruger MP before working as a research analyst at Allied Peak.”

Other roles followed. It was gradually emerging that Johnny felt a considerable affinity with data, but he couldn’t quite see a career path for himself: he knew he had the skills, but what was really required was a role in which he could grow. In time, he came to Finito. “I got introduced to Ronel Lehmann when my mother heard through the network about the services that Finito offer. She was aware that a lot of the roles I had done were not really leading anywhere. They may have been interesting, but there was no career progression. Whereas what Finito have delivered for me is actually a stepping stone into a longterm career progression instead of just working in roles which don’t really have a career progression.”

So how did the Finito team begin to shape that path? “After first speaking with Ronel, the number one takeaway is finding out specifically where I wanted to go – but secondly I began to understand how important it is to have similar alternatives if the first option isn’t working out.” This greatly appealed to Johnny’s logical mind. “If

you are in a process and there is only one possible outcome, it’s not very good,” he recalls. “Whereas if there are other options that hugely increases your chances of a beneficial outcome: you don’t have to keep going back to square one. Actually you can start from step 19 and carry on!”

All of this meant that Johnny was beginning to think about his career in a far more flexible way. With this strategy in place, he was now able to focus on improving his skillset in terms of his online presence, as well as his interview preparation. To do this, he was referred to two senior Finito mentors Andy Inman and Coco Stevenson.

Stevenson recalls: “I remember explaining to Johnny how important it is to research a company, in particular to consider its mission statement, vision, values and strategic plan. I told him that he needed to be prepared to answer questions about these things. If the interviewer doesn’t specifically ask questions about these, it is useful to bring them into your answers.’”

“MANY CANDIDATES ARE UNDER STRESS AND IT CAN BE POSSIBLE FOR THEIR ANSWERS TO REFLECT THIS AND NOT TO CONTAIN QUITE THE ATTITUDE WHICH EMPLOYERS ARE SEEKING.”

Another important lesson related to vocabulary. Many candidates are under stress and it can be possible for their answers to reflect this and not to contain quite the attitude which employers are seeking. “I remember telling Johnny to

make sure that the vocabulary he uses is positive,” Stevenson continues. “For example, in a practice interview, when asked about moving abroad, Johnny said he would be happy to, and that he ‘couldn’t care less’. I knew that he meant this in a positive way in so far as he is not fazed by the challenge of relocating, but the way he phrased it sounded very negative, or it could be misconstrued as negative.”

For Johnny this was important: “Coco was incredibly helpful and offered really good advice. I would say for the interview preparation she was absolutely fantastic.”

Andy Inman, as a former military man, is known at Finito for offering a stricter approach. Johnny responded positively to this. “He was quite strict. But I appreciate strictness because it delivers results. That’s what I am in the system for – to achieve a result. Whenever I do something I want to know roughly what the result is going to be. As a result, I would rather a mentor who is strict than one who is not strict: if they’re not strict nothing gets done.”

Around this time, Johnny began to focus on the business analysis route. He was coming into greater awareness of his strengths. “One of the things I am very good at is going through data with a very fine tooth comb to find the relevant information. I then enjoy packaging that in a way that is useful to the project management team.”

Andy Inman

Johnny had his setbacks, with not every interview successful, but it was here that the presence of a clear plan in his mind gave him resilience. However, Andy Inman had to make sure he kept a close eye on Johnny during the application process. “Having helped Johnny prepare for his previous interview, I was a little saddened at one point to hear that he had not been successful in securing a particular role,” Inman recalls. “I remember speaking to him after this disappointment, and I was heartened to see that he was as upbeat as ever, and hopeful that the company would be in touch again when a more data and research leaning role became available. We chatted about some tech difficulties that Johnny had during the interview, and I reminded Johnny that we had previously discussed ways to mitigate that.”

But even as Inman was dispensing this advice, he noticed with his military eye for detail that Johnny needed to keep a close watch on the patterns of his life – as is common when one is between jobs. “I noticed that Johnny was becoming a little more eccentric over the 12 months that I had known

him. His speech had become a little more affected and he would happily talk over you before you had finished a sentence. I felt it might have been due to the fact he had very little exposure to life outside of the home environment. I had a good idea of how Johnny’s days usually followed the same format of job applications in the morning, following up previous applications in the afternoon and then socialising with his parents’ friends in the evening or playing bridge with his mother.”

But in spite of these minor adjustments, Johnny is blessed with an optimistic attitude and an enviable in-built resilience. In time, he heard through the Finito network about a potential role at Enness Global, the high end mortgages company. Johnny recalls: “Enness were potentially looking to take someone on because they had a challenge in terms of the management of their databases for two reasons.” What were these? “Firstly, some of it was only partially filled in. Secondly, there had been no one doing my role and so there was an enormous backlog which had built up.”

It was a hugely important interview

and in advance of it Johnny had a long session with Andy Inman. The file note reads: “He [Johnny] is excited about the opportunity to meet Islay [Robinson, CEO of Enness Global]. We discussed various practical tips for the day, this will be Johnny’s first face to face interview, which in many ways is a bonus as it enables him to come across personally but is also a little daunting for him. We discussed the company background work he needs to do over the weekend as well as doing a recce of the office location on Sunday.”

“WE COVERED BREATHING

TECHNIQUES

WHILE WAITING TO BE CALLED IN AND THEN THE SOCIAL ETIQUETTE OF THE INITIAL INTRODUCTION.”

If that seems like granular preparation, it wasn’t all. Inman continues: “We covered breathing techniques while waiting to be called in and then the social etiquette of the initial introduction. We covered work history and the need to make it an interesting story rather than firing off a list of job positions and dates and we covered strengths and weaknesses and how to best put those across. Finally I convinced Johnny of the importance of just enjoying the opportunity and allowing his true self to come across.”

The memorandum concludes on a moving note: “He is as ready as he will ever be and is determined to give a good account of himself. This will be life changing for Johnny if he is successful.”

When Johnny got the job, everybody at Finito was thrilled for him and it is even more thrilling to consider now

Richard Oldfield

that Inman’s predictions have proven true; this has been life-changing for Johnny. But for Johnny himself this exciting challenge is only just beginning. “For the past 15 months, I have been going through the backlog and sorting it out so that former clients can be re-contacted, making it easier for Enness to handle old clients. Before I came into position, Enness were unaware of the value they could offer to old clients. What I have been doing is extracting that information and repackaging it for the relationship managers, who can then re-engage those people.”

This work has been an astonishing success, a fact which has greatly strengthened Johnny’s own standing within the company. “I know from discussions with various colleagues in the past weeks that those clients who I have extracted from the backlog have significant holdings and wealth, much of it brokered by Enness. And we have now been able to help many of them access additional value and financial services from our wider portfolio.”

“FINITO WORKS INTUITIVELY WITH YOUNG PEOPLE TO HELP THEM PINPOINT THE AREAS IN WHICH THEY CAN BEST EXCEL AND TO MOVE INTO FULFILLING JOBS.”

How does that make him feel to know he is making such a difference to the company? Johnny is immediate with his response. “It makes me enormously proud that I am making such a positive difference to the company and also it makes me very pleased that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. My

work ensures that Enness get enormous value out of me and also that my skills have developed through the role which means that actually it give me an enormously sellable skill for the future. I feel one of the great things about Finito finding me this role is that it will enable me to forge a career.”

This means that Johnny is now ideally positioned to graduate into a broader analytical role. Has he pitched that to the management at Enness? “They are aware that my skills go beyond purely data analysis and data processing. A lot of the projects I am now doing are involving more analysis than previously, so that my role has moved from being purely data processing to actually doing some of the analysis as well which is really useful.”

Johnny concludes: “They seem very happy with me. It’s a great success story and I am very grateful to Finito for providing such great assistance.”

But, of course, it hasn’t just been Finito that has helped. Johnny’s story would have been impossible without the generous support of two bursary donors. Richard Oldfield, the founder of the Henry Oldfield Trust, says:

“Finito works intuitively with young people to help them pinpoint the areas in which they can best excel and to move into fulfilling jobs. Their support of young people is invaluable. Finito helps them with their first step into the workplace. We are delighted to contribute to the Finito bursary for those who would not otherwise be able to afford this superb service.”

Meanwhile, Mike Watson, founder of Watson Medical Anti Ageing and Pain Management, tells us: “As a business owner, I often find myself mentoring students, school leavers and university graduates, many of whom are desperate for reassurance and guidance. Finito’s offering allows the sharing of invaluable insights, empowering youngsters in essential life values and reminding them the world is not as complex as portrayed – we’ve been their age before! Finito definitely put their money (and my own) where their mouth is!”

And when it comes to Johnny we’ll be reporting in these pages about developments as they come along. “This is just the beginning,” he says. “I’m excited for the future.”

Mike Watson

“THE UK CAN BECOME THE GLOBAL SUPERPOWER FOR CYBERSECURITY”

Imeetthe likeable MP Stephen McPartland at the House of Commons and immediately warm to his cheerful, optimistic nature. McPartland is one of those MPs who quietly and behind the scenes make the political weather without the general public being aware of it. The 47-yearold is leaving Parliament at the next election, and if I had to select somebody who embodies what will be lost after the next election when so many experienced members will be retiring, I would choose him. Whatever one’s politics, there will be an awful lot less experience of the kind the current MP for Stevenage in Parliament this time next year.

But before he does leave Westminster, the government has given him an important job to do – a sort of last hurrah. McPartland is leading the independent review into cybersecurity and economic growth.

The review was announced by the deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden in Lancaster House, that impressive venue modelled on the Palace of Versailles. It was an opportunity for the government to announce the Pall Mall Initiative whereby Britain, France and 35 other countries have agreed to increase efforts to stop hackers from targeting companies.

McPartland recalls the seriousness of the mood: “It was announced as quite a big deal. The idea behind it is that cybersecurity is an incredibly important product which the UK has to offer. We are seen as one of the world leaders and the government’s ambition is for us to

become the cybersecurity superpower around the world so that UK technology and investments are seen as amongst the best.”

And so what is McPartland’s role in this? “I have been charged with doing an independent report into how we can change the narrative around cybersecurity so that it is seen as an enabler of economic growth as opposed to just purely a defensive measure.” McPartland is keen to emphasise the momentum which the industry has, explaining that in the last seven years the sector has grown from £5 to £10 billion, and currently employs almost 60,000 people in the UK. He says that the industry can grow exponentially to £40 billion over the next seven years: if such growth were achieved, it could create 120,000 jobs.

“THE INDUSTRY CAN GROW

EXPONENTIALLY TO £40 BILLION OVER THE NEXT SEVEN YEARS.”

McPartland is keen to outline the scale of the opportunities. If we make progress in this area, cybersecurity could become a keystone of our future economy. “We have a greatly skilled workforce,” he tells me. “A lot of our children leaving school and going onto apprenticeships or to university all have technology skills. They have grown up with technology; they understand the importance of security. The younger generation don’t know anything other than technology. So we

have a huge advantage there.”

So how can we win the future?

McPartland is optimistic on this point too. “When you look around the world at our insurance, financial and legal systems, we are really respected and it’s a similar situation when it comes to cybersecurity, whether you think of GCHQ or the National Cybersecurity Centre. In addition to that, British intelligence is seen as very high quality.”

But in order to realise these opportunities, we also need to rethink the way we view cybersecurity. McPartland explains: “At the moment, cybersecurity is seen as something IT people do – it’s seen as reactive. But what I’ve been thinking about is the question of how you make cybersecurity an enabler of economic growth.”

To do this McPartland is looking at a range of areas. “One is the question of how you digitise your company faster. In particular, what are the barriers to digitising your company? These could

Steven McPartland

be to do with regulation,” McPartland explains, “or perhaps it might be that there’s some problem in the supply chain.”

Another area the review will look at is exportability. “We’re looking at the question of how we can ensure that the UK is seen as a technology superpower for cybersecurity. It might be that we could provide some kind of internationally recognised standard –almost like a digital City of London so that it is globally recognised that we are the safest country in the world to do business with, and with the safest products.”

That leads McPartland into a third area which his review is looking at. “That’s about closing the skills gap and making sure we can work with the education system and employers to make sure that we have the skills we need. We’re also –and this is the fourth area – looking at the question of competitive advantage. Put simply, if you have got the safest product, you can use cybersecurity as a strategic advantage and it will also help you sell your product. That’s because the person buying your product is not only going to be backed up by great insurance, finance and legal skills but it’s also going to be the safest product.”

“ESSENTIALLY, CYBERSECURITY IS GOING TO BE VERY MUCH LIKE HEALTH AND SAFETY: IT IS GOING TO BE SOMETHING THAT IS INTEGRAL TO A COMPANY’S FUTURE.”

I’m interested to delve deeper into the employability issues and ask what kind of changes this deepening understanding of cybersecurity might bring? “There

are big changes going on around the world at the moment. Looking at recent legislative trends in Europe and the US, you can actually see that there are going to be some changes at the very top of organisations which are then going to require a whole series of roles from the top down all the way to entry level. Essentially, cybersecurity is going to be very much like health and safety: it is going to be something that is integral to a company’s future. Some of those roles haven’t even been developed yet: this is one of those exciting fields where the solutions are moving at such a pace that it changes what happens behind it.”

“YOU CAN’T REALLY HAVE AN AI STRATEGY WITHOUT A CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY.”

How does all this fit in with the buzz around the AI sector? “I know there are a lot of young people who may be very interested in AI but you can’t really have an AI strategy without a cybersecurity strategy. However AI operates, you need to know that AI is secure and then you need to ensure that if somebody is going to use AI in a negative way your products are then secure from that kind of use of AI. So the very essence of AI is going to create more need for in-depth and innovative cybersecurity.”

Much of what McPartland describes seems to open up onto the need to reskill the existing workforce in order to make cybersecurity an effective priority. When I ask him about this, he says: “There are already companies that are providing advice to boards on the type of questions they need to be asking around cybersecurity. A lot of those boards are very comfortable asking questions of auditors around finances and what they need to know – but they are not really sure what questions to ask around cybersecurity.”

I ask how the situation is for small businesses versus large FTSE 100 companies. McPartland explains: “As part of the review we are doing a call for evidence. Net Zero did 50 odd round tables over a year, and we did 26 of them in eight weeks. These range across the whole of the economic sector in the UK so we have everything from insurance to sports and entertainment. The idea is to get businesses of all different sizes to try and understand what the government can do to help. This is an independent report so although it has been commissioned by government, I can go off and talk to who I need to and then develop the recommendations and then government can respond to them. This is not something the government is telling industry: we are out there asking.”

And what will all this mean for the apprenticeships agenda? “There is a huge opportunity for apprenticeships. I have been a Member of Parliament for 14 years, and the number of apprenticeships in my constituency is massive. In any growth industry there is always huge opportunity for apprentices but the trick is to ensure you channel that growth so that those companies can then go off and hire those apprentices.”

All of this is very exciting and you can feel that McPartland’s is a boyish energy unlikely to be checked by the small matter of not being an MP anymore. As we walk off the Terrace at the House of Commons, I tell him he’s too young to retire – and he laughs it off, evidently happy to be in Parliament now, but knowing that for a man of his talents there will be much to do outside Westminster when that time comes. The report was made public at the end of May and received by the government during the General Election campaign. We’ll report back on its reception.

LETTER FROM SAUDI ARABIA: DR NAJAH ALOTAIBI

When I speak at conferences, I often receive follow-up emails from Saudi students asking me how they can participate in similar events and establish a presence in institutions across the United Kingdom. My response is simple: cultivate a passion for networking.

International students, especially those from Saudi Arabia, often overlook the importance of forming connections while they are studying abroad. This may be due to navigating an unfamiliar environment, but it is an essential component of making the most of their educational journey and maximising the impact they can have within their communities when they return home.

Currently, there are approximately 14,070 Saudi students enrolled in the UK higher education. Among them, 11,850 are studying in UK Universities, 2,000 are pursuing distance or online learning. The majority, about 12,025, are pursuing undergraduate degrees. Universities such as Imperial College London, King's College London and the University of Manchester boast some of the highest numbers of Saudi students.

These students are part of a longstanding cultural diplomacy that’s linked to century-long relations between the two countries. They benefit from a prestigious educational programme which provides financial support for their education and living expenses. This enables them to pursue bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in the UK. This initiative aims to create a pool of highly skilled individuals who can contribute to their country's development upon their return home.

Saudi Arabia is undergoing a period of transformative economic and social change. This has been partially fuelled by

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030, which was launched almost a decade ago. This strategic plan aims to diversify the economy and reduce the country’s dependence on oil. Achieving these goals requires international expertise, innovative ideas and knowledge transfer. This is a major reason why Saudi students in the UK should see their time abroad as being about more than simply earning a degree. Saudi students should instead embrace the opportunity to expand their horizons by engaging with influential figures and thought leaders whilst they are studying in the UK, ultimately bringing these insights back to their homeland.

“INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS, ESPECIALLY THOSE FROM SAUDI ARABIA, OFTEN OVERLOOK THE IMPORTANCE OF FORMING CONNECTIONS.”

The UK can be a powerful ally when it comes to bringing this Saudi vision to life. As a global hub for accomplished professionals, influential individuals and creatives, the UK gives students the chance to connect with various experts in their fields. This exposure can open doors to internships, job prospects and academic advancement. When students have the chance to gain insights from industry leaders, this can expand their perspectives substantially.

The UK is also a vibrant environment with endless events and initiatives that students can engage in to enrich both

their creativity and learning. When students participate in these activities, they can gather valuable insights and ideas outside of academia, which can later translate into entrepreneurial ventures and projects back home. This knowledge transfer can have an incredibly positive impact on communities, create employment opportunities and support the growth of the private sector.

Investing in networking can lead to fruitful collaborations that benefit Saudi society and business. Building connections with UK start-ups, entrepreneurs and local businesses can pave the way for long-term global engagement and intercultural understanding.

“SAUDI

STUDENTS HAVE UNIQUE STORIES TO SHARE.”

Networking begins with a good story that makes one stand out. Saudi students have unique stories to share, especially around how their country transformed from resource scarcity to

Dr Najah Alotaibi

a leading economic player. My own experience studying in the UK as a Saudi woman has profoundly impacted my life, and I often share this story with others.

While earning a recognised degree from the UK is invaluable, the true potential of studying abroad lies in establishing a network of peers, experts and professionals who can offer guidance, mentorship and collaboration opportunities. These connections not only close geographical gaps but also

encourage a diverse exchange of ideas and perspectives.

For Saudi students, gathering the will and effort to engage in networking is crucial. Joining clubs, associations and groups related to their field can accelerate both professional and personal growth. Actively participating in events, workshops and seminars sustains and nurtures these connections.

In today’s digital world, an online presence is essential when it comes to

expressing one's personality, interests and aspirations to their network. Making the most of social media platforms can facilitate networking and global connections.

By immersing themselves in the rich opportunities available to them, Saudi students in the UK can build the right foundations to become invaluable assets to their communities and make a significant contribution to the ongoing transformation of their country.

unsplash.com

LETTER FROM SICILY: PHILIP MOULD OBE

Sicily

is an extraordinarily layered country. It’s a fascinating country where the influences are still visible – and in many cases still palpable. You’ve got the Venetians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Normans, the Germans, the French, the Spanish. Then of course you’ve got Horatio Nelson who comes and gets in quite a state in Sicily. He watered his ships at the Arethusa Fountain in Syracuse before the Battle of the Nile, and he ordered Marsala wine for the fleet from the winery in the west of the island. It’s absolutely heaving with the past; it is a lively cross-section of so many places. Then you get this extraordinary event in 1693, which was a defining moment which was the mother of all earthquakes. It pretty much flattened everything. Before that disaster occurred it would have been the most astonishing classical playground. They then rebuilt it all in this sort of bonkers baroque style, which you see ubiquitously, pushing the language of baroque to its absolute limits. Every building is almost moving as much as architecture can do, with these broken pediments and these great corbels which stick out. There are all sorts of wavy lines. This is very late baroque. This is eighteenth century baroque when baroque really gets going in the seventeenth century so it’s quite frivolous. But it’s consistent and it’s a stage set experience.

Although there are quite a few tourists and it’s quite crowded, there’s a lot to excite and lift you wherever you go. And it’s all done in this highly concentrated limestone which has a uniformity of appearance and an eighteenth century harmony which is rather staggering. While it’s a terribly poor country and the stink of the paternoster is around, all the infrastructure’s not been quite completed because of corruption. It’s not really like Italy actually. I think I’ve added my sense of Sicily to European civilisation: you see another aspect to a place which you thought you knew.

One strange thing about going to a place later in life is that a part of you almost assumes there’ll be not that much there, otherwise you’d have heard of it already. But what we find is instead this invention and perennial surprise of new places.

I think there are some places in the world – perhaps the Lake District is one – where you get this continuity and purity, but sometimes it can be difficult to get the measure of a place when you can feel commerce has moved into it. You lift your eyes and you see the industry on the outside. It’s rather like the plastics in the sea; you’d have to be blind not to see that we lived in this semi-ruined world. It’s rather like pylons – you have to will them to not be there to have some form of historical innocence.

“HIGHLY CONCENTRATED LIMESTONE WHICH HAS A UNIFORMITY OF APPEARANCE AND AN EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY HARMONY WHICH IS RATHER STAGGERING.”

I find suspension of disbelief difficult when it comes to travel; I suppose one must take a leap of the imagination, and try to peer past all the fixtures of the tourist industry. This is difficult but it is certainly worth doing. Perhaps people have been saying since Roman times, it’s as if wherever we look we’re seeing the destruction by humanity of our surroundings. This is why at my home in Duck End, we try to create a haven. It’s important to retain an element of romanticism; I believe I must care for the world around me.

Art is much the same. When a painting is complete it is a pure and subjective response to the world as it was then, and as artefacts they remain constant in a world where things are changing and disappearing. As I think about it, single artefacts, although they may be damaged and deteriorate, are things you can hold onto more than is the case at the macro level. These are the sorts of thoughts I get as I travel through Sicily. It is an interesting exercise for instance to walk through a Canaletto as opposed to walking through a street in a country we’ve not been through. There’s one painting of London by Canaletto in Prague, it’s huge about three metres wide and two metres high, obviously done with a camera obscure from the Thames and looking at the City. It’s astonishing because of the verisimilitude of everything that was there, and the happenings on the river, and the density of medieval London which still existed after the Fire. I was possessed by that – I walked in there on a rainy day and it was astonishing. It almost paves the way to a sort of linear abstraction. Perhaps this is what travel sometimes teaches us: to look again at what we have back home.

Philip Mould, OBE

unsplash.com unsplash.com

CULTURE

102

GAMBLE OF THE CENTURY

Simon Thomas at London Hippodrome

unsplash.com

134

AFTER WORDSWORTH

Why the Lakes aren’t just for poets

144

ARISE, SIR JOHN

Our Chairman on his knighthood

LONDON HIPPODROME CEO SIMON THOMAS: “EVERYTHING WE DO IS POSITIVE”

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON MEETS THE LIKEABLE ENTREPRENEUR

WHO

HAS

CREATED

A JOYFUL PLACE OF ENTERTAINMENT IN THE HEART OF THE WEST END

Having walked past its outside so often, and never having gone in, I wasn’t quite expecting the London Hippodrome to be as impressive as it is. The work of Frank Matcham (1854-1920), it is without question a triumph of British design: this is architecture as pure entertainment and pure joy. If I google Matcham, and see the twinkle in the eye of the man staring back at me, I can imagine that he’d be rather fun to meet, which isn’t always how one feels about Victorians. We also have Matcham to thank for Hackney Empire, The Coliseum and The Palladium.

But in a sense we can meet him here, in his work. As you walk through the

casino, you find it suddenly opens up into a vast well, and that the place is far bigger than you thought: this is the grand reveal of the Hippodrome and it is one of many reasons why people fall in love with it.

But really it’s success is down to its CEO Simon Thomas who has done wonders here, building on the work of his father Jimmy Thomas who died in 2022 at the age of 88. I meet Simon upstairs in the Penny Bar, the first port of call for many people visiting the Hippodrome, which has two restaurants, including the revered steakhouse Heliot, a streetside café and nine bars across seven floors . I try the food afterwards and it’s first rate.

I tell Simon how much I’ve enjoyed my experience of finding him. My delight, he tells me, is a common reaction: “I get pleasure out of people seeing the place for the first time. When people walk in they generally go: ‘Wow I was not expecting that’. Everything we do is positive: we give people a great place to be entertained, to socialise and we do this in a world where there is so much negativity around. It’s lovely when you get people who are actually talking up the economy – talking up business.”

Some of this attitude can be attributed to Jimmy Thomas, Simon’s father, who I met on one occasion, and who made a potentially dreary dinner rather fun. “He was fun,” says Thomas. “Go back about

eight or nine generations in my family and my great, great granny was probably a bearded lady. There has always been entertainment throughout the family.”

So how did he get here? Thomas plainly loves the Hippodrome, and explains the history of its extraordinary reinventions. Throughout, I have a sense of Thomas’ humility as just the latest custodian of this place. He attributes the building’s longevity to Matcham’s vision (“he was technically brilliant but he also created environments which have stood the test of time”) and because of the central and exciting nature of the location itself (“250,000 people a day walking past”).

The history is joyful – a layered tale out of a Peter Ackroyd novel. “It started life in 1900 as the Hippodrome Theatre. It was a circus theatre with a central 100,000 gallon pool. You have to imagine dwarfs diving from the ceiling into a big water tank, as well as elephants, seals, giants, pygmies, Charlie Chaplin, Houdini. It was only in 1909 that they covered over the water tanks; tastes were evidently changing.”

Later Thomas will take me up to the top floor and show where the performer Eddie Gifford, a one-legged cyclist, who would ride his bicycle across the top of the theatre and through a hole, down 60ft into the pool below. As my legs turn to jelly I realise I shall never have a side hustle as a circus performer.

Thomas continues: “They turned it into a music hall and it was here that the English premier of Swan Lake occurred in 1910. Then the first jazz ever played in the country in 1919 happened here with the original Dixieland jazz band. After that, the 20s, 30s, and 40s was the music hall ragtime era, but by the 50s it was the home of the Folies Bergère, and was a female topless revue. Here with our Magic Mike show we have done a kind of MeToo twist with a male topless revue.”

It is a rich history which opens up onto the accelerating nature of contemporary life. “Eventually, Charles Forte and Lord Bernard Delfont took over the building and turned it into the Talk of

the Town,” Thomas says. “That’s when they destroyed all the plasterwork, put a ceiling half way up and all the plasterwork about it started crumbling and dropping off. As the Talk of the Town it was phenomenal and many acts played here: Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Tom Jones, Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland. Shirley Bassey performed here in 1962 and 1972 and she came back for dinner a couple of months ago.”

But the 70s and 80s brought about a shift. Essentially, most of the talent started earning money on television, causing the place to go into decline. But here again, the venue showed its remarkable capacity for reinvention. “Peter Stringfellow took it on, put £1 million worth of lighting and turned it into Stringfellow’s nightclub, which he sold in the late 80s.” But in time corporate overinvestment would lead to financial tribulations and the Hippodrome lost its alcohol licence in 2005. “ But what has happened at every

era of the building is that somebody has come along and contemporised the entertainment. It’s always been the best in its field.”

Which brings us to the stewardship of the Thomases. By 1987, Simon had left university and at around that time too Jimmy Thomas, his father, had sold his bingo hall business. “He kept a nucleus business,” Thomas recalls, “supposedly for me to leave university and go straight into.” Thomas had other ideas. ”I wanted to prove myself so I went into the City and had two very good years at the City merchant bankers, Singer & Friedlander. Looking back I was really learning how to work but also having amazing financial training. Being an analyst meant that I was able to go into other people’s businesses and ask them why they did things and it just set me off on a path which I was able to build on. I then went into the family firm in 1989 and caught a wave of deregulation. Bingo was deregulated around 1990. The first bingo hall I had was a 300 seat converted cinema in Loughborough with 200 old ladies playing housey housey for a fiver. By the mid-90s, I had opened in Cricklewood a 2700-seat hall with three bars, two restaurants, two cabaret stages, wedding licence, cinema licence, 265 slot machines, and 800 car park spaces. It was off the scale for bingo: there was nothing like it. In fact there has been nothing like it since but it re-wrote what a bingo business could be.”

But despite his success, Thomas could see that bingo was likely to suffer a reversal. When the gambling laws were again revised in 2005, he saw that this would lend itself to huge opportunity in the casino sector. Realising that the smoking ban would also hit the bingo business, he sold in 2006 – just at the right time. “It resold 18 months later for one-third of what I sold it for,” he recalls.

Around that time the Hippodrome was available to rent. “The council were desperate for it not to become a problematic nightclub,” Thomas recalls,

“and along we came and said we wanted to turn it into a world-class casino using all of the new regulatory changes. The landlord was happy and the council were delighted; we got planning permission very easily.” Licensing was a little harder (“it was three years before we had all the permits in place”) but the Thomas family were able to start work on the site in July 2009.

“In hindsight, I was blissfully naïve,” Thomas tells me. “If I had been as aware of the magnitude of the challenges that were coming down the line I would certainly have thought once or twice about it. It needed somebody who was well-funded from the sale of the bingo business, a little bit bloody-minded and with a clear focus and vision.”

Fortunately, Thomas had those traits: “I was absolutely 100 per cent committed that I could get it open. The location is phenomenal and I would walk out of here after particularly awful building meetings and wonder what on earth I was doing. But then I would see the throngs of people, and think: ‘It’s going to work provided we don’t run out of money before we develop it.’”

“AN

ORIGINAL BUDGET OF £25 MILLION

WENT

UP TO £45 MILLION.”

Renovation work took three years (“a year longer than expected”), a delay which Thomas attributes to the learning curve he was on. In addition to that, the adjacent building – the one in which I am talking to Thomas – became available in 2010, meaning that the Thomas family took over the entire site. An original budget of £25 million went up to £45 million. “Financing was largely self-funded,” Thomas explains, “but we did need money from Barclays and they were wonderful until we came to the point of actually getting any money out of them and they turned their backs on us and said: ‘No we can’t lend you any money!’ That was a bit of a problem.”

It sounds it and I ask Thomas how he reacted to this setback. “There is a simple philosophy which I work to, which is when you have got a problem you have only got three choices: you accept, you change, or you walk away and if two of them aren’t viable, you get on with the other one. If you can’t walk away, and you can’t change, you have got to accept it. I find it really silly when you have got people who moan: ‘It’s really bad - I wish I wasn’t in this position.’ Well you are – so just get on with it. We ended up adopting the old saying which is attributed to Hannibal: ‘Find a way or make one.’”

“WE ENDED UP ADOPTING THE OLD SAYING WHICH IS ATTRIBUTED TO HANNIBAL: ‘FIND A WAY OR MAKE ONE.”

In time, the bank said they would lend a third of the money, but only after the bank’s surveyor had worked with the family’s surveyors to assure the bank on the development risk. Even after all these hoops had been jumped through, Barclays refused to lend. “It was credit crunch time and they turned their back on us. I was with my wife a couple of days later watching Bob Diamond on TV spouting about how Barclays were helping the British economy recover from this awful credit crunch and they were investing in job creation and tourism and renovation and regeneration. My wife said I should write to Bob.”

Thomas thought that a good idea. “I wrote him an email saying how lovely it had been to hear him talking about all these wonderful things he was doing to help the British economy. I added that my business fitted all his criteria but that Barclays was not only not helping, but also actively damaging my business, having strung me along the path and

then at the very last minute closed the door in my face.” Did Diamond reply? “After three hours I got an email back from him saying effectively: ‘I am on a plane to Africa, but I don’t like what I hear: leave it with me’”. One of his senior directors called John Winter came along and was brilliant and we got money out of them which got us to opening.”

Thomas compares the casino business to golf clubs. “Classically the third owner of a golf club is the one that makes money. The first person runs out of money building, the second one finishes it off and doesn’t get it to profitability and the third person buys it cheap and has all the benefits of the first two at a lower cost. That was my real fear: that we would run out of money. We got it open in July 2012. Boris Johnson was Mayor of London, and he came along to open it. He was doing what he was really good at which was being a showman for London. He was in his element, and it’s been a rollercoaster ever since.”

So how have the numbers been since opening? “If you look at the track record, other than Covid it looks good on the graph – but if you look closely at the graph it is up and down and all over the place. In the first few months we built our business model on 12,000 customers a week which perhaps was ambitious since the average casino was doing 2,000. There was one other big casino in the area that was at about 10 or 12,000. We thought we would take half their business, and create as much again and we were aiming to get 18,000 a week by the end of year 2. In reality, we hit 18,000 customers a week by the end of week four which was brilliant – but also a nightmare because we weren’t ready for it.”

Thomas recalls vividly the exhaustion of that time. “I remember coming up towards Christmas. We were open 24/7, 364 days a year and we are not allowed to open on Christmas Day by law. We were coming up to Christmas Day and I remember thinking how fantastic it was that we could just lock the doors for a

whole day and walk away. We were that exhausted and then somebody pointed out we had no idea how to lock the building – we had never tried! We had locks with no keys, we had keys that we had no idea what they were for – and even that was a nightmare. We ended up just barring the doors and putting security in.”

What evidently causes Thomas great delight is the sheer variety of human life which comes through his doors. “In Monte Carlo the big casino there is a bit like a church or cathedral. We have been very careful in trying to create fun, energy and vibrancy. We do get some incredible characters through the place. Probably the same as throughout the Hippodrome’s last 124 years, it has made people happy. It has created experiences, and given them reasons to go out and socialise and we are delighted to be continuing that tradition.”

I ask about how you make it welcoming when you need to have a bouncer outside. “We have to have security on the door by council regulation and it is a challenge because they have got to be credible. At 3 am in the morning, you get people coming in who have had way too much to drink, who want to get in for another pint of beer – and quite frankly they are not coming in so they have got to be effective on that and they have also got to be as courteous as a hotel doorman. We have a rule in the business: we only have people who smile because they are cup half full people. They find solutions not problems but we do make an exception for some of the doormen because I am quite happy to have big and grumpy on the door at 3 am on a Saturday morning!”

So ‘big and grumpy’ became the night doorman. But there is an amusing sequel to this story. “in time, ‘big and grumpy’ ended up doing day shifts as well occasionally and I said to Ian [Haworth, the Hippodrome’s likeable Director of Communications]: ‘I don’t want big and grumpy on the door. I

want completely the opposite during the afternoon’. Ian said: ‘The opposite of big and grumpy is short and happy’. Actually, we have got a history of dwarfs in the building from when they used to dive from the Minstrels’ Gallery, 60 feet into the big water tank. So we put an advert in the paper: Door dwarfs wanted. It was an international media storm. I was genuinely trying to employ dwarfs; there was nothing mischievous about it. Dwarfism is a medically recognised term. Out of the ad, we had a chap called Michael who was a dwarf and he was a brilliant doorman: he stayed with us until Covid. He was entertaining, charming, and he could talk the hind legs off a donkey. His way of dealing with people was: “Well, no one is going to mess with a dwarf.” We had to restructure because of Covid and he didn’t make it through but he is still very much alive and kicking and he was an amazing human being. From his point of view he had never been taken seriously before. Now he was a doorman and concierge on London’s busiest casino and a highly respected member of the team. He was brilliant at what he did.”

I say I noticed the kind nature of the staff on the way in. “That’s the preconception again of what a casino is. People see them in movies and they are a bit austere. They are entertainment complexes where grown-ups go. The average person will come in here spend £10 or £12 on food and drink and £40 on gambling. That’s not dissimilar to going to a nightclub or the theatre: you can have a whole evening’s entertainment and an awful lot of fun. The vast majority of people will have a punt and have a laugh – if they win, it’s great. If we ever see anybody that starts to give any sign of appearing distressed, they will be taken to one side and chatted to by the managers to check they are okay. It happens very infrequently.”

So what’s his view of the perennial question of gambling addiction? Thomas gives a very nuanced answer. “It is something to be recognised but we have

to have perspective. You don’t walk into a pub and go: ‘I hope I’m not one of the unfortunate ones who ends up getting addicted to alcohol’. The reality is there are a number of people in the country that will get addicted. They have addictive personalities or perhaps a genetic trait. The stats say that .3 per cent of the world are problem gamblers or have disordered gambling. Similarly, a percentage of the world are alcoholics and a percentage of the world are drug addicts and a percentage of the world are sex addicts. Our job is to make the environment safe and make sure that addicts get picked up and dealt with appropriately. But for everybody else it is just a welcoming space where they can have fun.”

I am interested in the laws of probability and how it potentially affects his business. Presumably somebody could come in, place a crazy bet and thereby put Thomas under significant financial pressure? “The way we control it is we cap the maximum somebody can bet on a number because you want a lot of people gambling at a

certain level so that it averages out. If you toss a coin a million times for £1 it is going to come out £500,000, give or take. Toss it once for a million and you have got total volatility. We have a maximum somebody can bet on a number of £300 generally, we will go to £500 and if you get enough people betting at that it averages out so you might come in with £100 and you could win £10,000. It happens and somebody might start with £1,000 and lose all of it. On average we will have a business that is making money. People are having fun spending. We put a control on volatility. Even then with the normal distribution you will occasionally get the white swan events where somebody just has an unbelievable run of luck. It does happen but that is part of the fun of it and when somebody comes in with £50 and walks out with £500 they have had a fantastic night and they really remember it. If they come in with £50 and lose it then they go: ‘Well, the house always wins and I knew I would probably lose’ – but I have had fun doing it. That’s the two extremes of what we want.”

“OUR JOB IS TO MAKE THE ENVIRONMENT SAFE AND MAKE SURE THAT ADDICTS GET PICKED UP AND DEALT WITH APPROPRIATELY.”

Thomas recalls how he once lost £1 million in a night. “That was one customer just on a roll. He thankfully came back the next day and that money came back to us, but he could equally have gone somewhere else. But that has happened just once in 10 years. When you think of casinos, people always think of the extremes of either problem gamblers or people winning or losing £1 million. For the vast majority of people, if you come here it’s a wall of safety. We will not let people in who are likely to be a problem, had too much to drink, and looking problematic. We will turn away people. The end result is you have got

80,000 sq. ft with bars, restaurants, live entertainment, gambling, poker where grown-ups can have fun in a safe space. At the Magic Mike show, for instance, we have 3000 women generally between 20 and 50 but from 18 to 80s who come to that show and plenty of them will have a few glasses of prosecco and be a little bit giddy but they come out into a safe space. They are not going out onto a cold High Street en masse where there could be a problem. It’s a really nice atmosphere.”

I ask how many people Thomas employs? “We have got 776 at the last count. That includes the cleaners who are contractors. Opening hours are 24/7 so there are three full shifts of people a day. At peak times, there are 1,500 customers in the building, with 32,000 customers a week. We have quite high service standards. We control the numbers of people in the building. We don’t want too many. Legally I can have 2,500 people in the building but operationally that would be sub-

optimal because it would be too busy to enjoy yourself and we only hit the 1500 self-imposed limit really on Friday and Saturday nights.”

I’m interested to know what the opportunities are. What skills do you need to be a croupier? “You have got to be a people person and you have got to be very good at mental arithmetic. It’s actually quite interesting from an employment point of view,” Thomas explains. “It is a great skill to have. We run three or four training schools each year where we advertise it: we get normally 50-60 applicants. We narrow that down to 10 people who we believe have got the aptitude and skills to be a croupier. You have got to manage people, you have got to manage the relationship around the table at the same time as playing the game. Over eight weeks we train them to deal roulette and blackjack and then they are trained on the job at live tables and then they will learn other games and other skills. We take people, generally aged 18 to 30, train them to

be a croupier. Once they have got their British gaming licence they typically will do two or three years in a casino to bring their skills up and then they will go on a cruise ship and travel the world for two or three years. From a job point of view they tend to be working during the crossings and when in port they are often not allowed to work or the customers go on shore so they have time to explore the place. When they come back, they can go back to part time work if they have a family.”

What is the salary expectation for a croupier? “A croupier with tips can make £40,000/£45,000 a year.”

Thomas then is not only employing a lot of people, he’s also taking care of a very important building, in addition to giving people a lot of joy. He is a very impressive man who has a boyish enthusiasm for his work. Next time I’m passing, I will drop in, and perhaps, if I’m feeling brave, hit the roulette tables.

FRANK AUERBACH

IRIS SPARK IS IMPRESSED BY A BRILLIANT SHOW AT THE COURTAULD INSTITUTE

Frank Auerbach (b.1931), Head of EOW, 1956 Charcoal and chalk on paper. Private Collection © the artist, courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London

Sometimes I think of those who achieved a lot young: John Keats, assured of immortality by writing a handful of odes, but dead at 26. Then of course we have Schubert, learning counterpoint on his death bed, but surely certain that the music would survive. It is a source of continual amazement that Georges Seurat managed to paint such perfect and revolutionary canvases by the age of 31. In each of these cases we have a navigable oeuvre: Keats’ output, though considerable for his age, can be encountered in a few days. You can make a provisional assessment of Seurat’s pictures online in 10 minutes.

But then there are those at the other end of the longevity spectrum – the fantastically productive and long-lived. In music, Elliott Carter wrote music every morning until his death at 103 and I suspect I’m not the only person who doesn’t know where to begin. In literature, the Greek playwrights were all fantastically long-lived. In retrospect perhaps it’s a blessing that we have only seven plays by Sophocles, who lived to be 90; he wrote 120. Art, as David Hockney pointed out, seems to be good for life expectancy. Picasso, Monet, Renoir – not to mention Hockney himself – are all long-livers.

Which brings us to Frank Auerbach, already 93 and counting. It is fascinating, if you go to the Courtauld Institute, to be confronted with a little corner of his oeuvre across two rooms in that lovely gallery on the top floor. These are the magnificent charcoal drawings which Auerbach made just after the Second World War on his way to becoming, with Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, one of the three most important artists of the so-called School of London. The Courtauld introduces the drawings with the following claim: “Auerbach’s charcoal heads – heavily worked and scarred but enduring and vital – connect us to the tenor of the post-war years.”

Just when you think that the gallery

may even be underselling Auerbach’s achievements, the next part of the placard expands on that thought: “Made over long periods of time, the drawings offer us experiences of what it feels like to engage deeply with another person.”

This rings true. For a long-lived artist, Auerbach is in fact relatively easy to place. He is not, like Picasso or Hockney, continually moving onto the next thing. This is, in fact, to put the matter rather mildly. He still works today out of the same Camden Town studio that he worked in in the days which this exhibition charts over half a century ago. Auerbach seems to be a creature of stasis and even of obsession. Just as Degas had his ballet-dancers and his women at their toilette, so Auerbach has his heads, and a bit of Mornington Crescent. We might say that he is a vertical and not a horizontal artist. To gauge his obsessions we must consider all that he doesn’t paint: hills, trees, fruit, any buildings not on Mornington Crescent, and any people apart from his small circle of friends who interest him. Even in respect of the last category, he tends to paint their heads and not the rest of their bodies.

Auerbach then seeks to understand the world by excluding all that doesn’t interest him, but this is not a problem.

“HE PROCLAIMS IN PAINT THAT ALL THE UNIVERSE MIGHT BE FOUND IN A FACE, OR IN A SECTION OF STREET.”

What I think he is proclaiming is his love for the things that he does paint. It was John Donne who spoke in his great love poem The Good Morrow of ‘one little room an everywhere’. Something similar is happening in Auerbach: he proclaims in paint that all the universe might be found in a face, or in a section of street.

He is helped enormously in this endeavour by the fact that he is so obviously correct, as these marvellous pictures prove time again. An Auerbach head is a document of the artist’s engagement with the sitter over a long period of time. Each day the sitting would accrue its truth, and often then be scrubbed away at by the artist, sometimes so violently as to tear the paper. This creates a startling effect where creation and destruction are in some way married in one image, as is the case with one of his few living rivals Gerhard Richter.

Frank Auerbach (b.1931), Self-Portrait, 1958, Charcoal and chalk on paper. Private Collection © the artist, courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London

The curators explain that these pictures are of historical interest in terms of charting how people looked and what they felt. This is true. At this safe distance from World War Two, which itself contained not only millions of individual tragedies, but a collective understanding of what humankind was now capable of, we might look with a certain historical interest at these people. Of course, there is a limit in our ability to do so since we are still shaped to some extent by it.

But really this interpretation is limited

because it doesn’t take into account the sheer extent of attention which Auerbach gives to his sitters, over 80, 90 or 100 sittings. To engage with a subject at such depth might be to go beyond the historical moment into deeper strata of life which have little to do with the latest circumstances, even those so gigantic as World War II. The effect is almost of creatures swimming up from their depths, eerily exposed.

The technique here backs up this interpretation. We have, accumulated across so many sittings, an

extraordinarily stable architecture when it comes to the features of a face. The lines of the skull – jaw, and eye-sockets, and the shape of the head – are always laid down with a profound confidence. This underlayer allows Auerbach extraordinary freedom in other parts of the drawing, which conveys movement and changes of mood. He shows that the flux of life skims along a certain set of structures.

Take, for instance, his self-portrait. Nobody can be in any doubt about the shape of the face; but once that is made

Frank Auerbach (b.1931), Head of E.O.W, 1955, Oil on board. Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales © the artist, courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London.

known to the viewer, Auerbach allows himself a freedom of interpretation which we can wonder at: a rush of charcoal at the forehead perhaps conveying the movement of thought. Certain subjects recur and we feel that this was because he loved them. However, all these images are maimed and torn, and remade and it is hard not to feel that this mimics the frustration we feel when we really try to grapple with another person: however much we love them, they are not us, and these large drawings seem to reflect that. Iris Murdoch wrote that in love we get to the end of people; but Auerbach, you feel only comes to the end of each drawing reluctantly, his feelings unresolved.

Irresolution though is an excellent basis for a long career; it keeps you at it. I think that Auerbach’s obsessive body of work needs to be distinguished from Degas’ ballet dancers, or from Stubbs’ lifelong need to paint horses. Those obsessions occurred in the open air. There is a feeling of necessary sequestration about Auberbach’s art, a self-sheltering from global currents. This may even amount to a sort of refusal of the outside world.

And yet this turning away never works: in the end we cannot avoid ourselves. Auerbach knows this – it is the very essence of vertical art to mine downwards, and insodoing, to find a

space which other things not of that time and place can enter.

It all amounts to a perfect little exhibition. Of course, it is a very serious one, and as you walk out into the rooms with all the impressionists in, blazing with so much colour you might reflect that this sort of picture-making is for a certain mood only. But there’s greatness here – the greatness of a thing done well out of passionate belief in art’s potential, hard work, monomania, and love.

This exhibition ran until 27th May 2024. An online tour of the exhibition is still available at courtauld.ac.uk

Frank Auerbach (b.1931), Head of Gerda Boehm, 1964, Oil on board. The Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia © the artist, courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London

Frank Auerbach (b.1931), Head of Helen Gillespie II, 1962, Charcoal and chalk on paper. Private Collection © the artist, courtesy of Frankie Rossi Art Projects, London

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS’ ‘WILD GOD’: ‘A SONG OF PLANETARY IMPORTANCE’

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

Alamy

It used to seem to me that rock and roll was a young man’s game, possessing within it the iron law of inevitable decline. It went like this. After the euphoria of one’s ‘breakthrough’ there would be a period of ‘maturity’, usually conducted in one’s late twenties (a point in life when nobody can really be said to be mature). Around this point, various complications would arise as part of the rock star’s grim pact with the genre: drugs, band break-ups, and, in many instances, death. But as all this unravelling occurred, the fan could at least look back on that sunny time before the alcohol had really kicked in and listen to the first fine careless rapture of the early hits.

This does, of course, happen – but it is a lie to say it has to happen. In fact, the only reason it occurs so often is because the conventions of the industry lead to self-destruction, and because fame puts the famous person in a false relation to other people, and therefore to the universe in general. Not many musicians, asleep as to the impact of all this harm, are able to go against the herd and dilute their ego sufficiently to lead a normal, productive life.

A rock star is therefore a curious and often unhappy specimen. On the one hand they are full of marvellous inspiration, walking around in privileged access to the fine substances of music. At the same time, their lives can seem predictable, rote, and mechanistic. Though they can do something which millions would love to be able to do, and have an infinite art potentially before them to explore, they are more likely than a whole range of other people –plumbers, lawyers, accountants and so forth – to self-destruct in completely appalling ways.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Fortunately, several examples run in the opposite direction, and so it turns out that rock stars don’t have to die young, or decline. They can grow, mature, alter and

reach enlightenment.

So how might that happen? The first important hurdle is not to die young and if that is achieved, then it also helps if one’s initial period of great fame subsides a little. In the marvellous cases of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, longevity eventually created the conditions for a productive old age. It is good when stadiums cede to arenas, and the rock star’s sense of proportion will be improved by the arrival on the planet of billions of people who have little inkling of their former importance.

The rock star with ambitions to be fruitful beyond their fifties will also be helped by mortality, that universal corrective to pride. In the case of Dylan and Cohen, the presence of death directed them away from their celebrity back towards themselves – into that deeper sense of fragile life where art comes from. The results were astonishing: ‘Murder Most Foul’, You Want it Darker, Mississippi, Samson in New Orleans, Standing in the Doorway, to name only a few. In each of these songs, and in many others, we can feel the necessity of the creative process: the impression is of music as an expression of an entirely healthy approach to life.

Nick Cave has followed a similar progression to these masters, but with the release of his new song ‘Wild Gods’ it even seems to me that he is surpassing them, entering some new circle of higher life all his own.

For those who don’t know his work, Cave and his band the Bad Seeds have been around since 1983, and for many years produced intelligent albums with a postpunk sound. Right from the beginning, Cave was different to his peers. He has always admitted religious imagery to his work: ancient wisdom has long since coursed through his lyrics, meaning that the vying sounds of the contemporary city – drums and electric guitars – were always juxtaposed with an intellectual inheritance of sacred books stretching back thousands of years. It is not too much to say that two

kinds of time have always inhabited his work: the urgency of the present moment rushing over, or contending with, the permanence of ancient thought.

Even before his recent run of magnificent albums, his work was hugely valuable. He has always been one of a small number of songwriters who bestows immense care on his language, and who understands that songwriting is a symbiotic form whereby what is said must be profoundly intertwined with musical texture to form a viable unity.

Cave’s fame arrived in a less intrusive fashion than Dylan’s, and maybe than Cohen’s, but a drug problem arose in the form of heroin addiction nonetheless. Fortunately the rehab which Amy Winehouse said she would never attend was attended by Cave and he has for some time been ‘clean’. All this will seem relatively predictable so far.

But the usual and expected arc towards septuagenarian mellowness was in this case bucked by a terrible and unthinkable event: the death of his 15-year-old son Arthur on 15th July 2015 after a fatal fall off a cliff in Brighton.

It is not surprising to find that Cave was altered irrevocably by this appalling event, as would be the case with anyone. The astonishing thing is the direction in which it altered him, and the authenticity with which he communicated his pain – and, crucially, all that he had learned from his pain. He has given bulletins from his zone of suffering via every avenue available to him: in songs of ever-increasing beauty and glory; in his online community The Red Hand Files, a project of enormous spiritual generosity; in ceramics; and in his peerless book Faith, Hope and Carnage (2022), which takes the form of a series of conversations with the journalist Sean O’Hagan.

Cave’s news is not what one might have expected: not only has Arthur’s death not been all bad, sometimes it has been the cause of immense blessings which he wouldn’t want to be without.

The aftermath of Arthur’s death is described in hallucinatory detail in Faith, Hope and Carnage, and it would be a hard-hearted person who could read of what happened without feeling all at once a love and sympathy for Cave and his wife Susie. In time, Cave would keep going as an artist. Some of Skeleton Tree (2016) was retrospectively rewritten to take into account the loss of Arthur, but most of the album had been written beforehand. His first full foray into post-grief creativity came with Ghosteen (2019), which was followed by Carnage (2021), which is not a Bad Seeds album, since it is the work solely of Cave and Bad Seeds member Warren Ellis, a very important person in Cave’s life.

It is possible now at a certain distance of time from Arthur’s death to allow oneself to feel that Cave was wellplaced to make some good out of a situation which would have been a purely negative experience in those who lack his spiritual and musical resources. This is the man who said in ‘Mercy Seat’ (1988) that he wasn’t afraid to die, and who vaguely entertained the idea of an interventionist God in 2011’s ‘Into My Arms’. The words which open that song – probably still his most popular – look now as if they were written epochs ago, out of a provisional soul:

I don’t believe in an interventionist God but I know darling that you do. What is important in these lines is the sense that the connection with the lover is so strong that her faith has to impact on him, and be shared in some way. Cave has distanced himself from this song, the main reason being that he now does believe in an interventionist God. Arthur’s death either introduced something new into the equation, or else it accelerated a process which was already under way in him. For Cave, as is the case for many of his contemporaries, the Bible has never been a book to be roundly mocked or cheerfully ignored: it has always been a vital part of his toolkit as a songwriter, conferring also a set of

obligations on him as a man. But it is one thing to play with religious imagery, and quite another to believe that the imagery may stand for a truer reality than the one we generally appear to inhabit.

Why did Arthur’s death make Nick Cave reassess his attitude to religion? Surely there could be no clearer exhibition of the futility and randomness of life than this poor boy’s accidental end? Curiously, the exact opposite proved to be the case. What seems to have happened is that Arthur’s death over time simply did not present itself to Cave as conclusively bad news: in fact, it told a completely different story. After the terrible months which followed Arthur’s departure, the Caves became aware of Arthur as a living presence within their lives. Arthur seemed – and many grieving people find the same about their loved ones – an acutely living force. Some will simply call him mistaken in this, but the art testifies, as we shall see, to the vivid nature of this experience. If we listen to these albums, we will see why these suspicions and experiences sent Cave back towards the eternal questions in a wholly altered state.

The profound pain of Arthur’s death triggered a mysterious metamorphosis which somehow made it impossible for Cave to sing those lines from ‘Into My Arms’. They simply weren’t true for him anymore. One way to look at life is that if we really pay attention, it has a way of continually disabusing us of pessimism: it seems too solicitous of our attention for that. We are too free, too blessed, too tangible, and just too hopeful to feel futile or accidental. The Cave family soon found that life has a curious way of offering up peace. True, it very often does this in the most peculiar ways – in halfseen fragments, in whispered rumours, and in fleeting correspondences. But it seems it does do this, and it certainly did so for the Caves.

When the death of a loved one happens, our capacity for paying attention ramps up. It is perhaps rather like the experience of watching a crunch moment in a tennis

match, when, knowing what’s at stake, we receive a heightened awareness of where the ball is landing in relation to the line and what strategies are really being attempted by both players. We know a crisis is nearing for one player, and a triumph for the other, and this focuses our attention. In our actual lives, grief cajoles out of us a new level of interest in things, because pain is such a jolting thing and we really want to know why it happened, and we really want it to go away.

This has to be utterly crushing in the first instance; we are face-to-face with certain facts about the universe which we are completely out of tune with in the seeming comfort of our modernity. To be blindsided by our lack of belief in immortality would be shock enough in itself. But there is a parallel shock which has nothing to do with the physical facts of death: it is the sudden realisation that we have been living in misshapen ways. In Cave’s case this process would lead to the absolute transformation of his art. ‘Wild God’ again makes it clear that this process is of enormous creative value. It is not too much to say that in Cave the redemptive possibilities of art have now taken on stupendous proportions, giving the listener access to a world of delight amounting to revelation. As we shall see, this song has such power within it that it can instantly render us taller, and far more likely to be equal to our own situation, whatever circumstances we might find ourselves in.

Of course, it is quite clear that the previous albums Ghosteen and Carnage are the products of the same mind and heart as the person who wrote, say, The Boatman’s Call (1997) on which album ‘Into My Arms’ appears; there is a thread of personality running through all these songs. But in truth the similarities now feel superficial: the ruction of 2015 was great and that made the subsequent flowering so extraordinary as to make one feel that Cave is now a quite different person altogether. Dante called this ‘la vita nuova’ – the new life. It is

this altered state which Cave has been giving expression to over the past four or five years.

Ghosteen was the first part of a process of reconciliation to the grief-world which Cave was so suddenly thrust into. That album may be understood as a form of waking up – of coming into fuller consciousness. To listen to these songs, which have the flavour of something completely fresh and new, is like seeing the most lovely field of flowers growing out of terrain which one had thought utterly scorched and given over to hopelessness. Soon the flowers grow in such abundance that one cannot seriously entertain a set of circumstances where the original devastation didn’t happen. In this instance, what happened to Arthur came to seem necessary. Its essential purpose would remain hidden (though it seems unlikely that any such purpose must include Cave’s new songs) but he was now not in doubt that Arthur’s death was asking to be understood as some form of gift –counterintuitive as that might seem.

What has followed has been a journey with numerous staging-posts, and it would require a more detailed study than this to do justice to that journey. But Cave has given us the myth-making of ‘Spinning Song’ and the magnificent yearning of ‘Waiting for You’. He has found Arthur speaking through him in ‘Ghosteen Speaks’ assuring the mourning father of his substantiality and his generous proximity: “Look for me/I am beside you.”

By the time of ‘Wild God’ this yearning feels as though it has in some way subsided to be replaced by an absolute joy at what each moment of life can offer. It is important to remember that this later development has also been caused by the beautiful figure of Arthur and surely continues to contain him: I am sure Cave shall never write another note of music which isn’t in some way a message to Arthur (or a message from him), and which doesn’t also relate to his other dead son Jethro who he tragically lost in 2022.

The year 2024 finds Cave sufficiently strong in himself to bring in a vast

system of myth and thought, which is of overwhelming truth and beauty, and goes beyond his previous work. This is not in any way to denigrate those beautiful previous albums: it was all a natural process and Cave has given us a profound testament to that process – a sort of map of the grieving and hopeful heart.

Suspicions have been crystallising in Cave these past years. In ‘Hand of God’, the opening song on Carnage, we feel as in no music I can think of since Bach, the astonishing otherness and strangeness of religious experience – the way it can arch down on you, pinning you to itself and refusing to let you go. This sense of being tied to an experience which turns out to be good for you beyond your wildest imaginings pervades that album. It all leads to the tremendous revelation in ‘Balcony Man’ that ‘this morning is beautiful and so are you’. What we have here is the successful arrival of the outside-inside life where the external beauty of the world is married to the inner joy of love and the world returns to a state of order which must have seemed

Alamy

absolutely impossible in the aftermath of Arthur’s death.

And so to ‘Wild God’. I hope the reader will forgive a small personal anecdote in order for me to illustrate its potential power. I put this song on iTunes in my car, just before the daily struggle of getting my children’s seat belts on. This meant that in the grapple for order, the song almost entirely passed me by, and yet once it had played out, and the children were safely strapped in, I found myself pausing in complete surprise once the song was finished, open-mouthed. I was suddenly aware that the music had rushed in to alter me entirely even though I thought I hadn’t been paying attention. This song has enormous capacity potential to change us in ways we do not yet know.

It begins with a shadow of itself – like a radio trying to tune up. It is as if the song begins with a floating representation of its own birth. We are then ushered into the territory of fairytale, told in Cave’s crooning tones, one of his abiding strengths, and which will always be a form of loving homage to Elvis Presley: Once upon a time a wild god zoomed

All through his memory in which he was entombed

It was rape and pillage in the retirement village

But in his mind he was a man of great virtue and courage

These confident stanzas open up onto the many ways in which we make ourselves inadequate vessels or receptacles for the true energy of life. Our own wild search for truth might land on the wrong things leading to a completely false image of ourselves: we think our happiness is to be found in power over others, in money, or in sexual conquest. When we live by these precepts, the divine – or ‘the wild god’ – has nothing to attach itself to. In this song, not only do we feel that as a lack but the ‘wild god’ does too. This state of affairs, where there is no

reciprocity between human beings and the forces which created them, will in turn lead to the rule of ego, and all the typical tropes of unhappy humanity: a world of ‘rape and pillage’ and in the next stanza ‘a dying city’. The evidence for this state of affairs is so wide-ranging as to feel dominant nearly all of the time. Put simply, no polity on earth bears very close inspection precisely because of this constant misfiring in human beings.

But the wild god doesn’t give up its search. In this song, it never once relents in its desire to find people with whom its energies can fuse in order for the world to fulfil its purpose. For ourselves, our own search is almost wholly blind and usually presents as chronic dissatisfaction and frustration at the incomplete state of things. Luckily, our own quest also has its own inviolable energy: all of us walk around knowing deep down that we can do much better with ourselves and wanting that to be so. Yet we are inadequate to the task of making ourselves suitable: and so as a general rule, nothing very interesting happens to people. We are asleep, and so we can’t fuse with the wild god. This dismays the wild god, who, according to Cave, is constant in his own desire for a better world:

So he flew to the top of the world and looked around

And said where are my people to bring your spirit down?

The wild god then is a sort of stray divinity in search of activation. But in our current condition – perhaps the same condition Cave was in before Arthur’s death – we’re no good to him, and so nothing ever detonates. Instead we’re mechanistic and caught up in rote aspects of life, making a mess even of our blessings – or as Cave says in the second verse, ‘making love with a kind of efficient gloom.’ In other words, we are perpetually committing a complete inversion of our purpose: we ought to be efficiently grateful, kind, loving and honest. Instead, we use our capacities for the wrong ends: to be gloomy, sullen,

acquisitive, angry, ungrateful and many other regrettable things.

And yet according to this song, we know deep down that we’re getting it wrong, that somehow we’re in a dense confusion. We might be caught up in the most heinous disaster and we might not know how to get out of it but most of us keep getting up in the morning, refusing to give up. Funnily enough, the way out into clarity and truth turns out to be simple:

And the people on the ground cried when does it start?

And the wild god says it starts with the heart, with the heart, with the heart

This is very beautiful and true: the repetition of the word ‘heart’ reminds us of the need for discipline and the virtue of repetition when it comes to improving our relationship with life. The Desert Fathers, for instance, used to repeat the same short prayer: “O God, do not leave me. I have done nothing good in your sight, but according to your goodness, let me now make a beginning of good.” I think Cave is saying that you can say this and not mean it and it won’t get you very far at all. But if you say these things ‘with a heart’ astonishing things can happen.

This is a definite first step: the realisation that our goal is in front of us and, in fact, not intellectually complicated at all: there’s no need to turn over half a library to find it. In fact, such a plan would almost certainly make matters worse given the sort of books which are usually found in libraries nowadays. Instead, what’s required is to find the affections behind things and to unite ourselves with them in a completely reciprocal spirit. But this work, though it isn’t hard as to the mind, is very hard as to the will, and accordingly cannot be undertaken in the course of a spa weekend. It is endless and you have to enter into it for the long haul. What Cave is proclaiming here is the difficult nature of correcting wrong life – as I take it he has been doing – and introducing instead better patterns of behaviour:

And the people on the ground cried when does it end?

The wild god says well it depends, but mostly never ends

‘Cause I’m a wild god flying and a wild god swimming

And an old sick god dying and crying and singing

Bring your spirit down

At this point – Bring your spirit down – the choir joins in, and the song is completely transformed – and if you’re listening with attention, your world will be too. What has happened in the realm of this song is that there has been an infinitely delightful fusion between the wild god and the individual, whether it be us or Cave. It is similar to the famous picture by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, where Adam and God’s fingers touch, bequeathing a sort of Big Bang energy, mirroring the start of life itself. This instead is the creation of a new self.

It was Emmanuel Swedenborg (16881772) who argued that as you get more remote from the source of creation, a sort of density arises and that it is our duty to cut through all that fog and activate our innermost being in harmony with causational love. At the same time, we might reach a lasting understanding that love is the organising principle behind life, the basis on which things exist at all.

By this interpretation, human beings are unique because they can give back testimony of lower realms – in this song, the realms of ‘rape and pillage’. If we do this then we show ourselves to be integral to the universe since we are launching a crucial process of reconciliation which augments the overall level of love. Whether or not this is actually going on in life or not, each reader will have to decide for themselves, but something of that nature is happening in this song: from this point on, everything awakens into the

most marvellous consciousness. It is not too much to say that the whole world wakes up.

It was the 20th century Armenian philosopher and mystic G.I Gurdjeff who once observed that if 200 people were to wake up then there would be no more war. This song shows you what can happen if one person does – but I hope its implications will be broader than that and cause a chain reaction in many people who will feel immediately that a song of this power has to have some true foundation.

It is comprehensible why a song like this should have come into being in this way. If there is any hope for humanity at this point it might well be for people with considerable audience like Cave to undergo just such a transformation as the one we can see he has undergone. This is because only celebrities can communicate in the numbers needed to remake the world.

On the day after I first heard this song, the annual madness of the Oscars was occurring: another terrible round of backslapping whose cringeworthiness seems to increase like some graph charting doom every year. But it occurred to me that I can imagine Cave attending the Oscars (perhaps he was even invited), though I find it difficult to conceive of him enjoying the experience. Even so, he comes out of that milieu of celebrity, where huge numbers of people will listen to what he has to say.

All of which makes the last two minutes of this song potentially of planetary importance. We see how it might go if humanity really were to change and wake up, how the chain reaction might occur, and how a new understanding might move through every country and political system (the ‘flames of anarchy’ as well as the ‘sweet, sweet tears of liberty’). These astonishing moments are also a call to every listener to join Cave in this journey. What would that entail? It would entail an end to every form of dullness and unthinking life, a new form of alertness

to goodness, beauty, truth and so on. This will seem so gigantic to many as to be unfeasible, but it is also true to say that if we cease to hope for something like this to happen then the likely result is extinction for the species.

Cave is casting a very wide net here. Crucially, he tells us that it might be especially your moment to join with the wild god, ‘if you’re feeling lonely and if you’re feeling blue’. Not everyone knows as Cave does what it is like to lose a child (let alone two), and so he is talking here from knowledge of the darkness. This makes the call of this song all the more authentic.

By the end of the song, Cave is wholly united with the ‘great, big, beautiful bird’ of the wild god. Everything foolish and wrong-headed has fallen away and Cave announces himself a wild god. He doesn’t do so with any arrogance or dogmatism. He has made this announcement to the world in the most superb and nuanced art imaginable. He is telling us that our predicament isn’t hopeless, and that there is a moment, which is now, when justice might suddenly swerve in, love rise up, and truth suddenly live in the corridors of power. Many people will say that none of this is likely to happen and they may be right. But such people wouldn’t have been able to imagine such a song as this, and shouldn’t have any decision-making power. In fact they don’t because they have closed themselves off to miracles, of which this song is just one of many.

In fact, what this song shows is that we all do have that opportunity to decide a new course of action. This capacity lies lodged within us, waiting for the prompt of a voice, an utterance, a sight, or a song just like this, sent to change you while you’re ineptly strapping your children into their car seats. That’s when the world can sometimes change – just when you thought you weren’t paying attention. Fortunately someone else was – and the moment you get wind of that, things start to get interesting.

AN INDELIBLE MARK: CJ SANSOM

1952-2024

RAYMOND HAVEL REMEMBERS A FINE HISTORICAL NOVELIST

Thedeath of CJ Sansom from a rare form of cancer is a matter for considerable sorrow for people who love beautifully written historical fiction. He was also one of those few writers who preferred to let his books do the talking, meaning that, at the moment of his death, one is compelled to discuss his books and not his life, as he would have wanted. For him, the books were the life.

Crime fiction is the realm of pure pleasure, but historical crime fiction has the added dimension that we learn as the mystery unfolds. I had studied history at A-Level and at university. Much as my professors did their best to dent my ignorance about Tudor England, the human material they had to work with was in this case too intent upon ignorance for any meaningful transformation to be possible. I remember a slight excitement upon reading Geoffrey Elton’s books, but it likely vanished in a haze of that evening’s alcohol.

Several decades later, CJ Sansom did what several visits to Hampton Court and Wolf Hall hadn’t quite done – gave me a real sense of orientation in the Tudor period. Sansom wrote two well-regarded novels Winter in Madrid and the book which understandably upset the descendants of Enoch Powell Dominion. This second book appeared to conflate Enoch Powell’s views on immigration, which are admittedly troubling, with a complete embrace of Nazism. Sansom was always a socialist at heart – but it was also socialism with a heart, very different from some of the intolerant attitudes which parts of the left strike today.

But it was in the Shardlake series where Sansom struck gold. The journey to publication was the story so many writers

dream of. He sent the first novel off to literary agents before going off on holiday, braced for the usual rejection letters. What ensued instead was a slew of emails expressing interest.

What was it that hooked us all in? As so often, the true art of a storyteller is concealed beneath a veneer of simplicity, making it look easy. The novels are written in as straightforward prose as it’s possible to imagine. Here is the deceptively simple opening to the first novel Dissolution (2023):

I was down in Surrey, on business for Lord Cromwell’s office, when the summons came.

This is how page-turners work: we know from the first sentence that we are shortly to meet Lord Cromwell, and we’re going to read that far for certain. And, of course, the trick is that by the time we meet Cromwell, we will then have multiple other reasons for continuing. All Sansom’s novels work on this simple principle: he keeps making sure we are engaged. These are finely wrought machines, whose function is to pique the reader’s curiosity. Hilary Mantel, also excellent in her way, might spend at least a paragraph – and sometimes several pages – describing a summons from somewhere. She was a great practitioner of the sentence. But Sansom didn’t need to be that – he doesn’t

Alamy

want us to work that hard. Literary critics tend to prefer Mantel; my suspicion is that most readers will prefer Sansom. It was Alan Bennett who once had a sudden plaintive reaction to working his way through a late Henry James novel: “Oh get on with it!”

This is something one never feels with Sansom: he is always getting on with it. Accordingly, the pages turn themselves. Mantel, for all the beauty of her writing, sometimes makes one think about what a good writer she is. Sansom makes you wonder who the murderer is, and this makes his the more immersive experience.

I also think Sansom’s portrayal of Cromwell is more plausible. The Mantel trilogy was a rehabilitative work, which emphasises Cromwell’s administrative excellence – as Elton did – but she falls for him a bit, and we are sometimes in the realm of power worship. As soon as you get any feel for the alien harshness of Tudor England, it makes you wonder really about the essential validity of Mantel’s decision to enter Cromwell’s head with such apparent empathy. Sansom, with his background as a lawyer defending the underdog, had a healthy disdain of power. He was less likely to be hoodwinked.

The decision to make Shardlake a lawyer was a masterstroke. It played to Sansom’s biographical strength. Sansom had been a lawyer himself, and he could marshal his own experience in the legal profession. This no doubt helped with the technical difficulties of writing the novels. But the legal profession is also connected to a cross-section of society and this gave the novels scope. My sense is that literary critics, who tend to assess ambition predominantly by how poetic the language is, have missed just how broad and allencompassing these books became.

The typical trend nowadays for the bestselling author is increasing length. The first Harry Potter novel comes in at a trim 200 or so pages. I find it a bit kitsch, but it is a tight book written by an unknown author. Today JK Rowling, under the pseudonym

of Robert Galbraith, seems incapable of writing a book under a thousand pages long – and does anything happen in these books to merit such length? The same is true of Philip Pullman. The early books of the His Dark Materials trilogy, especially The Subtle Knife, are extremely economical, and so one almost doesn’t notice that Pullman’s world makes no sense. By the fifth volume, The Secret Commonwealth, one of the windiest books in all literature, it becomes all too clear that Pullman has no idea what Dust, the central concept of the books, is. There is no control; and the sense is that the author has become too famous for any editor to intervene.

Though Sansom’s books do get progressively longer, nothing like this happens. There is a controlled development; the books get better and better, until his last novel Tombland which is his masterpiece. PD James, a great champion of Sansom’s work, reportedly saw Tombland at that book’s launch at The Ivy. She was towards the end of her life, and wryly said: “Well, this should see me through.” I hope it did, and many who heard the news of Sansom’s death, felt both a grief at his departure, but also a more selfish sense of disappointment that they would now never read his last novel Ratcliff, which he was working on at a slow pace in his last years. At this point in time, I can’t think of any book I’d like to read more: it is always a compliment to say that their death is very annoying.

As we go through these books, we experience the sweep of Tudor England. In Sovereign, we experience York; in Heartstone, we visit Portsmouth and witness the sinking of the Mary Rose. Sometimes, as in Revelation, we are in a claustrophobic London, where a serialkiller is at large in a city far smaller than our own.

This sense of place is one of Sansom’s strengths, and he helps us to understand the sometimes bewildering enormity of London today. In Shardlake’s London, we feel the legal district around the Temple as distinct from Westminster which in those

days was a complex of palaces which you entered by the Holbein gate. In Revelation, we have a vivid description of the marshiness of the South Bank which can shed light on our experience of that part of the city today. He is a great writer of place, as all great writers must be.

Sometimes, we might wonder a little bit about Shardlake the humanist. Here perhaps Sansom’s imagination failed him; in his centre-left atheism Shardlake seems a little too close to our own attitudes to be historically believable. I don’t think Tudor England was necessarily quite so rife with Blairite lawyers as Sansom vaguely implies it might have been, and we might sometimes feel that that was one thing about Tudor England which is preferable to the present time. On the other hand, Shardlake’s religious opinions do evolve a bit during the series, though we are never in doubt as to which way the wind is blowing. It can sometimes seem as if Shardlake has somehow pre-read Hume, Freud, Darwin and Marx. But these flaws never seriously impact the sheer scope of his research, and the excellent plots. It is always a good gauge of the success of a mystery to watch closely one’s level of surprise when the identity of the killer is revealed. By this measure, Lamentation is a perfect tale, where the solution is genuinely brilliant. When allied to the immensity of the portrait of the times, this is another masterpiece.

It is a sad passing. But as always, we must realise that our grief at not reading Ratcliff is only the flipside of our having been gifted all the others. Here is a writer to be sent on his way with only our gratitude. It is an old cliché that writers of a certain quality don’t die. Here then is another blessing: CJ Sansom’s last breath was a kind of catching at immortality, because those of us who loved him, understood with absolute certainty that our afternoon would be spent in rereading him, and that we’d never tire of recommending him to others.

BOOK REVIEWS

UPLIFTING BOOKS FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

SAY MORE: LESSONS FROM WORK, THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE WORLD

BY JEN PSAKI

IJen Psaki has become a Democratic sage by virtue of having served in both the Obama and the Biden administrations, the latter for 16 months. In today’s polarised America, it was never expected to be a proTrump memoir, and it isn’t – but it also has a certain nuance which can be missing from the typical score-settling memoir. We get some vignettes of life at the top of politics. Barack Obama proves relaxed about her taking on the role of Director of Communications and then needing to go on maternity leave. Joe Biden is surprised to hear that he doesn’t help the grieving family members as much as he hopes to when he tries to relate their loss back to the loss of his own son Beau. ‘I thought I was helping them’. At one point, John Kerry makes a gaffe and Psaki learns the importance of quick feedback:

it’s often better to speak your mind on the spot, than to pause and let a matter linger. At another point she observes, “Advising someone is not the same as appeasing them.” I suppose this is true, though, like a lot of the wisdom in this book, bordering on the obvious. Nevertheless, it’s worth a look. CJ

A VERY PRIVATE SCHOOL

BY CHARLES SPENCER

Many people who have been to boarding school will recognise the following question and answer. "When you think of the school, what’s the one word that comes to mind?” “Fear”. This establishes the theme of Charles Spencer’s book which raises many questions around privilege and trauma in our society. Spencer’s time at Maidwell Hall, where he boarded for five years in the 1970s, was truly awful, and the writer makes multiple allegations of sexual abuse about the staff there, sometimes naming them. It is extremely brave of him to speak out about his experiences. Spencer also manages to do more than simply to convey them – sometimes he is able to understand

them, suggesting that this book has been the product of a considerable amount of painful reflection. “'Her control over mesmerised boys was total, for we were starved of feminine warmth, and desperate for attention and affection,” he writes of one unnamed assistant matron who seems to have treated him especially badly. Are things any better today? One hopes so, as much of this book is alarming to read. But I don’t think boarding school, since it involves wresting children from their parents at a young age, can ever really take fear out of the equation. CJ

HARD PLACE, DEAD FIX AND DEADLY HUSH

BY DOUGLAS STEWART

Often when I read a book, I yearn to meet the author. Sometimes it isn’t possible but on other occasions it helps frame one’s appreciation. I have been blessed to have known Douglas Stewart since 1988 when he audaciously bought the London office of Clarke Wilmott & Clarke and launched Stewarts, which grew to become the UK's largest litigation-only law firm. At the time

he was senior partner, he was already writing books under the pen name of Cameron Ross. Since he stepped down, he has become an international best selling thriller novelist, presumably taking inspiration from some of his former clients who he represented with such aplomb.

Over the years he has published, A Family at Law, Insult to Injury, Shipping at Risk, Terror at Sea, Deadline Vegas and a trilogy under The Alistair Duncan Series including: The Scaffold; Villa Plot, Counterplot; and Case for Compensation.

His latest trilogy is The Ratso Thrillers, including Hard Place, Dead Fix and Deadly Hush.

D I Todd 'Ratso' Holtom is obsessed with destruction of a murderous global drug-empire run from London. Inspired by the facts of a true crime, Hard Place is set against the background of the war in Afghanistan from where the drugs are coming. Ratso must place his career on the line by pursuing a high-risk strategy against a drug-baron who has used corruption to gain protection. He enters a political minefield involving Scotland Yard and the Ministry of Defence in London and the Pentagon and State Department in Washington DC. The trail leads to the USA and the Bahamas where Ratso is helped by Kirsty-Ann Webber, a swelte Florida detective. Ratso races against the clock from country to country towards a series of dramatic confrontations.

Inspired by real events, Dead Fix is the second of the Det. Inspector Todd 'Ratso' Holtom series, following on from Hard Place. Ratso investigates international sports match-fixing, a labour of love for this London detective. Billions are being staked

on fixed results using a global blackmarket. Following a vicious attack on seeming innocents, he realises that he is up against more than bent players as he tackles the shady and murderous world of criminal gangs.

The trail points to a mastermind operating from Dubai and India. But are Ratso’s instincts failing him? Once again, he is supported by colleagues, Jock Strang, Tosh Watson and Nancy Petrie. As the investigation twists and turns, fresh evidence points to the USA. Here, his svelte long-distance lover, Det. Kirsty-Ann Webber of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department yet again proves her worth as the scope and scale of the investigation race to a dramatic climax.

Deadly Hush is the third in the Det. Inspector Todd 'Ratso' Holtom series. It follows the acclaim for Hard Place and Dead Fix . Now, Ratso has a serial killer on the loose. With each body, the killer leaves a playing-card. The first murder involves a gay icon TV presenter in London. When further gays are murdered, Ratso’s boss is convinced these are hate-crimes. Ratso’s viewpoint differs, presenting a challenge for him and his loyal team.

With media outcry as deaths mount, Ratso’s problems worsen. His jailed adversary, Boris Zandro, hires a hitman to deliver vengeance while Ratso’s investigation jets him to Switzerland and the Caribbean. Layer-on-layer of conflicting evidence leads to dramatic action as the plot races to a tense and nerveracking climax.

Once you have read these, it makes you feel glad that you were never a legal client of the author. RL

SEARCHING THE HORIZON

I opened my eyes and my eyes opened the light that helped them first to arise; and it was as though a window had forged another window, working and sculpting the light to show the drama of sight – how a new horizon glanced at me, gently, knighting me with angles, the emanations in a cool and slaking breeze, and the unmastered day ahead, like a slave still to each refraction of hope, each ghost on its way to becoming the fuller filled-out flesh it wants to be. Lit now, gripped by delight,

I walk among the staple daily shadows and feel each one sundered below my stepping feet, the horizon busied now with its batch of unhurt children.

Omar Sabbagh

A REVIEW OF THE HARBOUR HOTEL “THE PERFECT WEEKEND ESCAPE"

GEORGE ACHEBE

In early 2024, many parents looked at the calendar with a degree of confusion: the schools were going back on the 9th January, and not – as with the previous year – on the 2nd. The question of what to do with the children for that week, when they were beginning to get claustrophobic from Christmas reared up: it had to be answered one way or another.

I had a plan up my sleeve. My children have begun to show an interest in fossils and I had read that the fossil-hunting reaches its zenith on the Jurassic Coast in the winter, especially in the aftermath of storms.

Sidmouth, where the Harbour Hotel is located, is an excellent location from

which to explore: it is located at the end of a charming town dominated by a relaxing promenade with a sleepy Edwardian feel. It is probably the case that Covid-19 – with the humourlessness which characterised that particular disease – snookered many families into Larkinesque holidays they had mistakenly come to consider beneath them: Greece, Italy and the south of France were traded for Wales, the Lake District, and Cornwall.

What seems subsequently to have happened is that many families found they disliked airports more than they had realised, and also that Larkin was a grouch who made England sound like a car park. In fact, although it has car parks it is also one of the most

beautiful countries in the world. Many families now wonder why they should fly to an inferno in August and have begun to think of the risk of rain in England as being not only worth it, but a benediction of sorts.

“THE HARBOUR HOTEL CHAIN IS A GOOD WAY IN WHICH TO EXPLORE THE ENTIRE SOUTHERN COAST.”

The Harbour Hotel chain is a good way in which to explore the entire southern

coast. It has outposts at Guildford, Brighton, Chichester, and Southampton as well as a hotel in Bristol and three particularly lovely properties in Cornwall. The Sidmouth property is very beautiful: full of nautical decor, and nonchalant luxury.

Our room had a spacious balcony looking out onto the English channel. A few houses poke up towards the horizon, where the sky is continually producing masterpieces aimed at no one in particular: it can be a well-spent hour just to watch the clouds build an empire which they subsequently decide against. I found myself sketching the scene on my iPad throughout my stay, in a constant amazement at the loveliness of this part of the world.

We might think of January in England as a reasonably bitter destiny, but it has its austere beauties. Down at the excellent breakfast (pancakes and a fine full English) on our first morning, the sun kept bursting through the clouds, as if in the throes of its own private

epiphanies. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish sky from sea. In fact, you feel you’re being let in on the secrets of an interconnected system which London keeps from you.

“THE BEAUTY OF THE COASTLINE CAN ALSO BE SEEN FROM THE BREAKFAST ROOMS.”

The beauty of the coastline can also be seen from the breakfast rooms: the first cliffs between Sidmouth and the little village delightfully named Beer recede beyond the High Street, which has an excellent ice cream shop called Taste and lots of boutiques. The Sidmouth coastline is beautiful in itself, but also recedes down towards the additional promise of Lyme Regis, Charmouth, Bridport, and Kimmeridge. It is all fossil territory. Apparently, due

to a certain hidden toxicity about the waters, none of the creatures who died during the shift in climate following on from that famous asteroid impact some 65 million years ago have since been nibbled away at. As you look out to that glorious sea you are also considering a perfectly preserved time capsule. Sir David Attenborough is only the most famous person to be excited about this lucky anomaly: in fact, you don’t have to delve too much into the Jurassic coast to enter a welcoming community of fossil addicts and dinosaur lovers.

To fossil-hunt here is to partake in a long story. As you drive down the coast from Sidmouth to Lyme Regis, you are heading in a sense towards the ghost of Mary Anning (1799-1847). Feted and famed, and even subject to the high contemporary accolade of a Little People, Big Dreams book, Anning became famous in the Victorian era due to her discovery of the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was a mere 12 years’ old. She

subsequently went on to discover two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons and the first pterosaur skeleton to be located outside Germany.

“THROUGHOUT

OUR FIRST DAY, A STORM RAGED AROUND US.”

Throughout our first day, a storm raged around us – the sort that wants to take your umbrella with it – as we trudged submissively down to the museum. The museum which bears Anning’s name is also on the site of her house, and contains a treasure trove of fine fossils. It reminds you too of John Fowles’ long tenure in the area, as well as Jane Austen’s decision to locate the pivotal scene of Persuasion (1817) here. It is pointless to deny that the weather was adverse; but in this part of the world, a storm is also an opportunity because it whips up secrets which the sedate tides

can’t: it’s possible to make remarkable finds in January on the Jurassic Coast.

In Charmouth there is a little shop which is testament to this called The Forge Fossils. Run by Chris Moore, it is an unmissable place which we happened on the following day. Moore has recently been seen on television in that wonderful BBC documentary Attenborough and the Giant Sea Monster in his role as a local expert instrumental in extracting a giant skull of a pliosaur from the cliffface at Kimmeridge. Pliosaurs were extraordinary beasts – the T-Rexes of the seas – who swam round this part of the world in a time when T-Rexes themselves stalked the land. They were devilishly smooth swimmers, and from what I can tell could have bitten a decent chunk out of a football stadium.

Moore is friends with Attenborough – one lovely thing about the BBC documentary is to see Attenborough’s unfeigned joy at being in the fossil

community. Moore’s is one of those enviable careers which are tied to a specific place; they are the chance necessities of a birthright. We saw Moore’s studio, and watched Moore himself examining his fossils, the rest of the world a happy irrelevance to someone as happy in his work as he so obviously is.

Charmouth turns out to be an especially promising stretch of coastline, as there used to be a Victorian factory nearby, meaning that there is an unusual amount of seaglass to be found. Within half a mile or so, we found several necklaces worth, and lots of ammonites. To say that for a child an ammonite becomes a prized possession is to riot in understatement. I have often wondered at the way in which the simplest thing to a child – a leaf, a stone – immediately becomes treasure. My sense is that it’s the adults who can’t see the excitement in the apparently commonplace who are misguided.

The Jurassic Coast, (Wikipedia.org)

Charmouth, (Wikipedia.org)

The cliffs are very beautiful indeed. Anyone who has seen the brilliant crime series Broadchurch which finished after three excellent seasons will know the warm yellows and umbers of the cliffs here (the series was filmed at nearby Bridport). They make even winter feel warm, and I found myself sketching these too.

The hotel was a good place to beat a retreat to after fossil-hunting. As I’ve found is the case in the Harbour Hotel chain generally, the service is reliably excellent and warm: these hotels are extremely comfortable but they eschew the sort of grandeur which leads to too much formality. In some hotels, there is the exhausting sense that one is paying to have to be on one’s best behaviour. The Harbour Hotel staff were never less than kind and understanding: from Callum the restaurant manager to Abby the receptionist, Rachel the housekeeping manager, and Jay and Heather in the restaurant. The

food was also superb throughout: the chateaubriand comes particularly recommended.

In time, we came to eye our departure date with a certain contempt, until we decided to extend our stay partly with a view to taking advantage of the indoor swimming pool area. There is an outdoor area too which must be a marvellous place for an afternoon of cocktails in summer.

On our final day we decided that it would be worth going to see the famous pliosaur itself. This is housed in the Etches Collection down in Kimmeridge, founded by another star of the paleontology world Steve Etches. Etches is another down-to-earth character who has found his calling. We found him cheerfully sweeping the car park area outside his excellent museum. This is rather as if one were visiting Julia Roberts at Paramount Studios and found her doing some light dusting.

The museum he has founded must be the envy of the Natural History Museum. On a screen above the fossils we see an almost eerie reproduction of the Jurassic seas, where a pliosaur might at any moment descend upon an ichthyosaur. The exhibit in the centre of the main room shows the complicated structures of the brain, and makes one wonder by what curious and secret processes it might have come to be at all.

As you drive back to London, you can still hear the roar of the shingle and the surf for days afterwards. We had been among beauty and the mystery of evolution for what felt like far longer than a few days. Winter in the UK presents its challenges. It was Margaret Thatcher who said of Lord David Young: “Others bring me problems, David brings me solutions.” I might say the same of the Harbour Hotel.

To visit the Harbour Hotel, Sidmouth go to: https://www.harbourhotels.co.uk/ sidmouth

HOW TO BUILD A CAREER IN THE LAKES

CHRISTOPHER JACKSON

For the Londoner, coming to the Lake District is a way of measuring how far you spend your life from beauty most of the time. London, you realise, is in fact a massive accommodation with ugliness and squalor. Of course, we don’t feel this on a pleasant walk through Dulwich Park, or as we present our tickets for the latest exhibition at the National Gallery. I am not proposing that London doesn’t have its virtues, but its virtues can seem rather irrelevant once you spend some time beside a lake.

And these, notwithstanding all the grim reports about outbreaks of green algae, are the loveliest lakes I know. The landscape hits you with its revelation: “You must have made some pretty serious concessions, otherwise you’d be living here”. This sense might not bear inspection after prolonged exposure to

the hostile winter months, but it is a feeling to be explored.

It is told in the look of the slate walls, where you sense the countless days work of long since departed human hands; in the silent endurance of the cows and sheep against the elements; and above all in the great and constant marriage between mountains and lakes and light. Everyone from William Wilberforce to John Keats and JMW Turner, not to mention those fixtures of the place William Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin has come here and thought: “Well, this is it for me: why would I wish to be anywhere else?” I note that the place has such beauty that it has briefly even waylaid the introspective American songstress Taylor Swift from fulminating about the perfidy of her boyfriends: on the album Folklore there is a song called ‘The

Lakes’. In this song she calls the Lakes ‘a perfect place to cry’ – Swift’s favourite activity, one sometimes feels, and so I think she intends it as a compliment.

This last contribution to culture probably won’t have helped the Lake District’s uneasy relationship with tourism. I happen to know a local landowner who has taken to putting notes outside her driveway warning the tourists away. I have never yet seen a Japanese tourist while in the Lakes, but I can only assume the numbers are significant to have sent her to her Japanese dictionary.

I know two ways of possible approach to the Lakes; if you arrive by the M6 and then wind your way down towards Windermere, the abruptness of the shift from concrete horror to the most beautiful landscape on earth can make you blink in astonishment: it is too

Unsplash.com

sharp a juxtaposition between what we have chosen to do make of the world and what we inherited. It’s much better, I’ve discovered down the years, to head up through Cambridge and Harrogate, and approach by the Yorkshire Dales. Then you see the logic of the landscape unfolding, a gradual dawning of the scale and majesty of it all: your car, winding the roads as if in one of those David Hockney paintings, feels implicated somehow in a geological process which makes far more sense.

“YOU DO FEEL THAT YOU HAVE ESCAPED MODERNITY JUST A LITTLE BIT BY COMING HERE.”

Either way, you do feel that you have escaped modernity just a little bit by coming here. Sometimes the world beyond can pursue you. The National Trust can ridiculously reach across from its head office in Swindon to charge you ludicrous sums for parking near woodland which Beatrix Potter, who did so much to establish the National Trust, and therefore to preserve this landscape, had imagined would be open to the public. I imagine she’d be pretty annoyed. In general the further you go from the M6 the more ‘untouched’ this place. It is as if people come from all over to get here, and having got here, their curiosity can’t quite go the extra mile into the really beautiful parts. As you approach the Lakes, you can quote to yourself Wordsworth’s poem against the arrival of the railways here in 1847: “Is then no nook of English ground secure/from rash assault?”

But despite all this, there is some sort of independent spirit here which seems to know that London is deep down in vain. Amanda, the kindly person who oversees the cottage near Grasmere which we regularly take, used to be a high-flying

corporate player in the healthcare space, but she sold up and now works in social care. Stories like this, and many others like them, appear to proclaim her arrival at some deeper wisdom and superior sense of balance. The busy Londoner will look at such stories and perhaps lodge them for later: they are emblems of another set of values.

Not that people don’t work hard in the Lake District. In fact, there is an interesting and distinctive economy up here, which isn’t only to do with tourism. Of the 41,000 people who live in the National Park itself, 15,000 work in tourism, and 2,500 in farming. Interestingly, self-employment rates are almost double the national average, and very few – only around 300 people – claim Job Seekers’ Allowance. It is as if this landscape, by turns harsh and glorious, attracts the self-reliant – and usually the sort of independent soul who also places a high value on the aesthetic experience of life.

Beatrix Potter was just such a person, and she remains undoubtedly a one-woman economic phenomenon. Her lovely house in Lower Sawrey, known as Hill Top Farm and run by the National Trust – is booked up well in advance and with good reason. As we go through the little house, open books show how the room

which provided her original inspiration was transformed by the alchemy of art. Those joyous books still delight every generation of children, no matter how swiftly we think we might be progressing. Imagination has a curious way of vaulting from the past to now.

In one sense, Beatrix Potter is pure fantasy: rabbits, we must concede, do not typically wear blue coats in nature. In another sense her stories take place in the nature we actually see: Peter Rabbit stands a genuine chance of being eaten, and her descriptions of the natural world, all gleaned from the Lake District, are so minute as to feel true somehow to our condition. If you have young children, it’s visiting the Beatrix Potter Attraction in Bowness – another employer in the area, where many a family has sought refuge on a rained-off day in the Lakes.

If you walk down Rayrigg Road to the Jetty Museum you’ll find an interesting Potter curiosity: a little skiff which she rowed on the lakes. This museum houses the remnants of the vision of a man called George Pattinson, who I have a particular interest in, since he happened to be my grandfather. George was in the navy during the Second World War. On his return, he entered into a quest to rescue steamboats from the bed of Lake Windermere. The prevalence of these

Japanese tourists (pictured at Hill Top) are among the frequent visitors to Potter's home. Merchandisers in Japan estimate that 80% of the population have heard of Peter Rabbit. (Wikipedia.org)

boats can partly be explained by the fact that steamboating had been a popular pastime over the previous hundred years back to Victorian times, and also by the fact that often the lakes would freeze over and damage the boats sending them to the bottom of the lakes.

This is precisely what happened to SL Dolly, built in 1850 and listed as the oldest mechanically powered boat in the world. There was a particularly bad frost in 1895 which meant that Dolly began to take on water, falling 40 feet below the surface beyond the rescue capacities of the day. Years later, my mother witnessed its salvage from Ullswater. Later, my grandfather would restore it, always with the intention of making it lakeworthy again, which by an extraordinary

combination of hard work and vision, he did. His efforts attracted the interest of the Duke of Edinburgh who visited on one memorable occasion. Some of my most vivid childhood memories entail afternoon trips on Windermere. It felt as though you’d fallen through some secret door into a past world.

Today, sadly, with my grandfather no longer here, the Jetty Museum conservation team has decided to keep Dolly inside, and it’s not in a state of which my grandfather would have approved. This is the trouble with projects which turn on the passion of a single person: when those who come after us do not share it, something precious is lost. Much as I admire much of what has been attempted at the Jetty Museum, it is a

different and less quixotically charming place to the original Windermere Steamboat Museum, which opened in 1977. There is a fascinating photo of my mother Susan Jackson as an extra on the set of a period film; she was also there at the opening of the Windermere Steamboat Museum by the current King, then Prince Charles.

My mother remains passionate in preserving the boats for future generations. But sometimes one does feel the past encroaching. My mother’s side of the family come from a building family, the Pattinsons, which have been building in this part of the world for centuries. Many of their homes are now in different hands and the woods where I used to play in my childhood now have security fencing to prevent the public going in. It sometimes seems that the past is being slowly eroded. The discovery of the slate mines gave rise to a black market whereby thieves would go up into the mines, and steal wad. They would go down into Keswick, where the small back alleys were ideal for illegal trade. The George and Dragon, the centre for this, still stands today. Sometimes the stories one hears seem like they are crying to be turned into historical fiction. One historical figure Black Sal would steal from the local mines, and had the misfortune to be torn apart by wolves one evening returning home from checking up on her stash.

Another remarkable story is told in the Derwent Pencil museum of Charles Fraser-Smith whose job during World War Two was to provide spies with secreted kit. He would conceal maps and compasses into a Derwent pencil: “My piece of the war had been, I suppose, more unorthodox than that of almost anyone alive. I supplied gadgets to secret agents in the field or to prisoners of war trying to escape.” These stories, and many others like them, are a reminder that strange narratives can sometimes be found in remote places. They seem to have their origin in the magnificent shapes of this land, and its ancient claims,

be found in remote places. They seem to have their origin in the magnificent shapes of this land, and its ancient claims, but at the same time they link to broader currents of history. At various times, the Lakes have seen the Romans and the Vikings pass through; Hadrian’s Wall is within striking distance. For a while, the Lakes were owned by Fountains Abbey. Yet I wonder how much Cumbria has ever really been acquired; it seems to possess an intrinsic independent streak which may have to do with its geographical remoteness. A mountain isn’t just a feature of the land; it can become a way of life.

Perhaps this is why today Cumbria still contains fascinating career stories. When it comes to sheep farming we need look no further than James Rebanks’ fascinating A Shepherd’s Tale which speaks of the author’s commitment to the land stretching back many generations. The book opens with a beautiful description of bringing the sheep down from the hills for lambing, and the mood among the farmers. We are introduced to a world which will always continue as it has done for centuries:

There is no beginning, and there is no end. The sun rises, and falls, each day, and the seasons come and go. The days, months and years alternate through sunshine, rain, hail, wind, snow and frost. The leaves fall each autumn and burst forth again each spring. The earth spins through the vastness of space. The grass comes and goes with the warmth of the sun. The farms and the flocks endure, bigger than the life of a single person. We are born, live our working lives and die, passing like the oak leaves that blow across our land in the winter. We are each a tiny part of something enduring, something that feels solid, real and true. Our farming way of life has roots deeper than five thousand years into the soil of this landscape.

This is a large view of life, where the work we undertake has a profound ability to link far back in time – and into the future too.

The opportunities don’t end there. Over towards Penrith, there is a fascinating business run by Keith Scobie-Youngs called the Cumbria Clock Company which restores antique clocks across the country. Keith was, in fact, recently charged with restoring Big Ben. The gigantic minute hand of Big Ben is proudly laid out on the floor of one of the studios. “It’s a small pond, but deep,” he says, referring to his work. The company has also restored the world’s oldest clock at Salisbury Clock and conducted work at Hampton Court Palace – and done all this in Cumbria. I find I love the curious peace which comes from being in a room of ticking clocks. It is an image of things working properly, and I can imagine how satisfying the work must be.

But time is everywhere you look in the Lake District – it is as if the ancientness of these rocks can bequeath a larger perspective. It is partly this, I think, which has made Wordsworth’s poetry last. He is not really – or not only – a nature-loving poet. It is that his love of nature opens up onto such a deep enduring view of life where the forms of nature provide eternal consolation.

But if I were to work anywhere in the Lakes, I’d be applying to join Sarah Nelson gingerbread in Grasmere, a little shop just next to St Oswald’s where

Wordsworth is buried. Here, canny crows circle overhead since they know what the clued-up locals have also come to understand: that this is the finest gingerbread known to man, and probably in the overall universe. Sarah Nelson is another Lake District character who came up with her chewy, spicy recipe in the winter of 1854, and I would give rather a lot to have been looking over her shoulder as she had her Eureka moment. The recipe is now locked in a vault somewhere – a bank heist movie about this is waiting to be written. Sometimes, I have considered planning an actual heist.

The future of the Lakes is by no means assured. There are fears of too much development surfacing from time to time in the local press. But this pales in comparison to the stories around pollution which seems to get worse each year when the tourists descend in such increasing numbers. Yet there is resilience here, and a profound will to preserve. This is because we know that if we can do that we will be preserving a precious aspect of our collective selves: it is the part of us that loves and needs beauty, and it is to exist alongside that sense of responsibility which makes even a short visit to the Lakes such a refreshment.

THE INEXORABLE RISE OF NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

COSTEAU REPORTS FROM THE SOBERING

FRONT LINES OF A GROWTH SECTOR

5 Hertford Street (Wikipedia.org)

It is a curious thing how Prime Ministers’ drinking habits sometimes seem to mimic the mood of the nation. Sir Winston Churchill in his love of whiskey and cigars seemed to embody the pleasures that Britain hoped to transition to after the deprivations of the Second World War. Then in his almost unreadable memoir A Journey, Tony Blair wrote of his slight dependency on wine during his premiership: in that he is was very much of the Cool Britannia generation. Then the premiership of champagneswilling Liz Truss made us all consider alcoholism.

But now in 2024, we have a teetotal Prime Minister, and this seems in some ways to reflect the more sober mood of an inflation-hit nation. The advent of the Rishi Sunak premiership was all

about stability and might be mirrored in our own lives by the restraint of a night in, sipping non-alcoholic wine and reading FT reports about the importance of being fiscally sensible.

For many years, Costeau would have ordered almost anything in a restaurant but a non-alcoholic drink – in fact, I think I tried snails before I tried a mocktail. For years, caught up in the joys of the journalistic liquid lunch, the non-alcoholic menu was waved away, or even sneered at.

Fleet Street was built around alcohol. I recall one senior journalist who had known it in its heyday who would present himself for work in a paisley shirt at 11am. He would peck away at a column before excusing himself for lunch, then never return. It was how it had always been, and he continued

blissfully unaware that the paper he worked for, once under the ownership of a quirky aristocrat who would have tolerated his ways and even gone to drink at the Pillars of Hercules with him, was now in the hands of a private equity fund who had never heard of him. I remember the day he was fired as a changing of the guard, but I doubt it changed his drinking habits: his generation would push on through, old dogs too old to learn new tricks.

But perhaps the experience of millennials has been different, and has tended to be characterised by a mounting disquiet around alcohol consumption. In the 1990s, episodes of the now-forgotten sitcom Men Behaving Badly, starring Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey, would end with the stars swigging a can of Stella Artois,

then tossing it behind the sofa they were sitting on. Liam Gallagher, meanwhile, was emerging from bars. He looking considerably the worse for wear - but he also looked young, famous and rich and when people are young they have no inkling that immaturity and a disastrously unhealthy lifestyle may have been misguidedly rubber stamped by every media outlet.

And so we copy them – and copying in this case is not great since being consistently drunk turns out not to be the summit of wisdom. Nor is it the basis for a particularly fulfilling life. By 2024, there are signs that a rising number of people realise this.

According to a report by Statista, the UK with its strongish economy has seen ‘a surge in demand for low-sugar and zero-alcohol beverages, such as flavoured water, herbal teas, and functional beverages’. The implication is that not only are we not drinking booze but also trying hard to ensure our drinks contain healthy ingredients.

The effects on the economy – and therefore on the jobs market – are already beginning to show. According to Statista, revenue in the non-alcoholic drinks market is projected to reach $162 billion in 2024. But that’s just the beginning. Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of a whopping 11 per cent, resulting in a projected market volume of US$275 billion by 2029. Those sorts of numbers will reflect a customer base of some 1.3 billion people.

This means that there is a far broader range of non-alcoholic drinkers than one might think. It’s not just grizzled alcoholics giving their livers a break – though that’s obviously a part of it. Take, for instance, the JOMO Club – the acronym stands for the Joy of Missing Out. This non-alcoholic drinks subscription business is the brainchild of Gemma and Richard Mills. Each subscription box costs £38 and the idea is to help sober curious people explore

the market, with a particular focus on supporting unknown and innovative brands.

The couple shares the story of the company’s founding on its website: “During the pandemic, we were learning how to live and work from the same house and environment. Our divide between the working day and relaxing in the evening was a G&T (or multiple). But those G&Ts weren’t quite hitting the spot. We realised the gin wasn’t having a positive impact on our workouts and mental clarity and focus. That is when we started exploring alternatives to alcohol. We wanted to keep the ritual of making and drinking a drink but without the booze.”

The business has been a success, with women between the age of 25 and 55 comprising JOMO’s core audience. This in itself is interesting – one might have expected the company to attract a higher percentage of Gen Z. But no. Mills explains: “Gen Z (those born during the late 1990s and early 2000s) are often named ‘the sober generation’ but they’re not our target audience. Some people in that generation haven’t been drinking at all from the beginning and we’re a subscription-based business so our subscribers tend to people who are fairly established in their careers and therefore have higher salaries.”

It would seem there is a degree of lifestyle regret in play here, and perhaps a degree of morbidity from millennials seeking to avoid an early exit. But interestingly, it’s slightly more widespread than that. Mills estimates that 15 per cent of her client base are actually drinkers, with a mere 30 per cent sober. The remainder, she explains, are mindful drinkers, looking to cut down their alcohol consumption, but who wouldn’t deny themselves a drink from time to time.

Costeau’s experience is that once drink is jettisoned, there is a brief period where one finds the company of boozers something of a trial. One has the false

idea that one has abandoned fun. The wonder of the non-alcoholic drinks industry is that it has created a range of options which give one the sense of having a treat, without the toll.

I would say that two glasses is somewhat of a maximum for the non-alcoholic drinks connoisseur. After that point, one starts to feel as though one has had too many Coca-Colas. There is usually, if one happens to be attending a drinking session sober, a curious moment when everybody who has been drinking starts shouting without realising it. This is the moment when, from the drinker’s perspective, they have the false impression that they’re coming into their form. In fact, the alcohol has lulled them into saying similar things over and over again in the voice volume one would normally effect when trying to talk over a rock concert.

By far the best of the non-alcoholic beers in Costeau’s experience is Guinness 0.0 – so much so that I have heard that not even Dubliners can tell the difference. Perhaps this introduces what might be called a Law of Taste: in general, the stronger the flavour of the original beer the more likely the non-alcoholic counterpart is to deliver a punch.

But the fact that wine and gin, and other alcoholic drinks, are not quite there yet means that this is likely to be an employability growth area. New jobs will be there in marketing, in refining the technology, in distribution and of course in administration and management. These will be growth companies – in fact, they already are. Furthermore bartender roles are now frequently advertised with the caveat that you will be expected to be as proficient in making and serving non-alcoholic drinks as in alcoholic drinks.

This is our new world – more healthconscious, but beginning to realise that looking after oneself doesn’t have to be joyless. That sounds fine – and why not have a career out of it?

NEXT ISSUE

COLUMNS

FEATURES

Christopher

The

Christopher

CLASS DISMISSED SIR JOHN GRIFFIN

THE FOUNDER OF ADDISON LEE AND FINITO CHAIRMAN ON RECEIVING HIS KNIGHTHOOD, HIS WORK ETHIC – AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

AT FINITO WE WERE SO THRILLED TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR KNIGHTHOOD. CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU TO BE HONOURED IN THIS WAY?

It was very moving. I thought of my late father who came from Ireland and worked at Buckingham Palace looking after the guards. When I went to the Palace, it seemed to open up a door to the past: in particular, it meant a lot to me to see the Irish guards and the Royal family too. I felt it as an honour and a privilege – I suppose you could see it capped a lifetime of achievement.

DID YOU FEEL AWE?

I did – I was actually very taken aback. Did you know that as a kid I used to stand outside Buckingham Palace at the railings? Well here I was in the inner sanctum, as it were, kneeling and receiving the sword. I have always been a great supporter of the Royal Family –they do so much for our nation, putting us on the world stage and yielding a massive profit for the Country- and none more so than the King.

CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT THE DAY OF THE INVESTITURE ITSELF?

Going into the Palace is a breath-taking experience. Actually, I’m full of Royal connections because I also live in a house designed by John Nash who also designed Buckingham Palace. But the pomp and the tradition is very humbling. I had been there before for a small dinner when Eric Clapton performed with Stevie Wonder – but on the day of my investiture my main memory of the music was the two trumpeteers who gave a magnificent flourish as we came into a celebration lunch.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER WOULD SAY IF THEY KNEW THEIR SON HAD BEEN MADE A KNIGHT OF THE REALM?

They would be so very proud. Other members of my Irish family went to prison. We have got a son at Buckingham Palace!

THE CITATION FOR THE KNIGHTHOOD SHOWS THE SHEER VARIETY OF WHAT YOU’VE DONE. WHAT IS IT THAT MOTIVATES YOU AND KEEPS YOU PUSHING FORWARDS?

The main things which motivate me are helping the next generation and helping to save lives. The work we do at Finito is very important and I’m also incredibly proud of donating £12 million towards building The Griffin Institute at Northwick Park Hospital.

WHAT WAS THE BEST DAY’S WORK YOU EVER DID IN YOUR LIFE?

I won a six aside football championship and the British Schoolboy boxing championships –those were proud sporting moments. Professionally, I’m most proud of starting Addison Lee – and especially enticing my two sons and our extended family to join the company. It was a right of passage for family members to find their role.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR STARTING OUT TODAY?

Get up early and work late. Believe in yourself because your best is always enough.

WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR LEGENDARY WORK ETHIC FROM?

Both my parents were hard-working people, who instinctively understood that things don’t happen overnight. They believed in me, and I think I was always comforted by that. That definitely helped during the hard times – and if you don’t have hard times as an entrepreneur then you’re not taking enough risks!

HOW WILL THE KNIGHTHOOD CHANGE THINGS FOR YOU GOING FORWARDS? WHAT ARE YOUR IMMEDIATE PLANS?

It won’t come as a surprise that I am thinking about starting another business, but it will be difficult to beat my proudest record of achievement over 38 years at Addison Lee, no driver was found guilty of any offence against a passenger. I am writing my autobiography. When I was 16, I went camping in Devon, milked a cow and drank the milk. As a result, I got brucellosis, bovine Tuberculosis. I was in hospital for two years, and I left school without a single exam pass. I was on long term medication. During my treatment, I met a lot of people who later died. I was quite philosophical that I had not and realised that life was a gift.