The Incredible Journey: Christmas from Genesis to Jesus

Steve Brady visited me on my sick bed a little while ago and left me a copy of this book. Although it is book of daily readings, I couldn't put it down and finished it in three days. It is known as an advent book with a reading from Genesis to Revelation for every day of the Advent period. Steve is fun to read with an irrepressible sense of humour (he'd have to be like that, he is an Everton supporter).

The whole Christian message is here in this book and since Steve is an expert on the Last Things (he wrote his PhD on the Intermediate State) he gets Revelation right. If you are wondering what you should read in December, read this.

Beyond the Poison; Peter Robinson

We have watched a few of the DI Banks films on TV. He is a fairly miserable detective from Yorkshire with all the usual character flaws. The books are written by Peter Robinson; there are about 20 of them. I have been reading Beyond the Poison, his latest book and one of the three that doesn't feature DI Banks.

A composer of film music returns to Yorkshire from Holywood after his wife dies (sounds like breast cancer). He buys a remote manor house and discovers that in 1953 the wife who owned it then was hanged for killing her husband. He becomes intrigued by the case and is convinced that she wasinnocent; her conviction being due to fifties' moral prejudice. She was having an affair with a young artist only half her age. Her husband oribably died of natural causes. But as he traces the old men who impacted on her life, was there a more sinister story behind it all?

As we discover the background, we disover the history of North Yorkshire in the war and read a vivid account of what it was to be a nurse in the QA in Singapore when the Japanese attacked. The Japanese never signed the Geneva convention and their treatment of prisoners of war was vile. The German use of chemical warfare in WWI prompted the setting up of a British chemical and biological warfare defence establishment at Porton Down. Or was it a chemical and biological warfare attack department?

The book is well written being full of references to the films and music that I admire and is very up=to-date. culminating in the summer of 2011.

Three thrillers

During my period of enforced idleness I have been reading a few things, among them 3 thrillers.

There has been a BBC detective series based on the detective novels of Ian Hunter who died recently at the age of 82. Hunter was born at Hoveton, Norfolk and went to school across the River Bure in Wroxham. He left school at 14 and worked on his father's farm near Norwich. He enjoyed dinghy sailing on the Norfolk Broads, wrote natural history notes for the local newspaper, and wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. After the war he managed the antiquarian books department of Charles Cubitt in Norwich. Four years later, he established his own bookshop on Maddermarket in the city. From 1955 until 1998 he published a Gently detective novel nearly every year (46 in all). He retired to Brundall in Norfolk where he continued his interests in local history, natural history, and sailing.

The TV series starred Martin Shaw as a middle aged detective who was very old school in his ways yet sympathetic with the new social changes introduced in the 1960s, like easier divorce, end of the death penalty, tolerance of homosexuality, non-prosecution for attempted suicide, yet resolutely against abortion. The series differ markedly from the books, being set in Northumberland and Durham rather than in Norfolk, and with different characters.

The book I read was Gently by the Shore. I was rather disappointed by it. It was only the second of the George Gently novels and was set in a seaside town in East Anglia. I thought that the TV series was much better but was based on novels written in the 60s whereas this was from the 1950s. It had a rather tame Cold War theme.

I was struck by the very correct use of English with ultra-correct punctuation. Adjectives like 'south-wards' were hyphenated. It was strange to see how the language has changed over 50 years. I was also struck how words have passed out of the language and how the word 'gay' was used to mean 'self-consciously gaudy'. A mentally-handicapped individual was unselfconsciously referred to as a 'half-wit'. Hunter is unafraid to use medical terms like 'thorax' and 'olfactory' or technical words from yachting like 'staithe' and 'chandlery'.

I will try one of the other Ian Hunter novels to see if he is worth persisting with.

Robert Crais (born June 20, 1953) is an American author of detective fiction. Crais began his career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. He lists amongst his literary influences the authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck. Crais lives in California's Santa Monica mountains with his family.

Crais's usual protagonist and first-person narrator is private detective Elvis Cole, an ex-Ranger. Cole's partner is Joe Pike, a former Marine. Except for Demolition Angel, Hostage and The Two-Minute Rule, all of Crais' books feature Cole and Pike, with The Watchman (2007), The First Rule (2010) and The Sentry (2011) centering on Joe Pike. The author tackles a variety of subjects in his novels. Sunset Express dealt with a killer who bore an uncanny resemblance to O.J. Simpson. The most frequently recurring theme in Crais's books is the value of honesty; in his works, the long-term value of coming clean always outweighs the short-term benefits of covering up the problem. Crais also delves into issues of family and loyalty.

The book I read was Free Fall with echoes of the Rodney King riots. It is easy to see the influence of Raymond Chandler, though he is nothing like so good a writer. Phrases instead of sentences and the judicious use of the dash instead of punctuation are characteristics. The plot is arranged to provide an opportunity for extreme violence. Very unlike Agatha Christie. I have a memory of reading a Robert Crais novel before and towards the end I wasn't sure whether I had read this Robert Crais novel before. If it wasn't then his books are very similar.

I have also read the latest Lee Child. Jim Grant (born 1954), better known by his pen name Lee Child, is an English thriller writer. His wife Jane is a New Yorker, and they currently live in New York state. His first novel, Killing Floor, won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Each of Child's novels follows the adventures of a former American Military Policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States.

Though Grant was born in Coventry, England, his parents moved him and his three brothers to Handsworth Wood in Birmingham when he was four years old, so they could get a better education. Grant attended Cherry Orchard Primary School in Handsworth Wood until the age of 11 and was one of the cleverest boys in his year. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham, also the alma mater of J. R. R. Tolkien and Enoch Powell. His father was a civil servant and his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist. Some of Grant's early influences include Enid Blyton, W.E. Johns, and Alistair MacLean though his debt to Raymond Chandler is also apparent.

Grant joined Granada Television, part of the UK's ITV Network, in Manchester as presentation director. There he was involved with shows including Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown (TV series), Prime Suspect, and Cracker. Grant was involved in the transmission of more than 40,000 hours of programming for Granada, writing thousands of commercials, news stories, and trailers. He stayed with Granada 1977-1995, After being made redundant he decided he wanted to start writing novels, stating they are "the purest form of entertainment." In 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published and he moved to the US in the summer of 1998.

I read "The Affair", the 16th Jack Reacher novel, which is set in the past when Reacher was still a Miltary Policeman. It lets us know how and why he left the Army. It is the same old Reacher. As usual the story moves along at a cracking pace and gives a satisfying burst of adrenaline. The dashes and short sentences are even more apparent than in the Robert Crais.

The next author I am going to read is Peter Robinson. I'll keep you posted.

Convalescing

How have I been spending my time while convalescing? I have been watching films, sleeping and reading.

I am still ploughing (plowing?) through the book on Bayesian statistics, but that has been a little heavy. I have also decided to attack 'A Game of Thrones' the first novel in George R. R. Martin's best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels. I believe it is being serialized on TV, but that is on one of the few TV channels I don't have. Still I have always preferred the book to the movie.

I did watch a spy thriller on BBC TV last night called 'Page 8'. For a thriller it was rather gentle but the cast was stellar. Perhaps it could have done with a real film director. David Hare's strong views about rendition failed to allow the equally valid view that fighting bad guys with one hand tied behind our back leads to the triumph of evil.

I finally got around to watching the movie "The time traveller's wife". I read the book some time ago and preferred it to the film. Brad Pitt owned the rights and his mate Eric Bana starred as the beefcake. It was less complicated than the book.

I have also watched The Apostle starring Robert Duvall and one to stand alongside Tender Mercies which I saw a long while ago.

Miss Pettigrew lives for a day is also a heartwarming RomCom starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams and set in a London just before the second World War where night clubs and West End musicals are all that a young girl thinks about until she meets a couple of survivors from the first world war, who takes life a little more seriously.

Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont stars Joan Plowright as an elderly widow signed in as a long-term resident at a private hotel in London for the genteel poor. She expects her grandson to call but he never does. Instead after a fall she is adopted as a grandmother by a nice young busker on the London underground. As the friendship blossoms she finds she has more in common with him than with her own family.

Apart from the films, I have watched to football. Already after 3 games Manchester United are top of the league and Manchester City second. Both had big victories over London clubs at the weekend with United's drubbing or their closes competitors over the past 20 years, Arsenal, sensational. They won 8-2. I should h8-2 be an Arsenal supporter at present!

Absolute Friends

Over the past month I have been reading Absolute Friends by John le Carre. Normally I enjoy this author, but this book I have found very tedious.

IT is set at the end of the cold war and ponders what spies were going to do after this. It meanders into the Muslim Jihad, but then gets obsessed with the idea that the Iraq war was a neo-con conspiracy. I suppose it is possible to derive a scenario where this emerges but this book so wanted it to be one that it descends into fantasy.

Rather poor reading and below standard writing for this author.

Mrs Thatcher

I have been reading Thatcher's Britain by Richard Vinen. It is now more than 30 years since Mrs Thatcher came to power and I guess it is history for most people rather than news. It might be a suitable time to assess her influence. She is a woman of the same generation as the Queen and Marilyn Monroe. who broke through the glass ceiling, despite being on the 'wrong side'. For the left she is a figure of bile and spleen; for the right she is a heroine, but someone who was never 'one of us'.

Like Obama she attracts accolades for being the first of a kind, but unlike Obama, she has actually done something. The first thing she did was to rein in public spending, risking a recession in order to control the money supply. 364 economists wrote to the Times saying she was crazy; but it worked. Her policies are being repeated now by the current coalition government with the same predictable results.

She then was called upon to fight a war that stretched logistic possibilities. There were many who thought that it would have been cheaper to pay the 1800 Falkland Islanders £1 million each and resettle them in rural Scotland than send and Armada to the South Atlantic. There is no doubt that previous leaders like Wilson and Callaghan would have crumpled. Had she done so Great Britain would have had as much influence in the future as Austria or Greece. She had luck on her side in that in Galtieri, Argentina had a brutal right-wing dictator whom nobody wanted to side with and she therefore had covert aid from both America and France. She also was pitting a volunteer army against a conscripted one and this really showed itself when the helicopters were lost when the transport ship Atlantic Conveyor was sunk by an Exocet, having been mistaken for an aircraft carrier. Paratroopers coined a new word when they 'yomped' across the island and fought a battle uphill against dug in troops.

Although a messy little war of only moral significance, it did a great deal for British morale and confidence. Perhaps it was this that spurred her to take on the miners. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were the leaders of industrial labor. Immediately after the war there had been nearly a million of them and by 1883 there were still over 100,000. They had taken on the Heath government and defeated it. It was a long running sore for Conservatives. Who ran Britain? The Unions or Parliament?

Truth to tell, the miners were fighting a losing battle. Coal could be produced more cheaply in Poland, South Africa and Australia and in any case it was a dirty fuel that killed miners with pneumoconiosis and residents of towns with polluted air. And then there was North Sea oil and gas. I used to quip, "What do Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Hestletine have in common?" "The first got women and children out of the mines and the second got the men out." Although people admired miners for the filthy job they did and the sacrifice of their health to bring us energy, no-one really regrets that there is no longer any significant coal mining in the UK.

The Miners were badly led by Arthur Scargill who tried to avoid holding a strike ballot. Even his Union friends hated him and gave covert help to the government. Help from other unions was not forthcoming and the strike was called at an inopportune time when the power stations had plentiful supplies of coal with the warm weather coming up. Peter Walker, the very un-Thatcherite Minister in charge played a very straight bat throughout (perhaps because he was a Heath crony and wanted his own back on the miners.)

The Conservatives had enacted stringent restrictions on Union power and it is noticeable that the Blair/Brown governments have not reversed them. The same is true of that other great plank of Thatcherism - Privatization. Thatcher inherited a socialist country. The railways, the Post Office, British Airways, the airports, the gas industry, the water industry, the electricity industry, the telephones, radio-isotope production, the steel industry, and the major car producer were all owned by the government which ran them very badly. It could take 6 months to get a phone at a time when increasing numbers of people wanted to be contactable. The very houses that many people lived in were owned by the state and rented out. There were few private landlords and those that there were, were often crooks.

Thatcher changed all that. The Labor Party were committed to taking even more things into public ownership and the government's response to failing industry had hitherto been to nationalize it and provide it with a heavy subsidy at taxpayers expense. Most of the privatizations have been successful. It is hard to think what the government would have done about cell phones. It would probably take 6 months to get one! The railways is the glaring exception. They are still inefficient and expensive in private hands (but then it was her successor that privatized them, probably using the wrong business plan). The post office is still a nationalized industry but successive governments have shied away from this fence.

The sale of council houses at a discount has been a great success in England; the Welsh and Scots still think the English owe them a living and they remain socialist republics with the Union. Hardly anyone votes Conservative in these 'countries'. They certainly need a dash or private enterprise to shake them out of their torpor. There are middle aged men in Wales who have never worked and don't intend ever to work. They just father children that the State pays for. Independence for Scotland and Wales is what is needed. A few years ago they envied the 'tiger' economy in Ireland. Not now.

Northern Ireland has always been a subsidized state. Monetarism never took hold there. The subsidies were political to keep the Protestants from being unemployed and having to emigrate like the Southern Catholics. In truth tourism, horse racing and farming cannot support even the small population that lives there. It is a fine place for the landed gentry, but there is no future in that even in England.

Nationalism had its heyday under Thatcher. She really was despised by the other nations of the Union. She was hard nosed about public subsidies, but she could not bring herself to jettison the minor countries of the Union. Much of England's success came from the Big Bang, the deregulation of the City of London, which made it the financial capital of the world. This particularly benefited London and the South East and compensated for the decline in manufacturing industry that was taking place in the rest of the country. The government enticed Japanese auto manufacturers to South Wales, the North East and the West country, but not to Scotland. The two Scottish banks (Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland) certainly benefited from the Big Bang, but most of the jobs they created were in London with only poorly paid call-center jobs in Scotland.

But Irish nationalism was her greatest enemy. She was blown up by an IRA assassination attempt and two of her closest associates, Airey Neave (who had escaped from Colditz) and Ian Gow, were assassinated. She was not the sort to give in to threats and seemed to regard Gerry Adams as a lesser form of Argentinian. Not for her the more emollient tones of her successors John Major or Tony Blair.

Yet in foreign policy it was she who saw in Gorbachev, 'a man with whom we could do business'. With Ronald Reagan, a man with similar political ideas but a much softer manner, she won the Cold War by holding her nerve. She would have made a fine poker player.

Yet all political careers end in failure and she was deposed by an internal dissatisfaction in the Tory Party. She never lost an election, but in the end she did not win well enough. She had her favorites, usually good-looking younger men who were nor really up to the job, yet she was not well-liked. Even her staunchest supporters in the difficult years, Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe, deserted her. She lacked collegiality. Her legacy remains. Tony Blair and David Cameron would really have been her kind of boys, though neither of them would be up to the job in her eyes. She would have loved to be still in charge, reliving 1980 in 2007. She wouldn't have let Obama withdraw his aircraft from Libya in 2011.

Watching and reading

I watched Heaven Knows Mr Allison the other night. It is a two-hander between Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr as a marine and a nun trapped on a Pacific Island during the war against Japan. It has a happy ending with Mr Mitchum only scratched and Miss Kerr with her honor intact. It was a typical piece of period hokum that was enjoyable enough though both the leads played sterotypical characters and nothing very surprising happened. It might have been fairly shocking at the time with a mixed sex cave for sleeping in. Today the most shocking thing about it would be the anti-Japanese racism since the Nips were portrayed as semi-comical ineffectual individuals that one could hardly imagine conquering most of the Pacific.

We also watched the latest instalment of Nanny McPhee, which was fun. How we would all wish for a nanny like that to solve our problems! Emma Thompson, who wrote it, is a Left-wing socialist atheist. She obviously has a strong religious empathy, nevertheless. Christians would recognize the Holy Spirit as McPhee's paradigm.

I have also read the latest Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight. This is supposedly for younger readers, though the level of humor, complexity and adult themes is as great as in the other Discworld novels. It concerns the teenage witch, Tiffany Aching. Among the topics it covers are cutting the toenails of an old woman who has not had her shoes off in a year, a miscarriage in a 13-year old brought on by a severe beating from her father, attempted suicide, time travel, young love dissipated, joke shops that sell plastic doggie-poo, the responsibilities of leadership, death and bereavement, hiding one's abilities in order to fit in, weddings and funerals, bullying and standing up to bullies, the hidden truths in folk-myths, and prejudice and how it spreads in a community. Such serious subjects (apart from the joke shop) are handled with fun and humor and a delicious use of English. There are now 38 books in the Discworld series; I feel like reading them all again.

Healthcheck

Today I had my Hickman line replaced on the other side. I had had Augmentin for 5 days since the other one came out. Augmentin is not pleasant causing colic and diarrhea, but having had the line removed and the abdominal symptoms subsided I am feeling a lot better with much more energy. I think the next chemotherapy will be next Monday.

I have managed to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw with my wife - one piece missing! and I have started a book by Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, Virtue Reborn.

In the meantime I have read a John LeCarre from a few years back. Our Game is about two spies who were retired when the Soviet Union fell, but they can't leave well alone and get involved with a rebel movement in the Caucasus. LeCarre seems to be supporting the Blairite interventionist line (Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Sierra Leone) but it seems to me that it is impossible to tell which of the combatants has right on their side. As usual the story is about betrayal and involves betraying a friend, a lover, and a country.

We seem to be watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes recently. I watched the recent movie starring Robert Downey Jr and an old one Without a Clue with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley. Then we started on the old Basil Rathbone series which has been digitally remastered. I still think that the Jeremy Brett TV series was the best.

A Quiet Belief in Angels

They say that you should write about what you know. When I began this novel it irritated me. It was slow to get started and read as if it were written by a young writer trying to impress his English teacher. It was about a young writer trying to impress his English teacher. Although billed as a thriller, the thrills came out so slowly that although it was a bout a serial killer, the actual murders were almost incidental. It was really about a young boy growing into a man. It was just that his rites of passage involved being witness to a young girl being raped and dismembered - at least he was the one who found most of the body.

The killing of little girls haunts him throughout his life as tragedy piles on tragedy. It begins immediately pre-war in a small town in Georgia. The description of the environment is believable to me (though who am I to judge). the author comes from Birmingham. I thought it must be Birmingham Alabama, but no, this is Birmingham, England. The novel has won many awards, but although it held my attention, it took a lot of getting in to, and the plot denouement was too obvious. In any murder mystery there must be more than one possible solution, but if all the other suspects are eliminated with 50 pages to go, it is easy to guess the killer. You could, I guess, bring in a new character, but that would be spoiling the game, but when the answer comes not from the plot, but from the number of pages left to read, it is too disappointing for words.

Disordered Minds

Minette Walters lives here in Dorset and is one of the top crime writers. I have just read 'Disordered Minds' which is set in Bournemouth, though not a Bournemouth that I recognize. It is what you would call a psychological thriller.

Gregory House says, "Everybody lies." He is right, but in this book everyone creates a new personality for themselves. People construct a persona that makes them comfortable with themselves, even though everybody else sees through it. This makes for a fascinating read as the threads unravel and the truth is gradually revealed. The main investigator is not who he claims to be, not is the murderer. The person convicted didn't do it and one person can't remember doing it. The guilty accuse the innocent and the innocent protect the guilty, though how innocent are the innocent.

If you haven't already, read it.

One to read

After two boring books, here is one to read. Val McDermid is not part of the Edinburgh reading set which includes Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, JK Rowling and Iain Banks, all of whom I delight in but she writes about the same locus. She calls it "Tartan noir".

Val writes thrillers and "The Distant Echo" is from 2003. This is a stand alone book, unconnected with Kate Brannigan and Tony Hill, who feature in her thriller series. What I liked about it was its use of the 'cold case' formula which allowed her to contrast police methods from the seventies and the noughties. I also was pleased not to guess the identity of the killer until about a hundred pages from the end and even there, there was a sting in the tail.

It is usually the case that the killer in real-life murders is a family member or the one who found the body. Val explores how such an assumption can ruin lives. She also gives a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of an evangelical preacher, for one who comes from her (lesbian) background.

I recommend the book which can be obtained from Amazon for a penny or from all good charity shops for a pound.

A Touch of Frost

Some of you may be fans of David Jason's performance in A Touch of Frost, the long running detective series. Apart from the fact that he much to old and short to be a serving police officer and the series tends towards sentimentality - I enjoy it too.

So now that there are to be no more TV plays, I thought I would read one of the books that the series was based on - A Killing Frost by RD Wingfield.

It is clear that the books have a more rugged edge than the TV series. Frost is more exasperating and less lovable. He is an over-promoted detective sergeant who hates paperwork, relies on gut-instinct that is often wrong, performs searches without a warrant, longs for the days when he could beat a confession out of a suspect and has a heart of gold, especially where women and children are concerned.

He is foul-mouthed and sexually crude, offensive to authority, filthy in his habits and besotted with an earthier type of woman.

The books are 'poorly' written with short, verbless sentences and poorly presented in paperback with too few words on the page so as to make turning them a chore. They are however, very plot-dense, and the whole series of stories is neatly wrapped up in the denouement.

Frost as a genre is variably described by critics as a funny, frantic, utterly refreshing brew; as affecting, frightening and amusing; a crisp, confident, ripely-characterized novel, exciting, ingenious and roundly satisfying, multiple cases, multiple bodies, lashings of police-infighting. Fast furious and funny; Darker, funnier and more violent than the TV adaptation; a comic monster on the side of the angels; A cross between Rumpole and Columbo; More twists than a bucket of eels. And from the Guardian itself: A clever writer with an appealing line in cheekiness... Frost remains the most unattractive cop in mainstream crime fiction.

All comments are true in part.

Jonathan Aitken

I have just finished reading Jonathan Aitken's autobiography, Pride and Perjury which was written in 2000, ten years ago. Aitken was one of those 'future Prime Ministers' who had his legs chopped from under him by the über-sinister press. He was a person of privilege. Tall and handsome, Eton and Oxford, rich with connections (moderately rich anyway - he could lay his hands on a couple of millions); he was a great nephew of Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express and Minister of Aviation in World War II. His grandfather was British Ambassador to wartime Dublin, and Jonathan was raised in the Embassy because his father was a Spitfire pilot, horribly burned and a guinea pig at Archie McIndoe's plastic surgery unit at East Grinstead, while his mother served in the WRVS.

Not all went smoothly because as a young child he caught TB and spent 3 years with his legs in plaster of Paris, but nevertheless, he profited from his background, becoming a journalist in Viet Nam and Biafra, then a Merchant Banker and an author (he penned a biography of Richard Nixon after Watergate).

He became a conservative MP like his late father, and he was tipped for high office. He became a minister of defence under John Major and later as Chief Secretary to the Treasury he joined the Cabinet. But things began to go wrong.

He had friends in the Middle East which displeased Left Wing journalists at the Guardian and Granada TV. Articles and TV programs began to put it about that he was a Saudi plant in Parliament, that he had acted as a pimp for Arabs, that he took bribes and kick-backs on arms deals and that he ran a brothel (perhaps several).

It seems likely that all these accusations were outright lies and Aitken sued for libel. Despite the obvious veracity of his case he was caught out in a different lie. On a trip to Paris he allowed his hotel bill to be paid by a Saudi friend and then denied it, creating a conspiracy of lies to cover up his falsehood, involving his wife and daughter. The libel case collapsed, he lost his office, he became bankrupt, and his wife divorced him.

Yet he sees this as a journey of redemption.

Spiritually he was the sort of token High Anglican that you get from Public Schools like Eton, but when his wife questioned the shallowness of his Christian beliefs he did a dangerous thing. He put himself in the hands of the Living God. He was already Warden of St Margaret's in Westminster and he joined a Lenten series of meditation. He was asked to think about Isaiah chapter 43:
1 But now, this is what the LORD says— he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life.
15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, Israel's Creator, your King."
18 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
25 "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Jonathan Aitken passed through deep waters, but God was with him. He had to forget the former things. His public life was lost. He was sent to prison for perjury in 1999 and served 6 months of an 18 month sentence. Before going to prison he attended an Alpha Course. He came to recognize that this was all necessary to cure him of his pride and arrogance. He emerged a much humbled man.

After graduating with Distinction in theology after two years at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford (2000-2002) he began a new career as a writer, lecturer, and broadcaster. He has completed a second autobiography about his time in prison, a biography of Chuck Colson, who greatly aided his Christian growth and a biography of John Newton.

His wider activities include being a director of Prison Fellowship International, executive director of The Trinity Forum in Europe; and Honorary President of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. In 2007 he was appointed Chairman of the Centre for Social Justice’s policy study group on Prison Reform. He has been a speaker at the Keswick Convention

As a Christian public speaker Jonathan Aitken is heavily in demand for lectures, talks, debates and after dinner speeches. He fulfils around 100 speaking engagements a year, many of them in the United States.

Nudge

My older son is a health economist. He came to it via a degree in history then a spell as a hospital administrator, a researcher at the Kings Fund, then a time as a health care purchaser before joining the regulator, CHI as an analyst. As that has changed manifestations to the Healthcare Commission and finally the Care Quality Commission he has risen in the organization so that he is now Head of Intelligence (which sounds like 'M' in 007 movies). Earlier in the year he gave me 4 books for my birthday - I have reviewed 3 of them and I have just finished the fourth, Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. These guys are behavioral economists from the University of Chicago who call themselves Libertarian Paternalists.

They react against the idea that governments should control from the center, but also recognize that free markets can be harmful because in a complex world they allow experts to con humans who don't have the time and perseverance to research their choices. In principle they believe that people should choose for themselves how they live (they are libertarian) but they also believe that we need psychological protection from our worst impulses (they are paternalistic).

As humans we jump to conclusions. Here is an example that they give. Together a bat and ball cost $1 : 10c. The bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost? Most humans, me included, immediately say 10c, when of course, the answer is 5c. Our brains have an automatic and reflective mode. The reflective mode easily works out the answer, but the instant mode jumps to a conclusion.

Here's another one. It takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets. How long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? If you are in reflective mode you see at once the answer is 5 minutes. As a human you might reply 100 minutes.

On the other hand try and play a golf shot in reflective mode and you will shank it or play an air ball.

Like it or not, we are always going to be vulnerable to people who try to get us to use our automatic mode rather than our reflective mode. A good example would be supermarket owners who place chocolates for kiddies near the checkouts. If we are going to be vulnerable, why not frame our architecture of choice that nudges us to a good outcome? The classic example is of the male toilets at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. They engraved a black fly at the base of the urinals. It reduced spillage by 80%.

Perspicacious readers will now see that there are thousands of application for such psychological nudges, but everyone should read this book - Obama did, David Cameron did. It does not only apply to Left or to Right; both can learn from it. It works for increasing saving for your pension pot, for organ donation, for giving to charity, for choosing medical insurers, for making tax returns easier, for avoiding perverse incentives, like rewarding unmarried mothers with free houses, for losing weight, for stopping smoking, it allows people the freedom to ride motor-cycles without helmets (after signing up to the undoubted risks).

The beauty of the system is that it always defaults to freedom of choice. There may be warnings along the way, (Are you sure you want to delete this message?), but it lets you make a fool of yourself in a way that actual bans do not.

Read the book.

Not so good today

It seems that the day after the chemo ends is a poor day. I can't seem to think much and my concentration span is only about 15 minutes. I suppose some would call it 'chemo-brain'. On the other hand, I am coming down off a large dose of steroids, I only slept for 4 hours last night, I have retained water from the steroids and put on about 4 pounds, and my BP is up to 155/80. So maybe its just tiredness.

I was going to write something about 'The Oxford Murders' starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt, but apart from saying it was an enjoyable puzzle that I watched in 4 stages because of my chemo-brain I can't think of anything interesting. The reviews were mixed, but it was better than that. I think I'll keep it in my collection

The other thing I had in mind to write about was 'Winter in Madrid' by CJ Sampsom who writes the Henry VIII detective stories. I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War, so this was a good introduction and an interesting thriller. Worth a read.

The Damned United

After success as Tony Blair and David Frost, Michael Sheen can now be seen masquerading as football manager, Brian Clough, in the film, "The Damned United". I haven't seen the film but I have read the book by David Peace.

Brian Clough was a 2nd division footballer and a goal scoring machine. Playing for North-Eastern clubs, Middlesborough and Sunderland, he scored at the rate of nearly a goal a game, but his career ended at 29 with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

He found his way into football management, first at Hartlepools, the bottom club in the football league, then at Derby County - a midlands no-hoper team that he took the top of the 1st division, then with Brighton, another never-been-there outfit, and then on to Leeds United, the most successful team in Britain for the past 15 years.

Clough's recipe for success was pass, run, play for each other, never argue with officials, never criticise referees, never commit fouls, play football as it should be on the ground. One of his sayings was "If God had meant football to be played in the air, he would have put grass in the clouds."

But Clough didn't believe in God. He didn't believe in luck. He believed in Brian Howard Clough and fair play.

Leeds United played football in a quite different way. They were good, but they were hard. They sought out their opponents weaknesses and played on them. They fouled, they niggled, they feigned injury, they time-wasted, they bullied referees; they cheated. Their long term manager, Don Revie, was a meticulous planner, superstitious, and a whinger. He always had an excuse if thing went wrong. It was never him or his team that erred; it was always bad luck, or a blind referee, or the fans or fixture congestion, or the opposition cheating.

Clough and Revie were diametric opposites. Clough was arrogant, outgoing, conceited, often drunk, emotional, unreliable, brilliantly inspiring and a fast talker. Revie was taciturn,, unsmiling, introverted, tight-lipped, religious (in a superstitious way), punctual, regulated and tongue-tied. They did not get on.

Then there were the owners. In the 1970s football cubs were owned by a Board of Directors - usually self-made working class successes. These men had made their money form scrap metal or haulage, they were butchers or owned a fleet of taxicabs. They were often local politicians for how better to get those lucrative contracts than sitting on the council that awarded them. Local graft was the rule not the exception. The well known and irreverent footballer, Len Shackleton, wrote his own autobiography, rather than have a journalist to write it for him. He had one chapter entitled, "What the average football director knows about football". The chapter consisted of blank pages.

As you might imagine Clough did not get on with directors. He found himself dismissed from Derby County and while settled with lowly Brighton was approached by Leeds United. He broke his contract went to Leeds and told the players there to chuck their trophies and medals in a bin, since they'd only won them by cheating. The players, the fans, the directors, and the old manager all hated him and he hated them. He lasted 44 days before being canned.

5 years later he had taken Nottingham Forest, in the next door town to Derby, to the first division championship and twice to become Champions of Europe.

In 2004 he died of cancer having already had a liver transplant for alcoholic cirrhosis.

The novel is a strange one; a impressionistic fiction based on fact. It offended a lot of people, but was critically acclaimed. If the picture that it paints of football is an accurate one, then it is a horrible world. The footballers are foul-mouthed, heavy smokers, drinkers and lechers. Their on-the-pitch behavior is cynical and fraudulent. At one point in the novel Clough the socialist/atheist opines that there must be a heaven because the world he lives in is surely hell. I'd agree with that.

What to do when you don't feel well.

The last few days have seen me rather below par. I have been tired and had abdominal discomfort, though no real pain. My appetite has been poor and I've lost a few pounds. However, this is nothing like the chemotherapy side effects that I have inflicted on others.

To pass the time I have been reading. I recommend the following:

The Reed Stephens novels. These are written by fantasy writer Stephen Donaldson. Normally he writes epics about Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, battling with Lord Foul, but between times he throws off a Chandler-esq thriller. It is light entertainment, but fast moving.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale. This is a non fiction account of a famous 1860 murder at Road Hill House in Wiltshire. A 3-year old was snatched from his bed and found with his throat cut in an outside privee. The first professional detectives from Scotland Yard were called in and quickly solved the case, but could not secure a conviction. Many years later a suspect confessed, but received life imprisonment rather than the gallows.

The story takes in the development of the fictional detective, and involves Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. The background social history of Victorian England is fascinating.

I have also watched some movies: two Jack Lemmon films: The Out of Towners and The Front Page and a Douglas Sirk movie, Me and My Gal. Six more Douglas Sirks to watch.

Agatha Christie

Last night I watched an episode of Poirot. David Suchet is far and away the best impersonator of Agatha Christie's famous Belgian detective and his performance has improved over the years. Coincidentally last week saw an investigation into Suchet's ancestors. Although Jewish, David is now an evangelical Christian; that never stops him being Jewish, of course. He ancestors came from an area of central Europe that has been Russian and Prussia in its history. The persecution was the same whatever the nation.

Suchet surpasses both Ustinov and Finney. Three new 2-hour episodes are currently being shown on ITV. 'Cat among the pigeons' which was aired last night has a fairly silly plot, but just watching Suchet's performance and soaking in the period brought me a great deal of pleasure.

However, it reminded me of my childhood. Agatha Christie was banned from our house, not on grounds of taste, but because she was ajudged too frightening. Today we regard these films as light entertainment; when I was a child she was for adults only. People were murdered! How things have changed.

In the 1940s and 1950s in Britain murder was very rare and a thing of horror.