Appreciating The Work Of Richard Holmes

These days, with 17% of the population scheduled to live until they are 100, when you hear of a person dying in their 60s you tend to think that they have died 'young', especially if they are celebrities.  In the past fortnight, there have been two such deaths, both as a result of cancer.  The first was actress Elisabeth Sladen, who was only 63 and looked at least a decade younger.  The second was (Professor Brigadier Edward) Richard Holmes who died at the age of 65.  Perhaps he is not as well known to the general public as Sladen, but, I imagine to readers of this blog, interested in the kind of things I am interested, he was a well-known and respected name.  He was a military historian, who rose from the rank of private to brigadier in the Territorial Army; he became the first Director Reserve Forces and Cadets (1997-2000) in the British Army not drawn from the ranks of regular soldiers, and was 1999-2007 Colonel-Of-The-Regiment of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment.  He was an academic as well as a soldier, producing 22 books 1971-2008 and lecturing at the University of Cranfield, 1989-2009.  He was awarded the CBE in 1998 and the Danish Order of Dannebrog.

It is through his television programmes, that I imagine he will be best known most widely.  This is one reason why I think his work needs to be remembered.  In many ways he appeared the archetypal British officer, with a full moustache and and real vigour even when in his 50s and 60s, he was shown on television riding around on horseback and firing rifles more actively than many younger presenters.  In some ways, these days, there might be something off-putting about someone so much like an army officer of old.  However, there was an element in him that made his delivery and his sheer enthusiasm come to you through the television.  His voice was clear but with soft tones which made you feel that he was talking to a small group of fellow enthusiasts.  I imagine this comes from him having participated in numerous guided tours of battlefields; he was patron of the Guild of Battlefield Guides.  He managed to pitch the level perfectly, informing without coming across as patronising.  He was not one of these presenters who made you feel you were ignorant, more that in sharing his knowledge you could come to know what he knew.  Conversely, he was not as laid back as Michael Wood, another long serving history presenter who at times seems to be more on an adventure scrambling around places.  I imagine that Holmes's delivery was a product of teaching soldiers and ordinary university students who have many other distractions.  Commentators also note that whilst he covered big events he was also alert to the fate of the ordinary soldier and how they felt when wrapped up in battles.  This always allows the audience to connect more easily with the narrative.  That balance of the strategic and the tactical, down from the level of whole armies to the situation of individuals was well done and, I believe another trait that made Holmes so engaging.

It is many years since A.J.P. Taylor could engage people with basically simply lecturing on television.  However, though far more active, it was that kind of engaging delivery, personal enthusiasm, an ability to conjure up time and place, plus clear communication of facts that made Holmes's programmes stand out.  Newcomers such as Dan Snow, could learn a great deal from watching Holmes's programmes once again.  I have travelled around many of the regions and some of the sites featured in 'War Walks' (1997) and can confirm that he gave you such a good appreciation of what happened in landscapes that look very differen 60, 90 or many hundreds of years later.  Similarly, with his series on the American War of Independence, 'Redocats and Rebels' (2003) explaining a conflict which is always difficult for a British audience not least due to the complex geography of the fronts and battlefields; the same with 'Wellington: The Iron Duke' (2002) especially covering Wellington's career in India.

I think the greatest example of his skill was when flicking through channels I stumbled across an episode of his series 'The Western Front' (2002).  I had seen the whole series before, but in moments found myself engaged in it so much that I watched it right to the end once again.  We need people like this in all kinds of factual programmes.  They have a talent which is not taught, but evolves in people due to their life experiences and Holmes had had the right combination of experiences to provide the ideal presenter, serious and knowledgeable but so engaging that he pulled you right into his narrative.  It is a pity that he was killed by an invidious illness which has robbed us of watching more of his thoroughly engaging documentaries in the coming years.

Blogging the Blog 3: Chinese blogs and Freedom of Media

Sometimes you wish you had the ability to read certain languages and if I could I would be able to reinforce this post. However, I lack the ability to read Chinese script so will have to rely on the evidence of a woman called Prof. Susan Shirk who is Director of the University of California systemwide Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation, quite a mouthful, but she seems to know her stuff. She comments quite a great deal on current developments in China and it seems that she knows Chinese very well. Anyway, recently I came across some stuff she was outlining on changes in the media in China and how blogging is playing a role in that.

As you know, China is currently under a kind of dictatorship which is Communist in name but is thoroughly engaging with capitalist economics. Since the 1980s there has been a huge economic boom with millions of people moving to the cities and being able to travel far more freely, buy consumer goods and so on. It has been noticeable in the UK where many universities now seem to each recruit hundreds of students from mainland China whereas in the past they would have come from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Despite the move to economic freedoms (itself causing major environmental and also social problems as China's welfare state seems to have disappeared) political freedom has been far more restricted. Most obvious was the suppression of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tianamen Square in 1989 which were broken up by troops and tanks. This ended speculation (at least for a while) that China would follow the path of the USSR at the time, i.e. economic hardship leading to economic liberalisation and openness and then in turn to freer press and TV and to democracy (of course since then Russia has started going back to a more authoritarian system under Vladimir Putin.

As an aside, I was talking to a Chinese man who said that China currently has democracy at least to the level of democracy that there is in the USA and the UK. His view of Anglo-Saxon democracy is that it is dominated by multi-national companies and established families, along the lines of the Bushs, Kennedys, etc. in the USA and noble families in the UK. The people superficially have the ability to choose their government, but in fact it is these powerful families and their companies which run everything. Thus, he sees China with all its nepotism and Communist party leaders running large companies, as already having attained the level of democracy that the USA and UK have. Given that half of the British parliament (the House of Lords) is unelected, I would accept he has some points here, though I would not agree with his overall conclusion; neither Tony Blair or George Bush will be in power when they are 92. More importantly, though, it says something about the level of expectations of people in China, given that this man was in his 20s, spoke fluent English and had had the money to come to the UK for education.

A free media is vital for democracy. In China steps in that direction have almost come about by accident. Up until the early 1980s all publications, television, etc. belonged to the government and simply reported what the government wanted to say. The upper elite had access to information about the wider world, but they kept this to themselves. Journalists were civil servants and not only reported news to the public, but also reported on the feelings of the public to the elite. The cost of running such a system became impossible to sustain and so since then there has been a mushrooming of independent newspapers and magazines, particularly appealing to the urban middle class which has done well out of the economic changes. In fact most of them have a government newspaper at their core as these were the only people able to finance and get passed the bureaucracy to set them up. However, the news they report is much more extensive than in the old days. In addition, freer media from Hong Kong such as Phoenix television brings in a different view on things. Of course a free media may help democracy grow but it does not necessarily mean it is pro-democracy and a lot of the media in China is very nationalistic especially towards the USA and Taiwan.

So, where do the blogs come in. Well, the Chinese government still has a lot of power over the media and can push out editors they do not like. They still control the 11 television stations and 40 provinicial television stations and they still produce numerous official newspapers. Even on the internet they patronise news digest websites and ensure that the news they include on them is not out of step with what the government wants to cover. However, the internet cannot be a closed loop in the way that even television media can be. The Chinese government has heavy filtering of internet material accessible from China and some western companies have been criticised for collaborating on such filtering. In addition now, if you visit sites that are felt to include material that is inappropriate to what a person in China should be looking at, automated images of Chinese police appear on screen to tell you off. However, blocking and monitoring the internet is costly. Singapore which has an authoritarian government had to stop trying to control the internet coming into its country in the way it does with newspapers and television because it began to cost too much. The Chinese government continues to foot the bill for such control within its borders.

The Chinese government's filtering, despite the numerous monitoring staff its Department of Propaganda employs, is not perfect and things sometimes slip through, sometimes only for a few hours before they are eliminated. Now, apparently, however, there are bloggers waiting to snatch up such nuggets of news from the outside world. They email them around very quickly and put them up on their blogs so that Chinese people can read what is otherwise being denied to them. Obviously the Chinese government can go around eliminating blog by blog, but speed of communication and the number of bloggers will always mean some escape to post news of that kind in the weeks and months to come. Sometimes I worry that much blogging is little more than navel-gazing, so I guess my faith in its value was partly restored by realising that some bloggers out there are actually helping to spread knowledge and indirectly (hopefully) move the world's most populated country closer to (true) democracy.