The Ukraine War
The large-scale conflict that began when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022 led to much talk about a new age of war. In particular, there was a combination of new technology, notably in the form of drones, and the unexpected failure of a major power, Russia, to defeat one that had appeared highly vulnerable, Ukraine. This failure appeared to call out for explanation, and the latter led to much talk of novelty, with technology apparently trumping numbers.
As so often, reality was far more complex, as, indeed, was the assessment of success and failure. In the last, the early months of 2022 saw two failures, first that of deterrence by Western powers. Intelligence material, much of it from satellite photography, had provided plentiful information about Russian preparations, and there had been attempts to deter invasion, but none succeeded and on 24 February, Vladimir Putin, the Russian President announced a ‘special military operation’. The attack focused on a major drive on the capital Kiev, but airborne forces were rapidly defeated while a land-attack was held in early April. The Russians suffered from poor preparations, inadequate logistics, and inadequate tactics and a failure to gain air superiority. At the same time, the Ukrainian resistance was determined and resourceful, and Ukrainian tactics proved superior, not least a mobile defence that inflicted serious damage on less mobile and poorly-deployed Russian formations. These elements were more significant than the weapons employed. There was a parallel with the success by Jordan in repelling Syrian invasion in 1970 and of Chad in defeating Libyan invasion in 1987 in the so-called Toyota War. In each case, the defending force benefited from the assistance of Western air power, but ground-fighting was also significant and notably so at the expense of the rigid Soviet doctrine employed by Syria and Libya, both of whom also used Soviet weaponry, notably tanks. So also with the Egyptian and Syrian failure to prevail over Israel in 1973 and with another surprise attack, Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980. Instead, what was envisaged as a rapidly-successful overthrow of the Iranian regime, became an intractable conflict that lasted until 1988, with early gains the target for Iranian counteroffensives, some of which were successful. There was a parallel with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Indeed, the conflict soon saw many ‘traditional’ elements, notably, particularly in eastern Ukraine, a heavy emphasis on artillery and, linked to that, a reliance on trench cover. The range of artillery greatly increased, but the issues of target-acquisition, accuracy, and, in particular, supplies remained acute. Indeed, the cost of the munitions encouraged cost-benefit analyses by commentators. This cost also underlined the significance both of the substantial pre-war Russian arsenal and of the willingness and ability of Ukraine’s Western allies to provide the munitions. The latter underlined the problem for Ukraine created by its legacy Soviet weaponry for which it lacked the necessary ammunition.
As a further instance of this continuity came the stress in early 2023 on the provision of Western tanks for Ukraine, although this issue was about political commitment as much as military help. This was not the novelty that had been discerned in 2022 during the counter-attack on Russian units advancing on Kiev when the role of drones had led to discussion of the prospects for ‘killer drones.’
So also with the key emphasis on the human dimension. Russia had had far more success when it seized Crimea and consolidated its position in part of the Donbass in 2014, because the bulk of the population in those parts of Ukraine were not actively opposed; but the situation was very different in the areas attacked in 2022, the bulk of Ukraine. This helped resistance, while a lack of consent also became apparent in places that were overrun, such as the city of Kherson, and this eased the process of recapture when it occurred.
As with other conflicts, the international context proved an important element. Putin saw the war both as a way to prevent an independent Ukraine from joining NATO and also as a means to reverse the geopolitical aspects of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He enjoyed a measure of support from foreign powers, notably China and Iran, but could not match the international arms and financial support won by Ukraine, particularly in terms of backing from Eastern European states that identified with its struggle against Russia, as well as from the more general ‘West’ in which the conflict was regarded as a repetition of the Cold War. This international dimension enabled Ukraine to sustain the attritional struggle that developed as a second stage after the more ponderous offensive of the Russians, their pseudo-blitzkrieg, had failed against Kiev.
At the same time, this latter struggle raised the question of strategic capability for both of the combatants, and indeed for their allies. How best to define feasible goals in this second stage, and to envisage and secure a desirable outcome, became more serious due to frequent Russian public threats to go nuclear. The leadership of each combatant had put themselves in a difficult situation by outlining goals that are not plausible unless in terms of a complete victory. Ukraine seeks not just driving Russia from its recent conquests, including the territory to the north of the Sea of Azov that is apparently under clear Russian control, but also that taken by Russia in 2014. Yet, in the latter case, it is difficult to envisage Putin accepting the loss of Crimea and/or the Donbass. To do so would be an admission of a total failure that would lead to the overthrow of his regime, as with the end of the military rule of Greece and Argentina after international defeats in 1973 and 1982 respectively. It is more plausible that Putin would escalate the struggle rather than accepting such losses. Similarly, it is hard to see how his forces can conquer Ukraine or impose a settlement in which it accepts major losses.
These elements help make the conflict appear not new but in many senses a fresh iteration of longstanding features of warfare. To focus on the weaponry risks ignoring such continuities.
The war potentially has lessons for other potential struggles, notably that which might emerge from a Chinese attempt to gain control of Taiwan. How far the Ukraine war offers lessons for such a struggle, however, was a matter of debate, with suggestions that it might offer a viable model for opposition by a weaker force, and a guide to successful asymmetrical warfare.
This may be the case, but it is equally possible that Ukraine represents, as do all wars, factors that are specific to its particular case and of only possible relevance elsewhere. In this case, the extent to which Russia has not been able to gain air superiority and shut Ukraine off from foreign supplies is a key point, one that underlines the significance of the efforts by the very outnumbered Ukrainian air force to continue to challenge Russian air power. So also with missile attacks on Russian air bases. As with the Afghan war in 1979-89, the Russians found it difficult to concentrate and apply their strength. In contrast, in the case of Taiwan, which is an island and therefore a distinctive military environment, China would seek to use air and sea power in order to isolate the battle-space. How then does Ukraine prepare us to consider conflict over Taiwan?
The Ukraine war may be more indicative of the already long-term pattern of conflict on land, one that has been to the fore since World War Two, namely of the difficulty of staging a war of attack and occupation when facing a determined opposition. Unlike in (far more vulnerable) Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, Russia in 2022 did not get to first base in turning invasion into occupation, whereas in 2014, in areas of a different ethnic composition (Crimea and the Donbass), the military and political context and consequence had been far more benign for the Russians. That suggests the problems of ‘learning’ from example, as that can be a matter of confirmation bias rather than anything else. However, even if there had been a Russian conquest in 2022, the occupation would have still been a very difficult military task because of the size of the area involved, and of its population, and of the attitudes of the latter. A rapid overrunning of Ukraine comparable to that in Iraq in 2003 would have been implausible, not least given the absence of domestic support comparable to the Kurds. However, even had there been such an overrunning, it is difficult to see how a rising similar to that in Iraq after its conquest could have been avoided. Moreover, much of the terrain is well-suited to resistance activities.
There is also the question of how far the Ukraine war can or could have been contained. The possibility that it might lead to hostilities involving Belarus and Poland is more apparent than that of nuclear warfare, but ‘only’ in this context is a difficult concept. Poland is a NATO member and the possibility that NATO will or would have responded in such a way that large-scale conflict arises is high.
This then entails questions of prioritisation which are always issues as far as strategy is concerned. In particular, America has to assess how far a commitment to Ukraine is compatible with one to Taiwan, and whether the former will help deter China from pressurising Taiwan or, conversely, will encourage it to do so.
There is also the domestic political dimension. Given Donald Trump’s past attitudes to American allies, especially NATO, a victory for his allies in the 2022 American midterms might have been seen as a triumph for Putin, and the same point can be made about the 2024 presidential elections. As always, war is about politics as well as fighting. Issues such as military morale, popular resolve, and strategic prioritisation all have a political dimension and cannot be seen as separate to the course of conflict or indeed the measure of capability. It is easier to define, discuss and illustrate the latter in terms of the capabilities of weapons, whether drones, guns or tanks, but these take on meaning in terms of these other factors.
In Memoriam: Bruce Vandervort
The death of a good friend is always a shock. One’s thoughts focus on his family. I would also like to add a few words of personal recollection, and an evaluation of Bruce’s importance in the field. This is not an obituary, but an evaluation.
The life of scholarship depends heavily on the work of others, the enablers, the publishers, editors and reviewers, most of whom (undeservedly) remain somewhat obscure, while the focus of attention, instead, is on the author. Bruce Vandervort, who died on 5 March, aged 78, was both, a distinguished author and a key enabler.
Appointed a member of the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute in 1999, Bruce was a popular teacher, an author of several books, and, from 1999, until his death the editor of the Journal of Military History, the journal, established in 1937, of the Society for Military History which, earlier this year, renamed its annual award for best-published articles the Vandervort Prize.
The JMH was transformed by Bruce into the leading journal in the field. Prior to his editorship, it had been a very hit-and-miss affair, but Bruce greatly raised its standards, made it more global in its coverage, and increased the size and frequency of the issues. He was intellectually ambitious for the JMH and proud that publication in the journal became more competitive as the number of submissions rose greatly. Bruce took a very close interest in submissions, oversaw the evaluation process scrupulously, and did his utmost to have all relevant books reviewed, and appropriately so. He made the journal crucial in the field and it was associated with him to a degree that is highly unusual for journals. I can only think of Roger Kimball and the New Criterion as a parallel in a very different field and manner. For years, the degree to which Bruce would be a very hard act to follow had been a habitual topic among scholars, and the fear that the journal might revert to being insular was often mentioned. His death following soon after that of Dennis Showalter, reminds us how lucky the SMH has been in its leadership, but also how important it is to sustain this high quality. That both men were major scholars unaffected by the whims and fantasies of political correctness was important to the direction and calibre of their leadership. Americans will note that neither were at major schools, let alone the Ivys. Dennis was at Colorado College.
I met Bruce in the early 90s and we got on at once. He was of course an anglophile; indeed both Jane and Wendy, his successive wives, were English. Bruce had a wonderful timbre to his voice and a face of quiet expressiveness: the raised eyebrow was used repeatedly. Quiet, I was about to say for an American, which is a ridiculous way to characterise so many people, but non-Americans will know what I mean, Bruce was witty and sardonic, brilliant on the foibles of the self-styled great of the profession and the dangers of political correctness, and a very firm defender of standards. Having myself edited (a much less important) journal, Archives, the journal of the British Records Association, from 1990 to 2005, I know how editors are pressurised strongly over articles and reviews, and I understood Bruce’s well-purposed resilience.
We all stayed with Bruce and Wendy in Lexington in 1997 and, to use a very apt American term, they were very gracious hosts (I also like situate, though restroom I continue to find ridiculous). He also ‘visited with me’ and was a great guest. We worked together a lot. Bruce did two excellent books for the military history series I edited for Routledge, showing his commendable range, and he called forth from me some very good articles for JMH: for the author it is vitally important, if writing intellectually ambitious pieces, to work for a good editor, and I like to write what I call ‘thought pieces’. Bruce came over to London when I organised a military history paper at the Anglo-American conference, I saw a lot of Bruce when I gave opening or closing plenaries at two SMH conferences, and, like Dennis, he was a regular at Rick Schneid’s High Point conferences. To me, it was the ‘dream team’ as far as military history was concerned. Gone now, and two good friends and true fellows, and so quickly.
Having written this, I now hear that Colin Gray, another major scholar who, like Bruce, was a dedicatee of one of my books has died.
Free Speech in Universities, again
5 March brought two items into my gaze, one possibly an instructive comment on the other, however totally different they might appear. The former Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, a former Minister for Women and Equalities, due to speak on encouraging young women into politics to the UN Women Oxford UK Society, had her invitation withdrawn half an hour before she was due to appear due to her role in the Windrush controversy.
Separately, a student of the University of Exeter has received disgusting, anonymous emails from a racist idiot somewhere in the world. This has led to a ‘statement in response’ drafted by the English department and signed by many academics. It uses the incident to substantiate what it claims, based on no evidence, are ‘wider structural issues’ and “how appeals to freedom of speech” are abused in order to justify racist and misogynistic violence’, and calls accordingly for ‘taking a stand’ against what is presented as a community with ‘a deeply ingrained problem with racism’, a culture of racism’, and a ‘culture of permission, without fear of recrimination’. Apparently, the university is guilty of appeasement because it pursues matters ‘on legal grounds.’
The analysis and prospectus are clear:
‘Our community needs to get better at understanding whiteness as a position of structural advantage, liable to reinforce all sorts of unconscious and damaging assumptions when it comes to the most basic social and pedagogical interactions … all of us need to take a public, systematically reformist, and unambiguous stand against gathering forces of reaction, hatred, racism, and fascism.’
This analysis represents a serious misrepresentation of university life, but captures very well the transference of paranoia into an hysterical call for action. Thus, the racist and disgusting anonymous emails become ammunition for an established platform of bashing ‘whiteness,’ the university, and Western culture as a whole. Moreover, there are supporting emails that make it apparent that a witch-hunt is in prospect. One lecturer felt able to opine on 6 March: ‘there are individuals among us (by us I mean lecturers/staff at Exeter) whose written opinions enable such occurrences. Racism and sexism very much exist in UK HE and they inherently shape each other.’
This is all also part of the call for decolonising the curriculum which means, in practice, the imposition of a crude, unscholarly, but career and ego-enhancing version, of grievance studies with reputational blackmail used to weaponise the campaign. This is not laughable, but rather dangerous and contemptible: dangerous in that it is inherently totalitarian in intention and vicious in its arguments; and contemptible in that it is scholars, or at least academics, who are involved. While self-serving, the scholarship in the matter is poor, and, ironically, matches in its shallowness some of what rightly calls up criticism. The criticism of ‘whiteness’ is inherently racist, and can moreover be readily considered so if we substitute other terms or groups such as ‘Jewishness’ for ‘whiteness’. Crude generalisations, the argument of collective guilt, and ethic disparagement have been used about Jews, Blacks, Roma, and other groups, and it is ironic to find such tripe coming now from academics; but then the intellectual standard of the work of some of the latter can be readily questioned.
To add to the mélange, on the 6th, Eva Poen, an Exeter economics lecturer, was accused of transphobia by feminist and LGBT students over a tweet in which she observed ‘Only female people menstruate. Only female people go through menopause.’ This led to Dr Poen being accused of ‘openly singling out trans people.’ Adam Deloit, the university’s LGBTQ+ society’s transgender representative, added: ‘The fact the university tolerates her is really frustrating.’
So there we are. Another day in Hollywood, or at least universities, where the zeal to suppress opinion, freedom of expression, academic debate, democratic rights, and the rule of law, gathers more energy and makes steadily more demands. The irrelevance of these people in the face of a range of pressing immediate issues, whether Coronavirus, environmental change, the need to create jobs in a transforming economy, and the problems of advancing the national interest, or many others, may well be apparent; but they are all too potent in destroying the basis for a free and liberal society. Ironically, the disgusting emails of the bigot that has spurred the immediate issue in Exeter are matched, albeit thankfully in a very different language, by the attitudes of the would-be thought police. It will be instructive to find if the treatment of ‘whiteness’ as toxic makes the university attractive to students; students of all backgrounds, many be unimpressed by such flawed and racist arguments. As an instructive guide to the parody morality of the signatories of the merry-go-round of mindless petitions, it is worth asking how they square their views on the supposed structural privilege of ‘whiteness’ with that of widening participation to poor and underprivileged white boys/young men; the lowest demographic of British campuses. These students presumably are their targets for indoctrination as well as trashing. That Exeter has an ethos of inclusivity and a commitment to anti-racism makes one wonder why these staff members are not sacked. Given that many signatories to the attack on ‘whiteness’ were also on strike, one wonders the point of being taught in such a context. The English department at Exeter appears particularly unbalanced in its views, but History is not too far behind.
The facts spell out a different story to the arguments of the activists, in some lights a pampered mob clamouring to police every aspect of life. The saga of course is endless. Thus, the draft email to University management circulated by the BME network both admits that the police have ‘declared the case closed for difficulty in procuring evidence’ and that there is only a ‘possibility that the writers of these emails are our own students,’ but feels able to refer to ‘racist and misogynist crimes on campus’ and proposes to make institutional changes that would prevent the occurrence of such crimes … decolonise the curriculum … resource allocation.’
The paucity of evidence, poverty of thought, and self-serving character of the prospectus, are all too wearyingly predictable.
The ‘Head of the Family’
Most people growing up think their family normal and everyone else’s a bit of a mystery, and I was no different. Being asked by Pippa to reflect on family history has made me think a bit about it, and the past concept of the head of the family is my topic today. It was not to the fore with my father’s line which was not at all clannish. His mother had died at 46, his father had remarried, and I sense that there were stepmother issues. I remember the old man, a WWI veteran who did not talk about the war (the family story – I have no idea if true – was that he had lied about his age to sign up young). He was the old fashioned Labour patriot now almost totally gone (my father was lumbered with the middle name Alfred as a result), and, besides his job and having eight children, was a small-time Labour politician. He died when I was young, but I remember him being nice to me and taking me to see Arsenal, of which he was a great fan, play Nottingham Forest. I was instructed to cheer when an Arsenal player fouled a Nott Forest one, and boo when vice versa.
My father had three sisters all of whom married Americans and went to the USA and I did not see them until my first visit there. Of the five boys, the eldest was killed in WWII, another died youngish, Frank went to Australia and I only met him once, and Len went to Southend, a more crowded and cooler version of Australia. I remember going to Southend quite a lot – aside from Len’s family, there were two maiden aunts who treated me, Vivienne, and Stephen, very fondly. Len and Cyril had mixed relations, which got better as they got older. Len was much more exuberant and lively than Cyril, and better with people (a bit like Stephen and me); and I think Cyril at times found that disconcerting, but they saw more of each other with age. The Blacks I now realise just took it as an absolute given that they had talents. In Len’s case, aside from his work, he was a painter producing popular work which he used to sell to finance school fees, as well as smaller paintings that were more individual and searching: three of the latter he gave me hang in the hall at home. I liked him, his wife and his daughters, and enjoyed going to Southend, although not Southend itself.
On my maternal grandfather’s side, there was a ‘Head,’ my ‘Uncle Jayo.’ Like Indians, we, as children, were presented with all adults, relatives or otherwise, as uncle or auntie. In fact ‘Jayo’ was uncle to my grandfather who was in awe of him. I remember a man of 94 who was small, wizened, but able to walk quite a lot. When we spoke, he was not harsh, and indeed soft of voice, but I cannot remember any particular twinkle. He said little, but his remarks were regarded as of note as when he chided my father for giving Stephen a Havana at a family occasion on the grounds that if you started on a Havana you would have nothing subsequently to which to look forward.
On my maternal grandmother’s side, the pity was that she received love and affection rather than power. Rose was a lovely woman, as I mentioned in the preface to one of my books. As a child, I would look forward to the holiday fortnight I would stay with her and her husband, Phil, in their flat next to the park in Hendon. Rufus went with me – he was fine on the bus: we sat on the top at the front and looked at the view, though getting up and down the stairs was an issue. In contrast, Rufus hated going anywhere by tube and would stand with his legs locked to give him stability from the vibrations. Rose, who had grown up without any dog, was particularly kind to Rufus, and they got on well. Going meant taking him for long walks in the park, lots of time to read, and play my Avalon Hill game 1914, and lots and lots of well-cooked food: unlike 38 Parkside Drive, my parents’ home, where cooking was not really much on the menu. It was indeed typical there that, when my mother decided to give up sugar that meant we all had to, including Stephen who had a fine collection of sugar wrappers in large part assembled by writing to refineries around the world. What to do with the sugar that continued to arrive inside the wrappers became an issue. It would be poured into Nescafe jars, which were presented to friends. I took several jars with multi-coloured sugar when I went to Cambridge. Rose, who was to be lovely to Sarah, Tim and Pippa, was a thoroughly nice woman who had had a pretty tough life.
Two brothers lived nearby: ‘The Wing Commander’ and ‘The Head.’ ‘The Wing Commander’ was a name used by Rose with some humour because, like the late general in The Importance of Being…, he was not martial; although, unlike the general, that extended to his marital life which was harmonious. A very mild man indeed, he was a dentist, his military ranking arising from war service as a RAF dentist. Quiet man, mild, very nice family, a pleasure to visit.
Alas, that left his ghastly brother, Uncle B, to claim headship. A bright man, he had trained as a doctor and a dentist, then gone into business and made money, deliberately (in the view of relatives around at the time) married money (auntie Mary who I liked but scarcely knew), made more money himself, and, on that basis, thought he had the right to tell others what to do. He was vain, and, when his daughter encountered marital problems, seemed mostly worried that this might endanger his relations with his son-in-law, a well-connected peer. Both of his children were in his shadow.
Cyril disliked him, but the real opposition was Uncle Bernard who despised his unctuous self-righteousness. Highly successful himself as a dealer in scrap-metal (all human life is here; well not all, but certainly a range), Bernard would not defer. Come a (rare) family gathering soonish after my father had died. Now here I should offer a trigger warning, but you know me well enough… I am sitting chatting quietly to my mother (Doreen: I have never called her that, but that is her name). Uncle B’s son Alan sits down next to me and says to my left ear, presumably he thinks as I am now some sort of head of line which a) is not my view or wish and b) is an insult to my mother, ‘My Father wants you to know that he will never forgive Bernard.’ I turn my head, say quietly ‘You can tell your father from me to fuck off,’ and turn back to my mother. That was the last I ever heard from either of them, and, as far as I was concerned and aware, the end of the concept of the head. Good riddance.
My grandparents;’ generation is now all dead, so the following should not cause offence. I stayed some years ago with Charles Doran and his wife Elaine in Greenwich, Connecticut. Charles, the ‘Wing Commander’s’ son, moved to America soon after marrying Elaine, also English, and they have lived there ever since. We had met before in New York, and got on well together. Throwing light on the ‘Head of the Family’ and his Victorian-style hypocrisy, Charles told me that, on the day of his wedding, his father, the ‘Wing Commander,’ had had to make sure that the ‘Head’ left his lover in time to go to his wedding.
My Sister and Tony Blair: The Hidden History
[I asked Vivienne if she would mind this piece, her reply, having read it, ‘Brilliant. Publish,’ and the usual sign-off ‘Fat-fingerly and in haste.’]
It never struck me until recently but I have lived my life with strong women: Doreen (mother), Vivienne (sister), Sarah (wife), Pippa (daughter). Thinking as I take up my biro at an outdoor table in a New Orleans café away from the tourist area (humidity eased by light breeze, high 60s on way to low 80s), the thought lights through my mind as to how far this affected my attitude to women: maybe always expecting to find them articulate, bright and combative, and me responding accordingly.
Anyway, although I used to describe the somewhat reclusive and reserved Vivienne, who does not suffer fools, let alone gladly, as making Greta Garbo look like a positive socialite, some of you will have met her at parties or meals at Baring Crescent (she and her husband Kim have a house at Babbacombe/St Mary Church about 20 miles away), or at parties or dinners after my lectures at the Guildhall.
I am very fond of Vivienne and admire her drive, intelligence and personality. She tells me that as children I splashed her when we were in a paddling pool in the garden, but I cannot recall ever rowing, but then I do not recall rowing with Stephen (our brother) either: birth years are, me 55, Vivienne 57, Stephen 59.
Vivienne is extremely bright. She got five very good A-levels and then took three of the foreign languages and did a trilingual typing and shorthand course, and (typically English) got a job with Penguin in which she needed none of those skills. Like Stephen and our parents, she did not go to university, and indeed is disinclined to hire graduates as employees in her company as she thinks they lack the work-ethic. Married young, she divorced early, and moved into the company, to the top of which she was to rise, an agency handling actors. I am told by actors I have met (it amuses me that they only become interested in the conversation when they discover who my sister is) that she is famous in the field, and with a reputation for fiercely defending the interests of her clients: she has only 100 and apparently many ask her to act for them, only to be turned down. I find it interesting to read or note independent evaluations of people I know (Steve Smith’s ‘triangulation’) and once read a profile of her in a Sunday colour supplement.
We saw relatively little of each other when I lived in the North-East and Tim and Pippa were young, but I used to stay sometimes with her in London and was the sole family member invited to her wedding with Kim: the post-wedding reception was characteristically distinctive. There were eleven of us. We went to a delicatessen on Chiswick High Street, sat at tables outside on the pavement/sidewalk, had an open tab, and sat and all chatted in a very relaxed fashion. A lovely afternoon recalled with the photo of Vivienne and Kim on the drawing-room mantelpiece. I did as instructed and said nothing about the wedding to Doreen: she and Vivienne have poisonous relations, largely because Doreen is would-be very controlling unless kept within limits; indeed they have not spoken I think for nearly a quarter-century.
Moving to Devon in 1996, I came to see much more of Vivienne. By happenstance (to be next to the sea), Vivienne and Kim moved to Torbay, bought a ‘butterfly house’ (an architect of the mid-1960s built several in this style), and Kim, who sold up his graphic design business, lives there all the time, pursuing his hobbies, notably gardening and photography, and looking after the dogs (their ‘children’), while Vivienne spends several days in London working, and comes back for a long weekend. It has been great to have her nearby, I enjoy her astringent, but kind, company: if you are in Vivienne’s circle she is caring without cant; if not, she does not devote over-much time to you, although I notice she has become very popular with those who share the train she regularly takes from Newton Abbot and seems known, with affection, by all the ticket-collectors.
I also take criticism from Vivienne because I know it is based on an understanding of my personality, and on intelligence; characteristics the less blunt Sarah, from a different background, shares in full. Indeed, after a very pleasant lunch with me and Vivienne at the University in 1977 in which she had traced my personality to factors in infancy and childhood, Todd Gray told me that he understood why I am as I am. At the stage when Sarah and I moved to Baring Crescent in 1996 and had a lot of unexpected trouble with the house, I was on the phone with Vivienne and moaned a bit. She crisply asked: ‘What do you want, some money?’ Shocked, I said ‘No, some sympathy.’ Knowing that I have a tendency occasionally to self-pity, she treated this with the contempt I deserved, and indeed I bit on the bullet and got on with life.
So, we are close, and I can be readily assumed to do whatever asked. Very few others would get away with her answer to my request for a lift from Reading to London: context, her production company was shooting a pilot there with Alexi Sayle (it does not translate well), she had got me to take part, and at the end, I ascertained she had a car to take her back to London (like me, Vivienne does not drive, although I did for several years). I had a train ticket, but thought it would be nice to have a chat. A tired Vivienne quite late in the evening said I could have a lift as long as I promised to say absolutely nothing: we had a companionable silence back to London.
Occasion: my office in the Department. Phone: Vivienne who always rightly assumes you know who it is, and who does not go in for small talk, introductions or sign-offs to conversations. Like Cyril, who was very fond of her, and had many similarities, not least a quiet purpose, she is precise, concise and to-the-point, characteristics I greatly admire.
V: ‘I need you to do something for me.’
J: ‘Of course.’
V: ‘Tony Blair [then Prime Minister] has bought a house in Connaught Square. It is out to rent. I need you to rent it for me.’
J: ‘Where would I find the money for that?’
V: ‘[impatience] I would provide it.’
J: ‘Can I ask why?’
V: ‘I intend to film two episodes there’ [my sister owned half the production company that made ‘Bremner, Bird and Fortune’ and Rory Bremner (for Americans: a brilliant comic who did a superb impersonation of Blair) – was one of ‘her’s’ as she refers to those she represents.
J; [For I think the only time in my life] ‘Have you any idea of how much trouble I could get into?’
V: [Realising this means no] Hangs up.
Wonderfully Vivienne: brilliant imagination, enormous fun, and to the point.
Issue 20 of Science, Mathematics and Philosophy
Politics of the Modern World (forthcoming in The Critic online.
Knowledge has now become a fashionable thing
History, Geography, Literature Quizzes
Learning from Military History
History, Geography, Literature ANSWERS
Historiography, some personal reflections v2
Military History. A View from 2020
MilitaryHistoryandtheWhigInterpretation
2020JeremyBlack-Bibliography1985-2021
Idea-of-a-university-for-the21century
Military History of Italy, for Nuova Antologia Militare
Jeremy Black 