The dark side
If you are an Indian in England and wish to be in harmony with British society, you cannot be too critical of Winston Churchill — at least in public. However, yet another book has been harsh about Britain’s undoubtedly great wartime leader: Fighting Retreat: Churchill and India by Walter Reid, a historian educated at Oxford and Edinburgh, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of several acclaimed works on British politics and history.
The new book was reviewed for the Daily Telegraph by Andrew Roberts, who was deeply offended that Reid had “written a book claiming that Winston Churchill’s attitude towards India was ‘malign, cruel, obstructive and selfish’.” Roberts, author of the admiring Churchill: Walking with Destiny, observed: “One is left with the strong sense that Churchill was neither ‘malign’ nor ‘cruel’, but that this book is both.” He added that “Reid parrots the profoundly flawed analyses of authors such as Shashi Tharoor, Richard Toye and Sathnam Sanghera.”
In order to avoid being hagiographies, British biographies tend to emphasise the dark side of their subjects. Many of us grew up with A Tale of Two Cities and other classics by Charles Dickens. But a new biography, The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens, by Helena Kelly, refers to Oliver Twist’s Fagin as “a very old shrivelled Jew” with “a villainous-looking and repulsive face”. Dickens calls Fagin “the Jew” over 100 times in the novel. Although he also created positive Jewish characters, Kelly notes that “Dickens’s anti-Semitism should not be minimised”.
Wonders galore
Neil MacGregor, one of Britain’s most eminent cultural historians, has written approvingly of the way the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai is currently holding an exhibition that has brought art treasures from other countries to India. MacGregor, a former director of the British Museum, hailed the Mumbai exhibition, Ancient Sculptures: India Egypt Assyria Greece Rome, as “the first stage of a pioneering exercise in global co-curation”.
It “houses fragments of two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and statues of gods from Egypt, Greece and Rome, selected by CSMVS curators from the collections of the Getty Museum, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the British Museum.” He adds: “The statues of Aphrodite, Dionysus, Apollo and their companions are the outriders for a long-term partnership between the CSMVS and the three lending institutions, a joint venture in sharing collections and knowledge, all funded by the Getty Trust. (I have been an adviser to the Getty Trust on this project from the beginning.)”
I have urged relatives in Mumbai to see the exhibition, which MacGregor says will allow Indians “not just to admire and enjoy great works of art, but to think afresh about the complex links between India and the rest of the world over more than 3,000 years.” He wonders: “Can this partnership be a model for others between the museums of Europe
and North America and those in the rest of the world?” The British will never give up the Koh-i-noor but maybe the diamond could leave the Tower of London for a tour of India one day.
Fishy business
One change in British society has been that men enjoy cooking as much as women. Nandana Sen’s husband, John Makinson, has many accomplishments to his name. He has been a senior Financial Times journalist, as well as chairman of Penguin Random House and the National Theatre. But he makes an excellent poached salmon. I have just tried out the recipe by cooking half a salmon in a fish kettle, a long oval tin where the fish is simmered gently in bouillon. John advised me: “To make the court bouillon, I put half a bottle of dry wine, half a cup of white wine vinegar, diced carrot, onion and celery, a little salt and pepper, a couple of sliced lemons, and some aromatics (I used parsley and bay leaf but thyme would be fine as well).”
He decorated the salmon with sliced cucumber and lots of lemon wedges alongside it, and served it with buttered new potatoes, steamed asparagus and home-made mayonnaise. Very satisfactory and not at all difficult. This year, he did “salmon en croute for Christmas lunch and it was great,” he tells me.
Life and death
I wrote last time about a college batchmate who was sent home after consultants said they could do no more for him. We did have a chat on the phone but his wife later wrote to say that he passed away peacefully early on Christmas morning. I have been trying to recall our student days for an obituary in the college magazine. His passing emphasises that grief is the price of life and that life is precious and fragile.
Yet, there is a growing movement in Britain calling on the government to allow assisted dying. It is being championed by a former TV celebrity, Dame Esther Rantzen (83) who has Stage IV lung cancer. The Indian author, Zareer Masani, also backs the move. Others say it would be wrong and dangerous.
