This is one of my favourite novels, and the edition pictured above boasts the only decent cover I’ve seen of this (admittedly infrequently published) work. I picked it up in a second hand bookshop in Limerick about five years ago, and with retrospect it probably should have cost more than €3, especially considering the rarity of the old Penguin edition. Perhaps its value will rise again with its reissue in December by Serpent’s Tail, complete with a new introduction by Diana Athill, in whose house the author lived and committed suicide in in 1969.
This novel triggered my interest in the now all-but-disappeared Egyptian Coptic elite. Leaders in society in the pre-Nasser area, the Copts, like the Greeks before them, were caught between worlds – the world of aristocratic Europe to which they aspired, with its country clubs and communication through French, and the dramatically unequal society in which they lived, where priests’ palaces adjoined slums and the fellaheen (peasants) laboured for a subsistence lifestyle while the elite held hunting parties on the land they tilled. It was inevitable that dramatic change would come, but the Copts had an extraordinarily ancient Christian heritage, almost unique in the area, that ran the risk of being lost forever after Nasser’s rise to power.
The author (a distant relative of former UN Secretary Boutros-Boutros Ghali) came from this rarefied world, and like his alter ego, the character Ram, entertained Marxist ideals before the disillusionment of experience and the ugly reality of post-revolution Egypt caused him to retreat into cynicism. The story covers the experiences of Ram and his avowedly Communist friend Font as they move from Cairo to London, full of romantic dreams of living an artist’s life in the East End, but are disillusioned by casual racism and their upper-middle class hosts’ lack of loyalty. When they return to Cairo, Nasser has taken power but the socialist revolution is far from the dream Font imagined, with a Jewish friend beaten half to death by soldiers and Ram’s excursions into amateur spying revealing endemic levels of prisoner torture.
But it’s more than just political disillusionment that stalks the characters. Ram particularly finds himself becoming more and more detached from any authentic sense of self as the novel progresses. A lifetime of floating between categories – West and East, European and Egyptian, socialist and playboy – as well as the tragedy of a failed love affair, leads him to separate his psyche in two, vividly described in the following passage from the novel:
‘That moment….was the very beginning – the first time in my life that I had felt myself cleave into two entities, the one participating and the other watching and judging.’
The cataclysm of that cleavage is what causes Ram to descend into cynicism and accept so many things that he had once found intolerable. I’ve never read any book that better encapsulates what it must feel like to be caught between two cultures, with no clear sense of belonging to either. Not only does it achieve this, it’s also funny, sympathetic and full of vividly drawn characters that encapsulate the two cities it memorialises. I hope its reissue brings it the widespread attention it deserves.
Allan Williams & Rod Murray with friends at Flat 3, Hillary Mansions, Gambier Terrace in Liverpool, England | July 1960 © Harold Chapman (I) (II) (III)
Charley Foxx, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder at the Scotch of St James club, 1966.
15-year-old Stevie Wonder, NME, 18 February, 1966
“None of the Beatles was on hand for Stevie’s show at the Cavern, but Paul McCartney came to a show we did in London. After the final set, Stevie, Paul, Clarence [Paul, Stevie’s producer] and I sat around acting like a proverbial mutual admiration society - Paul going on and on about how the Beatles loved rhythm and blues and how they all admired Stevie’s music and the Motown sound; the rest of us quizzing him about the “Fab Four”. it was the only time in all my years of working alongside the greatest singers and musicians in the world that I ever asked for an autograph, which earned me major points with my sisters Joan and Diane.”
Ted Hull (Stevie’s tutor), The Wonder Years: my life and times with Stevie Wonder, 2000
Braille message for Stevie (“We love you baby”) on the cover of Wings’ 1973 album Red Rose Speedway.
On the first night of recording, who should turn up at the studio door but Paul and Linda. It was the first time since the Beatles had broken up that John and Paul had been in the same room…They play. With Paul on drums, in the absence of Ringo and Keith Moon that night, and John picking up his guitar, soon to be joined by Stevie Wonder, they went into a jam of ‘Midnight Special’.
Ray Connolly, Being John Lennon A Restless Life
“I’ve always been an admirer from the early days when we first heard him as ‘Little’ Stevie Wonder with ‘Fingertips’. Then I met him on and off [for a few years] and went to his shows. Eventually, I asked him if we could record together ‘Ebony and Ivory’. I spent some time with him in Montserrat to make that record... He’s such a musical monster. You sit down with him at the piano immediately he’s off. I know some of his old stories so I can joke with him and take the mickey. He was originally ‘Steveland Morris’ and he was in a little blind school in Detroit. He was just one of the blind kids who happened to be musically gifted. He went to Motown to make ‘Fingertips’ and then he was famous. He came back as ‘Little Stevie Wonder’. So he once told me all the blind kids in the school used to call him [adopts mocking tone] ‘Wundurr’. They didn’t like him and were jealous of him. So now when I see him and if we pass in the corridor I say ‘Wundurr’ and he immediately knows it’s Paul.”
Paul McCartney, GQ Magazine, November 2012
Stevie and Paul in Montserrat, working on Tug of War, 1981.
“But, you know, he’s such a fantastic person to work with that you just go along with it. He’s worth it! He may not always show up when he says he will. Maybe he has got to finish this other album he’s doing, whatever. You just have to make a lot of allowances. He’s such a great musician. It’s all fine, in the end. When he eventually got there and started working, it was perfect. I thought, ‘Oh God, everything he does is perfect.’ I’m talking about even handclaps here… you know, just handclaps. I remember being just a little bit out on the handclaps. We were round a mic clapping, and he just went, ‘Hey Paul, stop! Hey man, you’re not in the pocket!’ And I’m going, ‘Okay, alright, I’m not in the pocket! Let’s get it in the pocket.’ On the Beatles records we weren’t that precise with handclaps! ‘In the pocket’ means being exactly on the beat. So Stevie is saying, ‘You’re not in the pocket, man!’ and I’m going, ‘Oh shit! Okay, let’s get it right!’ So we just worked at it until we got it. He’s very much the perfectionist.”
Paul McCartney, Tug of War Archive Collection, 2015
“Stevie came along to the studio in LA and he listened to the track for about ten minutes and he totally got it. He just went to the mic and within 20 minutes had nailed this dynamite solo. When you listen you just think, ‘How do you come up with that?’ But it’s just because he is a genius, that’s why.”
Paul on recording Only Our Hearts with Stevie in 2011.
Paul and Stevie during mixing for Kisses on the Bottom, 15 November 2011 source
Hollering at this description of Magic Alex at some pre-Apple planning meeting. John's weird little boyfriend, plotting away.
(Source: Magical mystery tours : my life with the Beatles by Tony Bramwell)
fuckkkkkkk offffffffffff
speakingofcake's photo on Instagram
This line is so funny. Soccer mom that just gave herself a pelvic injury by doing crescent lunge pose too enthusiastically.
Chapter 3: Rulers make bad lovers
Under his carpet: Linda Eastman McCartney reflects on the ups and downs her marriage to Paul in a series of snapshots between 1968 and 1990. Chapter 1 of 5 posted.
Plinda fans/Paul superfans dni (JOKING! No sugarcoating, but not a hatchet job on either. Most of it is based on fact, but plenty is invented - speculative fiction an' all that.)
While not shying away from the darker sides of the marriage, this story is primarily intended as a character study about flawed individuals, none of whom are villains. It also explores the tension between visually appearing liberated, as many Boomer women did, and the reality of their domestic lives. A tension which is still relevant today.
In Our Time recently had a great two-part episode on the history of the city, charting the economic and political rise of cities from Ur to Bogota. Some of the information was familiar, and some quite unexpected. For example, after the fall of Rome heavily populated cities became a minority, and London didn’t reach first-century Roman population levels until the beginning of the 19th century. The political architecture of 18th century cities was illuminative – Hausmann’s wide boulevards were designed as much to prevent rebellious working classes from erecting barricades as they were for aesthetic reasons. The earliest ‘gated communities’ were the Georgian townhouses of 18th-century London and Dublin, where the mews at the back gave access to carriages, so that their inhabitants need never step on to the main street outside and encounter any of the ordinary inhabitants of the city. But cities were often reclaimed by the very people who they were designed to control – New Delhi was designed with Hausmann-esque boulevards after the Indian Rebellion of the 1850s in a concentrated effort to consolidate imperial power, however after independence in 1947 Lutyens’ architecture was celebrated and the city accepted as a key part of India’s history. Similar accomodations with the symbols of past conquest have occured in Dublin and Kingston. And there’s no doubt that a dense concentration of people, while often leading to poverty and disease, is a significant factor in the development of revolutionary ideals and a vision of a fairer society for all – Engels’ Manchester and early 20th century Paris and Moscow being key examples. Part of the second programme focused on the astonishing effect the development of the railways had on British cities, particularly London. One commentator referred to the light-speed adoption of railway travel as the equivalent of an ‘atomic age’ and the analogy is not exxagerated – within 30 years London and Paris had evolved from cities which relied on horse-drawn carriages to ones with mass under- and overground transit systems. This had the effect of finally bringing the rich into almost direct contact with the poor masses, as the engraving above by Dore reveals. Bridges ran directly over slum tenements, leaving the passengers in no doubt as to the conditions the inhabitants lived in. Many poor people were evicted from their homes without compensation in the early days of the railways, yet ironically it was the social mixture and opportunities for mobility brought about by those same railways that later helped increase employment opportunities, and subesequently, aspiration. Modern cities were analysed too, with a fascinating parallel drawn between the development of Los Angeles as a car city in the 1930s and its imitation by South American new cities like Mexico and Bogota. One contributor broke past the usual cliches about the relentless ugliness of modern cities – an argument that has been pitched against all new building since probably the days of Ur – and described how run-down slums in Bogota have evolved into respectable neighbourhoods after the introduction of good public transport. He seemed to be siding with the unfashionable but hopeful view that regeneration is always possible where people are concentrated together, even in desperate slums, and it is good planning, support and an understanding that millions in the developing world would rather live in cities than in the country that are needed to improve cities, not hand-wringing over their lack of beauty. Human life is messy and complex, therefore our cities are too, but that’s no excuse for neglect and doom-mongering. I would have liked more analysis of the cultural life of cities, and the greatest city of all, New York, was barely touched upon, but overall the series was extraordinarily comprehensive and informative. Above all, the history of cities is the history of humanity, a story in equal parts unequal, cruel, thrilling and wonderful. As Velutus says in Shakespeare’s Corialunus: ‘What is the city but the people?’ Listen to In Our Time: Cities here.
Some writing and Beatlemania. The phrase 'slender fire' is a translation of a line in Fragment 31, the remains of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho
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