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A Walk Up Wolstonbury Hill in Winter

A bracing December walk on the Downs, up an ancient hill, trudging above the rainclouds, looking down on the misty haze of the Sussex weald, listening to my Desert Island playlist, remembering the times I met Margaret Thatcher.

What’s that last thing, Tim?

Margaret Thatcher? Random thoughts you get as you hike on your own. I looked into those cold blue eyes once - doltishly described by Mitterand as akin to Caligula’s. Piercing, soul searching, intimidating perhaps; you could see she took no shit from anyone. If only she - a trained scientist - were in charge now instead of the blundering third raters we have today.

Such thoughts I have, ascending, and descending Wolstonbury Hill, Clayton, West Sussex.

Getting out, hiking, exploring, invigorates the mind, stimulates the memory and shakes the box of possibilities. If there has been one good thing to take from this awful 2020, it’s that I’m deliberately walking more around my beautiful county. I say deliberately; before this en-cagement, I used to do 10,000 - 12,000 steps a day naturally, just getting to and from work. (You think my lithe and toned frame occurs naturally?). Once the lockdown began in March, I realised that if I didn’t consciously go on walks, I’d quickly morph into a supersized Tim.

So, I began walking, firstly around Burgess Hill. I think I know the streets and pathways and countryside around my town pretty well now nine months on. How have I lived here so long and not known anything about where I lived? Embarrassing really. But, seek and you shall find, and I have been seeking a lot recently. I’ll share some of these discoveries here over the coming days.

Wolstonbury Hill is part of the defensive screen of rises that separates the Sussex weald from the coast. It lies above the parish of Clayton, famous for the Jack and Jill windmills but also the castle folly bestriding the railway tunnel that takes the London trains under the hills to Brighton beyond.

The Clayton Tunnel takes the London to Brighton trains under this remarkable 19th Century castle folly.

I followed the National Trust map for my walk. The instructions were clear until I hit the environs of Danny Hall - a large country house used by Churchill and his war cabinet. Instead of walking around the hill and climbing obliquely, I went too early and ended up clambering up the steep slope directly. I puffed and panted up the hill aware that an attractive, and much younger lady, was coming up fast behind me.

So I increased my pace and hit the top red faced and wheezing, all ready to smile benignly at my pursuer. I mean, how does anyone meet anyone these days? Perhaps a real-life ‘hello’ is better than being ghosted on a dating app? Probably, maybe, dunno; the lady - quite rightly - ghosted me in real-life and whizzed past and onwards into the flock of bell wearing sheep. Yes, like Switzerland.

It’s a racy blog I write.

The view from the hill : Danny House in the foreground

The views down to the coast or across to the Jack and Jill windmills were obscured by the mist. Still, what I could see - Hassocks, Burgess Hill, Hurstpierpoint - was well worth the climb. This being December, the pathways through the various woods were clogged with mud. I suppose, that’s what you expect in winter, out on the Downs. I think next time, I’ll don the wellies and sacrifice looking good for remaining dry. Spring and summer will bring their own delights.

My route down was milder, more winding, more reflective. The rain came down slightly and that, combined with my playlist and the bells of the sheep, made this more Christmas-y than I expected. I don’t need snow or twinkling lights. Just bleakness and the dark trunks of lifeless trees. Yes, I’m more Corelli than Carey.

Christmas is a time of memory - lost family Christmases, departed relatives, forgotten friends, little children now grown up. Memories of Margaret Thatcher... In the mist, in the rain, walking the chalk scarred hilltops of Sussex, you can think of these things.

I’ll be back.

The return from Wolstonbury Hill.

Playlist

• Sixpence None The Wiser - Kiss Me

• Everything but the Girl - On My Mind

• Van Morrison - Beside You

• Eurythmics - Here Comes the Rain Again

• Frank Sinatra - You’re Sensational

• The Rolling Stones - Time Waits for No-One

• Abba - The Winner Takes it All

How Negative Interest Rates Are the New Flares

Economists are herd creatures. Admittedly there may be more than one herd but they like to get with their fellow economists and chew the cud.

Like all social sciences, it has fads, fashions and theories that, like flares, come and go. So, why do I say negative interest rates are the new flares?

Well, for a start, it’s an exciting phrase, one that allows you to visualise some long haired loser from the 70’s nodding along earnestly as some prog rock group embark on a twenty minute keyboard and drum solo on the theme of The Hobbit. But extend that zoom focus; all the kids are wearing flares. Yes, these flappy trousered kids are the economists.

And negative interest rates are Emerson, Lake and Palmer?

Er, no. Yes. Perhaps. I know. I took the analogy too far. It happens.

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean, yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen. No, what I mean is, economists follow fashions like 70’s kids bopping to progressive rock. And today, the fashion has turned to negative interest rates.

In my Linkedin article I write (though not as I do now, yes I’m versatile) about the growing cult of negative interests rates. How banks, companies and people might be charged for storing balances within the financial system. To be fair, this idea has been around for a while. Following the central bank responses to the last recession - aka The Credit Crunch - interest rates were left on the floor. Real screw the savers territory.

So what to do? The central banks, by bringing rates to zero, had effectively got rid of one of the two arrows they have in their economic quiver (the other being printing money. They like that one too - it’s so virile. Of course, the viagra soon wears off and leaves just a headache. I’m told).

But, some bright spark might have said, what if zero wasn’t the end? What if we, like, took rates to negative? “So we’d charge people for giving us money?” his boss might have asked afraid of not getting down with the kids. “Yeah, exactly! We’ll make money a hot potato. Pass it on on quick!”

And so, the theory of negative interest rates was born.

For me though, big theories of economics - from the General Theory, counter cyclical demand management, The Austrian School, Monetarism, The invisible hand, the incomes augmented Philips curve, return to the Gold Standard, baggism, shaggism, thisism, thatism - they’re all a bit ‘theoretical’. Grand theories are a parlour game played without reference to life outside the cosy prism.

But it reduce it to the micro level. You and me.

Economics is about incentives. If you charge people to store their money you will dis-incentivise them from doing so. Some people will put money under the mattress. Others though will buy holidays and spend their savings and so be vulnerable should they get old, or sick or lose their job.

Money is amoral. It is a means of exchange. No more. No less. However, I'm not sure debt and consumption are wise replacements for prudence and deferred gratification. Negative interest rates seem to tip monetary policy from amorality into immorality. And that can’t be right.

Now. Where’s my flares?

The First Century BC in Five Battles

The first century BC is without doubt the most well-known period from ancient Rome. Films, TV series and books all tend to focus in on this era*. And usually the timeframe of interest is just the thirty year period between 60-30BC.

The last stages of the fall of the Roman Republic - and its transformation to imperial rule - are well known; Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Cato, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Octavian / Augustus, Brutus, Agrippa, Cassius… Some pretty big names - well known even now. Rightly so. There’s much to discuss. However, the century is more detailed, nuanced and action packed than just those central years. Lots more happened in the century before Jesus than Caesar crossing The Rubicon. Telling the story in just five battles is going to be difficult!

I’m dividing 100BC - 1BC into three eras. Most of the battles will, of course, come from that climatic middle thirty-year period. Can’t help that.

1) Marius and Sulla, The Social and Mithridatic Wars 100-60BC.

A confrontation between more than just two men, Marius and Sulla, this internecine struggle for the soul and power of the Republic led ultimately to the first Roman invasion of, well, er, Rome. The Battle of the Colline Gate 82BC comes from this period as Sulla marched on the capital and fought a huge battle outside the walls of the city.

Also from this period, Rome fights, defeats and then grants citizenship to its Italian allies in The Social War.

Rome defeats a slave revolt at home (you may have heard of this. Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas take on the might of the British Empire. Sorry Roman Empire) and Lucullus and Pompey fight King Mithridates over a twenty five year period and add huge swaths of the Levant to the Empire.

2) The Fall of the Republic 60-31BC. Caesar invades and conquers Gaul, returns and fights Pompey and the Senate, wins, establishes himself as dictator, is assassinated, the assassins are caught and killed by Octavian and Antony, who divide up the empire, fall out and square off. Octavian defeats Antony, becomes Emperor and changes his name to Augustus. Bye bye Republic. From this busy period we have The Battle of Carrhae 53BC - Crassus’ disastrous folly taking on the Parthans, Caesar’s triumph over the Gauls at Alesia in 52BC, Caesar defeating Pompey at Pharsalus 48 BC and the climatic battle of Actium 31BC which finishes off the civil wars.

3) The Augustian settlement - 31BC to the end of century. Augustus as primus unter pares. There were wars, there were battles. Large amounts of territory were formally added to the Empire (Egypt & Switzerland for example), but the modus operanti of empire reverted to the old Roman model - bit by bit, as circumstances dictated. Beginning of the German wars. I have selected no battles from this era. The gates of Janus - opened when Rome was at war, and they usually were, were closed three times during this period.

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Civic life in the Republic had been getting progressively worse, and more violent, over the last third of the 2nd century BC. The causes of this degradation were many; paradoxically Rome’s victories abroad - culminating in the twin victories over Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC - sowed the mauvaises herbes back at home. These, and other triumphs over the past half century, brought home too much money and too many slaves. The new funds tended to go to aristocrats who bought up the farmsteads of their countrymen, creating large estates, using slave labour to work them. Rome’s small scale agrarian economy was already disrupted by the demands placed on its citizen army who had to put down their ploughs and serve in the military, sometimes faraway and often for years at a time. So foreign success had tilted the equilibrium in Roman society between the haves and the have nots.

Marius was a nouvo homme who had held the consulship an unprecedented six times whilst fighting off the menace of The Cimbri and the Teutones at the end of the second century BC. He reformed the army, making it a paid profession and not a citizen duty. This had important ramifications for the future of the republic and, perhaps, into the Imperial era. Admittedly, the reforms stabilised and professionalised the army - making it an even more fearsome force. But they also severed a link between the army and the state. From now on, armies fought more for their general and less for Rome, with devastating results to the stability of the state. Throw in class warfare, demagogues, constant wars and the republic’s days were numbered.

Sulla - one of Marius’ ex lieutenants, came to symbolise the reactionary optimates through opposition to land reform and resentment at the increasingly bold populist interventions from the people’s tribunes. This party disdained where Rome was going, the wealth, the lack of morals, the appeal to the masses. The clash has familiar strains with one side wanting to return to the purity and stability of earlier Republican days and the other looking to reform a faltering system.

The wars between these two visions of the republic took place against the backdrop of the First Mithridatic War. Sulla - the consul at the time - was appointed to lead Rome’s army in the near east and, whilst he was away, the forces of Marius took over Rome. This happened twice. The second time provoked a full scale civil war culminating outside the walls of Rome itself at The Battle of The Colline Gate 82 BC.

Though Marius was dead by this point, his son had picked up his causes and factions. Returning from the east, Sulla rushed to Rome where the Marian party - with Etruscan and Samnite allies were holed up. The battle lasted from mid afternoon onwards and into the night. It was a bloody and confused affair taking place in front, and within, Rome. It is said that 50,000 men died that night as gradually Sulla’s forces forced their way into Rome.

The ramifications - proscriptions, the massacre of 8000 Samnite prisoners, dictatorship - were fearful. Sulla was a contradiction as a man. He took dictatorial powers only to resign them - Cincinnatus style - months later before standing himself for election. During that time he reformed the constitution, giving more power to the Senate, less to the Tribunes of the people but also making it harder for people like him to seize control. It didn’t last.

“No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full.” Sulla.

Externally, Rome fought a long running war with Mithridates VI, King of Pontus (in modern day Turkey). The wars - there were three - lasted from 88 BC to 63 BC and took place against a backdrop of increasing violence back in Rome which worked to Mithradates advantage. The conflict started with the massacre of all Romans in the East by Mithradates and ended with his suicide - alone and defeated - as Pompey created a huge Eastern Empire (modern Turkey, Syria and the Levant). This new general-led conquest model spread. When Pompey formed the First Triumvirate with Crassus and Caesar in 59 BC, the other two were eager to replicate his successes. They had - shall we say - variable results.

Crassus first. There are three or four really large and consequential Roman defeats across the thousand or so years of the Empire. Along with Hannibal’s Cannae slaughter and, say, the wipe out of three legions at the Teutoburg Forest or Valens’ defeat at the hands of the Goths at Adrianople 378 AD, Crassus’ defeat at Carrhae 53BC was one of the largest Roman defeats ever. A poor general let his troops down.

Over on the Eastern border of the Empire, the Parthian Empire abutted the expanding Romans. Crassus was eager to take advantage of a proxy dispute with the Parthians over succession within the buffer state of Armenia. He set off to Mesopotamian with seven legions and associated auxiliaries. Many marched out. Hardly any came back. The few survivors of the battle were nearly all captured never to return.**

The legions died hard under a hail of arrows at Carrhae.

It was arrogance and stupidity that caused the Roman army under Crassus to die in such numbers. Foolishly taking a short cut across the desert, where they were vulnerable and with little cavalry support, the legions were attacked by wave after wave of horse archers and heavily armoured cataphracts. They were literally picked off. Crassus himself was killed whilst trying to parlay with the Persians. It was a total disaster and one brought about needlessly by a poor general seeking personal glory. This was not the Roman way.

However, someone else who could also be accused of putting personal aggrandisement ahead of the state’s interests, was one Gaius Julius Caesar. However, unlike Crassus, Caesar was a ruthlessly good general, able to both inspire his troops and be inspirational in battle. After his consulship in 59BC, Caesar’s reward was the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul. Most governors were happy to grow fat on the taxes of their province but not Caesar! From this springboard he spent the next eight years conquering the whole of Gaul - a massive area consisting of modern day France, Belgium and parts of Germany. He even ventured to Britain a couple of times.

The Gauls had long been a mythical foe to the Romans; they sacked Rome in 390 BC and as recent as 100BC threatened to overwhelm the Italian peninsular before being turned back by Marius. So Caesar’s victories and conquests were astounding to the Roman people. He won victory after victory throughout Gaul, rushing here and there to urge on his spread out forces suffering only the occasional reverse. The Gauls didn’t unite until it was almost too late. Finally they rallied behind Vercingetorix who massed forces and destroyed crops to starve Caesar’s troops.

Caesar pinned down Vercingetorix and 80,000 of his troops in the hilltop fortress of Alesia 52BC. He had around eleven legions under his command plus various allies. Probably around 65,000 men. He built a wall all around the hilltop fortress but, when the relief force of 250,000 Gauls turned up, he then built a second wall facing the other way. He was now besieged himself and fighting on both fronts.***

But the Romans held against frequent double sided attacks. Caesar was everywhere rallying his troops and making sure the defences held. They did. The besieging army was driven off with huge casualties and the starving Gauls in the hilltop fortress had no option but to surrender to Caesar (see main picture). Vercingetorix was sent to Rome and held in prison for five years before taking part in one of Caesar’s triumphal parades. He was then ritually throttled to death.

Gaul was conquered. Alesia was Caesar’s greatest victory.

“Then after a short interval they renewed their charge, threw their javelins and, as ordered by Caesar, quickly drew their swords. Nor indeed did the Pompeians fail to meet the occasion; they stood up to the hail of missiles and bore the onset of the legions; they kept their ranks, threw their javelins, and then resorted to their swords.”

— Caesar - The Civil War describing The Battle of Pharsalus

His term as proconsul in Gaul up, Caesar famously crossed the Rubican River into Italy, muttered something in Greek about dice, and headed off to Rome with his army. His speed and audacity caught his rivals in the Senate and Pompey by surprise. They didn’t have an army to hand and so bolted from the city and crossed the Adriatic in order to gather troops from the East. Civil war had again begun.

Caesar firstly destroyed the Senate’s forces in Spain and then, the following year followed Pompey over the Adriatic. There was an inconclusive battle at Dyrrhachium before the decisive showdown at Pharsalus in Greece. Caesar was outnumbered, his troops were starving and he’d been tactically boxed in. The smart move for the Senate forces would have been to starve him out. But they weren’t smart.

Caesar’s troops were battle hardened veterans from the long Gallic Wars whereas many of Pompey’s were raw recruits. As described by Caesar in the quote above, although outnumbered, his troops charged Pompey’s lines taking the initiative against the larger force. Pompey’s overwhelming calvary charged Caesar’s cavalry as expected but were in turn cut down by a fourth line of infantry Caesar had concealed. From there, Caesar’s forces routed Pompey’s legions and chased them and their general back to their camp. As the camp was in danger, Pompey threw off his general’s cloak and escaped through the rear gate. He crossed to Egypt where he was traitorously beheaded by Ptolemy XIII, Cleopatra’s brother.

Following his victory at Pharsalus, Caesar spent the next couple of years tracking down the remains of the Senate party before returning to Rome as dictator for life. Which is when he was assassinated in 44BC. The next couple of years were a wearying round of civil wars and proscriptions as Antony and Octavian tracked down and defeated the assassins - Brutus and Cassius. With Lepidus, they formed the second triumvirate in 43 BC and carved up the Roman world between the three of them.

The following ten years were relatively peaceful militarily but gradually the two head triumvirs - Octavian and Antony - perhaps inevitably - fell out. They prepared huge armies for war in a winner-takes-all campaign in Greece.

Technically, Actium wasn’t the last battle of the Roman Republic. That honour goes to the Battle of Alexandria the year after in 30 BC where Octavian chased down Antony and Cleopatra. But this decisive victory off the coast of Greece made the ending inevitable and anti-climatic.

Antony was the better general. He’d proved this many times under Gabinius in the East and then Caesar in Gaul and, following the latter’s death, in the wars against the assassins. One shouldn’t get too hung up on his latter day portrayal as a lovestruck drunk who fell for Cleopatra and let her rule him. But certainly the quality of his generalship declined in the years 40-30BC. He received the East in the carve up between himself, Lepidus and Octavian following the Battle of Philippi and, as overlord, attempted without success to avenge the loss of Carrhae against the Persians.

Actium was a sea battle but it was a sea battle only because Octavian’s general, Agrippa, was using his fleet to blockade Antony’s land forces on Western coast of Greece. The Battle of Actium was Antony’s attempt to break this blockade. The forces were evenly matched - Agrippa had more ships, Antony had heavier ships. The battle went back and forth until, inexplicably, the squadron under Cleopatra made a break for it and headed off back to Egypt. Antony, transferring to a lighter and faster ship, followed, leaving his remaining forces to fend for themselves.

Agrippa’s fleet then destroyed Antony’s fleet and Antony’s army of nineteen legions (yes, 19!), left stranded without provisions in Greece, surrendered. Octavian, dealing with some troop mutinies and pirates, only followed up on this success the following year. Landing in Egypt, he easily defeated Antony’s remnants of an army. We know what happened next; Antony committed suicide, and Cleopatra, sensing Octavian wanted her as prize exhibit in a subsequent triumph through Rome, did likewise. The civil wars were over.

Octavian, became Augustus (majestic) and gradually consolidated his powers over the Roman people with the willing help of the Senate - purged, cowed and sick of war. The previous century of civil wars, proscriptions, and turmoil had taken the heart out of the Republic. Although Augustus was careful to keep up the facade of the Republic’s institutions (consuls, senate, pontiffs etc) there was no doubt who was really in charge. Augustus faced no serious challenges to this ascendency or rule.

So the first century BC was a transitional period for Rome as it moved away from hundreds of years of Republican rule to five hundred more years (or fifteen hundred including the Byzantine Empire) of quasi monarchy. Despite the internal turmoil and wars, externally, Rome consolidated her power, grew her Empire and was, by the end, much more powerful than she was at the beginning.

“I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble,” said Augustus on his deathbed. Architecturally, he may have been right, certainly many fine public buildings were built during his era. It could also - as has been pointed out - be taken metaphorically; he took chaos and brought order at the expense of liberty.

NOTES

* Or 180 AD and the hand over from Marcus Aurelius to his son Commodus - The Fall of the Roman Empire & more recently Gladiator.

** Cassius (of Caesar assassin fame) led the few forces not killed or captured back to Roman Syria. There are rumours that some of the survivors left in Mesopotamia were forced marched by the Persians to their Eastern border to man the defences against incursions. There are even stories of Roman prisoners making their way to China.

*** You should always be wary about numbers listed in ancient sources. Caesar, writing in his campaign book - The Civil Wars - probably overestimates. It was a common practice.

The crash of 33AD

In these days of no history, where everything is apparently unprecedented and has never happened before throughout humanity’s countless years on this planet, where we have reached peak morality as a species and can pronounce on the past with a lofty distain, it’s worth plucking out some embers from the smouldering fires of our collective history. Who knows? Might be instructive!

Over-leveraged financial houses, external shocks, a run on banks, shortage of credit; the financial crisis of 33AD - which shook the Roman world - had them all. Throw in a first century version of quantitive easing and the picture is complete.

The Emperor Tiberius (14-37 AD) is popularly remembered as a miserly old pervert whose one redeeming feature was that, whilst far worse than his predecessor Augustus, he was inestimably better than his successor, Caligula.

Tiberius, wearying of the stresses of Rome’s day-to-day administration, went off to live in Capri leaving his Praetorian enforcer Sejanus in charge back in the capital. Ambitious and unscrupulous, Sejanus arrogated so much power during his master’s absence that Tiberius had him and his allies executed. Once executed, these rich persons’ estates reverted to the Imperial Treasury. This had the concomitant affect of withdrawing large sums of money from the economy. Money was already circulating at a low level in the economy as, fiscally, Tiberius tended towards hoarding and not spending. For example, he cut back on Augustus’ lavish public building policy and avoided, if possible, costly military campaigns. He withdrew from Germania even after the revenge-spanking of Arminius at the battles of Idistaviso and Angrivarian Wall.1

But these savings came at a price. The Roman economy was pretty much a cash economy “thus, when the state ran a budget surplus (as it did under Tiberius) it caused a direct contraction of the money supply.” 2

But now we come to the proximate causes of the credit crunch…

An Egyptian banking house - Seuthe and Son- invested in some ships carrying cargoes of spices which - unfortunately for them - sank during a hurricane in the Red Sea. Think Lehman Brothers. The interconnectedness of the Roman finance world was proven back on Rome’s Via Sacra** - which was equivalent to the the ancient world’s Wall Street (with added temples and hookers). Financial houses in the capital now went bust as a result of lending to Seuthe and Son. One by one they closed up, calling in loans which caused more and more pressure on liquidity.

Timing is all in a financial crash. Two other factors - perhaps small in themselves - ratcheted up the pressure.

Firstly, this was just the moment when a longstanding edict of Tiberius’ came into force: all senators had to invest a third of their wealth in Italian land. They needed money to purchase property and so created a rush on the stricken financial houses (3) and debtors who either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay up the required capital. Secondly, a rebellion amongst the Belgae in Northern Gaul, out on the fringes of the empire, had meant those investing in that high risk but high reward area had lost their money. In the modern world, think of Argentina reneging on her debts and dragging down those eager-for-profit institutions who had lent them the money.

Demand for liquidity far exceeded supply. Rumours of instability exacerbated the fast growing crisis. Banks wouldn’t trust each other. Money was hoarded. The empire’s financial and trade worlds froze. A classic (and classical) credit crunch! Oh shit!

The relevant quaester (essentially finance minister) passed the problem onto the Senate who, long used to being ineffective, passed the problem onto Tiberius over in Capri. Taking time out from his paranoia and perversions however, Tiberius acted quickly. His response was emphatic; the liquidity crisis was to be met by a massive injection of imperial funds into the Roman financial world. Yes, quantitive easing in a toga! One hundred million sestertii from the imperial treasury was released into the banking system at zero percent rate of interest. Additionally, collateral for these loans was accepted at twice market rates which stabilised the property market and brought confidence back to the credit market.

Tiberius’ swift response - creating both liquidity and shoring up confidence in the finance markets - meant that the crisis worked itself through quickly. He was dead within four years and bequeathed his successor Caligula, a full Treasury. Caligula, did not have a problem spending money but that is another story!

The parallels with financial crashes that we may be familiar with are striking but the underlying factors - unpredictable events, state fiscal and monetary policy, financial contagion, and confidence in the system - are also well known to us. The crash of 33 AD however, is not.

I suppose that it is at this point that you would expect me to deliver a worthy homily about history repeating itself or that it rhymes or that it’s all been done before. I could but I won’t. That would be too easy and - in its way - overly trite.

What is more interesting is not the repetitive nature of history but that each age tends to believe it is unique. Each individual is of course unique and unless you believe in reincarnation, a belief in uniqueness is a forgivable fault. But still a fault when history is weighed in the aggregate. As I’ve tried to demonstrate with the crash of 33 AD, give or take a few togas and a lack of internet, the crisis wasn’t too different from our recent credit crunch of 2007/2009.

It’s not the forgetfulness that gets you, it’s the unknowing arrogance. From wars to diseases, from monetary crisis to the venality of politicians, ‘now’ is - perhaps inevitably - judged to be the only time in history these things have ever happened and so we blunder around marvelling at the wheel we’ve just reinvented. Sadly the past is not only a different country, but an increasingly forgotten place. I would argue - and do - that a little humility goes a long way and brings that rarest of all qualities - perspective.

Perspective adds depth and moderates over-reaction. From our own personal experience, we all know this to be true.

When we were young - and knew nothing and had experienced less - we carried the twin curses of ignorance and certainty. We didn’t know anything but - by God! - were we sure of our opinion. But we gradually matured as individuals, adding experience to assessment, judgement to decision. It’s part of life’s journey.

I wish we matured as a society in a similar way but, each generation is ever reborn as a teenager. Certain. Ignorant. Fated to be more wrong than right.

Next week I’ll carry this thought process into a ham-fisted look at Justinian’s reconquering of the Italian peninsula and how it was stymied by the plague. Masks are most definitely optional!

NOTES

1) Following the massacre of three legions in the Tueoburg Forest in 9 AD, the battles of Idistaviso and Angrivarian Wall by Tiberius’ nephew Germanicus, did much to restore Roman pride. Tiberius still pulled the troops back to the near side of the Rhine.

2) How Excess Government Killed Ancient Rome - Bruce Bartlett. The Cato Institute 1994

3) Ancient Rome did have a primitive banking system - though ‘banks’ and ‘banking’ is not a term they’d have recognised (though for convenience I may use these terms - the latin is argentarii). Depositors placed their money with reputable firms who, in turn, lent it out to those needing capital, principally to finance goods being shipped around the empire. The interest was set by the state (12% being the norm). These financial firms were clustered around the Forum along the Via Sacra which has been described as Rome’s Wall Street. It was also the site of many temples - temples being in ancient times often linked to banking (people deposited money there for safekeeping). To facilitate trade across the empire, banking centres were present in many other major cities across the Empire which foreshadows a modern sense of interconnectedness.

Mary Chain, Mascara, Morrissey and Me: SUSSEX UNI IN THE 80’s

Natalie. Or Brigitte? My next door neighbour but briefly - East Slope, Sussex University

Natalie lived next door to me. She was years older - at least four. That was an unbridgeable gap in those days. She appeared experienced and sophisticated in a way that I wasn’t then and probably am not now. Also she was French; dark haired, beautiful, effortlessly sexy. I’d only gone to university and found Brigitte Bardot living in the next room!

And then, mid-term, she moved out. Our juvenile antics must have irked her. Oh - the bottomless pain of separation! The exquisite misery of emptiness! Surrounded by hundreds of eighteen year olds I was alone, so alone.

I played Hatful of Hollow endlessly. Morrissey incongruously spoke to me. ‘Please, please, please let me get what I want’ he sang through my cheap speakers. There was silence from the empty room next door.

East Slope, Sussex University, autumn term 1986.

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I was driving my daughter around ‘my’ Brighton before one of the recent interminable lockdowns. We were stopping off and photographing all my previous addresses throughout Brighton and Hove. Some I stayed at for a matter of weeks, others for several years. Many looked decrepit, a handful were grand, very grand. I had situational memories of all of them. Job. Girlfriend. How cold they were (it was alway cold in Brighton flats).

On the way back to Burgess Hill we stopped off at Sussex University. I’d lived in three campus apartments over two years - East Slope, Kent House and Park Village. Let’s see if I could retrace once familiar steps and show my daughter, well what? Where Natalie left me bereft all those years ago? Mmm, maybe not. But to get a sense of where I lived certainly.

But like most universities since the 80’s, Sussex has got bigger - ‘welcoming’ more and more students in order to meet Tony Blair’s ridiculous 50% target. Add to this to the maniacal drive to recruit loads of fee paying foreign students and you have a university with near four times the number of ‘clients’ it had when I went there.*

So although we drove past many familiar buildings, there was a new feeling about the campus. It seemed very closed in whereas I remembered it as much more spacious when I was there. Tricks of time, perhaps. Sussex was a relatively small university in the 80’s and the student body was split fairly evenly between public school tossers and the brightest and best of the comprehensive system. 4500 students in all - one third living on campus. It felt like a village. A village out in the Downs, ten minutes train ride from Brighton. It sported Sussex red brick and the architect - Basil Spence - had designed the layout so that it nodded vaguely in the direction of a classical Roman forum. (I know this stuff because I used to do campus tours for prospective parents and students in my third year. £3 a pop, I remember.)

Shades at night! TR in his Kent House student room 1988 - alas the call from the Jesus & Mary Chain never came.

There were the bars of course. East Slope bar was notorious because of the cheap drinks, the scrum to get those cheap drinks and the sticky floor caused by said drinks being too difficult for students to navigate the plastic glass of Kronenberg from glass to mouth without spilling. (Pints were 60-70p). Park Village Bar merits a mention as it was the home of the Julie’s Jinx, a pint of every spirit behind the bar starting from a base of half a cider. These cocktails never lasted long in your stomach.

Sussex has changed since the 80’s. New high rise accommodation blocks bestride and dominate the northern end of campus. All those extra fee paying students have to live somewhere I suppose. Inside, these alien structures are probably very nice replete with all the mod cons our current flock of students demand. But the village feeling, the uniqueness of the first red brick university, has gone. And so has East Slope, so named because all the student accommodation was in single story flats rising gently up a hill. All gone. And yes, that campus flat where I met - and then mourned - the beautiful Natalie, now gone completely. A metaphor there, probably.

To be fair the remaining buildings from then to now, looked tired. Park Village specifically seemed on its last legs with rotting woodwork, overgrown green spaces, windswept rubbish piled up in corners. Not how I remembered it at all. But then what I truly remember is the spirit, the ephemeral feeling and not just the concrete. I remember the summer of ‘87, and every window being open and blasting out the newly released Joshua Tree. I remember late night parties and lying on the grass in the warm June air, talking bollocks about politics and music and gossiping over plastic glasses of cheap red wine. I remember reading Wuthering Heights for the first time out on the fields next to Park Village; fields now covered with blocks of flats and car parks.

It’s the people and the time; the young people interacting, doing stuff, each other, laughing and joking that defines a place, an era. I guess I always knew that.

Park Village party, June 1988. TR lying down in white (with hair!)

So even before further buildings are torn down, as East Slope has been, the transient spirit my cohort possessed has gone. Each successive intake make their own memories, their own version of what a university community means. But that time is heartbreakingly brief and we’re left - if we ever venture to go back - with the mere bones slowly rotting away. The flesh has long gone. The spirit died the very moment we walked out that last day Summer Term ‘88. And maybe that’s as it should be. Life is ever onwards and never static.

And Natalie? Fuck knows. She shacked up with some professor, moved into a flat behind the station in Brighton and - for all I know - got married, had kids and never thinks about me. But if she does I hope she plays The Smiths occasionally and suffers a momentary flashback to her time at Sussex University as the unwitting star of a movie she’s never seen.

Tim Robson 17B East Slope 1986.

(I like live versions of songs. This solo version from Morrissey - years later, different lyrics - captures though the wistfulness of time passed. Hence me selecting it. You’re welcome.)

• Fifteen Minutes with You… From Reel Around The Fountain, The Smiths

• Foreign student income. Perhaps that why the British universities whined like bitches when the uneducated population voted for Brexit? Call me old fashioned (puts down pint) but shouldn’t the primary function of UK universities be to educate the children of this land first?

Is the US the new Rome?

Amongst classical scholars there’s long been an interesting thought experiment; is the US the re-incarnation of Rome?

Let’s go through the checklist:-

The era of kings // British imperial rule.

Throwing out the kings and the early republic // the American revolution and the foundation of the Republic (the Senate - now where did that come from?)

The unification of the Italian peninsula under Roman rule // the spread westwards of the US republic through the Louisiana Purchase, Mexican War and the pioneer trails beyond the Appalachians

Battle between the senatorial class and the plebeians - creation of the People’s Assembly and tribunes // the extension of the franchise to women and the abolition of slavery

An existential war against Carthage // fight against Communism

The fall of the republic - increasing political violence, The Gracchi, increasing disparity of wealth, vicious two party system, Marius / Sulla, the crossing of the Rubicon // gridlock, decrease of working ‘across the aisle’ increasing political violence, intolerance for opposing views, non-acceptance of political norms.

The Imperial era brought into being stability and stopped the political violence. The price was dictatorship. Increase in welfare, reliance on slaves, beginnings of feudalism. Christianity. The empire split into two. Collapse. // …

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I’ve been aware of the theory for years - it is an intellectual game; history is instructive not necessary predictive and making parallels from one era to another is typically odious. But still…

I’m currently writing about the 1st century BC as part of my five battles per century history of Rome series. This is the century where the Roman Republic became increasingly violent and all the norms of political discourse and traditional checks and balances were thrown aside. It led to ceaseless civil wars before Augustus ended the republic and became Emperor.

It took fifty years from the populism of Tiberius Gracchus to Sulla’s victory outside the walls of Rome in the Battle of the Colline Gate. Reputedly 50,000 died in just that one battle. It was another fifty years between Sulla’s victory and subsequent proscriptions and (short-lived) dictatorship to Augustus’ victory over Antony at Actium and the effective ending of the republic.

One hundred years of violence and death.

I tend to seek refuge in ancient history - it’s a comforting and a harmless pursuit. But as I researched and wrote the history of the first century BC, many awful parallels became more urgent.

Those that don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it, goes a familiar refrain. I would amend that to read, “Those that don’t know their history are doomed to make achingly bad allusions to the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism.” It’s society’s go to - everything’s Hitler, every opponent is his reincarnation. I suppose it’s not that long ago in the scheme of things and history’s a long and complex body of knowledge, never complete, often paradoxical. Collapses can be quick or they can be slow but there are some commonalities.

Civic norms are flimsier than they appear and, it seems to me, violence is never far away from the human condition. Once violence is introduced into a society’s bloodstream, then events afterwards become unpredictable, often dark, very dark. A good place to avoid this is to accept defeat gracefully, concede that your opponents are not necessary evil people, and that the mob, once unleashed, is hard to curtail and unpredictable. Those who let loose the dogs of war do so at their own peril.

As I said, the US being the new Rome is a parlour game, an intellectual exercise. The US is not an empire - though it does often project violence worldwide. It does still have, hopefully, a functioning democracy which will be severely tested this November. I just hope that the result is accepted and that Trump gets a less acrimonious second term or that there is a peaceful and good-natured transfer of power to the Democrats. The road to Actium does not have to be retraced.

The First Century in Five Battles

(In which Tim maps the Roman Empire in the first century AD through five battles)

“Varus, give me back my legions!”

So the ageing Emperor Augustus is said to have shouted, driven mad by the loss of three legions at The Battle of The Teutoberg Forest in AD 9. Quinctilus Varus was the Roman commander who led those legions into the dark German forests, never to return. This is the first battle of the first century. Rome’s devastating response following the campaigns of the aptly named Germanicus shall be my next focus as exemplified by The Battle of Idistaviso in AD 16.

The invasion of Britain under the Emperor Claudius in AD 43 merits a mention. As does the defeat of Boudicca at the Battle of Watling Street in AD 61 where Rome firmly put down her revolt. The Battle of Mons Graupius in AD 83 finally consolidated Britain (minus Caledonia) into the Empire.

The siege and destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is an obvious landmark battle. The Jewish revolt was a major uprising and occurred during one of the few periods of outside instability the Roman Empire faced in the first century. Its impact is probably still felt today.

Whilst Titus was dealing with the Jewish revolt, his father Vespasian had marched on Rome to throw his laurel wreath into the ring to become Emperor. The ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ in AD 69 was the first Roman civil war in 100 years. Previously Emperors had just been assassinated, poisoned or committed suicide. This violent transfer of power though was limited to the unfortunate Emperor and his immediate supporters and didn’t lead to a full-scale civil war as had been the norm in the late Republic. Although, Rome soon came back to normalcy - and indeed the Emperors improved - this respite would be only temporary and civil wars would come back in a big way towards the end of the second century.

A note on the army itself: The Roman army of the 1st Century AD looked exactly like the Roman Army in popular imagination. They wore curved helmets protecting the back of their necks, segmented armour, carried long curved rectangular shields, held short thrusting swords and threw devastating volleys of weighted spears. A legion consisted around 5120 men divided into 10 cohorts (the 1st being double sized). There were 28 legions in Augustus’ time, later increased to 30. Auxiliaries assisted the legions (archers, calvary, skirmishers etc) and their number was around the same. Therefore, a reasonable assessment of the size of the Roman Army of this period is 300,000 men under arms.

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The first century began with Augustus in the 28th year of his principate. Unlike much of the previous century, The Roman world was pretty much at peace with itself. The civil wars were over. Augustus stealthily added nations that were protectorates - like Egypt - to the Empire avoiding outright conquering. However, his sons-in-law - Drusus and Tiberius - added Raetia (modern Switzerland). But this Caesar - unlike his famous uncle - was content to be imperator in name if not in deed.

However, one recurring trouble spot in the Empire was the Germanic tribes beyond Gaul. Could Augustus add Germania to the Empire and, if not, where was the defensive line of the empire to be drawn? It was going to be the river Elbe but - following the loss of the legions in the forests - Rome pulled back to the Rhine where it stayed for the next four hundred years.

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was the shock that caused this retrenchment. Three legions (plus assorted auxiliaries and camp followers) operating beyond the Rhine, were betrayed by a supposed friendly German ally, Arminius, and massacred. Arminius led Varus into the dense forest and then sprang his trap. The army was wiped out and their totemic eagles taken.

At this point in time, Rome had just 28 legions. The loss of three meant a sizeable chunk of the available forces had just disappeared. No wonder Augustus was upset. Revenge came slowly and - as was the wont at these times - through a member of the Imperial family.

Germanicus was nephew to the new Emperor Tiberius and was sent to the Rhine to sort out the mess left after Arminius’ triumph. Fighting many battles and chasing many tribes into many forests, Germanicus skirmished and harassed the Germans time after time over three years until he finally tempted them into an open pitched battle. This was at the Weser River and became the Battle of Idistaviso AD 16. The result was a massacre of the German tribes. Arminius survived only to be beaten again that same year at The Battle of the Angrivarian Wall. (He was later killed by members of his own tribe. He is still celebrated as one of the founders of the German nation. His massive 19th has century statue stands above the Teutoburg Forest to this day.)

Rome had won the conflict but Tiberius, ever cautious, withdrew Germanicus to Rome and the Empire’s frontier was settled back at the Rhine.

Julius Caesar had come across the Channel to Britain a couple of times but he never made a serious invasion attempt - he was too busy conquering Gaul. These incursions provoked a few fights, garnered some tributes and alliances, but Caesar didn’t stick around to conquer Britain. One hundred years later though, in AD 43, the unwarlike Emperor Claudius - another nephew of Tiberius - launched the invasion of Britain.

The conquest was a slow process taking over 40 years. The south of the country was relatively passive, having interacted with the Romans for years. However, the North and West and Wales proved much more difficult. Whilst the Romans were distracted subduing the Welsh tribes in AD 60, the Iceni under Boudicca rebelled back in the conquered south. The rebellion was short, violent with the rebels burning and massacring the Roman towns of St Albans, Colchester and a little town called Londinium.

The governor, Seutonius Paulinus, gathered up a force centred around one and a half legions and met Boudicca and her army somewhere along what became known later as Watling Street. He chose his battlefield well, funnelling the Britons into a narrow front. As had happened many times previously in Roman history, well-trained legions overcame a larger but undisciplined horde. The rebels were massacred - hemmed in by their own carriages - and Boudicca committed suicide not long after.

Twenty of so years later, the Romans had turned their attention to the north of Britain. Up in Scotland, the Caledonian tribes were causing problems. However, the usual rules applied; tracking a tribe into an open pitched battle was difficult and whilst traipsing around the wet and cold of Scotland, the Roman army was prey to ambushes and lightning strikes. Governor Agricola finally lured the Caledonians into battle somewhere in the mountains of Scotland (the precise site is unknown). The Battle of Mons Graupius AD 83 was unique in that the Romans won it using only their highly trained Germans auxiliaries with assistance from the cavalry.

Tacitus, who wrote the account of the battle, famously put words into mouth of the Caledonian leader, Calgacus, “They make a desolation and call it peace.” All Britain was conquered. For now.

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem, by David Roberts (1850)

Back a few years, and we have the brutal Siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 part of the First Jewish-Roman war. Pompey had added Judea to the empire back in the Republican days. He’d even successfully laid siege to Jerusalem. This time though, the struggle was more bitter as a hardcore sect of rebels within the city - the Zealots - refused to surrender. As Vespasian had left for Rome, his son Titus (later emperor too) led the four legion assault on the city. Starvation, disease and the terrors of war were meted out to the inhabitants of the city, bolstered as they were by hundreds of thousands of refugees escaping the wider war. The end was a massacre:-

“They poured into the street sword in hand, slaughtering indiscriminately all they came across and burning houses with those who had fled there still inside… Since the troops had run out of victims to kill or property to loot, Caesar ordered the army to raze to the ground the whole city and the temple…” Josephus, The Jewish War (Book 6:404 / Book 7:1)

Jerusalem and its population was destroyed. This was quite a consequential siege in history.

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Little Richard

(An appreciation of Little Richard)

Back in the 70’s, my parents owned five records.* Two Beatles albums - “before they got weird” - With The Beatles and Rubber Soul. The Carpenters greatest hits 1970-74, Abba’s Greatest Hits (72-76 - yeah, before the really good ones!) and K-Tel’s Rockin’ Rollin’ Greats. I played them all but mainly the latter record. It’s what convinced my parents to buy me firstly Jerry Lee Lewis’ Greatest Hits and then, The King himself, Elvis’ 40 Greatest Hits.

So, my first exposure to rock n’ roll was that K-Tel compilation. Twenty years after rock n roll burst on the scene. They were mostly all there : Bill Haley. Gene Vincent. Carl Perkins. The Everlys. Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Tommy Roe (bizarrely). Oh and Roy Orbison and his sublime, snare drum and riff led, Oh Pretty Woman.

And of course, Little Richard.

K-Tel being the skinflints they were, the two Little Richard cuts (Long Tall Sally and Lucille) were live performances culled from a later 1967 live album. Ordinarily, that would be a problem. Not Richard. He was, as we all know, damn good live and both songs rocked out of the speakers.

This isn’t going to be a long obit. Richard Penniman’s career itself, as a top selling artist, wasn’t long. His career as an icon, an inspirer and live performer though lasted much longer than his initial two / three years of seminal hits.

You know when a little Richard song comes on. The brash piano intro, the brass, the riff, the instinctive three chords and some cleaned up bawdy lyrics. And that voice. A howl. A scream. A falsetto. There is no one like him. He just makes you smile, tap your feet and, if you want to get people going at a function, just slap on ‘Tutti Frutti’ and watch them park their drinks and head to the dance-floor. I know, I’ve done it. Yes, I used to DJ.

So if Elvis combined country hill billy with rhythm and blues, Richard was pure rhythm and blues tinged with gospel. He had the element of a charismatic preacher about him. As we know his personal journey took him to God - he was an ordained priest - and you see within him the struggles he faced. One of the best rock books I’ve ever read is his biography - in which he fully collaborated - which is candid about his sexuality, his drug use, his predilections, but also his warmth as a human being. It is well worth a read and damn funny.

He’s immortalised in the rock movie The Girl Can’t Help It singing the title track (plus Ready Teddy and She’s Got It). Immaculately coiffured, standing astride his long suffering piano, he steals the show from the other musical acts (though I do have a soft spot for Julie London’s Cry Me A River).

And man, did he look good! Hair piled up, snaking moustache and increasingly flamboyant outfits, you can see where former bandmate Jimi Hendrix (who he fired), Otis Redding, James Brown and later Prince, got their inspiration from. He toured with the Beatles and the Stones early in their career, passing on the torch and teaching Paul the nuances of the Little Richard style. As we know, the Fab Four always ended their concerts with their tribute to Richard, a raucous version of Long Tall Sally.

RIP Richard, one of the great ones.

(And yes, Little Richard was included in my permitted obits as listed four years ago.)

Footnote * - Of course they didn’t own just five records. But there was only five I was interested in (at that time). My Mum listened to classical. My Dad listened to swing. The radio played Terry Wogan on Radio 2. We watched Top of the Pops on Thursday nights.

The 4th Century in Five Battles

(In which Tim discusses the five most important battles within the wider history of the 4th Century Roman Empire)

The fourth century was bookended by two famous ‘Christian’ battles - The Milvian Bridge in 312 and The Frigidus in 394. They mark - apocryphally - both the entry point of Christianity into the Roman Empire and its ultimate victory. Each led to climatic events; The Milvian Bridge led directly to the Nicene Council of 325 which formalised the Christian creed. The Frigidus began the series of events that ended with Alaric’s sack of Rome just sixteen years later.

So we have our beginning and end. What in between? Adrianople, of course. The defeat of Valens and the Eastern Roman Empire’s army at the hands of the Goths in 378 is popularly associated with the eventual downfall of the empire itself. Can’t argue that it’s important.

For me, Julian is the most interesting fourth century Emperor. His metamorphosis from bookish princeling to ass-kickin’ Caesar began in Gaul. The most famous battle in his journey to pacify the province was his victory over the Alamanni in the Battle of Strasbourg 357.

Our fifth battle is The Battle of Mursa 351 where the forces of Constantius II defeated those of the usurper Magnentius in the biggest and bloodiest battle of the century. As an exercise in damaging futility this was the daddy of them all.

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The Empire at the beginning of the fourth century was a very different animal to that ruled over by Septimius Severus one hundred years earlier. The crisis of the third century had brought about chaos, short lived emperors, and the temporary division into three mini empires. The gradual restoration of control was brought about by the Illyrian emperors Claudius Gothicus, Aurelian, Probus and finally Diocletian.

Diocletian instituted the tetrarchy - a system where two senior Augustii and two junior Caesars ruled quadrants of the Empire. It was a neat idea. It didn’t last. Diocletian, who resigned along with his co-Augustus Maximian, lived long enough to see not only his fine cabbages grow in his retirement home in Split, but his system of government fall apart as his successors squabbled amongst themselves to gain and maintain power.

Constantine (The Great), son of one of Diocletian’s successors Constantius I, was chief amongst those squabbling. He was annoyed that he was left out of Diocletian’s succession plans and, on the death of his ailing father in York in 306, declared himself emperor. This led ultimately to the first battle of our series - The Milvian Bridge.

In this battle, Constantine marched into Italy in 312 - then under the rule of one of the many post-Diocletian claimants - Maxentius. With a smaller army, Constantine’s troops feared losing the climatic battle outside Rome the next day. That night Constantine dreamed of a cross in the sky. So the story goes, he had his army paint the Christian symbol on their shields and, with God on their side, they routed Maxentius and his army the next day at The Milvian Bridge.

The Arch of Constantine was completed to mark this famous victory. The fact that it was originally going to be the Arch of Maxentius and repurposed bas reliefs from earlier monuments, is now somewhat forgotten. He who wins writes the history and gets the arches. It still stands today under the shadow of the Colosseum.

The next twelve years were a history of Rome fighting itself as Constantine gradually consolidated his power to become sole emperor in 324 with his defeat of Licinius. Famously, Constantine left three legacies to the Empire when he died - after converting on his deathbed to Christianity - in 337:

• The Council of Nicene which produced a unified - though disputed for many years - Christian doctrine still in use today,

• The founding of Constantinople as the ‘new Rome’ on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium,

• An utterly chaotic carve up of the Empire between his three sons and two nephews which set the scene for nearly twenty years of civil wars.

The intrigues between the three sons of Constantine deserve a blog of all their own. The imaginatively named Constantine, Constans and Constantius battled it out for years until only the latter remained standing as Constantius II. The second of our landmark battles occurs in this period when Constantius - in the East - took on his brother Constans’ murderer, Magnentius at Mursa in 351.

Mursa was a triumph for Constantius but a tragedy for the empire. Crack units of the East and Western Roman armies fought each other in a bloodbath in Pannonia (modern day Croatia). The battle saw the flowering of the late Roman cataphracts - heavily armoured cavalry - as they mowed down Magnentius’ legions. It was a victory but a pyrrhic one.

One of the consequences of Rome turning in on itself was that units were inevitably withdrawn from the Empire’s borders. The tribes living beyond took advantage of this and increasingly began to run amok amongst the frontiers. Constantius proved Diocletian’s theory that the Empire was too big for just one ruler and so appointed first his cousin Gallus, and then his other cousin, Julian, as junior Caesar. Gallus proved himself unfit to rule and so was executed. Julian however, proved himself quite the opposite.

Bookish, sceptical and a lover of philosophy, Julian was an unlikely warrior Caesar. Sent to Gaul to restore order, Julian did just that. And more. Let down by his supporting army (who may have been acting on the orders of Constantius) Julian was left facing a much larger force of Alamanni near Strasbourg in 357. The battle was a complete rout with the Alamanni destroyed by Julian’s infantry and then chased all the way back to the Rhine where many survivors drowned. Over the following years, Julian followed up by a process of forward-defence - raids into enemy territory whilst repairing and reinforcing the border.

Inevitably the two last descendants of Constantine The Great squared off against each other in 361 (see previous blogpost). Luckily for the Empire, Constantius died on the way to confront Julian allowing the latter to become the undisputed ruler of the whole empire. Julian met his ‘spear of destiny’ just two years later fighting the Persians and bringing to an end Constantine’s line and any anti-Christian fight back. Rome was henceforth a Christian empire.

The Empire now fell into the hands of Valentinian who appointed his brother Valens Augustus of the East. This proved a fatal decision as Valens allowed a massive Gothic migration into his lands in 376. The Goths crossed the Danube to escape the growing power of the Huns expanding and terrorising from the east. Stupidity, betrayal and pride (Valens refused to wait for the army of his nephew Gratian - now Emperor of the West) led Valens and the Eastern Roman army to take on the Goths alone at Adrianople (now part of European Turkey) in 378.

Adrianople was a disaster for the Romans. Their army was destroyed by the Goths and the emperor himself allegedly died after been burnt alive in a peasant house while attempting to flee the battlefield. The defeat left the Eastern empire defenceless and leaderless and at the mercy of the Goths who now rampaged at will throughout Thrace and Greece.

Slowly, piece by piece, Roman general and later emperor Theodosius (The Great) put the East back together. He fought defensive actions and eventually made peace with the Goths in 382 allowing them to stay within the empire’s borders. Once inside the Goths became a combustable element, fighting for the Empire when it suited them but, equally likely to go marauding and looting.

Over in the Western half, Valentinian’s younger son Valentinian II - now Emperor - allegedly hanged himself. His all-powerful advisor and military commander Arbogast was more than implicated. Arbogast was a Frank by birth and so ineligible to take the throne himself and so he chose Eugenius, an obscure Roman official to be the new Emperor in the West. Over in the East, Theodosius bided his time. But when Arbogast and Eugenius started to favour the old Roman gods over Christianity, Theodosius reacted. The showdown took place at The Battle of The Frigidus (modern day Slovenia) in 394.

This two day battle was notable for several things.

• Theodosius won the battle becoming the last sole Emperor of East and West. Not for long though as he died in 395.

• The battle marked the final victory of Christianity over paganism. Much is made of the high winds that allegedly blew at Arbogast’s forces on day two of the battle rendering their missiles useless. A divine wind, it was claimed.

• Theodosius’ use of Gothic auxiliaries (foederati) was controversial. He put them in the front line and used them as cheap cannon fodder. It allowed him to win the battle but incensed his surviving allies. One of the Gothic leaders fighting for Theodosius that day was a young noble named Alaric. Sixteen years later, Alaric led the Goths into Italy and sacked Rome for the first time in eight hundred years. It wasn’t the end of the Roman Empire but it marked the beginning of the last stages of the Western half.

The fourth century ends with the young sons of Theodosius - Honorius and Arcadius - in charge of the West and East respectively. Both of them were weak, dominated by advisors and unfit for their times. It was a sad end to such a lively century.

So what have learnt in this brief canter through the years 300-399?

First, and most obvious, the rise and rise of Christianity. A persecuted sect at the start of the century - the worst repression occurred under Diocletian for example - it was the undisputed religion of the Empire by the end.

The Roman military was still powerful throughout much of the century. Although the legions were no longer the primary unit, it still packed a punch. Borrowing from Palmyra and Persia, the military incorporated heavy calvary units alongside smaller vexallations of infantry. When it worked, armies could criss-cross the empire and successfully see off threats. Under strong leaders - Constantine, Julian - the army could be formidable.

The increased use of foederati - allied non Roman troops. By the end of the century, the traditional auxiliary units - trained and led by Romans - had largely been replaced by unincorporated bands of barbarians who fought under their own banners and leaders.

Civil wars were as deadly to the empire as attacks by outside forces. Roman v Roman battles were as common and - pace Mursa - could be much more deadly.

The idea of a single emperor ruling the whole empire was the exception rather than the rule throughout the fourth century. It was a rare period that saw just one ruler.

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(I attach David Bowie’s Velvet Goldmine. When I was younger, reading about the later Roman Empire, I always associated this song with the heavily armed Cataphracts riding East to West, West to East, protecting the Empire. I misheard a line so it read “I’ll be your faithful prince who will ride for you again and again.” Unfortunately I now know that’s not the lyrics!)

GREATEST MOVIE SONGS

You’re watching a film. A song comes on the soundtrack - either heard or sung. And it’s memorable. And perfect. And right for the film, the time and the place. Might not be your favourite song but there - in the moment, watching the film - it is.

Here is my list of the greatest film songs.

Isn’t this a Lovely Day (Top Hat) - 1935

“The weather is frightening. The thunder and lightening seem to be having their way…”

If there’s a better song, I don’t know it. There’s probably not a day that passes where I don’t sing a couple of bars from this Irving Berlin classic. The movie poster hangs in my bedroom. In the film, Fred and Ginger are caught in a rainstorm and take refuge in a bandstand. As they sing and dance to this clever song, the rain outside pours. Their little shelter becomes a cacoon of flirtation, courtship and growing new love. To a great melody. We probably all wish for this. They weren’t complicated, Hollywood musicals of the 30’s. They went to the point. And what a lovely - make believe - world that was.

Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine - Lost in Translation 2001

Top five favourite movie. What’s not to like? Bill Murray. Bill Murray singing ‘More than This’ in a Japanese karaoke bar. Scarlett Johansson. Yes, Scarlett. A chaste romantic film. Clever. Laid back. The whirlwind of romance away from home. They go out with her friends. A club. A chase. A party. A karaoke bar. They drink and smoke and then get a taxi home. The early morning ennui following a night out. Dozy. Comfortable. With someone special. And this song plays. A surprisingly tender tune for a song with cranked up guitars. It floats along with the hazy reality of a blissful 3am with a girl. In a taxi. On the way back.

Get Back, The Beatles with Billy Preston - Let it Be (1970) Not the single. The final song from the movie.

The Beatles going down fighting. A cold January in 1969. The Beatles are nearly broken up and somewhat lethargic about their latest album. They decide to play one last impromptu concert on the roof of their building because they can’t be arsed going anywhere or organising anything else. So they play their latest songs across London to the unsuspecting office workers. The police get called after half an hour bringing this rooftop concert to an end. But there’s one more song. Get Back. John and George’s amp gets turned off after the first verse. And then ‘fuck it’ they switch it back on and their guitars come back with added urgency. This is it. The last song ever played live by the greatest group ever. It’s scrappy, it’s raw but it’s the fucking Beatles man. Going down fighting.

You’re Sensational, Frank Sinatra - High Society (1956)

“I’ve no proof. When people say, “You’re more or less aloof.”

Ah, Cole Porter… What a song writer. Famously, he wrote both the music and the witty and intelligent lyrics to his songs. High Society is one of my happy places. Happy memories of the family watching a good movie back in the 70’s. Of course, I like The Philadelphia Story too, but I grew up with the colour, musical version. From Louis Armstrong kicking it off on the bus, the hip jazz lingo, Bing Crosby being Bing, right through to the loveliness that was Grace Kelly. It’s a classic movie with a ‘sensational’ score. So many great moments; Bing and Grace harmonising on ‘True Love’, “now that’s jazz”, Frank and Bing duetting drunk, the breakfast outside on the patio. And the effortless class of ‘You’re Sensational’. I know I say it lot, but hardly a day goes by without my singing or humming its opening lines quoted above.

Bela Lugosi’s Dead, The Hunger (1983)

This is the classic opening for Tony Scott’s stylistic vampire movie The Hunger. The music is strange, other worldly and the perfect accompaniment to an unsettling, hip nightclub where Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie go out a’hunting for victims. Long coats, shades, cigarettes; the foundations of Goth are right there up on screen. Of course, in real life, Goths were just smelly losers in bad clothes and worse make-up hiding their acne. But in their mind, they were Peter Murphy, the chisel cheeked lead singer of Bauhaus who dominates this first scene from behind the bars of a cage (see below). Right song. Right movie. Well framed and shot. Hence, on the list!

Sweet Transvestite, Tim Curry - Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Cracking song in one weird musical. Great was the day I found this movie. Suddenly everyone in sixth form was a sweet transvestite as both an insult, a compliment and - at the Christmas disco - a costume. I liked this song so much, I got my group to learn it and we’d chuck it in every now and then to get the crowd going. Or to stop them going. Whatever. At our final gig, at the Hare and Hounds in Brighton in early 1996, this was the last song we ever played. Pissed. Out of tune. Camping it up. And then I pulled a strop and sacked the band and went solo. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Good song though.

There She Goes, The La’s - The Parent Trap (1998)

One of the greats. Of course this song stands on its own. Lee Mavers’ beautiful, beautiful indie twinkling guitar ditty packs three minutes of audio gold. And here, in a mainstream kids movie, it’s framed perfectly. As Lynsay Lohan’s American twin is driven around London - in a vintage Rolls Royce of course - images of London flash by as There She Goes blasts out. The two go together like an American travel agent’s perfect ad of quirky, historical, sunny London. With a iconoclastic soundtrack.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music, Julie Andrews - The Sound of Music (1965)

Yeah, I know. A bit route one. Too obvious. What’s your favourite band? The Beatles. Favourite piece of classic music? Beethoven’s Fifth. Favourite movie song? As Time Goes By, Casablanca. They’re culturally ubiquitous for a reason, no? They’re the Stairways to Heaven of their field. Same here. I’ve tried to give a wide range of movie songs in this piece but - hey! - indulge me one indulgence. A toss up between the Dooley Wilson classic (If she can stand it, I can. Play it!) and this one. I went with Julie running around the Austrian Alps singing about mountains. And music. What makes it so special though, apart from the song, of course, is the helicopter shots, the gradual build up before Julie finally comes into shot. It is a classic, musically and cinematographically. Once seen, never forgot. Job done.

The Best Unknown 60's Songs

The best hidden 60’s songs - in musical terms - is a slippery concept. I say ‘best’, you say ‘deservedly obscure’. You say “but what about this one’ and I say something about your mother. Ah, dear readers, I remember pub conversations.

But unknown songs, some by famous groups like the Beatles or Stones, are always a joy to find. It appeals to the musical snob in me. We all like to feel that our shadowy light in the forest is the one true path to musical esteem.

It’s all subjective, of course.

(In the list below I mainly feature obscure tracks by well-known bands with a few unknowns in there to keep you on your toes. It would be easy to pack the list with Gene Clark demos but that wouldn’t be fair.)

Lady Friend - The Byrds 1967

A joyous, rollicking single written by David Crosby, ignored at the time and now totally forgotten. Undeservedly so. The Byrds storm through a cracking tune with trademark Rickenbackers, floating harmonies, light and shade. Oh, and trumpets. There was a time, years ago, single and with tousled hair and Roger Mcguinn shades, this and Eight Miles High soundtracked my life. It was the beautiful dawning of a sadly short day… This is at the Byrds at their best and no-one knows this.

Reconsider Baby - Elvis 1960

Elvis would occasionally ‘do’ the blues. Exhibit A, his definitive take on Trouble in King Creole is perhaps his greatest ever vocal. Steamroller Blues is a highlight of his Aloha from Hawaii concert and album. Mess of Blues is one of my favourite ever tracks (but perhaps too famous for this list!) So, fresh out of the army, Elvis straps on his guitar and gets down and dirty with Lowell Fulsion’s driving lament. Yeah, that’s E on lead-rhythm. This version is famous for its two-in-the-morning feel epitomised by Boots Randolph’s extended strip club sax solo. Elvis is Back indeed!

The Who - Circles (1966)

An A side, a B side, and song of many names (Instant Party for example), Circles is a song with a complicated release history. What is not complicated though is that it is a great piece of mid 60’s psychedelia. Hypnotic, the tune apes the song title in that the guitar chug spirals round and round creating a musical embrace drawing you in. That’s John Entwhistle on French horn providing the persistent drone which pushes the track away from the Who’s previous RnB sound towards the more experimental I Can See For Miles. I used to mash up this track with Neil Diamond’s even more obscure ‘Shot Down’ to audiences between Brighton and London. Well, audiences in Brighton. And London.

Child of the Moon - The Rolling Stones (1968)

Hidden in plain sight, Child of the Moon is the B side of Jumping Jack Flash. I have the original single, lovingly bought at Rochdale’s Champness Hall monthly secondhand record fair back in the 80’s. “The wind blows rain into my face” begins Mick over an ominous drone kicked off with producer Jimmy Miller screaming out some inaudible words. It’s a bit hippyish, a bit psychedelic, slightly reminiscent of the Beatles (also obscure) B side Rain but it’s catchy and I like it. And the video. Weird. Slightly unsettling.

My Girl the Month of May - Dion and the Belmonts (1966)

Yes, the guy who did The Wanderer and Runaround Sue, released this swinging-60’s record years after The Beatles had rendered him and Belmonts obsolete. It’s full of mid 60's hip strangeness, some spirited singing from Dion and a chuck in the everything including the kitchen sink approach to production. ‘Little girl of mine, youngest flowers of springtime, you're the month of May.” And what month is better than May? Got nowhere in the charts and so this is a delight to find. You’re welcome.

Born to be a Rolling Stone - Gene Vincent (1967)

Gene ‘Be-bop-a-lula’ Vincent relocated to the UK in the mid 60’s. Tax reasons. Women problems. A draw on the live circuit, he didn’t however record anymore hits. His moment had passed. But he recorded some obscure mid-60’s singles that are quite beautiful. Born to be a Rolling Stone (b side the almost equally sublime Hurtin’ for you Baby) is stop-start Byrds influenced, guitar led song with a riff that I’ve ripped off ever since. On one level, it’s a slight piece as the singer tells us in a couple of verses why he’s born to be a rolling stone. But music is often as not a feeling, a sense of time and place from where you first heard it. Gene’s mid 60’s output came along at the right time for me.

Happenings Ten Years Time Ago - The Yardbirds (1966)

“Why you all got long hair? Bet you’re pulling the crumpet, ain’t ya?”

It doesn’t get better than this. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on twin attack lead guitar smouldering through some hard rocking mid 60’s psychedelia. This is peak Yardbirds. They went up fast and fell almost as swiftly before re-emerging as the global phenomenon Led Zeppelin. So, much to write about this song. Jeff and Jimmy playing in unison, the catchy tune, the hard riff, the avant-gard spoken piece in the middle. Together with Stroll On, the dual lead guitar Yardbirds lasted for only a few months in 1966. Such months!

Juliet - Neil Diamond (1969)

I could write a whole article on fantastic Neil Diamond lost gems from the 60’s. Across both Bang and Capital labels he produced some wondrous songs from ‘66 onwards. Always good, he seemed to lose his way a bit from the mid 70’s until The Jazz Singer (1979). He’s now battling Parkinsons and I wish him well against that horrible disease. I’ve already written about Neil Diamond Song Number 1 Solitary Man, but there’s plenty of rivals from the 60’s. I chose Juliet because of the feel, the words, his range from baritione to falsetto, the cosy feeling of new love. “Lay your eyes on me, girl, wanderin’ inside a grown man, no more than a small boy, sweet Juliet.” The whole Sweet Caroline album is filled with some of my favourite music. I could have picked the sublime Glory Road, Hurtin’ You Don’t Come Easy, And The Grass Won’t Pay No Mind. The title track isn’t bad either.

Rain - The Beatles (1966)

An obscure Beatles track? Surely no such thing! Well, probably not, but a non-album B side is about as close as you can get. Rain was the B side of Paperback Writer. It’s the Beatles going full-on psychedelic. Snappy, stop-start drums and a persistent drone kick off this little beauty. It all works. Paul’s bass is fluid and a co-lead instrument. Check out the bass solo towards the end propelling the song into its backwards coda. “Raaaaaaiiiinnnnn” sing John and Paul never more in harmony than here. If you’ve not heard it, you’re in for a treat. In terms of Beatles B sides, it’s in the top three (along with Don’t Let Me Down and You Can’t Do That). A John song, of course.

Rudy’s in Love - The Locomotive (1968)

“No gun shootin’ for Rudi, no retributin’.”

A minor hit. British blue beat. Ska. The Birmingham sound. I first came across this song on a compilation 60’s cassette tape that came free with, I dunno, Vox magazine in the early 90’s. It’s a cheerful ditty about a rude boy who finds love and so doesn’t want to do gangster type stuff anymore. Basic boy meets girl stuff. Driven by a horn section and an organ, this is the ska sound that the Specials picked up ten years later. Syncopated. Danceable. Fun fact; until I checked this out I always assumed at least the singer was black. Apparently not, bunch of Brummie white boys. Who knew?

So there we go. It’s a list. Clearly I’ll argue with it tomorrow. Real obscure stuff - Gene Clark, The Toggery Five, The 13th Floor Elevators, Jackson Frank etc will have to wait for another day.

Riffs! Shouting! Power! - The Roots of Rock.

Sometimes I amuse myself.

Chortle.

Sometimes I amuse myself by imaging the origins of hard rock. How did music get from, say, Neil Sedaka and The Everly Brothers in 1960 all the way to Led Zeppelin in 1969? Nothing wrong with Sedaka or The Everlys of course. Their switch of record labels in 1960 to Warners kick started - in my opinion - their best records, epitomised by the wonder that is ‘Cathy’s Clown”. But something happened between ‘60 and ‘69. Music began to go all the way to 11.

So this is a blogpost that traces that development of hard rock, heavy rock and punk in just five 60's records.

Caveat (for there must be one). By selecting five early 60's records, one doesn't deny the journey up to that point. Muddy Waters riffing like a bastard. Little Richard amping up the vocals. Chuck Berry giving every subsequent guitarist a rock blueprint. And Elvis. Of course Elvis. But, where to start? As I've written before, you can trace rock back to Beethoven's thunderous riffs, Vivaldi's repeated motifs in, say, his Mandolin Concerto in C. But I'll restrict my journey to the first half of the 60's or else I will disappear up my own arse (again).

What am I looking for? Anger. Loud overdriven guitars. A sense of musical anarchy barely held in check. Riffs. Screaming singers. All the way to eleven. On a Marshall amp. So here is my list of the five stepping stones from pop to heavy rock.

The Beatles - Twist and Shout (Feb 1963)

Yeah, everyone knows this song and The Beatles version. One of the Beatles best ever covers (up with Long Tall Sally, Dizzy Miss Lizzie, Bad Boy, Money). But what propels this song forward is John Lennon’s vocals. If he did nothing else, he’d be remembered for this performance. After a full day recording the Please Please Me album, Lennon audibly shreds his larynx as he provides one of rock's greatest vocals. The instrumentation is so-so, a standard early sixties beat combo sound. It's the singing, the call and response, the AH-AH-AH-AH-WOOO bit that makes this song special. Compare the muscular and aggressive Beatles' version against The Isley Brothers' original. No contest. Lennon pisses on them and kick starts heavy rock.

The Kingsmen - Louie Louie (April 1963)

When researching this (seriously Tim?) I found that Louie Louie was recorded after The Beatles' Twist & Shout by two months. Who knew? Who cares? Massive hit in the 60's. Revived in the 70's for the film Animal House. What can one say about this? An absolute shocker of a recording, slapdash, careless, badly recorded. A total fuck up. But in that carefree, shouty, riff heavy style, we have the embryo hard rock and punk. It was recorded in just one take for $50 with singer Jack Ely yelling as loud as he could at a mic lodged above his head just so he could be heard above the instruments. A million pub rock bands heard this and learnt the way forward. Inspiring.

The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man (Nov 1963)

It's not often The Beatles and The Stones went head to head. But - song hustling - John and Paul gave the young Stones this song to help get the London boys into the charts (number 12). The Beatles went on to record I Wanna Be Your Man themselves for the With The Beatles Album. Now, whilst The Beatles version is polished and lively, The Stones go straight for the balls. Or more to say, Brian Jones does. The ferocity and aggression he gives to his slide guitar lead is a wonder to behold. He did it one take. Bizarrely,  this track is not heard much these days. First time I heard it, way after other Stones stuff - as it's not on an album nor on most Greatest Hits compilations - I was blown away with Jones' wall of noise. 1963? Are you kidding me? But it is step three onto heavy rock. 

The Kinks - You Really Got Me (1964)

Riff heaven. Taking up the baton from the Kingsmen and amping up the power London style. Guitarist Dave Davis creates the song's dynamic. He cut his amp with a razor blade to create the fuzzy, 'heavy' sound. Rock is born! He then throws out a volley of notes in the solo; mad, nonsensical but the inspiration for many a guitarist's solo (I include myself here!). Long rumoured to be played by session man and pre Led Zep Jimmy Page, it was in fact Dave Davis. The first song you can really head bang to. And air guitar.

The Who - My Generation (1965)

The song where it all comes together! Riffs, heavy guitar sound, fucking mental rhythm section, powerful singer. Feedback. Anarchy. Power. Driven by The Ox and Moonie; their powerful backing gives Townsend the space to riff away and Daltrey to stutter like a pilled up prick chucked in front of a mic at closing time shouting out his story. The final minute where Moon goes mad, Daltrey screams and Townsend and Entwhistle lock together is one of rock's finest moments. It is this that points to the future - not least during The Who's own guitar smashing versions of this very song. The path is is now open for the Who to charge towards rock's finest moment - 'Won't Get Fooled Again.'.

Watch The Who in their best ‘Fuk Da Hippies’ mood at Monterey 1967.

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Reposted and rewritten from August 2016 

SPQR by Mary Beard (Book Review)

SPQR ( Senatus PopulusQue Romanus meaning, for the Senate and People of Rome, the indelible banner stamped below the eagle standards of the Roman legions) is a chunky book that traces Rome from its beginnings as a bandit village in the 750’s BC through to the grant of universal citizenship across the empire by Caracalla in 212 AD. A period of nearly a thousand years. Or, as Mary Beard writes, Rome’s first millennium. As we all know, the Western Roman Empire continued for another 250 years whereas the Eastern Roman Empire - popularly now known as the Byzantium Empire - lasted for a further 1200 years until its eventual fall in 1453.

The problem with any book spanning a thousand years of history is that - no matter how large - it can only give a surface presentation of the narrative as it moves along. There’s no in depth analysis of each event. If you want that, then specialist books are what you need and that’s what I usually prefer. I get frustrated that the author is, necessarily, constrained and so has to arbitrarily choose what to include and what to leave out. That applies here (Marius and the Cimbrian War hardly get a mention for instance). However, I was gifted this book and so once I started, I needed to finish!

The first part of SPQR, covering the foundation and growth of the Republic through to its subsequent transformation under Augustus in the latter part of the 1st century BC, is episodic but essentially follows a linear narrative. The following 200 odd years, detailing the period of the ‘Principate’ emperors, feels much more rushed and thematic. The problem with this latter half of the book is the tendency to indulge in what I call ‘magpie’ historicism - selecting random examples from a wide variety of ages to justify an argument. Part of this is due to the periodic lack of sources handed down to us across the ages. Was Rome’s most thrilling period - the fall of the Republic - so famous because it marked a major turning point or because the surviving source material is so rich?

The central question of any book covering a thousand years is why Rome went from being a tribe of brigands in central Italy to a world power. The usual suspects are present in this book - the Romans’ love of adaption - in army tactics, in building, even in gods. Mary Beard advances that Rome was unique in its ability to absorb its defeated enemies, from Veii, to the Sabines, the Samnites etc, in a loose embrace so all might prosper. The Romans weren’t fussy about local gods or systems of government, they co-opted them. What however was sine qua non was the supply of manpower for wars.

As to the question whether the Romans better in battle or just able to muster more men, Mary Beard believes that - with technology the same, the largest army was predisposed to win. It’s an argument and a plausible if obvious one. There is some truth to this. For example, the Second Punic War where Hannibal, clearly the better general, could win the battles but never the war. Rome kept recruiting armies, harassing the Carthaginians and recapturing towns, in order to continue fighting even when all seemed lost. That was, until they found their own master tactician in Scipio Africanus. Another example may be the most famous if only due to the popular adage that it spawned following the Battle of Asculum. Fighting King Pyrrhus in the 270’s BC, the Romans kept losing battles but extracted unsustainable casualties on Pyrrhus, thus giving rise to the popular phrase “Pyrrhic victory”.

I think my major objection to this type of book is that it clearly comes from an academic. Nothing wrong with that, of course. However, there is hair-splitting and ‘on the one hand, but on the other’ isms that can annoy after a while. Much of the book seems to be negative; finding a popular story or commonly held piece of knowledge and then finding issues with it. It’s a tendency I like least in academics, the pursuit of the obscure in preference to the universal. At best this can advance knowledge and provide balance to a flabby prevailing narrative, at worst, it can be obscurantist and distorting. You can lose the big picture by being needlessly pedantic. In broad based books - like this - the approach can lose the narrative thrust in a welter of qualifications.

Maybe it wasn’t the book for me but then I never expected it to be. I’ve long moved beyond large overviews of the Roman world - however scholarly - and into more niche areas like Julian or Aurelian. So, if someone wants to gift me a Roman history then Josephus’ The Jewish War might be a good place to start.

A couple of factoids-

The word rostrum, for a speaker’s platform, comes from the Latin word for a ship’s ram (rostra). After the naval battle of Antium in 338bc, the victorious commander of the Roman fleet, Gaius Maenius, took the rams from six captured enemy ships and placed them on the platform in the Forum. Hence rostrum.

“They make a wasteland and call it peace,” said Calgacus, ancient British leader, as quoted by Roman historian Tacitus. An interesting quote (wasteland can be interrupted as ‘desert’ or ‘desolation’) which shows as much about Roman freedom of thought to write this down as it does a critique of Roman pacification efforts. Rome usually was magnanimous in victory, the exceptions (like Caesar’s massacre of the Tencteri and Usipetes) providing the exceptions to the rule. They wanted money, taxes, slaves, markets and manpower for the army.

Walking on Lavender Hill

“I commute into Clapham Junction everyday. My office is a twenty minute walk up Lavender Hill and Wandsworth Road.”

— Tim Robson - Bang The Beat!

Lavender...

The word lavender conjures up those sun drenched, hazy fields of Provence. Or perhaps some choppy, warm-toned, Impressionist masterpiece. Or is it a section of a busy thoroughfare in South Central London? Yes, it’s probably the latter. For years this road, this feeling, was my beat.

One thing you won’t find much of on Lavender Hill is, well, lavender. Maybe some discarded pizza boxes, plenty of rubbish strewn waste bags, an upturned supermarket trolley or a decaying Christmas tree thrown onto the street. But not much lavender. The shrub that gave this area its name has gone. Long gone.

The green fields of Lavender Hill. Picture TR

My entrance and exit point to this urban dreamscape is Clapham Junction railway station. Not sure what a junction is, but as to the Clapham part, well, that’s a little bit of historical postcode snobbery. A fib. It’s in Battersea. And Battersea is working class. Full of engineering and manufacturing works back in the day. Less so now. Maybe we could rename it Lavender Junction? Help shift those new million pound apartments, no?

There’s a pub. There’s always a pub, isn’t there? The Falcon is pretty special though. One of those big pubs you only get in London. The ones dripping with large baskets of flowers, partitioned rooms and back lit smoky glass. This one sports a famous horseshoe bar (the UK’s longest apparently). I don’t drink there though – nor the Slug and Lettuce next door. However, the facilities are unguarded and handy so I was pretty much a regular.

The Falcon. Piss stop.

So up we go, up Lavender Hill, ambling wistfully through these London fields. Past the retail splendour of Arding and Hobbs, sprinting past Fitness First, KFC and numerous Lebara money transfer shops where bored staff sell cheap booze and fags, whilst conducting mobile phone conversations that sound important, but probably aren't.

There was a girl once. There's always a girl, behind the memories, driving the words. We were students at South Bank University further up the A3036 on Wandsworth Road. The campus is now closed and converted into a Tesco Express and Pure Gym. I used to catch the Number 87 bus down Lavender Hill to Clapham Junction. If I was more observant, as I sat on the bus all those years ago, I would have noticed a local oddity – a genuine London eatery – the Pie and Mash shop. The historian and the Englander within me likes the fact that this relic of old London, of its working class eating habits, is still there. I like that. I’m a fan; pie and mash and gravy for £4. Treacle Pudding and ice cream or spotted dick for £3. I don’t go near the eels or the liquor (eel and parsley sauce). It's cheering though to know nestling amidst the numerous Thai, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and assorted other restaurants there is an authentic London eatery. But for how long?

Eels. Jellied. Yum.

Continuing on we get Battersea Library, the police station but, most wonderfully (and where most of the drivel on this website was written) the Grade 2 listed building that used to be Battersea town hall but now doubles as Battersea Arts Centre. They used to build beauty, those Victorians, you know, put the effort in, and make buildings things of wonder and aspiration.

“Kate and I are meeting in Battersea Arts Centre. I’m late. I scan the bar. At a corner table is a woman who bears a passing resemblance to Kate’s online dating profile.”

— Tim Robson: The Bottle and the Sock

However, money was always an issue, even in the 1880’s. None more so than The Church of the Ascension, a big, bold - God is terrible, God is almighty, repent ye sinners - church at the top of the hill. It’s a massive stone structure with Byzantine influences by way of Carcassonne. It should have been adorned with an equally gigantic phallic tower but the original architect pissed the money away, was eventually sacked and so he church was completed sans spire. Nerdishly, I own a copy of the original architectural plans from 1875 and framed, they adorn my living room.

French / Byzantine architecture meets Victorian brick shit-house, muscular Anglicanism.

“There’s a tramp whose regular perch is the low surrounding wall of the Ascension of the Lord Church on Lavender Hill. Kicking back with his can of strong lager, he likes to shout abuse at the passing world. His favourite trick is surprise; hunched harmlessly over his carrier bag one minute, and then, as though roused from sleep, pouncing like a lion the next.”

— Tim Robson - About Twenty Minutes

And then we're walking downhill. Go past - hurry! - The Crown pub. One time, as I was leaving, I witnessed some ritualised urban ballet as two drug dealers squared off to each other out on the street. Held back by their various women folk screaming, "Leave it out Jon, he's not worth it!" I waited for my Uber to take me to the station as the performance played out. Don't know who won. It's probably on YouTube somewhere.

This eastern part of Lavender Hill is all shit council flats and massed ranks of mopeds parked on the pavement outside nondescript takeaways. Let me explain lest you live in a town where cuisine laziness hasn't yet set in. Every eatery on Lavender Hill - and there are many, so many - has a fleet of mopeds waiting to transport to the indolent, the obese, and the time poor banker-wankers, their genuine, wood fired Neapolitan pizzas. This, children, is what decadence looks like. Fight, fight, against the dying of the light and cook from scratch you lazy bastards!

“We continue walking down Lavender Hill keeping our own counsel. Once again, our pace is well matched and we walk together, three feet apart. As we near the old Cedar pub, she slows.”

— Tim Robson: About Twenty Minutes

Lift up your eyes. There is beauty in the most unusual places.

There are many places on Lavender Hill that offer a 'massage'. Strangely they always want to massage - for extra, for cash only - those parts that don't often get massaged in - say - more mainstream establishments. Happy endings are promised. Not always delivered. I avert my eyes, clutch my pearls, lift up my skirts, and run from these places. 

(And that paragraph - about happy endings on Lavender Hill - still sends me significant traffic to this website. I’m guessing here, but there’s probably money to be made from adult activities.)

And so, after a mile or so, Lavender Hill finishes at Cedars Road and hands the A3036 baton over to Wandsworth Road in a fistful of Tesco Expresses, coffee shops and Premier Inns in old temperance halls. We are now entering Lambeth and our story must end here.

What happened to Battersea? Abolished in 1965, apparently.

And so where does all this take us? An old London Street. Full of Victorian buildings. What signifies?

“And with clear, cold eyes
And newly acquired candour,
I sift these departing delusions;”

— Tim Robson - Delusions

Well, everything. And nothing. From the confident Victorian public buildings, to the sturdy 19th Century housing for the workers, to the bold and confident Anglicanism. To the many, many cultures that have taken root here, left their mark on the shops, restaurants, through even the pizza delivery boys that criss-cross unknowing across this urban thoroughfare. To the pubs, open and closed, converted or renovated, silently bearing witness to wars and coronations, disasters and triumphs. History shines through, hiding amongst these stones, these relics, peeping shyly from under the brim of modernity. The breath of London, old London, still blows gently in this cityscape. And if you look hard enough, you will find some lavender. Yes, even on Lavender Hill.

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Lavender. On Lavender Hill

All pictures of Lavender Hill, Tim Robson February 2017. Article revised April 2020

Brighton to Manchester Train

I didn't own a car until 1997. Before that time I either walked, rode my bike or, for longer journeys, hired a car but, most probably, took the train. It seemed a better, fitter existence, though maybe I was just younger and leaner and reaping the benefits of living in a city, Brighton. Or maybe I was just poorer.

In those days (roughly 1986 to 1997) in order to get between Brighton and Rochdale, I used to take a marvellous direct train that snaked slowly but surely across England between Brighton and Manchester Piccadilly. I checked National Rail Enquiries recently and this route doesn't exist any more and instead one is encouraged to take the commuter train to London, hop on the underground to Euston and then catch the Virgin to Manchester. It's a quicker journey end-to-end no doubt, but more bitty, and less stately.

I remember the old Brighton to Manchester no-change journey (and its reverse) being around eight hours but perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me. It certainly felt a long time! There were plenty of stops; a selection, Gatwick, Kensington Olympia, Banbury, Birmingham New Street, Birmingham International, Stoke, Crewe, Wythenshaw etc etc. Back in those days there were smoking cars and non smoking cars. I sat in either depending on my ever flipping status. Buffet cars existed of course. I actually liked and looked forward to my British Rail cheese and tomato sandwich on white bread. I still miss it. Typically though I didn't drink alcohol on trains, then. I was corrupted eventually by a friend in 1989 who brought a four pack of Tetleys with him for the journey up to Stoke on our way to his 21st celebration. After that the drop to M&S pre mixed Gin and Tonic was a short one.

The interesting thing about the train from Brighton to Manchester was that - with so many stops - people were forever getting on and off along the way and so the landscape of interaction constantly changed. You might strike up a conversation with someone between say Coventry and Stoke, flirt with a girl between Gatwick and Milton Keynes. Sometimes it was busy, sometimes empty, and this changed depending on the day and the station.

In those pre mobile phone days, what did one do for all these hours? Well, one read, of course. Books and broadsheet newspapers. One could write letters. Yes, people actually used to write letters to each other and not that long ago in the scheme of things! I remember one time writing a letter to a friend on this very journey and stopping at Kensington Olympia, and briefly looking up to see Princess Diana strolling by my window. She was walking along the platform and passed right by me. She got on our train - I believe in a special ‘royal’ carriage though I may be wrong about this - and hitched a ride somewhere further down the line (not Brighton, I think). There was no phone to take a snap of her and so I only have my memory of her being so close, separated from me by just a pane of glass.

That and my Madonna story vie for a telling when I’m out to impress.

I do remember the eagerness one got, impatience even, as the last hour of the journey approached. If my parents weren't picking me up, the arrival at Manchester Piccadilly only meant the start of another journey: a cross town bus to Manchester Victoria, slow train to Rochdale, and parents or taxi for the last leg home. 

I wish I'd have taken more pictures of these journeys. I look at the stock photos on the internet and they seem so old, so quaint, still lifes from another era. I begin to mix fading memories with fiction. I start to image white linen clad restaurant cars and Belgian detectives, efficient station masters looking at pocket watches and brass buttoned ticket collectors with stamps and strange hats. The Brighton to Manchester Intercity has morphed into Murder on the Orient Express or The Lady Vanishes.

Like all memories, one edits - either consciously or though age and declining brain cells - what is recalled. Probably there was lateness, smoky carriages, boredom, inconsiderate passengers but then there was also no inappropriate phone calls either and although many of us had Walkmans (if the batteries lasted!) not everyone was in their own sound buffered zone. So people did talk to each other and, given the era, there was more of a sense of homogeneity about the passengers - a shared story, culture, prejudices. Gone now. But so has British Rail, the route itself, my hair, the careless use of time, being out of contact for long periods of time. Yes, the past is a very different place, how strange it seems sometimes.

Train to London: Nov 1994. The jumper years.

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Originally published 2018 - slightly revised.

The idea for this blogpost came from Peter Hitchens and his - far superior - memories of trains in Europe both now and then.from his Sunday Express column 21/01/18.

A Walk on the Wey and Arun Canal

An unrestored part of the Wey and Arun canal

Back in days remembered best in sepia, the school children of this land used to study British social and economic history 1700 to 1945. This would give the successful students an O Level in History.

This wasn’t the study of war or conquest or empire, this was the study of how a small island nation became great - innovation, reform, experimentation and science. Throw in liberty, religious tolerance, property rights and you have an alternative history of Britain to combat the modern narrative of “It was all slavery, innit?”

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Abraham Darby, Josiah Wedgwood, The Enclosure Acts, The Duke of Bridgewater, Robert Stephenson, William Wilberforce, The Great Reform Act all roll off the tongue of English of a certain vintage. The landmark acts of Parliament, the social reformers, the dark satanic mills, the sheep fanciers and anti Malthusians, all flash by in a parade of not quite forgotten factoids.

One of the accelerators of the industrial revolution was ‘canal mania’ - the twenty or thirty years before the advent and mass adoption of railways. Canals could move bulk commodities long distances safely and efficiently. Britain became criss-crossed by a network of canals, linking cities to the sea, factories to their markets. The longboat, pulled by horses along countless towpaths, complicated series of locks, was one of the unsung heroes of our island story.

But it wasn’t to last.

A restored part of the canal with bridge

The railways were faster and could carry more and for further distances. Gradually the canals were abandoned as goods transferred to rail. Slowly the canals disappeared, bit by bit, one by one. They were neglected, infilled, allowed to rot as nature took its course.

Which brings me to The Wey and Arun Canal.

The canal was built between 1813 and 1816 to link the river Wey in Surrey with the River Arun in Sussex. This vital link would thus connect London with the South Coast. But it was soon eclipsed by the railways and never brought in enough traffic to make it viable. It closed in 1871 and gradually was left to rot and re-wild.

I was there a couple of weekends ago. Storm Dennis was coming in hard, the wind was howling, the rain was falling and so - in Tim World - this meant “go for a hike”. Resolving to see somewhere different, a few clicks on Google got me to Loxwood and the Wey and Arun Canal. Hiking boots, walking trousers, bobble hat and Mars bar packed, off I went!

The story of this abandoned canal is one with an evolving happy ending. Since 1970, a preservation society has been gradually reclaiming this old waterway; getting planning permissions, digging it out, repairing bridges and locks, organising professional workers and armies of volunteers. They’ve restored several miles to make it navigable again. They have plans to get the whole canal operational. Big dreams.

I chose a walk incorporating both the restored and unrestored portions, starting and finishing in Loxwood. Technically this was a four mile hike but given the weather, the mud, my unfamiliarity with the route and a failing iPhone battery, it seemed a somewhat longer endeavour. But I live for wind and rain, soft challenges and middle-class war stories.

The restored part of the canal was like any other canal in a beautiful part of the country. The dreadful weather meant I had it all to myself. I walked along the tow path, dodged the falling branches and contemplated the rain on the water. What interested me more though was the unrestored the sections of the canal - untouched since the nineteenth century and left to their own devices. In places there was no flow of water, in others just a trickle. Obstructions abounded - trees grew right in the middle of where a canal was still clearly defined. Farmers had created the own bridges and accesses that cut the canal into pieces. Seeing this made me appreciate the restored part even more. What labours and fortitude must the merry volunteers of the Wey and Arun Canal Trust have suffered to turn basically a dip in the landscape into a functioning canal?

 

I turned away from the canal up the marvellously named Rosemary Lane (When I was in service in Rosemary Lane*) and then headed cross country back towards Loxwood. Across field and dale, woodland and track I wandered, head down.

There’s a point on a walk where - after stepping in one too many muddy puddles - you no longer beat yourself up about opting for hiking boots and not knee high wellies. You see, walking along woodland trails in mid Feb with a full on storm blowing was, shall we say, difficult. My hiking boots sank into the mud and got soaked (checking today, they still are). I got soaked. My phone ran out of battery. But I ate my Mars bar and found my own way back to Loxwood.

The solitude allowed me to ponder those long ago, semi forgotten lessons in British social and economic history. In truth it was a dry subject matter - no villainous Tudors lopping heads off, or epic Crown against Commons clashes or even little England alone against the united forces of fascism 1940. But walking along this partially restored piece of our industrial revolution got me thinking; it’s the inventors, the doers, the makers and builders that really make the lasting changes, isn’t it? What lasts is not the generals but the engineers. Canal mania was a brief but intense time in our development but they helped get us to where we are. Even in the wind, rain and mud

The Good Life - Part 1

“society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

— Karl Marx - The German Ideology*

The other day I gazed at my Twitter feed and saw the same news item retweeted and commented upon by several of the people I follow. Making the same points with various degrees of humour or waspishness. I was literally gazing down at my own personalised echo chamber. Comforting, affirming and totally corrupting.

We all know - or at least I hope we do - that to live the good life, you should be understanding, humble, a seeker or truth and knowledge. What is a good life? Well, read my dissection of Marcus Aurelius here. We should all try to widen our sources of information, and gain new perspectives and thoughts.

This feeling grew after the election in December. I should have been happy - and I was - but a feeling in me grew that perhaps I was missing something. On a whim I trimmed my right wing and libertarian sources and upped my left wing and radical sources. I always had a few (George Galloway, Jimmy Dore, Tulsi Gabbard) but now I wanted left wing voices to be more represented on the panels of my thoughts. My politics is complicated and I wanted my sources to reflect this, to challenge myself.

But last week I went further. As any reader of this blog knows, I have interests in Roman history, history generally, architecture, London and art. But my Twitter feed did not reflect this. So I actively sought out Twitter feeds that nourished what I actually like beyond the narrow prism of politics - archaeological finds and digs, art exhibitions, great architecture from around the world.

And so my twitter feed - my guilty pleasure - is now (for now) more representative of me as a whole, including the better half of my soul. When I look at my feed I want to stray from Trump’s tweets, to a campaign to save a Roman villa in Gloucestershire, to what’s happening next door at the Tate, to the painful internal process of good solid Labour MPs as they try to work out why they got the recent kicking from the UK electorate.

The same with books. The same with podcasts. The same with YouTubing. Music. 2020 has to be the year of diversity of thought, that most important but under-rated of qualities. It is a central pillar that buttresses ‘a good life’.

Next week, I discuss that how reducing your alcohol intake, eating moderately across all the food groups, quitting smoking and exercising regularly might actually make you more healthy. It’s part of my new series; Stating the Bleeding Obvious.

* Footnote - the Marx quote… This always struck me as ridiculous when I read this back at University. We all had to study Marx a lot, and this quote seemed to summarise the unrealistic nature of communism as envisaged in The German Ideology. But if one substitutes work and replaces it with thought, then, not so crazy…

The Greatest Album One / Two Punches

There are albums that come out of the blocks with two killer tracks that are like a pissed off Mike Tyson swinging wildly at some trash talking, old timer patsy in the late 80's. Albums that decide that the best way to follow a kicking first track, is with another. 

Lock up your aunties! The Crowes in 1992

The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992)

The second album from the Crowes throws 'Sting Me' to the left and "Remedy' to the right. 1992 might have been Grunge Year Zero but, together with Teenage Fanclub, the Crowes held rock's banner aloft. These are kick-ass rock tunes. Basically, The Faces reimagined if their Marshalls were turned to 11 and Rod really went for it instead of pretending to be Sam Cooke. Love these two songs. Highlight - the 'fuck you' start of the guitar solo in Sting Me. A moment in rock I've ever and a day tried to replicate. Two seconds of true power!

The CD reissue doesn't 'feel' right!

Eden - Everything but the Girl (1984)

The impulse purchase one doesn't regret! Stood in WHSmith Rochdale's record department in 1984, I hear the wondrous album play over the store speakers. One track, two tracks, I was sold. Marched up to desk and asked, "Pray tell me good madam, who is making this bewitching sound?". Everything but the Girl apparently. Crazy name, crazy sound. So, I bought the album with its distinctive cardboard, non veneered album with the abstract painting on the front. The songs, I now know, were Each and Everyone and Bittersweet. They detail the commonplace jealousies and realities of relationships. All bedsits, screaming babies and jealousy. No holding hands and a rush towards lust with these songs. It was the clever lyrics as much as the bossa nova rhythms that had me captivated. The rest of the album's pretty good (apart from the execrable Soft Touch). I’ve framed this album.

George is a pinapple head

Beatles for Sale (1964)

Not a One / Two, but a 1-2-3. The Fab Four of course do what other groups do - only better. Whilst other groups would put their singles on their albums, The Beatles didn't.  So Beatles for Sale kicks off with No Reply, I'm a Loser, Baby's in Black. With these stunning ditties The Fab Four literally piss on their competition. The bar is set so high, their album tracks sound like a career best single for any other group. Bizarrely, although released at the height of Beatlemania, Beatles for Sale is pretty obscure these days and these three - being non singles - are not as well known as they should be. But I love this album. Almost as much as I love...

Fisheye

...Rubber Soul (1965)

Pound for pound, this non single containing album, packs pretty much the hardest punch of any album. It roars out of the blocks with McCartney's funky - come on Motown have a go if you think you're hard enough! - Drive My Car. Most groups' best single ever. Just an album track. We then shift gear to the acoustic and sitar masterpiece that is Norwegian Wood. As a guitarist, this latter song - with its major to minor shift - is a dream to play. Like You've Got To Hide Your Love Away this shows why Lennon is so revered. This is effortlessly brilliant. We all fuck around on D but don't achieve anything like this. Let alone chucking in a middle 8 in G minor. Class. In a glass.

Hard. Soft. Kicks ass.

Led Zep 4 (1971)

Anything The Beatles can do, Zep does one better and louder! The whole of Side 1 of Led Zep 4. Just review these four tracks:- Black Dog, Rock n Roll, The Battle of Evermore, Stairway to Heaven. And this is just an normal album, not a greatest hits compilation. Not a filler in sight! From the sonic destruction of the first two, to my teenage fav with Sandy Denny (obligatory hobbit references!) to the ubiquitous - but deservedly so - Stairway, this is how to start a 37 million selling album. Are these guys knights of the realm yet FFS?

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This article was originally produced in 2016. Minor edits.

From Bulgakov to Hardy via Romans

It’s crowded. It’s dusty. It is my overstocked bedside table. What lurks there?

Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

A Russian novel recommended by a Russian lady. Though she’s departed the scene, the novel remains; a 439 page aide memoire to one of life’s tiny footnotes.

SPQR - Mary Beard

It’s like the law - or something - that there shall be a Roman History book on my bedside table. Mary Beard traverses familiar ground as she meanders around from Romulus to Septimius Severus. Not my favourite author or person but I’ll try and look past that and let the subject speak for itself.

Life’s Little Ironies - Thomas Hardy

Hardy was an all rounder - novels, poems and short stories. Study the art from a master.

The Folio Book of the English Christmas

It’s an annual tradition, I get this book out 1st December, it gathers dust and I put back on the shelf in February as the crocuses emerge and the thought of Christmases past appal.

Caligula - The Corruption of Power, Anthony A Barrett

Not one, but two Roman histories. As a keen student of Suetonius and Robert Graves, this feels a bit obvious to my tastes. I crave the third and fourth century, the fury of Aurelian, the prescience of Constantine, the oddness of Julian. But one still returns to the Julio-Claudians like a Hollywood film-maker.

The Bible - King James Version

The only constant presence on my bedside table. I like to look in occasionally. Ah, wisdom and Western Culture. Mmm. As you were. And today’s reading is: Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; But afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. (Proverbs 20: 17)

And my mobile phone and a coaster with my name on it. Possibly my Boss watch.