Back Into The Sunshine – TNT Sports 2

  The best moment of this was at the end, hearing Clive Tyldesley yelling “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”.   How on earth was that 25 years ago?   And will we ever stop wandering in the Wilderness and get there again?   Anyway, after a slow start with too much waffle, the whole programme was very interesting, and brought back a lot of memories.   It started in 1985 – the year of The Ban.

Let’s just go back to 14 months prior to Heysel.  March 1984.  United v Barcelona in the Cup Winners’ Cup.   I wasn’t allowed to go because I’d only just turned 9 and was deemed too young to be out late on a school night.  So I missed one of the greatest United performances of all time!   Most European matches before the finals weren’t televised then, although I think that that one was on the radio.   I moaned so much that, when United qualified for the UEFA Cup for the following season, I was allowed to go.  Hooray!   November 1984, United v PSV Eindhoven, there I was.  The match went to extra time, and goodness knows what time we got home, but I must have got up for school the next day because I was allowed to go to the next two European matches.   First up, Dundee United.  Then Videoton.  But we lost to Videoton after penalties at the end of the away leg.  The away leg wasn’t even on the radio: we had to watch the shoot-out on Ceefax.  And thus ended my first season of European nights.  But we won the Cup!   And so we were in the 85/86 Cup Winners’ Cup.

But then we weren’t.

The programme began with The Ban.   The various contributors didn’t argue with the ban, but they did say just how rotten it was for everyone.  It was rotten for us, but it was even worse for Everton, who’d just won the league and seemed to stand a very good chance of winning the European Cup.  (Steaua Bucharest won it instead.   Everton would have made mincemeat of them.)  Instead, we got something called the “Super Cup”.  As the programme said, no-one had the slightest bit of interest in it.   Then there was the “Full Members’ Cup”, which I vaguely remember one of the papers nicknaming the “Fool Members’ Cup”.    United never even entered it.    For some reason, the programme never mentioned Channel 4 showing Italian football, but they talked a lot about English players going to Rangers.

Then, in 1990, the ban was lifted!   United and Villa were back in Europe.  Our first match was against Pecsi Munkas.  I think you pronounce it “Peshki Munkas”.  “Pesh” for short.  And we won the Cup Winners’ Cup!   English clubs were back in business!

Er, yes.  Then it all went a bit pear-shaped.   In 1993, back in the European Cup, by then “the Champions League” but still only for champions, we lost to Galatasaray, in the infamous “Welcome to hell” match.  The programme took Paul Parker (why Paul Parker?) back to Istanbul, for a reunion with some of the Galatasaray players from that night.  And I’d forgotten about Blackburn losing to Trelleborgs, the Swedish part-timers whose players included a rat catcher, but there was that too.   And there was Forest losing 5-1 at home to Bayern in 1996.   After English clubs had dominated Europe in the first half of the ’80s, we’d fallen behind and it was a long way back.

But we did it!   That wonderful night in 1999.  “Manchester United have reached the Promised Land”.  And, since then, English clubs have won the Champions League six times more.  Spanish clubs ten, times, Italian clubs three times, German clubs (well, club) three times and Portuguese clubs once.   So we’re not doing badly.   The ban seems a long time ago now, but it was a difficult time.  And this programme brought back a lot of memories.   It was just rather depressing when one of the presenters said that he wasn’t even born at the time!

Unbelievably, it’s 25 years since the Treble.  That’s the one that sticks in the mind, partly because it *was* the Treble and partly because of the incredible finish, 1-0 down with seconds to go and then winning 2-1.   But how I wish I could relive those wonderful couple of months in 2008, when United won the league and the Champions League, and Rafa won the French Open and then Wimbledon … that amazing final, arguably the best tennis match ever.   Happy days …

 

The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Sky Atlantic

  There’s been a lot of moaning in certain quarters about this series, on the grounds that the Holocaust shouldn’t be used as “entertainment”.  I beg to differ.  Yes, there are now dozens of Holocaust novels and numerous films, and I think that it’s all getting a bit much and arguably a bit exploitative; but the book on which this is based was one of the first, and it’s telling a true story.   As for “entertainment”, that’s the wrong word.  What it’s doing is rehumanising people whom the concentration camps dehumanised.

A few years back, someone moaned that Anne Frank shouldn’t be seen as the “face” of the Holocaust because most of her diary was trivial stuff about arguing with her family, finding Mr Dussel annoying and fancying Peter van Daan.   Of course she should, and of course it was.  That’s the sort of thing that teenage girls write about.  She was just an ordinary teenage girl, and Lale Sokolov (formerly Eisenberg), the main character in this story, was just an ordinary young man.  Who fell in love.  With an ordinary young woman.   In the most horrific circumstances in human history.  Because they were still human.   So, yes, it’s OK to have a love story set at Auschwitz.  It’s proving that, even after people were stripped, shaved, and tattooed with a number instead of their name, they were still human.

Yes, there are errors in the book.  The number tattooed on the arm of Gisela “Gita” Fuhrmannova, Lale’s future wife, is wrong.  There’s a reference to penicillin, long before it was widely available.  Some of what’s said about Josef Mengele doesn’t agree with other sources.   It’s obviously not great that there are errors; but it was written from an elderly man’s memories of what happened over half a century earlier, not as a textbook.

There’s also been some moaning about the casting in the TV adaptation.  Jonah Hauer-King, as the young Lale, speaks RP English.  Harvey Keitel, as the older Lale, speaks English with an Eastern European accent.  Er, folks, the young Lale would have been speaking his mother tongue (presumably Slovak?), not English.  So he wouldn’t have been speaking with a foreign accent, would he?!   There’s even been moaning because CGI was used to “reconstruct” an Auschwitz set, rather than filming at the real site.  How on earth could they have built the set at the real site?

The story’s quite well-known now.   In Bratislava, it’s demanded that one person from each Jewish household “volunteer” to “help the war effort”.  Lale goes, and finds himself being transported to Auschwitz, where he becomes one of those tattooing numbers on the arms of new prisoners.  One of the prisoners is Gita.  At the end of the war, they’re separated, but meet in Bratislava, marry, and later move to Australia.   Decades later, after Gita’s death, Lale tells his story to Heather Morris, who writes a book about it.

I’m not sure how well the decision to show the story as flashbacks worked.   We were shown Lale and Heather, and then flashbacks to Auschwitz; and jumping backwards and forwards between timelines never works that well.   We also saw the older Lale being haunted by visions of friends who’d been murdered, and by an SS office with whom he’d had a lot of interaction, which was also a bit confusing.  But I think that the programme did a reasonably good job of trying to depict the horrors of the camp, even showing black smoke coming out of the gas chambers, and Lale witnessing people being shot dead at random.  It tried.  It’s a very sensitive topic, and any book or film or TV series about it is always going to be controversial.  Sky have really done their best to *be* sensitive, with the series being directed by the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor.

A week after the Holocaust memorial in Hyde Park was covered up because of fears that it was at risk of vandalism, and two days after Poland’s main synagogue was firebombed, watch this.  And just watch it.  Don’t drive yourself mad worrying about accents or exact numbers.  Just watch it, and take it in.

 

 

 

 

Pilgrimage: the road through North Wales – BBC 2

  As much as I like North Wales, I wasn’t convinced about the choice of route for this year’s series, purely because it isn’t a historical pilgrimage route like the Camino.  However, a lot of “big” pilgrimage sites aren’t very historical at all.  I’m older than the shrine at Medjugorje!    And this one does include some “proper” historical sites, like Holywell and Bardsey Island.

I must go to Holywell again some time, and wander around in the pool properly, like the “celebs” (I’ve used inverted commas because I’d never even heard of some of them, and I only knew others because they’re related to genuinely famous people) in the first episode is.   There were about three other people there when I stopped off on the way back from Bodnant Garden once, so at least it was quiet!

Bodnant Garden actually features on the pilgrimage route, which is a bit weird because it’s a garden, not a religious site.  But then, gardens are a lot more peaceful than religious sites, so probably a lot better for the soul.

The North Wales Pilgrims’ Way (I am appalled by the lack of an apostrophe on its website) was only “invented” in 2011.  It’s fascinating how pilgrimage routes are becoming a “thing” again.  Honestly, if I weren’t so fat and unfit, and if I got more time off work, I would love to walk the Camino … not because of anything to do with religion, but just to get that bit of time out and getting your head together, in a troubled world.

I was somewhat bemused that Spencer Matthews didn’t know that Jesus was a real person.   What do they charge at Eton these days, about £50,000 per annum?   And they turn out people who don’t know that Jesus was a real person?   That’s really very worrying!   Michaela Strachan, who takes me back to the ’80s, spoke a lot more sense, talking about placing faith in the natural world, whilst Sonali Shah and Tom Rosenthal also made some interesting points.

It’s the sixth series of Pilgrimage now, and the fact that it’s lasted so long shows that there’s genuine interest in this idea of taking time out and thinking about things.   There’s a lot going on at the moment, and we’re all trying to make some sense of the world.   I look forward to watching the rest of this series.

 

 

Royal Kill List – Sky Showcase

  It’s always good to see historical programmes on Sky Showcase, and they did very well to get Joseph Fiennes to be one of the narrators for this one.   Could we just lose the constant swearing, though?   It’s very tiresome.  Having said which, Charles II probably *did* swear a lot, if only to prove that he wasn’t a Puritan!

The theme of this series is the quest to hunt down the regicides, i.e. the people involved in the trial and execution of Charles I, who were excluded from the general pardon given at the time of the Restoration.  Those already dead, including Oliver Cromwell, were dug up and executed posthumously.   Several others were executed, and others were sentenced to life imprisonment.  Some were pardoned, and a few escaped.

It’s not talked about very much, possibly because it doesn’t fit with Charles II’s image as “the Merry Monarch” – lover of many women, father of many illegitimate children, frequent visitor to the theatre and to Newmarket, etc etc.   The fact that he was engaged in secret deals with the French gets overlooked, as well.  I suppose we’re all willing to forgive him anything because the Restoration got rid of the horrendous rule of the Cromwells.   Why Oliver Cromwell so often scores so highly in “greatest ever Englishmen” polls is beyond me.   The man banned Sunday football.  And mince pies.   And closed the theatres.  He also fined people for swearing, so everyone involved in historical programmes on Sky TV would have been very poor if they’d been around in his time.   No wonder that Charles II’s reign is fondly remembered!

But Charles really did go after the regicides, which I suppose is understandable, and this was an interesting take on things.  It also showed the future James II doing a lot of moaning at his brother, and getting very narky about the influence of the infamous Barbara Villiers.   The reign of Charles, like the reign of his grandfather, tends to be overlooked, sandwiched in between the Civil War/Interregnum and the Glorious Revolution.   Despite the fact that half the aristocratic families in the country are descended from his various offspring by his various mistresses!

This went a a bit OTT for a docu-drama, but it was always entertaining – and, unlike the irritating stuff that the BBC churn out these days, made no references to current political events and didn’t include a load of woke drivel.   It was certainly colourful!   But I do think that it was a bit hard on Charles.  It made him look very bloodthirsty, whereas his actions were really quite mild under the circumstances.   Sky’s history programmes often seem designed more to shock than to do anything else.  But, hey, at least they don’t lecture you like the BBC’s do …

Paperboy by Tony Macaulay

This is the author’s account of growing up in the Shankhill Road area of Belfast in the 1970s … with “so it was” or “so I did” added to the end of every other sentence, presumably to give an authentically Northern Irish feel!!   It’s a really interesting book, combining the everyday schoolboy experiences of family, school, friends, girlfriends, football (everyone seems to support United, possibly because of the George Best connection), watching TV, music and, as the title suggests, delivering papers, with the horrors of frequent bombings and having your daily activities disrupted by fires and barricades.   It’s surprisingly funny and upbeat, considering how difficult life must have been at times, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

 

The Gunpowder Plot – Channel 5

  Thank you to Channel 5 for this.  The miserable council have cancelled the Heaton Park bonfire and fireworks display again, and it feels as if Bonfire Night’s getting squeezed out between all the over-commercialised Halloween rubbish and the shops putting out the Christmas stuff four months early.  The failure of the Gunpowder Plot was an important event in our history, and the tradition of commemorating it should live on.  This two-hour programme largely followed the traditional narrative, although just before the end it did suggest that Francis Tresham might actually have been spying for Cecil.  It also made the point that, had the plot succeeded, a large number of people would have been killed in the explosion.  The idea that the gunpowder of the time wouldn’t have been strong enough to blow up Parliament just isn’t true.

You know the basic story.  Guy Fawkes & co – “the gang”, as the programme referred to them, led by Robert Catesby – rented a cellar underneath the House of Lords, smuggled a load of gunpowder in, and planned to set it all off during the State Opening of Parliament.  But someone sent an anonymous letter warning Lord Mounteagle to stay away, and so the plot was discovered.   The programme also went into the lesser-known story of how the plotters were found at Holbeche House in Staffordshire, and Catesby, Percy and some of the others were killed in a shoot-out.   Holbeche House is currently disused after the nursing home which used to occupy it closed down, and there’s some talk of the National Trust taking it over, although I doubt that they’ll want to pay for it.

And so we remember, remember, the Fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot.  I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.   I know it used to get a bit out of hand at one point, but it was always good fun when I was a kid, and I think it’s really mean of the council to cancel the free public events!    Enjoy the fireworks, and eat some bonfire toffee and parkin buns.

 

 

Union with David Olusoga – BBC 2

David Olusoga usually gets on my nerves, but this series, on the history of the union between the nations of the United Kingdoms, looks like being really good.  A lot of what was covered in the first episode was very familiar stuff – Edward I’s conquest of Wales, the Ulster Plantation, Gunpowder Plot, the Glorious Revolution, the Darien Scheme – but it’s not usually all put together in the context of examining the formation of the Union.   We heard about the events, and also about the attitudes of the different countries towards the idea of union.   We also got to hear the opinions of various random people about the idea and history of the United Kingdom, which I’m not sure we needed, but some of what they had to say was quite interesting, and David had clearly made an effort to speak to people with a range of different opinions.

This episode finished with the 1707 Act of Union.   I completed on the purchase of my house on 17th July 2001, and I can always remember the date because it was 17/07.  I know that everyone really needed to know that.

Well done BBC 2.  The BBC’s history series have been a bit off recently, but this one looks very promising.

 

 

Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero – Channel 4

This was horrible; but I’m always complaining that Holocaust documentaries focus too much on the concentration camps and overlook the fact that more Holocaust victims were shot than gassed, so it was very positive – if that’s the right word – to see Channel 4 devoting an entire programme to the mass shootings in Ukraine.  When I went to Ukraine in 2008, I went to Babyn Yar, still better known by its Russian name of Babi Yar, and a lot of people just looked at me blankly when I said that I’d been there.   Over 33,700 people were murdered there in the course of just two days.  Another 70,000 people were murdered there over the next two years.  23,000 people were murdered in two days at Kamianets-Podilskyi.   And they were many more massacres.

The programme showed us a lot of photographs and video coverage from the time, and also harrowing interviews with survivors.   And it didn’t shy away from pointing out the extent of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis, or mentioning the little-known war crimes trials held in the Soviet Union after the end of the war.

It was a difficult hour’s TV to watch, but these stories need to be told. There wasn’t even a proper memorial at Babyn Yar for many years, but a proper museum’s due to open in 2025 or 2026.

These stories need to be told.

British Summer Time Begins: The School Summer Holidays 1930-1980 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

  This was an interesting idea, to write a book about how British schoolchildren spent their summer holidays in the days before trips abroad became common and kids were glued to screens all the time, and I thought it was much better than the author’s book about boarding schools.   However, I think she cast her net too wide.  For one thing, a lot changed between 1930 and 1980.   For another, how children spent their summer holidays varied widely according to their circumstances.  The book did try to show that, but it all felt very bitty when you were jumping from a child from an exclusive boarding school jetting off to spend their holidays with parents who worked in some far-flung part of the Empire to a child who spent their summer holidays playing on debris from the Blitz at the end of their back street.

Having said which, it was quite entertaining.   It wasn’t a nostalgia fest for me because I was only 5 in 1980, but I can imagine that it’d be a nostalgia fest for people in their 50s and older.   It was just too bitty, though, and there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on people at the wealthier end of the scale, and not so much on the average family spending a fortnight at a boarding house in Blackpool.   Not bad.  I’ve read better.

The Queens That Changed The World – Channel 4

(I wish people would not use “that” when referring to humans.)  It was great to see Channel 4 devoting an hour to Queen Anne, who, as they said, is “the forgotten queen”, and deserves far more credit than she ever gets.   However, some of the ways in which they interpreted things were rather odd, and I still can’t believe that anyone could spend an hour talking about Queen Anne without once mentioning the War of the Spanish Succession.

As the programme said, Anne deserves far more credit than she ever gets for her role in bringing about the Act of Union, and also for the amount of time which she spent attending Cabinet meetings.   They also made the point that she was the first married Queen Regnant of England not to give her husband any sort of political role, and that that set the precedent for future Princes Consort.  However, I thought it was stretching things to claim that her main advisors were female, whereas Elizabeth I’s were male.  OK, she was very reliant on Sarah Churchill and then Abigail Masham in many ways, but they weren’t running the show politically.  What about the likes of Godolphin and Harley, neither of whom even got a name-check?

We got the “dirty chambermaid” poem, and the story of when Sarah told Anne to “Be quiet”, and how all the gossip, much of it begun by Sarah, has overshadowed Anne’s political achievements.  Too true.   I once read a book by an incredibly patronising male historian who claimed that Anne’s court was like an Angela Brazil novel.   As the programme said, Anne sent Sarah packing, when Sarah got too big for her boots.  She was the one in charge.   But I found it rather odd that the programme said that we could really do with knowing if any of the stories about Anne and Abigail or indeed Anne and Sarah are true, because that’d show that bisexual people have always existed, and that the Royal Family hasn’t always been “heteronormative”.  What??   What about Ancient Greece, where being bisexual was quite common?  And what about Anne’s great-grandfather, James I and VI, who was definitely bisexual?

The programme also talked about the tragedy of Anne having seventeen pregnancies but no surviving children.   It suggested that she may have had lupus, which could partly account for that.  But saying that the reason she never conceived again after the Duke of Gloucester’s death was because she couldn’t face another loss didn’t ring true at all.   Princesses and queens in the 18th century didn’t have that option.

And it also suggested that it was Anne who brought about the Glorious Revolution, by gossiping about Mary Beatrice’s pregnancy, saying that she wasn’t really pregnant, or that the baby had died at birth and James Edward was a substitute.   And that that’s what persuaded William of Orange to launch his invasion.   What on earth?!   What about the invitation sent by the “Immortal Seven”?   What about William’s desire for English help against Louis XIV?   And the “warming pan” story was hardly just being put about by Anne.   I’m not saying that Anne wasn’t involved, but to try to claim that she was responsible for the Glorious Revolution is pushing it more than a bit!

So this programme definitely went overboard.  Except in the matter of the War of the Spanish Succession, which it bizarrely failed to mention at all.   But it did make some very good points about how Anne’s been overlooked and not given the credit she deserves, and some of what was said was very interesting.