Arthur's Seat

Joffe on Patten

Josef Joffe, the publisher of DIe Zeit takes Chris Patten to task over the thesis of his latest book, Cousins and Strangers: America, Britain, and Europe in a New Century.

Joffe's analysis is spot on (registration required) - and it highlights the superficial tone taken by Patten in what amounts to a lengthy attack on the current US Administration and on US mores.

When it comes to Islam and terror, Patten for once loses his cool. So you Yanks want to remake the Middle East by force? "Damn it," he sputters, "this is our neighborhood," and therefore we know better, he all but shouts. Above all, you must ditch Samuel Huntington and his "clash of civilizations." For the Arabs are just like us: they "top the world in believing that democracy is the best form of government." And they care most about "personal security, fulfillment and satisfaction." So whence Arab rage?

You guessed it: from the war in Iraq and "the betrayal and denial of Palestinian rights." This is a curiously foreshortened list. Does the Iraq war explain the unfathomable cruelty of Saddam Hussein before 2003 or even 1991? Does it explain the despotism and the deadly quarrels between sects, ideologies and regimes that preceded Israel's occupation in 1967? Does it explain the annihilation of the Syrian city of Hama by Hafez al-Assad's army in 1982? Or the economic backwardness that leaves so many young Arab men without a job and a future? Patten doesn't lay the blame for Islamist terrorism directly on the West. Ever so subtly, he indicts by posing questions: "Why does the West's notion of spreading freedom, capitalism and democracy look to some others like licentiousness, greed and a new colonialism?".

In a backhanded compliment Joffe tips his hat to the tutorial system - apparently under threat - at Oxford. In a former life I debated with Herr Joffe at the Oxford Union on the issue of US troops in Europe. I can't remember much more about it except it also involved Michael Heseltine and Laurent Fabius...

If back in college they had been obliged to deliver two essays per week, American mandarins might sound more like Patten and less like PowerPoint. In Oxford, they teach you not only to write well but also to think beyond the talking points of the day, and this is why the standard prejudices of the Good European do not overwhelm his intelligence, erudition and wit.

"The precipice under everyday prattle..."

What does this mean?

Can someone translate it for me?

Home

Luggage still on holiday. Waiting for BA to locate and deliver it; especially the 3kg of parmesan.

One of the best things about going on holiday is catching up on all that reading. My random vacation reading list was:

Richard Holmes' magisterial history of the British army in WWI: Tommy
Robert Kaplan's elegant travelogue Mediterranean Winter  - which I read in the 30c shade
The moving and Whitbread winning Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time by Mark Haddon

and then a Scottish thread

Michael Fry's excellent new Highland history Wild Scots
The New Road, Neil Munro's novel of the end of the auld sang
and
John Sandler's Battle of Harlaw

and a confession - John Grisham's The Summons - which seemed to be no different from any other Grisham.

List of food and drink consumed may follow.

Tagged by a book fiend

Lynne over at Knowledge Problem is playing Book Tig (that's Tag to you folks over the pond). Interestingly, I was having a chat with two colleagues today about the Minister's Cat- now there's a game for wordsmiths.

1. How many books do I own? Sitting in Mrs Seat's office there are about 600 books scattered on the shelves, all mine. There are another 200 or so in the spare room, all mine; and, a further few hundred in boxes waiting for new shelves to arrive downstairs. That's not counting my little collection at work, and my childhood books (now on loan to various nephews and nieces) mainly at my parents.

2. What’s the last book I bought? Tragically I was an only twin; the biography of Peter Cook. Bought at Edinburgh airport and the cause of great jocularity on the BD63 to LHR.

3. What’s the last book I read? Thomas Asbridge's First Crusade. Others started, but not yet finished.

4. What are the five books that mean the most to me?

(Does Rosemary Sutcliffe count? School and Uni set texts not included.)

Alasdair Gray Lanark - an extrordinary evocation of another Scotland

Albert Jay Nock The State of the Union

Tom Wolfe The Right Stuff - start of a long love affair with the USA

Bernard Guenee States and Rulers - a medievalist's medievalist

Sandy McCall Smith Portuguese Irregular Verbs - pure laughter on paper

Right: David at Freedom and Whisky; Stuart at Independence; Iain at Edge of England's Sword; Tim at Tim Worstall and Hew BG (time you had your own blog, HBG - but until you do, you may leave a comment here!) - you're are all "It"!

Caricatures and Portugese Irregular Verbs

An excellent exhibition has just opened at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Combining the 18th c. caricatures of Jon Kay with the contemporary cartoons of Iain MacIntosh it highlights how little has really changed in Edinburgh since we were the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Iain MacIntosh has illustrated a number of books by my former ethics professor, and all round good egg, Alexander McCall Smith. I read the Portuguese Irregular Verbs trilogy one rain-soaked afternoon and haven't laughed as much in a long time. His daily novel, 44 Scotland Street, is coming to the end of its second volume in The Scotsman.