Wednesday 25th June 2025
Blog Page 484

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’: Big Read

Cyrus Larcombe-Moore
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‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’: Big Read

‘The guests are met, the feast is set’ and the Ancient Mariner Big Read has begun. On 18th April, the project released its first instalment: the opening moments of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” read by actor and activist Jeremy Irons.  Over the next forty days, forty writers, actors, performers and artists will continue Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem — and their performances can be found free for all online.  

Coming up will be readings by the likes of Iggy Pop, Tilda Swinton, and the acclaimed author and Devon resident, Hilary Mantel.  Amazingly, I have also been afforded the opportunity to read alongside these monoliths of film, music, art and literature as well as contributing my own fiction to the project.  

It’s an honour.  As a winner of The Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2016, I’ve found myself in unbelievable company with poets Kathleen Jamie, Lemn Sissay, Max Porter, and even the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, who is also a contributor.  Also featured in the project are unique works created by a plethora of international artists in response to the poem and indeed, a reaction to our strange times, even though the project has been in development for three years, hosted by The Arts Institute at University of Plymouth.

The poet himself is one of the greatest Romantic artists  — and a personal hero of mine.  “The Rime” features some of the most famous lines in poetry – so famous that many people quote them, having no idea who wrote them.  ‘Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink’;  ‘He prayeth best who loveth best / All creatures great and small’.

And “The Rime”, a fable centred around the striking image of a shot albatross, long seen as an emblem of our disconnection from nature, has much to tell us about loneliness.  Writer and fellow opium-addict, Thomas de Quincey said of Coleridge’s drug-induced isolation:  ‘Where is the man who shall be equal to these things? Is, indeed, Leviathan so tamed?  In that case, the quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished’.  He went on to add admiringly ‘Whenever he spoke it was as if he were tracing a circle in the air’. But Coleridge’s meditiations now have a new relevance.  He could not have precisely foreseen our current situation but his words on loneliness can never have seemed more applicable.

As we lie in our beds listening to the celebrated artists that have entertained and reassured us so often, we hear a voice that has never be forgotten, a man whose poetry speaks through us and shows the way.  In these days of isolation, the transportive force of Coleridge is a welcome escape. His mariners find themselves stranded in open water; so do we, caught in our very own doldrums.  I have spent the last month secluded in my bedroom, my garden and on my sofa trying to convince myself that we will return to the equilibrium we knew.  As the world changes unimaginably, Coleridge stands as our guide past this anti-social virus.  The stranded Mariner experienced enforced self-isolation.  Art can allow us to deal with ours.

Author Philip Hoare is curating the project, alongside Cornish-based artist Angela Cockayne and Sarah Chapman of the Art Institute at University of Plymouth.  The South West is intrinsically bound to this project and to the poem itself.  Coleridge was born in Ottery St Mary – my reading was recorded, along with Dame Hilary’s, in the same parish church where Coleridge himself was baptised by his father, who was minister at the church.  It was strange to think we read in a space in which the infant poet may have cried over the baptismal font.  As a boy, Samuel floated his paper boats down the Otter past the jigsaw church that overlooks East Devon. The harbour at Watchet in Somerset is supposed to be a key inspiration for the poem, itself written in Somerset.  As a resident of Tavistock, where I spent my own childhood, I feel proud that my region has not only inspired this project, but supplied the modern voices to create it. 

The forty days of the Big Read will not be a desert wilderness, but be filled with the many voices of Coleridge himself.  The Ancient Mariner Big Read has been inspired by the same team’s previous project, the Moby-Dick Big Read of 2012, in which I was also lucky enough to take part, reading a chapter with a former teacher at Tavistock College and providing my photography to the project. The Moby Dick Big Read has gone to have international coverage and over 10 million hits on its website.   

Listeners to the new recordings can collect them, daily, building up a sound mosaic of the poem which will then be released as the complete work. At the end of those forty days, “The Rime” and its ancient mariner will emerge, like a ghost ship out of the internet mist – a digital tribute to Coleridge’s 200-year-old art.  As the water and wind of the high-seas stretch our sails, I hope these readings will give us all a sense of the wide-open and free ocean that, I hope, lies ahead. 

Cyrus Larcombe-Moore, who lives in Tavistock, is Foyle’s young Poet of the Year Winner and has been longlisted for the National Poetry Award. Go to www.ancientmarinerbigread.com this Friday to hear his extract of ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ .

Study music: ambience over annoyance

Emmaleigh Eaves
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Study music: ambience over annoyance

In the library, there sits two camps: those who listen to music, and those who don’t. As you tour around the tables, you might catch an ear of each person’s music, overhearing the stray thud or an odd vocal. The people who prefer silence always remind those in the other camp of this, proclaiming that they ‘just can’t focus unless in total silence’. That said, the chair scrapes, the hushed library gossip, and that coughing person still plagued with Freshers’ Flu do not exactly constitute silence. Admittedly, scientific research does suggest that music is not as conducive to productive study as silence—but neither is hearing about a drunken one-night stand from the other side of the room. And so I turn to music.

That specific anime girl, sitting at her desk against a Japanese bedroom scene, has accompanied me through my studies to the extent that I feel like we’ve grown up together. For those who don’t instantly recognise this description, she is the cover of many YouTube videos of lo-fi hip hop beats, one of which has been live-streaming non-stop since I discovered it years ago. Chilled jazz, soft melodies and the occasional looped vocal, punctuated by the ever-repeating hip hop beat, defines the genre, its mild monotony allowing the music to be conducive to study, minimising distractions. Once I had found myself immersed in the genre, I soon discovered Shiloh Dynasty, a singer who posted several voice clips on Instagram in 2016 but obscured every identifiable detail about themselves to the extent that their gender is uncertain and some speculate about whether they are still alive. Despite the mystery surrounding Shiloh Dynasty, their melancholic vocals have been sampled by countless lo-fi artists, as well as the ever-controversial XXXTENTACION. The sombre notes of their voice and the rawness of the emotion within it transports me into a calmer headspace. Studying then feels calm.

But lo-fi hip hop is not where study music ends for me. Since coming to Oxford, I have inevitably encountered Techno music through events at The Bullingdon, nights at Plush, and, of course, conversations with Londoners. I realise now there is a surprising crossover between what I’m able to listen to when I study and when I go out. The intensity of the techno that I listen to when I study depends on many factors: the time of the day, the urgency of the deadline, and just how close I am to throwing my laptop across the room out of boredom and confusion. For a casual morning library session, I find in Four Tet’s music a luscious brightness which makes something like learning German grammar a more enjoyable experience. If I have a deadline in the next 30 minutes, I find that a strong coffee and Mall Grab make a perfect motivational pairing with the heavy consistent beat, mirroring rushed typing and my own caffeinated heartbeat. And then sometimes it’ll be 9 o’clock, pres are about to start and I’m trying to finish off my last bit of work. I feel the coming night looming, tantalisingly dangling just beyond my desk. In these moments I know that whatever I choose to listen to will probably lessen my productivity, but I still click play and surrender to the inescapable thuds in order to smash out some more French vocab on Quizlet, tapping the keyboard and bopping my head to the beat—before alerting everyone around me that I’m done for the day.

These two genres are my personal favourites when it comes to studying. Some may prefer to go down the classical route (although the study that asserts the benefits of listening to Mozart is questionable). Others may enjoy a simple instrumental playlist to focus them. I listen to music when I study simply because I love listening to music. Granted, it may reduce the effectivity of my study in some way, but it also motivates me to keep going, prevents me from getting bored so easily and makes studying an overall more pleasurable experience. The pressure to optimize productivity in everything we do constantly invades students’ lives to the point of toxicity; listening to my favourite music while I study is, in turn, a sort of resistance to this.

And for those aforementioned people who don’t listen to music as they study and have been torn away from the imperfect silence of the library because of COVID-19, Oxford’s ‘Sounds of the Bodleian’ may help fill that library-shaped hole.

The 2020 NFL Draft: analysis following the success of online format

Gabriel Whitwam
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The 2020 NFL Draft: analysis following the success of online format

The spectacle that is the NFL Draft, due to be hosted in Las Vegas, successfully happened entirely virtually this week. A rare sporting distraction from the quarantine most of the world is enduring, the draft went off without a hitch while maintaining its high level of excitement.

Many felt the draft should not have gone ahead given the circumstances, both out of fear of diverting resources away from the front-lines, and because the lack of personal contact would undermine its appeal. However, they were proven wrong by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the event. The balance of attention between the pandemic and the draft itself was well struck, and Microsoft Teams stood in for Las Vegas’ strip amazingly well.

While the location may well have changed, the hype was by no means diminished. With the help of fan involvement, cameras in players’ living rooms, and a view of Commissioner Roger Goodell’s home life, the excitement of the occasion remained. As pundit David Samson put it, “the NFL successfully made lemonade out of lemons”.

In terms of headline selections, the draft very much went as predicted (See the predictions Tristan Varakuta made for Cherwell here: https://cherwell.org/2020/04/04/the-2020-nfl-draft-who-should-we-be-looking-out-for/). Joe Burrow is set to become the Tiger King in the Queen City, going first overall to the Cincinnati Bengals. Burrow grew up in Ohio, the same state as Cincinnati, and was last year’s Heisman trophy winner, given to the best player in college football. His unbelievable season at LSU, culminating in a victory in the National Championship game, made him too impressive a prospect for the Bengals to pass up on.

Chase Young’s selection second overall was also unsurprising, with many seeing him as the best prospect in the draft, only being passed at Number 1 because of the relative positional value of a quarterback such as Burrow, compared to Young’s role on the edge. Jeff Okudah rounded off a top three of ex-Ohio State players, going to the Detroit Lions as a replacement for cornerback Darius Slay, who was traded to the Eagles last month.

The Dolphins’  Tua Tagovailoa fifth, and the Los Angles Chargers’ subsequent selection of Justin Herbert, also followed the path many had predicted. Both teams lack the much coveted ‘franchise quarterback’ and these two were widely ranked as the second and third best options at the position. Andrew Thomas’ selection at 4th by the New York Football Giants was less anticipated, but his pedigree and the Giants’ need to strengthen their offensive line are widely accepted.

The draft was not without surprises, however. CeeDee Lamb falling to 17 was not expected for a player rated by many as the best wide receiver in this packed draft. The Dallas Cowboys did very well to snag someone of his calibre without trading up. The biggest shock of the draft was Jordan Love going to the Green Bay Packers. The Packers have one of the best quarterbacks in the game in Aaron Rodgers, and so selecting a quarterback in the first round was a bold move, one designed to secure the team’s long-term future. However, it is a move that has worked for Green Bay before, with Rodgers himself being taken while Brett Favre was still at his peak, and the handover between the two of them allowing the team to remain a contender for an extended period.

Over recent years, the NFL draft has become a key moment in the sporting calendar, with the spectacular nature of the ceremony, the emotional displays of the draftees, and the gambles of the selections making it unmissable reality television. Recent highlights include Aaron Rodgers’ painful wait in the green room and Eli Manning’s beautifully uncomfortable posing with a Chargers jersey.

In keeping with the theatrics of the draft’s history, this year’s ceremony was due to be hosted on a floating platform in the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas. Players were to be ferried to the red carpet-clad stage by boat when drafted, living up to the increasing extravagance of the event.

The success of this videoconferencing extravaganza suggests there’s hope for the future of such spectacles in this pandemic-centred reality. Microsoft Teams’ stock as the basis of our future interactions was also boosted, with the platform hosting each team’s virtual ‘war room’. The NFL also made great use of the platform to host a ‘Draft-A-Thon’, raising money to help the response to the global pandemic.

Few knew whether such an ambitious event could be held entirely virtually, and this draft was not what it would have been without COVID-19. However, it is fair to say that the NFL pulled off its 2020 Player Selection Meeting amazingly well given the circumstances.

Image credit: Maize & Blue Nation under Creative Commons Attributions 2.0 License

Coronaland: Where commercialism does public service

Ben Gray
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Coronaland: Where commercialism does public service

Earlier this month, the Holiday Inn Express in Stevenage had five homeless people removed as a result of abuse of staff and damage to the hotel’s property. Along with 18 other single homeless people and one family, these five were placed in the hotel in March by East Herts District Council as part of the government’s attempt to solve the spread of the virus among the homeless by moving them into private accommodation. As yet, the hotel has not commented on what happened, but what is obvious from the very inception of the idea is that its staff were in no way equipped to deal with the situation placed upon them. They have no training in social care, they are hospitality industry workers.

Likewise, the homeless community was not prepared either. Living rough takes a brutal psychological and physical toll, it requires adaptation to a completely different, alien way of life. This adaptation must in many cases take a huge amount of rehabilitation to overcome and without it, faced with the hotel environment and interaction with the staff, it is unsurprising that what must have been an uneasy accord eventually broke down. The bitter irony is that the homeless are the people that a market economy has left behind, and yet it is commercialism – private enterprise – which is being asked in this time of pandemic to take on the responsibility of their care.

The case of the Stevenage homeless community is an extreme example of a phenomenon which we are now witnessing as the UK wrestles with the virus. That is, that a number of private companies are being asked to perform tasks for the public good and have essentially formed a kind of pseudo-state, a back-up in a time of overcapacity. Imagine BUPA but the doctors are not qualified. 

This is perhaps most visible in the case of the supermarkets, which are, of course, continuing to provide the quintessential essential service of keeping the population fed. While ultimately carrying on with their commercial reason for being, they have had to implement similar kinds of policies on a micro level to those the government is applying to the nation at large. They are regulating the numbers of people going into their stores, directing their staff to make sure rules of social distancing are enforced and altering their product range to the effect that need trumps choice.

Listening to the Heart radio advert breaks, you will notice that the government’s coronavirus broadcast and Aldi’s own announcement are so similar in tone, content and even the voice of the speaker that, if you had not listened till the very end of each, you could be forgiven for not knowing which was from the state and which was the supermarket. In their role as mini-states, the supermarkets are actually doing very well. For example, they have freed up their home delivery slots in order to ensure that the elderly and the vulnerable get the essentials they need, thereby becoming an unwitting arm of the UK’s welfare system.

But what has gone unacknowledged is that providing a service to the public is not the ultimate goal of these firms, and therefore the current tendency to view them within a framework of heroism and sacrifice is something we should be wary of. In a consumer economy, the demand of the population for goods and services results in the formation of firms to satisfy that demand, but they do so to generate profit. The fact that a service is being provided is, to the cynical eye, incidental. In times of stability when the market is functioning as normal this, despite a number of faults, is not a bad way to do things. Company and consumer rub along alright, happy with what each takes away. But what happens when the government expects, and the people need the firms to prioritise their service?

The UK has already had one nasty shock, as everyone realised that when Virgin stepped up to act as intermediary between the NHS and donations from individuals it was allegedly taking a cut. As far as Virgin was concerned it simply saw a market in the social media challenge nomination and donation craze which has been saturating our Instagram feeds in lockdown and responding to fill a void. Virgin has always done this for everything under the sun including trains, planes and even space travel. But in this case, there was no void to be filled, you could always donate directly, and then the public began to see that commercialism and crisis response are not necessarily compatible.

Right now, companies providing essential services are working in overdrive. They form a crucial part of the system which is keeping the UK economy and the consumer society it underpins on life support during the lockdown. We should be proud of the way our firms are responding – because maintaining confidence in the economy is going be crucial – and be particularly thankful to their employees for the jobs they are doing. But we must ask, when commercialism fails in the public service duties now being expected of it, will the state step in? So far, in the case of the homeless people told to leave the Holiday Inn in Stevenage, it has not. They are back on the street.

STOP USING MAX RICHTER’S “ON THE NATURE OF DAYLIGHT” IN EVERYTHING

Danielle Rae Childs
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STOP USING MAX RICHTER’S “ON THE NATURE OF DAYLIGHT” IN EVERYTHING

Our favorite songs are fecund pleasures, increasing in affectivity and growing with us over time, like a reliable friendship. But, if you dilute the potency of a precious song through overuse, that is overuse without innovation, good songs get worn out. One of my fecund favorites, Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight”, is dangerously close to becoming trite in this way, and it is lazy filmmaking that’s to blame. 

(I’m betting that you’ll recognize it, but in case the name of the piece hasn’t rang any bells, go ahead and give it a listen here while you read on.

Now, it’s not unusual for certain inspired songs to earn places on a variety of movie soundtracks. In fact, songs like Lynard Skynard’s “Sweet Home Alabama”, Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking on Sunshine”, and James Brown’s “I Feel Good” frequently find themselves on lists of the most overused songs in film. As far as classical pieces go, loads of films capitalize off of audiences’ familiarity with Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (most famously in Apocalypse Now) or Luigi Boccherini’s “Minuet” (usually used to make fun of classical music) But, these pieces are decades if not hundreds of years older than the cinematic medium itself and, like the pop songs, they already have distinct reputations.

Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” originally written for an opera about epic norse mythology, is repurposed in Apocalypse Now to score a helicopter attack on a north Vietnamese village. The callous bombast of the music juxtaposed with the mundane silence of the unsuspecting village creates a sickening dissonance that exemplifies the power of music to work with (and against) visuals to communicate theme.

What does constitute a unique phenomenon in film music history is the existence of a contemporary piece of classical music exerting such ubiquitous influence over the industry. It’s nearly unheard of and yet, that’s exactly the sort of hold Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” seems to have on modern film and television. Proving the point, at a pub quiz I attended last September there was a film music themed round where we had to say which movie certain music belonged to; bonus points were awarded if you could name the song itself.  As expected, the round featured some well-known scores and a few pop songs, which were for the most part pretty easily identified, if not named. Still, when the soft postminimalist melody of “On the Nature of Daylight” began to swell in the air, I was surprised to see that the eyes of six members of my eight-person team lit up in recognition– three of them knew Richter’s work by name.  

Most everyone knew the piece from its use as sonic bookends in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, but chances are most of us have heard it a number of times. “On the Nature of Daylight” also features in such films as Stranger than Fiction (2006), Shutter Island (2010), Disconnect (2012), the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012), The Face of an Angel (2014), The Innocents (2016), and Togo (2019). In terms of television, the track also plays at the end of an episode of Hulu’s Castle Rock titled “The Queen”, and was used very recently in the 35th anniversary episode of Eastenders. Perhaps most tellingly of all, a music video for the song starring Elisabeth Moss was released in 2018. I ask you, reader, how many pieces of classical music get their own music video?  

Now, Hans Zimmer performed at 2017’s Coachella, so in terms of high art mediums infiltrating pop culture spaces, stranger things have happened. But whereas Zimmer’s most famous music comes from the scores of popular multi-film franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean or The Dark Knight trilogy, Richter’s song wasn’t written for film at all, making its popularity even more startling. “On the Nature of Daylight” is the second track off of Richter’s 2004 album The Blue Notebooks, which the composer produced in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a work of protest art. The album was a critical success, but certainly not a commercial one: Richter has even gone on record saying that he and his family were forced to leave their home due to poor album sales (https://www.popmatters.com/192773-max-richter-the-blue-notebooks-2495537909.html).

Hans Zimmer putting on a performance that’s half recital/half gig, and totally full of bangers.

Thankfully, Max Richter is no longer an obscure musician, but the fact remains, the overuse of “On the Nature of Daylight” has become grating. One the one hand, I’m immensely happy to see a genre of music that typically carries connotations of elitism appreciated by such a wide and diverse audience. Moreover, as a fan, I’m delighted that Richter has become well-known and that his work has become lucrative. But, “On the Nature of Daylight” now has such a formidable cinematic reputation that I’ve begun to wish filmmakers would be a bit more discerning when selecting the track for use in one of their productions. 

The song’s immaculate slow build, the melancholy of its minor keys, the exuberance of the string section at the song’s peak, all of this allows “On the Nature of Daylight” to lend poignant emotional resonance to any scene in which it’s used– at least the shadow of it. See, the trouble is, most productions don’t earn this payoff, and when the narrative reaches for a release it hasn’t earned, it cheapens an exceptionally potent piece of music. In fact, given the track’s popularity, its use can almost feel cliched, which is particularly damning for pieces like “On the Nature of Daylight” because it has no distinct pop culture reputation to fall back on outside of its use in the industry. This means that the industry has the power to ruin it, and as someone very much attached to this song, it’s hard to watch the movies bleed Richter’s work dry.

None of this is the composer’s fault; he has every right to grant the use of the song to paying production teams, but it’s a bad look for filmmakers who appear to be taking emotional shortcuts. Boring cinema gets made when filmmakers attempt to adhere to recipes for successful movies, instead of leaning into the spirit of innovation that birthed the medium in the first place. You don’t know what all you can do with a film until you try it and it works. “On the Nature of Daylight” worked in Arrival, and I actually think it works in a few things, but that doesn’t make the song a catch all for conveying melancholy every time a cinematic narrative calls for it. 

The way the slow crescendo of “On the Nature of Daylight” peaks right as the protagonist’s dead wife disintegrates in his dream, leaving him utterly alone, makes Shutter Island an excellent example of a film that uses Richter’s work precisely and with intention. (You can watch the scene here if you’re unfamiliar).

So, I’m making a very serious, probably selfish, and likely ineffectual plea, that the film and television industry stop the use of “On the Nature of Daylight” in their productions. I realize making this request roughly translates into shouting “Hey, all of showbiz, stop ruining my favorite song!” into the void, but my personal taste and investment aside, the industry really would do well to go back to scoring films with specificity. It really is a beautiful thing when a score becomes synonymous with certain film visuals, forming an exclusive and symbiotic relationship. Plus, this method gave us Hans Zimmer shredding on the banjo in Coachella Valley, so there’s that. 

Diversity, waste, and travel: what globalisation means for food

Shreya Banerjee
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Diversity, waste, and travel: what globalisation means for food

For many people, being at home during lockdown means that there is an abundance of time to spend preparing, eating, and thinking about food. Combined with the population’s increased dependence on home cooking due to the closure of restaurants, it seems there is no better time to consider where the products we label as essential originate from, the extent to which our diets have become international and the effects of this.

Food trade has played a significant role in the history of globalisation, as it has allowed for cultural exchange for thousands of years. From the transporting of spices along the Silk Road, to the potatoes being imported from the Andes to Ireland in 1589 by Sir Walter Raleigh, one could argue that humanity has been sharing and adapting to new crops for a very long time ­– after all, it took only 16 years for the potato to become widely farmed throughout Europe. But even if our swift adoption of and fascination for foreign crops dates back to Charles II being presented with a pineapple, the last century has undeniably ushered in a new age of consumption.

Where produce from far-off lands may once have radiated mystique, in today’s world, over two thirds of the crops that underpin national diets are originally grown somewhere else. This is a trend that has accelerated dramatically over the last 50 years: whether it’s sushi you’re searching for in Addis Ababa or McDonald’s in Honolulu, globalisation has made a wide range of cuisines more accessible than ever, while also aiding multinational fast food companies to exploit our modern need for convenience. It has not only transformed the produce that we eat and where it is grown, but also redefined our tastes internationally – interactions between different cultures as a result of immigration have led to an expectation of an Indian take-away in most British towns, and culinary phenomena such as Korean-Mexican fusion in Los Angeles and Japanese-Brazilian hybrid restaurants in London. Moreover, the popularity of cooking shows such as MasterChef, where contestants are encouraged to explore different cuisines, reflects how our society is more open to experimentation than ever before. Though this is of less relevance to communities that are dependent on livestock and backyard farming, urbanisation and immigration have created melting pots of cuisine and culture across the globe, which form perfect subjects for an inquiry into globalised diets.

Aside from being a vehicle for cultural metamorphosis, globalisation within the food industry has had major environmental effects, often inextricably bound to the politics of agriculture and trade, which are exacerbated by the ever-growing demand for food in an ever-growing population. The demand for meat across the globe has never been higher, with countries such as Australia and the US consuming an average of over 300 grams per person, per day, and the largest increase has been for pork and chicken in Asia. This has led to expansion of pig meat farming that has raised currently pertinent concerns about public health and viruses, especially if farming is not regulated effectively.

Alongside the growth in demand for meat, the last decade has proven that wheat, soya beans and palm oil are ‘megacrops’: superpowers within agriculture with the potential to overhaul the productivity and value of land. In Brazil’s Matopiba (the savannah region formed by several states which is the country’s agricultural frontier) 14,000 sq km of native vegetation were cleared for soya cultivation from 2016-17 in order to satisfy the Chinese demand for soya beans – only to be left uncultivated by the U.S. because of the trade war between Beijing and Washington. The illegal deforestation and environmental endangerment that has resulted from a huge international demand for soya as well as palm oil is not dissimilar to what Mexico is experiencing from the avocado boom throughout the late 2010s, when the security of domestic produce was undermined by unparalleled Western demand for the incredibly Instagrammable toast-topper.

Clearly, the globalisation of our diets has had positive and negative effects – whilst many of us have access to a balanced diet that our ancestors could never have dreamt of and can taste delicious indigenous and fusion foods from around the world, there is an environmental cost. Having said this, it has also led to the increased accessibility and popularisation of veganism through new meat-free alternatives and the wide sharing of information on social media. A vegan diet can drastically reduce one’s carbon footprint, but it is worth considering that most diets within a globally interdependent food supply chain quickly accumulate ‘food miles’,which is one factor used to measure the environmental impact of getting food from the farm to your fork.

Today, due to our growing consciousness of the impact that demand can have on an environment and its inhabitants, as well as the pandemic having caused a large portion of our food supply chain to grind to a halt, food security seems to be higher on the agenda and more in the spotlight than ever. The rush to stockpile essential products has also provoked analysis of what we consider basic necessities, and it has become clear that although thousands of different foods are imported and exported every year, our global diet is starting to converge due to our dependence on a handful of megacrops, as well as the explosion of fast food culture in the last 50 years. Monocrop plantations of these megacrops such as corn, wheat and soya beans are more vulnerable to viruses and pests than plantations with biodiversity. However, in a world where cities have huge demand for key products and we are growing our own produce less, it may seem like there is no alternative to monocropping on a large scale.

Although the pandemic has propelled us into uncertain times, it can be comforting to satisfy our culinary curiosity by means of new recipes or the variety of restaurants still delivering food. Even when confined to our homes, globalisation has made it easier than ever to travel the world from our plates.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: 50 years on

Gabriel Coleman
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Mad Dogs and Englishmen: 50 years on

In the spring of 1970, 50 years ago, a collection of musicians underwent the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which came to be immortalised in a live album and a concert film. This tour fell on the cusp of a dramatic change in the way that music and musicians were viewed. It was the last hurrah of the idealistic Woodstock generation and an introduction to an increasingly dark and commercial world of music.

On the 11th March 1970, an exhausted Joe Cocker arrived in LA after a non-stop tour of the States with ‘The Grease Band’. Joe was a humble mechanic from Sheffield who was suddenly shot into superstardom by his timeless cover of the Beatles’ ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ and his subsequent performance at Woodstock in 1969. The day after his return from tour (12th March), Joe’s manager, Dee Anthony, announced that he had been booked for a seven-week tour of the States. The Grease Band had just been dissolved, yet Joe had only a few days before he had to begin a gruelling 48-show tour of the US.

Cocker looked to his friends Leon Russell and Denny Cordell for help. Russell was the Mark Ronson of early 1970s Rock and Roll; he played with everyone who was anyone, and Elton John regularly calls him his greatest influence. Leon’s honky-tonk piano, southern twang, and incredible musical experience, along with his silent demeanour and crazy wizard-like look earned him the title ‘the master of Space and Time’. He had been part of The Wrecking Crew in the 1960s, a prolific collection of session musicians who, often in place of the actual bands, played on albums for giants such as the Everley Brothers, Sammy Davis Jr,  Frank and Nancy, the Byrds, the Monkees, the Mamas and Pappas, and many more. As a result, by the early 1970s Russell was one of the most sought-after musicians in the world, though relatively unknown by the general public. He was at the centre of an extensive web of highly talented, countercultural musicians that split their time between Laurel Canyon in LA and Tulsa in Oklahoma.

Russell called on his friends and within a week he had got together somewhere between 30 and 40 musicians all keen to help Cocker out. Most had a similar session background to Leon or had been involved with the folk giants of LA, Delaney and Bonnie. All of them were highly accomplished and would continue to dominate the music industry for the following decade, working with the likes of the Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Eric Clapton, John Lennon, and George Harrison.

In addition to the core band, there were numerous backup singers, ranging from Denny Cordell, the record producer, to Rita Coleridge – ‘the undying queen of Rock and Roll’ – as well as the kids, wives and friends of everyone involved.

The Band only had 6 days’ rehearsal. They moved between Leon’s house and ‘The Plantation’ – the home of Delaney, Bonnie, and Taj Mahal. People came and went, and music was played day and night. Only one recording of the rehearsals made it onto the live album, ‘Warm up Jam/ Under My Thumb’, in a great example of the loose and experimental process that fuelled the development of most of the tracks on the album. Delaney and Bonnie’s album Motel Shot, which was recorded in one evening in the living room of The Plantation and features most of the artists on the Mad Dog’s Tour, runs in a similar vein and gives an idea of the spontaneous genius of this group.

When the tour finally kicked off, there were so many people involved that A&M Records had to buy a 1940s transcontinental airliner – ‘Cocker Power’. It was filled with musicians, hangers-on, a film crew, kids, and dogs. The tour manager was a Shakespearean actor called Smitty. He can be seen in the concert film reciting Shakespeare and addressing middle-American hotel staff as if he were an 18th Century gentlemen. Even at the time, it was considered to be an absurd circus, let alone in retrospect.

I won’t analyse the all twenty tracks on the album, but it is worth picking out a few highlights:

A cover of the Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Women’

The song, and the concert, quite literally begins with a circus theme tune. Joe dances onto the stage. Leon, looking like the mad hatter, pulls off riffs that put Keith Richards to shame, and the band pulsates with an inescapable swinging rhythm.  Dancers can be seen lining the back of the stage, before halfway through the song a dancing woman dressed from head to toe in white, Leon’s best friend from Tulsa, Emily, bursts onto the scene smashing a tambourine and kisses Leon. The whole thing is completely mad but amid this chaotic looseness we get our first sense of just how talented everyone is. 

A cover of The Box Tops’ ‘The Letter’

Leon sits at the piano with his characteristic deadpan composure, looking half bored and somewhat otherworldly. He showcases his honky-tonk style, dominating the song and establishing himself as the heart of the band.  Bobby Keys’ saxophone solo similarly shines through. He rolls along, keeping perfect time with the rhythm section and reminding us why he was considered to be the very best at what he did.

‘Space Captain’

Whilst Joe was the main act, Leon was the one really in charge. In the words of the photographer Linda Wolf, who accompanied the tour: “Leon was clearly the master of Space and Time: he was the conductor of the music and the energy.” Nowhere does this come across better than on ‘Space Captain’. Joe’s voice roars over the top and the backup singers provide us with amusing ‘woos’ throughout, but once again Leon’s piano stands out. And it’s when, about halfway through, he stands up and begins to conduct the 30-something people as if they were an orchestra that we realise just how important Leon is. Joe was the heart and soul, but Leon was the brains.

‘I’ll drown in my own tears/ When Something is Wrong with My Baby/ I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’

Although no footage survives, this 12-minute blues medley is Joe’s magnum opus. Joe was first and foremost a soul singer, and it’s when he covers the likes of Otis Redding that he seems most truly at home. His voice is incredibly powerful, emotional, and raw; it’s velvet sandpaper. Even without seeing a live performance, you can tell that Joe feels every part of these songs. He captures the very essence of ‘blues’ better than anyone else from this period of music. It’s no surprise that Ray Charles deemed him to be the only white guy who could sing soul music.

‘With A Little Help from My Friends’

The song that made Joe famous and the one that we always have to come back to is the one with which he ends. Chris Stainton is on the organ, Leon on guitar, and the backup singers are in full swing. The band unleashes a beautiful cacophony of sound becoming more an orchestra than anything else. This song defined the collective spirit of the whole tour and indeed the whole era. It rolls on for nine minutes, and Joe is at the centre. He leads the audience and the band along an emotional rollercoaster, revving them up, calming them down, and ending with pure unleashed ecstasy. For me, the highlight is Joe’s scream about 4 minutes in; it’s wild and a little bit scary but shows just how passionate and raw a talent Joe was.  In the film, you can see one backup singer’s reaction to Joe’s scream. She smiles and leans back, shaking her head with pure excitement. Chris Stainton struggles to keep up at times, the rhythm section is somewhat confused, and Leon and Joe are quite clearly very high, but despite (or, perhaps, because of) all this there is a really special feeling to the performance. Everyone involved, including the audience we see in brief glimpses, is completely immersed. Even when watching it 50 years on, for a brief moment everything else fades into limbo and is replaced by a sense of simple and pure bliss.

This article wouldn’t be true to itself without acknowledging a somewhat sad reality. Looking back on this album, tour, and film 50 years later, it is easy to idealise what these musicians accomplished. Despite the incredible talent on display, the tour wasn’t without its downfalls. The shows were relentless, people became addicted to drugs, Joe and Leon fell out badly, and despite the overwhelming success of the album and the film most of the band, including Joe, never saw a penny. Above all, Joe was a wreck by the end of the tour and it started a downward spiral into drink and drugs that lasted the best part of 10 years. He was never quite the same afterwards, the witty flare that characterised him extinguished. Though he did manage to survive and have a resurgence in the 80s, when watching the concert film today it is almost painful to see the brief moments of Joe backstage. He is always drunk or high, pale-faced, and looking out of sorts: quite literally an English gentleman in a world of mad dogs.

Where, then, does that leave our relationship with Mad Dogs and Englishmen? In an age of Super Bowl half-time shows and million-dollar concert tours that are dominated by auto-tuned backing tracks, perfect choreography, light shows, outfit changes, and make-up, Joe and his band are a relic of a golden age when a genuine love of music was more important than all the trappings that come with it. It was chaotic, decadent, and far from pretty, but that’s exactly what made this group of hopelessly idealistic and enormously talented musicians so special.

Liberalism’s Moment of Truth

Sea-Yun Joung and Jonathan Nicoll
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Liberalism’s Moment of Truth

The night overtaketh the day, the four horsemen draw near, and pestilence approacheth. The apocalypse is at hand, and the state, in shining armour, riding a white stallion, quickly and silently moveth to seize all the power it can to save people from plague… and from themselves. And the citizen sloucheth idly and watcheth only Netflix as power is seizéd. This is, after all, the only way… Right?

Humankind is at present going through what the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, describes as “the most challenging crisis since World War II” and what Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist at the IMF, calls a “crisis like no other”. In light of this, governments around the world have responded with sweeping draconian measures unlike anything we – in the Western and liberal world – have witnessed or experienced in our living memories. These measures – which include restrictions to the freedom of movement and assembly, increased police power, and enhanced surveillance – are disconcerting, and have something of a sinister aftertaste, despite their immediate necessity.

At some level, it is certainly true that a trade-off between liberty and security exists. It is also true that times of crisis – such as that which we at present find ourselves in – justify the curtailment of certain civil liberties in the name of promoting security and saving lives. It is not, however, the case that times such as these justify a blanket surrender of power and total handover of liberty to the government. Indeed, a government’s exercise of power is legitimate and justifiable only insofar as it is consented to by the nation’s constituents. And whilst people would, for the most part, consent to the temporary sacrifice of a limited number of liberties in the name of protecting themselves and their loved ones, they would not consent to giving up any more freedoms than they must, nor for any longer than they must. Thus – as John Henry Newman, the Oriel theologian, argued – “those political institutions are the best, which subtract as little as possible from a people’s natural independence as the price of their protection”.

Yet historically, during – and after – crises, governments have tended to stray from such political ideals of balance, instead pursuing only security at the expense of our natural independence. In light of the crisis we find ourselves in, we now stand before the same historical threat. Yet, as this crisis is more severe than those we have gone through in the past, the threat to our natural independence is direr than ever.

This threat to our liberty can be broken up into two principal components. The first is that those curtailments to liberty that we accept temporarily lurk, persist, and outstay their welcome. The second, and arguably more worrying, is that the crisis may present power-hungry leaders an irresistible opportunity to sweep in and grow authoritarian powers that they will hold onto long after the end of the crisis.

“Temporary” measures:

Laws and measures enacted in response to specific crises have a nasty habit of remaining in place long after they are intended to have ceased – and often, in fact, long after they are necessary for any other reason than empowering the state.

Consider, for example, the Patriot Act: legislation enacted to prevent the recurrence of the tragedies of September 11th. Originally, it intended to serve as a temporary four-year-long measure. Yet, as provisions of the Act have been constantly renewed, the NSA, to this day, maintains the right to monitor communications without a court order and to compile – and share with the FBI – data on citizens. Is the current carryout of these surveillance practices, which the 2015 Snowden leak shed light on, really what people in 2001 agreed to – and what people would now consent to?

Alternatively, consider the “temporary” measures instituted by Israel after it declared a state of emergency during its War of Independence. In spite of the fact that the war ended over 70 years ago, some measures – including press censorship and land confiscation rights – remain implemented to this day. Did the Israeli people of 1948 who accepted these measures at the time really consent to their continuation to this day?

Those powers and those liberties we forego in the present crisis – in the name of protecting ourselves and our loved ones – will, in a similar fashion, persist and linger if we are not vigilant. They are sinking deep into the belly of the Leviathan – and soon they’ll be at a depth we can no longer reach.

Opportunistic leaders:

While in ordinary times acquiring power – at least in democracies – involves the arduous process of succumbing to the desires and wills of the electorate, the current crisis provides an opportunity like no-other for a swift and effortless power grab by leaders who have long coveted it.

We have already witnessed Hungary suffer this fate after their leader, Viktor Orbán, appropriated the right to rule by decree indefinitely – making the nation, in effect, a dictatorship. This ought to act as a precautionary tale of what could be to come in other fragile democracies that, like Hungary, have weak, if at all existent, democratic safeguards in place.

It is not only fragile democracies for whom we ought to worry, however. Liberalism is at grave risk, and facing its hour of reckoning, even in nations that supposedly embody and even exemplify it, such as Britain and the United States. These nations find themselves at a tipping point in history where people have, amidst the immediate and temporary pains of the pandemic, lost hope in liberalism and saw it instead in the – mind you, very dangerous – notion of collectivism. This is demonstrated no better than by the fact that few, if any, of us – judges, politicians, civilians – expressed dissent or attempted to challenge what would normally be considered despotic measures. Thus spake the Leviathan, and we accepted.

And while this is fine, as it is true that the temporary loss of our liberties is necessary to fight the pandemic, we must ensure that we do not allow governments to abuse the precedent that has been set. Going forwards, if we do not remain vigilant, who is to stop them exercising arbitrary power over us, and curtailing our freedoms, in the name of some other ‘emergency’?

Defending our liberty:

To defend ourselves from the grave threat against liberty we face, it is perhaps first useful to remember that – as Aristotle pointed out –we are, by nature, zoon politikon – that is, political animals. We are capable of speech and of moral reasoning – of lógos. And it is necessary – especially, at times like these – that we exercise these capabilities. Specifically, we must actively engage in scrutiny of the policies enacted in haste, and in expressing political dissent with those we do not agree with. We ought, by similar virtue, to scrutinise and express dissent with any future appeals to the ‘emergency’ precedent set by this crisis which our leaders may invoke.

You might, however, quite rightly, suggest that devoting a significant portion of your life to political activism is not viable. After all, life is already hectic enough. Well, fear not, for there is a solution. And that is strengthening the constitutional mechanisms that check power in government. Through such measures, that would, of course, include provisions for legitimate emergencies, we would be able to ensure that not only is the state prevented from arbitrarily interfering in our liberties today or tomorrow, but that it is prevented from doing so ad infinitum.

Defending liberalism:

Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary – the Leviathan – as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

You might, in the background, be thinking – why is this ‘liberty’ at all desirable? Why do we ought to promote and protect it in the first place? Such thoughts are indeed tempting. Liberalism has, after all, failed us at our hour of need. Yet we must remember that the upholding of liberal values has brought us much virtue and much good. It has enriched us, given us equal voices, and protected us from evils of tyranny. These virtues and these goods, ultimately, far outweigh the shortcomings of it that this crisis has made us aware of.

We, therefore, cannot allow ourselves to fall for the trap – the forbidden fruit – of handing over our power to the Leviathan, as tempting as it may be. For once we do, we can never take it back. And while the Leviathan, at this time, may well be benevolent, he needn’t remain such. By handing over our power, and accepting the Leviathan into our lives, we set ourselves onto a one-way path to despotism and destitution – onto the ‘Road to Serfdom’.

In 1683, although for a very different set of reasons, Hobbes’ books, including the Leviathan, were publicly burnt in the quadrangle of the Bodleian. To stand up for and defend our liberal principles, we must, metaphorically, do the same. We must burn the Hobbesian Leviathan out of our minds, out of our souls, and out of our constitutions. For whilst it is true that during times like these, life would be ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ without the heavy hand of the Leviathan, we seldom live in such times. And during ordinary times, it is hard to deny that liberalism, absent the heavy hand, has done us well.

In Conversation with Countess Alexandra Tolstoy

Alexander Haveron-Jones
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In Conversation with Countess Alexandra Tolstoy

Countess Alexandra Tolstoy is the daughter of Count Nikolai Tolstoy-Miloslavsky, the current head of the noble House of Tolstoy, distantly related to Leo Tolstoy, and the former partner of Sergei Pugachev, a Russian oligarch who was once worth $15 billion and was amongst Putin’s inner circle. Nicknamed ‘Putin’s Banker’, Pugachev owned a coal mine, shipyards, designer brands and one of Russia’s largest private banks before a catastrophic fall from favour placed him at number 3 on the Kremlin hit list. 

A superficial browse of Alexandra’s delightfully aesthetic Instagram page evokes the traditional rural cottage idyll; her three young children in shorts and little leather shoes reading or playing outside; carrying a roast goose to a carefully-decorated table for supper in a candle-lit dining room; nursing a cup of tea on a rocking chair beside the aga. Before this, she was quite the adventurer, having made documentaries with the BBC about her horseback expeditions, and trekking 8,000 kilometres on horse and camel across the Silk Road in 1999. 

But, Alexandra’s presently unassuming country lifestyle, or, indeed, the life of adventure in her earlier years, is miles from the shrouded world of Russian high society, and from the 200-acre estate in Hertfordshire and $40 million beach-front Caribbean villa she recently enjoyed with her husband, whose fortune went from $15 billion to $70 million – and now refuses to give her and the children even a penny. 

In 2008 Alexandra met Sergei, then one of Russia’s most influential men, who had bankrolled the Russian government; but, following Putin’s eradication of the oligarchy, and the disappearance of a $1 billion loan from the State to his bank which went under a year later, Sergei had to flee Russia in fear of his life, allegedly receiving death threats to himself and their children. In 2015, the Russians pursued Pugachev in the British courts to reclaim the missing $1 billion, for which he was found liable, and his passport was seized and his assets worldwide were frozen: he fled illegally to France, for which he was sentenced to two years imprisonment in the UK – meaning he couldn’t return to be with Alexandra and the children. 

After visiting Sergei at their château in France, where he was physically violent towards her, locked their passports in a safe and smashed her mobile phone, Alexandra managed to return with the children to the UK and now lives between her small country cottage in Oxfordshire and their London townhouse, which she was forced to sell in a deal with the Russian authorities (though thankfully can remain in residence each month until it sells). 

Alexandra’s confidence and safety were worn by years of threats and continual surveillance from the Russian authorities, alleged harassment from the British legal system, and, indeed, later by the cruelty and intimidation by her very husband. Having momentarily enjoyed the luxuries of a billionaire lifestyle, she’s now entirely without financial support from Sergei, retains no luxuries from their relationship, and has sold all of the designer clothes, bags and shoes she’d once owned: but she says she’s all the happier because of it. 

I telephone Alexandra on a sunny afternoon during lockdown, which she is spending at her parents’ house with the children; suffering from asthma, she thinks it safer to be with other adults, just in case. She picks up the telephone, and I can hear the excited chatter of the children who are going into the sitting room to be read a Just William story by their grandfather. 

Alexandra is cheerfully conversational, and I congratulate her on the release of the recent BBC documentary about her and her husband’s complex relationship (‘The Countess and the Russian Billionaire’); it’s hard not to be compelled by the remarkable situation of her marriage to one of the world’s richest men, and we soon discuss the astonishing details: 

While living in London with Sergei, the couple became aware of surveillance placed upon them by the Russian state; Sergei’s security company found GPS trackers planted under their cars (which were initially suspected to be explosive devices), including the car used exclusively by Alexandra and the children. Indeed, after the breakdown of her relationship, it was Sergei himself who began monitoring Alexandra, placing individuals outside her London house every day to intimidate her. I was fascinated to know whether, in a contrary sense, this had prepared her and the children for lockdown, as she’d already become so accustomed to feeling great isolation, especially in their French château, “which was sort of isolation anyway”. 

“I think what’s prepared me has been all those adventures I did, like riding the silk road, riding through Mongolia; I went for months when it was pre-mobile phone – we had no connection with the world outside … When I was eighteen I lived in Moscow for six months and really did nothing but read books and learn Russian. I think those prepared me more than anything, really.” 

But, when Alexandra had first met Sergei, she’d recently ended an unhappy marriage and fell very much in love with the oligarch, despite the potential risk involved with someone so closely linked to the elite levels of Russian politics: “I was obviously a thrill-seeker; I loved an adventure and I loved the feeling of adrenaline and excitement. It was the love story of my life, and it did feel dangerous … he was this very powerful person, and he did turn on me sometimes in the early days, but there was this drama of winning him back round; I didn’t realise that this was all very dangerous abusive pattern.” 

Alexandra believes Sergei spun a false narrative to malign her and distract from his own culpability for the disastrous failure of his business interests; particularly, Sergei blames his downfall on the fact that Putin supposedly disliked his marriage to a foreigner, which she frustratedly contests: “It’s a very narcissistic thing to do; he made up this whole narrative [in the documentary] which suited… it’s all about belittling me, and by saying that – particularly to his close family – it gave them a narrative that it was my fault that everything had gone wrong for him; he blamed it on me, saying that Putin didn’t like me. But it’s absurd … Putin just wouldn’t care about that.” Having once enjoyed an intensely close friendship, even spending many holidays together, by the time Alexandra met Sergei, he had only seen Putin “once, in all those years.” 

Alexandra asks if I’ve watched ‘Dirty John’ on Netflix, and compares theirs to the romance underpinned by the manipulation of the sociopathic significant other: “I just find the psychology of being a sociopath – or narcissism – so fascinating; this creating of narratives that are literally just complete lies, but I think they end up half-believing them…” She later asks if I’ve read And Quiet Flows the Don, saying that “the relationship at the beginning is very, very similar; it just feels so full of danger and it’s very raw, and often angry, but then very passionate … to me, it felt really like I was so in love.” Reflecting on their relationship, and his moments of physical violence and control over her, she says that “there were signs there,” but she “just didn’t know how to read or understand them.” 

“I think the real truth was that, yes, he wasn’t bowing down to Putin, but he also had a business partner who he was very close to for years, and that business partner left… [and it was at this point that Sergei began having business difficulties]; Sergei himself was no kind of businessman. It was shocking how he had absolutely no clue about finances, about running a company; it was shocking … basic accounting, he didn’t even understand. I think that probably this business partner had been the brains, and Sergei had been the ‘power broker’…” 

Despite the tumult of threats, financial loss, and romantic decline, complicated with the duty of raising small children, Alexandra seems at harmony with her present situation, and this is thanks to her newly unostentatious lifestyle – that of ‘the billionaire’s wife’ just didn’t suit her: “My whole confidence got so smashed when I was with him; he was so very manipulative, very denigrating about my riding, my exhibitions, my travel… and so, I began to focus on all these things which a ‘normal’ kind of oligarch’s girlfriend would focus on. I suppose that I was not very confident anyway, and I felt I needed to live-up to these very ‘shiny’, perfect girls and I was a bit Bridget Jones-like in comparison to them, so felt probably a bit inadequate … I should’ve just carried on the way I was … I didn’t realise, but it accentuated how lost I’d become, and it also made me much more dependent on him, so I think he liked it, because it isolated me from my family.” 

She now considers the trappings of her private-jet-chic “vulgar”, and has since sold almost all that which she’s kept, realising “bogged down” the luxurious tokens of her billionaire lifestyle: “The really cathartic moment was last summer … I thought ‘I have to sell these ridiculous handbags, I have to sell them’… because they’re actually quite liquid – it’s money that I can use to pay school fees and I can educate the children… I suddenly managed to make myself look at them and think it’s not really me anyway.” 

“I think it’s difficult for anybody in those circumstances to be creative; how can you be original? Some people don’t care about aesthetics, but for me, to be creative is really part of my DNA.” Alexandra tells me how her appreciation for books and visual arts were “completely crushed: I couldn’t do anything”; the luxury afforded to her nevertheless impeded her fundamental desire to be productive and freedom to explore creatively. I note how impossible it must be to represent oneself in a society where value and status is projected through selfsame designer clothes and modern houses, which is entirely different to the way she represents herself now. 

In the autumn, she held a sale at her house and gave proceeds to a charity which supports underprivileged children and adults with autism living in St. Petersburg, who she says are completely unsupported by the state. Selling her designer clothes and handbags allowed her to “start again”, and to “be herself”. Just that morning, she’d been contacted by a friend who was a yacht broker, who was sad to see the couple’s old yacht on the charter market, but Alexandra felt no loss: “I thought to myself ‘it’s amazing’… I literally miss nothing about that lifestyle … planes, boats, trains, automobiles, houses: nothing.” 

Now, Alexandra has reclaimed her creative autonomy and a certain intellectual freedom which was repressed during her years spent with the billionaire: “We all have different tastes, but if our taste isn’t reflecting who we are or where we are in life, that lack of harmony can make you feel not very happy.” Her Instagram page has allowed her to present her own image to the world, one which she finds to be truly representative, unlike that of the media which is seemingly always speculating. 

Talking about her pursuit of an exquisitely domestic lifestyle, Alexandra says that “it’s not just aesthetic, it does also go with a kind of freedom of thought, doesn’t it? If I look at my children, they’re incredibly curious about a lot of things I’m not sure their peers would be curious about – my oldest son is obsessed with carnivorous plants, and the middle one is making things all the time … I think that, somehow, that aesthetic – they sort of go hand-in-hand. When I was with Sergei, I stopped reading so much of that 19th-century literature which I’m so passionate about … With the life I live now, emotionally and mentally I can romantically dream and escape – whereas then, it was so stultifying.” 

I wonder if, like her fashion sense, her interior design interests were affected during her time with Sergei, as one might imagine they would be, but she says that they weren’t: “Weirdly, the interior decorating never changed… I could afford more things, but [Sergei] didn’t really give me the opportunity to do very much … the taste never changed there at all. When I was in Sergei’s château, he wouldn’t really let me do anything anyway”. I say how I find so much more satisfaction in accumulating individuals pieces and creating one’s own eclectic aesthetic, which she certainly concurs: “I totally agree! It completely goes when you can buy it all… and who doesn’t love a bargain?” Earlier that day, she proudly tells me, she’d found wonderful vintage Hungarian fabrics and embroidery to re-use for the children’s little wooden caravan, making curtains: “that’s just so rewarding”. She tells me that Sergei did have “really good taste”, but, I was surprised to learn, collected artwork for its style, “rather than for the sake of them being expensive pieces.” 

Alexandra seems to be regaining her confidence since the ending of her relationship and peak surveillance a few years ago – in the documentary, there’s recent footage of her and her children riding scooters to school in the morning, something she never could have done a few years ago. She says that “every day is difficult, and I often don’t sleep at night … it’s that philosophy of ‘dust yourself down’, and carry on trying … I don’t ever stop putting myself out there and trying.” 

In the past year, Alexandra’s rebuilt her travel company, which she founded before the marriage, built a fashion business, which I’m told is going well, and been writing for lots of magazines; she’s even made amicable progress with the Russian state, and has since returned without threat… But it seems to me that her greatest solace in the idyll she’s struggled to provide for her children: “they’ve got this big pond, and a rowing boat, and a little caravan, and a wigwam,” and is rescued by the stillness of the country. Now free to raise them in a lifestyle similar to that of her own childhood, they won’t be familiar with the world of Russian high-society which had caused such anguish for their mother: though it remains that their father, who they haven’t seen in four years since his escape to France, remains in the top three of the Kremlin hit list…

This article was emended on 10/05/2024 to correct information about Tolstoy and Pugachev’s relationship.

Reading ‘Neurotribes’ in Autism Acceptance Month

Catherine de Guise
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Reading ‘Neurotribes’ in Autism Acceptance Month

This Autism Awareness Month, I decided to become more aware of the history of the condition I’ve lived with my entire life but was only diagnosed with a year ago. Steve Silberman’s 592 page book on autism, written in 2015, seemed a logical place to start. 

Neurotribes is a history of attitudes, research and responses to autism as well as a personalised account of autistic individuals. Silberman recounts shifting understandings of autism, taking us from when it was once labelled as ‘childhood psychosis’ to what we now understand as ‘autistic spectrum disorder’. Diagnostic criteria has come to recognise the variety of forms autism can take, while still being linked by a few key factors - difficulties with social interaction and communication, and restricted and repetitive behaviour. 

The sociability of autistic people is something that can vary greatly, though most will experience a degree of social isolation. This seems a particularly pertinent issue at the moment, when social isolation is being enforced and many neurotypicals (non-autistic people) are discovering what it feels like. For some autistic people, their isolation, caused mainly by difficulty with social interaction and anxiety nurtured by countless negative interactions, is unwelcome. However, solitude can also be comforting and safe. 

A quote in Neurotribes from Tony Attwood, a psychologist who specialises in Asperger’s, describes how the difficulties of autism can disappear when one is alone: ‘You cannot have a social deficit when you are alone, you cannot have a communication problem when you are alone, your repetitive behaviour does not annoy anyone when you are alone. All the diagnostic criteria dissolve in solitude…The signs of autism and the degrees of stress and withdrawal are proportional to the number of people present.’ 

People like Attwood, who have stressed that the difficulties of autism are largely caused by the outside world, have helped to combat the view that it is autistic people that need to change. The focus shifts to the fight for accommodation. Silberman highlights the need for this in his description of ways of ‘curing’ autism. One such way is Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), which is still in use today. It was created by Ole Ivar Lovaas, and involved trying to rid children of obvious autistic traits through hitting them, starving them and administering electric shocks. Lovaas also went on to apply ABA to effeminate boys to ‘cure’ them of homosexuality and gender non-conformity. His defense in the face of the growing gay rights movement was that it was still easier to change a child than society. 

In sections like this, Neurotribes was an immensely difficult book to read. Silberman discusses the fear of ‘an epidemic of autism’ and the way in which many parents responded by trying to defeat autism through invasive therapy and alternative medicine. Parents mourned for the loss of a child that they came to see as damaged after the diagnosis, and tried desperately to ‘regain’ their child. At times, Silberman tries to show some sympathy for these parents, who were often forced to turn to alternative means as mainstream medicine was offering so little in terms of autism research.  

It was painful to read anyway. The belief that autistic people are incapable of empathy is still widely held, but it is increasingly recognised that we do experience empathy, and are in fact prone to hyper-empathy, which was certainly the case as I read about the suffering of autistic children. Hyper-empathy means that the suffering of another can cause an intense emotional, psychological and physical pain. It hurts to hear about the children who were forced to submit to ‘holding therapy’ – where a parent would grip their child and force them to look into their eyes, while telling the children how bad they made them feel. 

The backlash against vaccinations was another upsetting part of the book, particularly at the moment, as we watch numerous people dying from a disease that we don’t have a vaccine for. Already, I’ve seen some forums discussing whether or not it would be wise to receive a coronavirus vaccination, should one come to exist. Astounding, that some people might be more worried about autism than the possibility of their child dying, but that’s the illogical neurotypical mind for you. 

The book is not simply a traipse through decades of poor research and the mistreatment of autistic people – interspersed through this is hope. Silberman stresses the achievements of autistic people in science and technology and art. He combats misinformation. He reveals decades of fighting for increased recognition and support. The end section is particularly moving, as it describes autism activism that is increasingly led by autistic people themselves.  

In Neurotribes, Silberman is hopeful about the future of autism advocacy, but five years on, the tribe of neurodiverse people is still not a united one. This is perhaps indicated by Autism Awareness Month itself, a name that is disliked by many in the autistic community for its association with Autism Speaks, an organisation that aims to ‘cure autism’. Autism Acceptance has gained ground instead, prioritising the self-advocacy of autistic people.

It goes beyond simply recognising autistic people as different, and looks to accept and accommodate those differences. Perhaps there is still hope for a united tribe of neurodiverse people. 

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