Frederico Garcia Lorca - Three Plays

Before I write about each of the plays in turn.  There are some general themes that arise from the trio.  First, and most powerful, is the feeling of oppression and violence that emanates from Lorca’s depiction of society.  People are forced to do things they hate, marry people they don’t love and live miserable lives all for the sake of societal convention and ‘honour’.  All three plays contain lovers deemed illicit by society; in “Blood Wedding” the bride cannot be with her true love as he is too poor to marry her, in “Yerma” the eponymous woman was married too young to realise what she was doing and in “Casa De Bernarda Alba” the cause is monetary again.  Juxtaposed to this is a theme of true love and it’s all encompassing power.  It described more than once as a rope, which pulls those under its power in ways they are powerless to resist. In all three plays, the power of this love eventually leads to death, which illustrates Lorca’s point as dramatically as possible!

There is further social comment on the rigid roles expected of men and women.  All three plays seem to highlight the terrible oppression suffered by women in this age; confined to their houses, in the interests of decency and appearances, and only permitted to look after the men and produce children.  Bernada Alba and her daughters, the mother in Blood Wedding and the protagonist in Yerma are all examples of the terrible results of this oppression.  It’s less clear to me if there is also a condemnation of the behaviour of men.  Both men and women cheat on their families in these plays so the dishonesty isn’t confined to one sex.  Nonetheless, two of the male protagonists do cheat on their wives or fiances so perhaps men are being portrayed as the more dishonest and the weaker of the sexes.  There is some comment on men's’ predilection for prostitutes too but it isn’t harsh.  I feel like the criticism is aimed at society as a whole, perpetuating unimaginably repressive stereotypes, which, in turn, make everybody miserable.  However, in a male dominated society I suppose there must be some criticism of men as the primary culprits in its continuation, although, Bernarda Alba is a fine example of a woman who does a huge amount to perpetuate it.  There is also some criticism of differences between rich and poor but this seems secondary to the criticism of people being forced to repress their true feelings.  However, when La Poncia says, “all we’ve got is our hands to work with and a hole to be buried in” in “Casa de Bernarda Alba” I felt a pang of empathy for her miserable life.

Alongside this apparent criticism of tyrannical society sits a seeming reverence for certain traditions, nature and the natural forces in life.  Each of the three plays contains a symbolic or metaphorical section; in Blood Wedding we have ‘The Moon’ and ‘Death’ disguised as a beggar woman, in Yerma the fertility ceremony involving the bull and the cow and in Casa de Bernada Alba the mad grandmother who seems to be an example of the wise fool as in King Lear.  As such, I found a stinging criticism of tradition and societal norms sitting beside an endorsement of nature and natural feelings as experienced by feelings, emotions and desires.  The character of La Poncia in Casa Bernarda Alba seemed to embody this for me and is simultaneously full of folkloric wisdom while not being prudish or despotic in its application.

The importance of nature and the closeness Lorca felt to it in his rural life near Granada are also apparent in the text.  I’m really glad I read these plays in Granada as they are rooted in this landscape and culture in a way I could still feel today.  The palette of biscuit coloured browns, striking blues and brilliant whites is immediately identifiable.  The Andalucian summer sun is brilliantly described as, “heavy as lead”.  There are also countless similes and metaphors that point towards a life lived at far closer proximity to nature than most modern urban dwellers.  Features drawn from the observation of corpses like ‘yellow lips’ and ‘tongues full of ants’ and stories of sows eating babies show a rural life entirely alien to me.  Indeed, in Blood Wedding, the ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ discuss the prospect of grandchildren like farmers discussing livestock including the choice phrase, “my son will cover her well.  He has good seed”!  The ‘Mother’ wants girls to do the embroidering, the Father boys to work the land for free.  I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend's aunt near Granada when she bemoaned the fact her brother didn’t marry an ex-girlfriend who, “knew how to kill a pig and make something from every part of it”! I feel like there is still proximity to the rural way of life portrayed in these plays.  Albeit within a far more open and liberal society.  

All plays feature songs or poems that are presented in the manner of an oral tradition.  Even though they didn’t speak to me, I feel they are more evidence of Lorca’s connection to a specific place as a writer.  They also represent another perspective on the past and the role of tradition in society.  To me, they seem to draw a connection between the current events and those that have happened in the past.  Demonstrating that major themes of human life are constant and unchanging.  I couldn’t really connect with these in the same way as the descriptions of the landscape or, in a much more remote way, the customs of the local people.  My British cultural background is surely one part of the problem.  While the translator does a great job, invoking some Scottish phrases, they simply don't have the same significance for me nor are they as euphonic as I suspect they are in Spanish.  Reading them in Spanish is certainly a project for next year!

My major criticism of the plays is their portrayal of unending misery and wretchedness.  Everyone is unhappy, often with good reason, and cheats, lies and behaves dishonourably.  There are few, if any, examples of pure love or enjoyment.  Everything is sullied by deception or oppression.  While this has the advantage of creating a very vivid impression it also makes it seem like Lorca thought everyone was dishonest or vindictive and that the world was only full of unhappiness.  Doubtless, Lorca wanted to do this to prove a point about the society he was living in but after three plays worth of total depression I found myself wondering why he couldn’t find space for even the slightest celebration of the joys of life or a good, honourable and, most importantly, happy person.  Perhaps it is because most pleasure is fleeting while sin occupies a far more permanent position within the human condition.  Whatever the case, I found it unrelenting!   

BLOOD WEDDING

The play has a minimalist feel.  The plot is simple and the characters’ personalities don’t play a central role.  Far more central is the importance of existing customs and the primacy of tradition.  Many of the characters are given generic names like ‘Mother’ or ‘Bride-To-Be’ perhaps to reinforce this subservience of the individual to the family or community.  Sometimes, this can be a bit confusing when you have ‘Mother’ (the mother of the groom) and ‘Father’ (the father of the bride) interacting in the same scene!  On the whole I liked the simplicity of the plot; a prelude to the wedding as viewed from the respective families, the introduction of the bride’s illicit love, the wedding itself, the disappearance of the bride and her lover, their pursuit and the death of both men followed by the bride offering herself to the mother to be killed.  It was exciting.  However, there was a heavy, depressing quality to the whole story.

The Mother is grieving for her murdered husband and son.  Sadness and bitterness appear to have inundated her life and she holds that life is nothing but suffering saying at one point, “As long as one lives, one is always at war”  Her son is to be married to the daughter of a local farmer and she is paranoid about how suitable she is as a match.  This turns out to be justified when she runs off with her former lover, who was too poor to marry her and married her cousin instead.  There are some beautiful metaphors in the style of observations taken from a life lived in close proximity to nature.  One of my favourites was, “their eyes are broken flowers.  And their teeth two fistfuls of frozen snow.”  As with all three of the plays, the songs and poems didn’t translate particularly well.  I wasn’t sure I liked the allegorical sections involving the Moon and Death.  

On the whole it was quite enjoyable.  It made a lot out of its short, simple storyline and was exciting to read.  The Bride-to-Be’s actions are fairly inexplicable, an ill-conceived, and ill-fated, escape from her wedding followed by an attempt to get her mother-in-law to kill her.  Unless we believe in the all encompassing power of love that Lorca refers to in all three plays.  Looked at from this perspective, it quickly becomes the society that is insane rather than the Bride-to-Be and this theme recurs throughout the other plays.  

YERMA

Yerma’s longing for a baby is claustrophobic and harrowing.  It’s unclear if giving birth is associated with nature, and therefore treated positively by Lorca, or if insistence on women giving birth is seen as imposed by society and therefore negative.  I’m very much inclined to think that it is the latter.  The nameless ‘Girl 2’ who talks to Yerma in the fields supports this view and seems highly critical of society’s role in governing personal relationships.  “I’m nineteen years old and I hate cooking and washing. But that’s what I’ve got to do all day. Things I hate doing. And why? Why does my husband need to be my husband? We do exactly the same things we used to do before we got married. It’s just old people’s silliness”.  She concedes that everyone will see her as “mad” but that she doesn’t want to get married and concludes that it ensures, “that the whole world is stuck in their houses doing things they hate doing.”  For whatever reason I feel like I hear Lorca’s voice more clearly in her words than the other characters although I may be mistaken and her views are being presented as young and mistaken!

Throughout the story various explanations are offered for why Yerma, who is ostensibly fit and healthy, can’t conceive.  One is that she doesn’t love her husband and this is true.  Yerma is in love with another man who she talks to briefly during the play and fantasises about.  Here there is an obvious and quite violent attack on the practice of getting married before having had any experience of relationships.  Yerma says, “Girls like me, girls who grow up in the country . . . all the doors are shut and bolted shut in our face. It’s all words left only half-spoken, gestures only half-made, because these are all things that you’re just not supposed to know . . . And you too, you keep quiet too, and then off you go looking like you know, like you know the answer to everything, but won’t say it, won’t tell me, even though you know I am dying of thirst.”  This criticism seems similar to Blood Wedding and entirely sensible and justified to me.  

There is a lot of nonsense talked about childbirth and the reasons for conception in the play but this seems to be aimed at illustrating the gossiping and credulous society that produces it.  One further reading could relate to the role of religion in society.  During her search to get pregnant, Yerma encounters a pagan women who tells her that she needs to concieve with a man she loves.  While this advice is probably of dubious empirical or biological value, one feels at bottom it is probably sound.  On the other hand, the old Christian women she consults with has her performing magic rituals in the middle of the night and paying her bushels of wheat! I relate this to Lorca’s criticism of society’s blind conformity with tradition, and the church’s role within that, and his possible endorsement of more ‘natural’ ways of living although I accept this interpretation may be a little speculative.

Towards the end of the play, I found myself asking if Yerma is mad for wanting children so much.  The atmosphere in her house becomes totally toxic when her husband’s two sisters move in and perhaps it is this that drives her into a frenzy more than the absence of a child.  Generally speaking, her marriage is miserable, she doesn’t love her husband and he knows this.  However, while he seems content to occupy himself with his business and is simply happy to avoid public scandal she dreams of a different life with another man she loves.

I found this play to be more intense in its claustrophobia and misery than “Blood Wedding”.  There’s more dialogue, the play itself is longer and the characters are deeper and more complex. Nonetheless, finally the same theme of overpowering love leading to death dominates albeit in a slightly altered format.  Yerma seems to choose the sin of murder over that of adultery when she kills her husband in a fit of rage after he reveals he doesn’t want children.  

CASA BERNARDA ALBA

The protagonist is horrible!  She enforces all the oppression of her age by not permitting any of her daughters to leave the house for 8 years after the death of her husband.  A charitable interpretation of this situation would invoke her grief but it quickly becomes apparent she has a sadistic love of being puritanical.  The consequence is that all her four daughters become extremely sexually frustrated and things deteriorate further when a man does come into the equation.  She is also a despicable hypocrite, which makes her especially detestable.  She claims to hate gossip but is an inveterate gossip herself.  She spreads toxicity all around and it’s so unpleasant you really can’t forgive her even though her husband has died.  The three plays form a crescendo of misery, increasing in detail and volume to this shrill finale.  It really is a masterpiece of misery and I was not at all surprised to learn from my Spanish friend that they say “Casa Bernarda Alba” for a situation where everything is completely fucked!  In fairness to Lorca, who I’ve criticised earlier for being all doom and gloom, some of her pronouncements are quite amusing in their ludicrous severity.  For example, “The only man women should look at in church is the priest. And only because he wears a skirt. To look at any other man is to act like a bitch on heat.”  However, it really is only momentary relief as you’re quickly bludgeoned into distress by her tyranny with her daughters. Not to mention far crueler pronouncements like, “I’m not concerned with feelings. What people feel is their own affair. What matters is the way things look” and “If you should be happy then you are happy. They are one and the same.”  She is the very embodiment of the societal repression that ‘Girl 2’ speaks so eloquently against and against which all three plays speak strongly.  The scene where she bays for the blood of a mother who has had an illegitimate child and killed it for fear of the repercussions is truly dreadful.  It cements the idea of a person, and probably a society too, so wrapped up in misery and anger that it’s only pleasure can be exacting punishment on those who dare to follow nature and ignore the societal laws that are making them all miserable.

La Poncia is a great character and my favourite from these three plays.  She is worldly and I think it is mentioned  she is a prostitute’s daughter in conversation with Bernarda.  As such, she is sure to be classified as ‘dishonourable’ or ‘undignified’ although all her actions in the play show her to be quite the opposite.  She is a servant in Bernarda’s house and is subjected to all kinds of humiliation and cruelness.  Despite all this abuse, she is very wise and tries to warn Bernarda about the lethal situation developing amongst her daughters.  Bernarda cruelly dismisses her kind advice as jealous gossip.  It is in La Poncia’s mouth we find the best diagnosis of the play’s myriad woes, “They are women without men, that’s all. And when it comes to sex, everything else gets swept away.”  The crazy grandmother, who is locked in her room most of the time, also speaks in a prophetic or metaphorical way.  However, La Poncia’s advice is far less poetic and far more practical.  Perhaps more akin to the Pagan women in “Yerma”.  In any case, because she depicted as a sage it is interesting to find her as an apologist for men’s voracious sexual appetites.  This may be due to her mother’s profession but it is surprising to hear her say, “He can’t control himself. He’s only a man.” of the man who proposes to the eldest, ugliest and richest daughter while sleeping with the youngest and prettiest.  Better still she says, “I gave my son money to go with her [a prostitute]. Men need these things.” I’m not sure how to take this as Lorca doesn’t seem to be very sexist in the rest of his writing.  It may simply be that he wanted La Poncia to be an authentic character with views of the age and I have over interpreted her role as a truth teller in the play.  

In the end, death inevitably comes and, as with the misery in the house, it’s worse than in the other two plays.  At a higher pitch and volume.  The deadly squabbling between the siblings is already worse for being within a family.  Yet furthermore, it seems to take on an even darker hue because it has been incubated by their mother and would probably not have happened if not for her vindictive, sadistic and superficial approach to life.  When Adela, the youngest daughter, says, “and I’ll gladly wear my crown of thorns.” before committing suicide I’m not sure if we’re supposed to think of her as Christ-like.  She is certainly portrayed as being truly in love and this could be interpreted as the greatest celebration of God if ‘God is Love’.  However, Bernarda’s obsession with burying her as a virgin, despite the fact it seems fairly obvious she has slept with Pepe, shows religion as having an entirely opposing view of this kind of love!  This was the best of the three plays and I enjoyed them all but wasn’t blown away by any of them.

 

     

AA Gill - Pour Me: A Life

The last time I read any AA Gill, I was a prepubescent leafing through my parent’s copy of The Sunday Times. I remember being impressed by the acerbity.  Now, some 20 years later, the sheer acidity of his prose fails to cover his other stylistic woes.  George Orwell, who Gill inexplicably claims to have had a “titanic crush” on at school, tells us, “good prose is like a windowpane” in his essay Why I Write.  Gill describes, “glazed windows with curtains, behind which is painted a Home Counties landscape” in one of the dive bars he used to drink in.  This is an apt description of his prose although he’s also scrawled ‘Look at me! I’m so clever’ across the glass.  Arcane words litter the text but fail to add much to the general meaning leaving the impression they’re only there to show you how much he knows.  I looked up ‘octorate’, apparently how spider’s move, on google to no avail. He’s also loquacious and floral but in a self-satisfied way that brings little extra satisfaction to the reader.  For example, “they hate it and rant at the propinquity, rage against the intimacy” repeats the same idea two, if not three, times and it seems Gill will never use one convoluted, unclear phrase or word where three or four would suffice.  The most farcical example of this is the following, written in praise of omission:

“writing is the art of editing, each of these words is the result of a decision not to utilise, call on, pick, substitute, designate, suffer, frog-march, choose other words”

It reads like he’s copied and pasted from a list of synonyms!  Other phrases are ludicrously highfalutin; the remnants of a dinner party left to decay are described as, “the corruption of earthly vanity and fleshly lust”. All without apparent irony!  There are also some outright mistakes; “ossuaries of bones” is tautological, “actuary accounting” should be “actuarial”.  At other points, this 60 year old man writes like a 16 year old referencing “cranking”, “barfing” and saying “they’re on it. They’re doing shit”.  It might be faintly amusing and help to appeal to younger readers in a 500 word piece about a restaurant but in a longer, allegedly more reflective, format it’s clunky.  It’s populist, shock-jock prose that sits awkwardly with his attempts at a more refined, less colour-supplement journalistic style.  Metaphors are mixed and muddled.  Tears ‘swim’ down his cheeks, but swimming is something that takes place in water not something water does.  There is ‘an attempt to reconstruct, resurrect the boat that is going the other way’ but if it’s going in any direction then presumably it can’t be resurrected as it’s still afloat!  He either wants to turn it around or dredge it up from the ocean floor but not both at the same time while chucking in ‘reconstruct’ for good measure.   I’m still wondering what phrases like, “they are pre-National Health, a quaint black-and-white starched wimple rectal thermometer condition”, used in reference to DT, or “the wilful extravagance of a tissue-paper basement bohemianism” actually mean other than being a collection of words the author loosely associates with the concept he’s trying to express.  The tone is mean and sneering.  In the first chapter alone, we contend with references to ‘dagoes’ and ‘randy fat girl[s]’ but at least these are comprehensible.   He’s also snobbish, name dropping his quasi-famous society mates and bemoaning that alcoholism and LSD aren’t what they used to be. I find this fecklessness amazing for a former addict and suspect he’s faking it at some level.  He tells tall tales about his pathetic exploits as a drunk with a kind of pride makes me wonder if he’s learned anything except to stop drinking.  Gill is the consummate attention seeker; seemingly both in prose and life.  

Stylistic gripes aside, I found it really hard to work out what’s going on chronologically in the first chapter.  There seems to be almost no structure amidst the sneering, the showing off and the confusing metaphors.  It’s like he wrote it as a stream of consciousness.  We start off and Gill’s in rehab.  He’s thirty and he’s talking about some exercise they do in rehab about being adrift at sea and making choices about getting back to land.  So far, so comprehensible.  However, he then goes on to say that 27 years later he realised he made the wrong choice.  As such, I’m thinking he is 57 when he realises this.  However, later on he says the book will cover the period between his time and rehab and the end of his marriage, which is between six and eighteen months.  Incidentally, this turns out to be totally untrue; the book seems to cover almost all parts of his life apart from this period.  It seems he gets divorced first, then stops drinking in rehab a year or so later.  So what of the 27 years?  We can only presume that he is NOW 27 years removed from the time when he chose to get married and that the choice to get married is the ‘choice’ he is talking about and not the choice he was confronted with in rehab.  Perhaps this sort of vagueness is supposed to pique the reader’s interest but I found it unclear and annoying.  It’s like he’s remembered the incident from rehab and written about it but then made only the vaguest attempt to connect it to the rest of the chapter.  Sadly, unconnected and rambling rants are all too common throughout the book.

We continue in this higgledy-piggledy way through a hodge-podge of half-baked philosophical observations, autobiographical remembrances and miscellania. All suffused with the ambience of a recalcitrant schoolboy dashing off an essay before a deadline.  It’s as if Gill believes he’s so clever and his life so interesting that anything he says will be worthwhile. So what’s the point of thinking about what’s being said or giving it a structure?  Of course, structure isn’t essential. The real problem is the material, the observations are commonplace but presented in such a smug, self-congratulatory way it’s a nauseating.

The book does improve from the truly shocking start.  There are more interesting, and comprehensible, sections on him studying art while at the Slade, a brief history of his family going back two generations and a dissertation on cooking.  However, all read like individual essays inserted into the broader stream of consciousness and all suffer from his ‘why use one word when I know fifteen’ approach to writing.  None are explicitly linked to the stated subject matter of the book; namely, addiction except for the therapeutic qualities of cooking in his family.  Coupled with the insufferable style and propensity to pontificate on subjects well outside his expertise using the same tone of arrogant assertion, it doesn’t amount to good prose.  In general, he reminds me a bit of Jeremy Clarkson.  He knows about his specialist subject but expresses his knowledge in such a mean spirited way.  Both are intelligent and capable of making interesting points but insist on playing the class clown.  It’s lowest common denominator stuff; sexism, wild exaggeration, oversimplification of complex issues, racism, xenophobia, outlandish stories, arrogance, name dropping and unsubstantiated opinions presented as facts.  Both should really be above such carry-on but are egged on by the class.  As the comedian Stuart Lee puts it so unforgettably, “with his outrageous politically incorrect opinions which he has every week to a deadline in The Sunday Times for money”.  Anyone wondering why it is so unacceptable for intelligent, privileged people with a public platform to behave like this should watch this part of his stand up routine! I haven’t read any Clarkson since I was about 12 either so perhaps he’s changed, but I very much doubt it.  I was most amused when Gill reveals the two are friends, a fine match in my opinion.  

Gill also seems fixated on portraying himself as close to penniless throughout the book but doesn’t seem to think it contradictory to mention his expensive education, flats on High Street Kensington, not working and drinking non-stop which all clearly contradict this narrative.  I’m not saying they were filthy rich but the idea of him, his father and his brother ‘pooling 30 francs’ to bet on a horse at Longchamp because they had ‘run out of money’ is plainly a ridiculous fabrication.  His father was a very successful television producer and director and many parts of the book point to the family’s occupation of fairly elevated social strata.  However, as with the outrageous politically incorrect views, Gill must show off and exaggerate at all costs!  He also tries to simultaneously claim he is middle class while also working at Tatler, which even he admits is solely for good looking people with trust funds.  While his family could be described as upper middle class, it’s clear from the contents of this book, and his job at Tatler, that he is a SERIOUS social climber.  His good looks and natural affinity for being a snob probably helped considerably in this regard.

For a brief moment, around Chapter 10, Gill does actually talk about addiction before moving on to more worthy topics like how wonderful he is at journalism, how funny he is and how really it critics who are the lifeblood of the world and facilitate all progress in it.  What he says is, for me, far too broad and inauthentic.  It’s a sort of caricature of addiction for those who know nothing about it but are interested in it in a sort voyeuristic way.  Addicts are this, addicts aren’t this, addicts do this, but addicts don’t do that.  It’s as if every single addict were exactly the same and he has knowledge of the whole field because he was once a degenerate with a couple of war stories; most of which sound heavily embellished.  He asserts that no addict indulges in self-pity, which is far too general to be meaningful.  Of course people feel sorry for themselves, often with good reason, and an addict is no different.  He might not feel pity for himself over his addiction, which often has physical and psychological aspects that are hard to overcome, but to assert that it plays no role is simply too broad a statement.  In the same vein, we are told “living sober is nothing like as heroically gritty as trying to live stoned and drunk”.  Again, that depends on the person, the circumstances and a thousand other variables that Gill doesn’t care to examine.  He even goes so far as to say he doesn’t mind if his children take heroin because, “I know what to do about heroin”.  It’s hard to express the arrogance and stupidity of this sentence.  However, it’s all of a piece; what he wants to do is write something that will shock the non-addict, something at odds with their middle class, Sunday Times view of the world.  By turns this can be talking about shitting yourself or claiming heroism for the addict or saying taking heroin is OK.  It doesn’t matter, as long as sufficient shock is produced and he’s the centre of attention.  It’s tiresome, much like the prose.  The exact same motivation lies behind all Gill’s outpourings; he’s showing off and acting for the crowd.  

This book doesn’t examine addiction in any detailed or meaningful way.  I also suspect it doesn’t really reveal much about Gill’s life.  It reads like 100 frivolous pieces for some weekend supplement of the Sunday Times vaguely joined together. He flits from subject to subject telling tall tales and making jokes.  The only unifying theme is the desire to shock, to impress, to seem clever or controversial.  He thinks he’s hilarious, and even writes as much, but I didn’t even smile once during this book.  A consummate show off, he’s always making outlandish claims and trying to show that what others find complicated is comprehensible to him by virtue of his wit and irreverence.  He glamorises his addiction and rarely writes about the terrible effects it must have had on those around him.  He comes off as a mean, snobbish, arrogant and unpleasant man with a huge ego and far too high an opinion of himself, his views and his exploits, which he admits he largely can’t remember and has probably largely invented.  Those hoping for a honest examination of addiction should look elsewhere as this is just a few stories about addiction coupled with a load of sundry material on how great he thinks he is.  I had most empathy with the Scandinavian guide who told him, “You’re a cunt”!  Just like the glazed pane with the fake Home Counties scenery behind it; Gill shows us a mish mash of fabricated stories through the grubby window of his pretentious prose.

K O Knausgaard - A Death In The Family

The book started with a bang for me as I really loved the discussion about death on pages 4-7. Among other examples, it spoke about how everyone likes to hear about death on the news but no one wants dead bodies on the street.  It pointed out how many people die in films, novels and videogames but how taboo footage of cadavers being eaten by birds would be in the same context.  It is really excellent.

Sadly, things quickly went downhill for me.  A lot of the prose is lacklustre and uninspiring.  Every minute detail is described but not in a colourful or beautiful way, rather, it is quite dull and simplistic.  The result is rather mundane and not evocative.  The endless details never combine to paint a vivid scene.  For me, it seemed more like heaping boring description upon boring description.  I suppose you could describe the style as distinctive but I didn’t enjoy it.  I also wondered, given the chronology of the book, how he could possibly have remembered such a multitude of inane details about his youth.  So, when I reached ‘Part 2’ I was a little confused to read, ‘I hardly remember anything from my childhood.  That is, I remember hardly any of the events in it’ (p211). I began to wonder whether this guy really knaus what he’s talking about!  In some way, this seemed to make all the boring recollections of how he had prepared his lunch, or from what angle he had approached his father, or how black and steamy his coffee was rather less forgivable!  On finishing the book, the adjectives ‘black’ and ‘shiny’ stick in my head as overused.  I feel like an effort to remember details from one’s childhood can be a worthy endeavour insofar as it can be helpful in reconstructing a ambience or environment.  However, simply making up a mountain of tiny details seems rather pointless to me and perhaps this is why I find the author’s prose underwhelming.  Perhaps I’m being too black and white about whether this is a work of fiction or autobiography and I don’t think it really matters so long as what’s created is effective and here, crucially for me, most of it wasn’t really.   

One possible exception to this general stylistic gloom and lack of ambience is the section describing his father’s descent into alcoholism and his death around pp 250-270.  It seemed more authentic and contains the honesty that many people have praised in Knausgaard’s writing but it’s still a bit bland and mechanical for my tastes.  Another brighter section was pp 316-334 where he describes the state of his grandmother’s home that she and his father having been living in prior to his father’s death.  Alongside the forensic descriptions of the filth and chaos of the house there’s also a lot of detail on the floor plan.  The same is true for descriptions of his childhood home.  I’m not sure whether I am alone in this but I found these descriptions difficult to follow and was never left with the feeling that I had a working knowledge of the floorplan described.  Despite all the description I remained confused!  It’s more the descriptions of the filth that ring true and are evocative.

Another stylistic gripe I have with the book is that it contains a number of impossibly long sentences.  For reasons that I hope will be obvious to the reader I will refrain from reproducing them here.  However, three of the most heinous examples occur at pp 353/4 (17 lines), p366 (16 lines) and p429 (16 lines).  In some cases, like p366, he obscures a lovely idea of books being everyman’s access to ‘the supreme’ with quite a lot of pretentious rambling about ‘Orpheus’ gaze’.  In others, such as p429, he probably does the reader a favour by distracting from the banality and self-aggrandisement of the subject matter; in this case, how his wife likes how good he is at reading people.  My point is not simply restricted to these three examples, although these are perhaps some of the most extreme cases of it.  In general, I feel the sentences are too long, a bit rambling and suffer from a lack of clarity and crispness owing to the large amounts of information crammed into them.

There are stylistic highlights too.  There is an excellent and perceptive section around pp 368-9 about the role playing nature of early identity:

“So there I was, playing roles, pretending this and pretending that...There was something furtive and dubious about my character, nothing of the solid pure traits which I encountered in some people during the period, people whom I therefore admired.”

Also, a section on swimming in the sea from p401:

“the sun burning down through the high blue sky and sea.  The water streaming off your body as you haul yourself up using hollows in the rock face, the drops on your left shoulder blades for a few seconds until the heat has burned them off, the water in your trunks still dripping long after you’ve wrapped a towel around yourself.”

Both are powerful pieces of prose.  The first because of the idea it contains and the clarity with which it is expressed, it’s also unusually pithy.  While the latter is, perhaps, an example of how the author’s chosen method of forensic description can bear fruit.

At the end of the book, the author returns to the theme of death and its relation to the physical human body.  He repeats the idea that the dead body is just another inanimate object and that the death of a body is just another process like those that inanimate objects undergo all the time:

“for humans are just one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone and water.  And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor”

But this kind of thinking, like the idea of leaving dead bodies to lie where they die, is highly theoretical at the end of the day.  This same man who has such intellectual regard for death finds himself inescapably moved to tears by the death of his father who he has, intellectually at least, wished dead for several years; not without justification!  It is the strength of the feelings surrounding death and grief that make these kind of approaches to death more or less impossible for most normal humans.  It is not reason and intellect that see the author rooting through his bedroom cupboard in the middle of the night to check his father is not there (p489)!  The strength of the emotions, connections and the sense of loss are too powerful for anyone to be able to treat a dead body like a kettle or view a loved one’s death like a smashed window.  Regardless of the truth of these assertions from an empirical perspective, they are emotionally devoid of all meaning.  

The book contains some interesting ideas and some good passages but overall it was only just good enough for me to view reading it in a vaguely positive light.  I disliked the style and found it cluttered, overly descriptive and lacklustre.  I also found the author’s ideas and his expression of them a bit pretentious in places.  The sections dealing with his father’s death and the aftermath were the highlights for me but, overall, it’s not a book I’d especially recommend and I don’t think I’ll read any more in the series.

Mike Brearley - The Art Of Captaincy

This is a good, interesting and useful book.  For another reader, say one who had a keen interest in cricket during the time when the author was in the pomp of his captaincy career, I’m sure it would be considered a stone-wall classic.  It’s really like four books in one but more about that later.  I’ll begin by getting a couple of stylistic and editorial gripes out of the way.  First, I found two misprints, which is surprising and sloppy.  It also seems totally at odds with the author’s own, seemingly meticulous, style and the evidence provided by the excellent and exhaustive index.  Secondly, and far less significantly, it is amazing how frequently the word-joining-hyphen appears in the text.  I wondered if this is a peculiarity of the author or whether it was a feature of writing at the time; perhaps a bit like the hashtag now.  Lastly, there is one section that I find totally incomprehensible:

“Douglas Jardine was the type to pay attention to such detail.  In 1932, he insisted on all tourists having dental check-ups before leaving England.  He is even said, by Alan Gibson, to have nursed Harold Larwood through, during the interval, with sips of champagne, while outside police were guarding against a riot and Australia was contemplating breaking itself away from the empire” p330

It makes no sense to me and I have re-read it several times and googled ‘1932 Australia Gibson Jardine’ etc.  Is it that Jardine nurses Gibson through his dental inspection with champagne? But why would the police be guarding against a riot? Let alone Australia breaking away from the Empire! The word ‘interval’ implies it was during a game but it couldn’t have been one against Australia as the touring party were still in England; all very confusing!

I wrote before that this is really four books in one and it certainly is in terms of the variety and quantity of the content.  I do not mean to say that each part of the book is different and readily identifiable as belonging to one of four types.  The four ingredients are intertwined and mixed in a way that defies rigid categorisation, however, this was the way the book presented itself to me and I think it is a useful framework; but then again I would!

1.

For a former cricket player and fan of the contemporary game for perhaps about 5-10 years, but no great student of its history, this book contains some fascinating historical insights and perspectives.  As such, this book is in part a historical one and this is my first category.  It’s a seasoned, intelligent professional giving you historical vignettes from his considerable knowledge.  From the inevitable stories about W.G.Grace, which are really a bit hackneyed, to a very interesting discourse on the demise of the leg spinner:

“But why have leg spinners all but disappeared?  Part of the answer lies in the factors that have countered against spin bowlers in general, and helped seamers: the use of fertilisers, the watering of outfields and the changes in ball-manufacture.  More specifically, though, leg spinners have suffered from a change in attitude.  Cricketers have become less cavalier.  It is no longer thinkable that a wicket-keeper should have 64 stumpings in a season, as Les Ames did in 1932.  Contrast Ames’s career record (415 stumpings, 698 catches) with John Murray’s (257 stumpings, 1,270 catches) or Jim Park’s (93 stumpings, 1089 catches).  Tail-enders no longer slog gaily, thereby becoming quick victims for a slow leg-spinner.  Selectors, captains and cricketers in general have become more conscious of containment; and the leg-spinner, especially in recent English conditions, has become a luxury.  One-day cricket, which calls for attacking batting but defensive bowling, has hastened his demise, but it, too, is a symptom as well as a cause.” p241

As a stylistic aside, I’d like to note that the hyphen occurs seven times in the last two quotations!  We are also treated to more idiosyncratic titbits, like the possible origin of the term ‘Chinaman’ to signify left arm unorthodox spin.  Happily, this quotation also contains one of the two misprints I was grumbling about earlier:

“...Ellis Edgar Achong, a slow left-armer [sic] bowler of Chinese origin who played for the West Indies between 1929 and 1935.”  p238

Achong sounds like a potentially interesting character!  There are many other examples of the author’s knowledge of, and skill in presenting, the game’s history.  However, one striking observation about the history of the game that I had never considered came from the books 2015 introduction, written by Ed Smith.  Smith is, like the author, a former Middlesex and England batsman and also, like the author, of no small intelligence and writing ability.  I met him at a wedding once and he was charming so there’s my claim to fame! He points out that the leadership of a cricket team has changed drastically in the 20th century.  For instance, in 1962 the game abolished the distinction between amateurs and professionals and became fully professional.  This meant that the captain would now be professional as opposed to the previous necessity that this position be filled by an amatuer.  Brearley, whose career began in 1961, recalls changing with the captain in luxurious surroundings while the professionals had to get changed in a shower room!  However, England did not appointment a professional coach until 1986.  As such, Brearley’s career spanned an era whereby the captain was no longer some idiot toff, selected on the merits of breeding and wealth alone, but a first among professional equals.  It also preceded an era where coaching heavily influenced strategy and tactics.  Taken in this historical context, his role was probably more akin to the player / manager role occasionally adopted in football and the book is all the more interesting for it.

2.

The aspect of the book I enjoyed least was what might be called memoir.  I have little or no knowledge of the cast of players and absolutely no contemporary recollection of the events.  Consequently, even though some of the stories are entertaining in their own right, it’s hard for the material to be that engaging.  Clearly, this is not a fair criticism of the book as many readers would have knowledge of the cast of players and events and were probably buying the book for this very reason!  One subgenre of the memoir-esque material that I did enjoy rather more than the rest is what one might term ‘after dinner speech material’.  For example, this story for ancient Greek military history:

“When during the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans were about to make a landing from Sphacteria, the Athenian general addressed his troops as follows: ‘Soldiers, all of us are together in this.  I don’t want any of you in our present awkward position to try to show off his intelligence by making a precise calculation of the dangers which surround us.  Instead we must make straight for the enemy, and not pause to discuss the matter, confident in our hearts that these dangers too can be surmounted.’” p318

And in a similar, but more modern and light-hearted vein:

‘It was EM Forster I think who said, “How can I know what I think until I hear what I say?”’ p319

On the whole though, this was the part of the book I got the least from.

3.  

The final two strands of this book I want to write about are far more closely intermingled than the previous two.  I’ll call them ‘A Captain’s Handbook’ and ‘The Philosophy and Psychology of Leadership’ or perhaps PPL in the interests of brevity and ease of typing!  The reason I say they’re far more closely linked is because both essentially address the incredibly broad field of leadership, which in turn encapsulates relationships, families and education.  A person who had just been appointed captain of a team would find this an excellent 101 in cricket captaincy.  Everything is covered in extreme from the technical merits of certain field placements to the practical challenges of arranging winter nets.  In this respect, I wish I had read this book when I was about 11 years.  Sadly, my cricket captaincy career was to be a short one.  Might it all have been so different had I read this book?  I doubt it! However, much of this practical material contains clear parallels in other parts of life.  For example, when discussing finding a new captain for a team:

“The more feeble the side has become, and the longer its decline has lasted, the more reason there is to import” p45

I need hardly point out the multitude of different situations this kind of thinking might be applicable to.  Equally useful is the following passage, which describes the antinomy of the personal vs. the group in cricket while simultaneously providing an interesting analysis of group sizes and their different dynamics that could be applied in a corporate or a social context:

“Team success is, indeed, the product of personal successes.  And it would be possible to have the conflict between self-interest and that of the group in a team game.  Each ball is a mini-drama between two protagonists - a bowler and a batsman; but the protagonists’’ actions take their meaning from, and are strongly influenced by, the group context.

It is not accidental that sporting teams range from around seven or eight to fifteen a side.  For a true group cannot exist with much less than seven members; and with more than twenty it tends to become a crowd.  Two is not a group; they may combine well together , but too much hangs on the individuals and how they happen to get on.  Threes tend to divide into a two and a one; fours into two-two.  Five or six people can make a group, but the absence of one or two individuals makes its identity precarious.” p311

Some passages are more specific to cricket:

“The players’ attitudes are improved by realistic practice matches” p60

But clearly indicate an approval for secondary tasks performed in a serious and focussed manner and the benefits that this kind of environment can bring to a team.  Other reflections, indeed, probably also constitute memoir given that they refer to individual matches:

“We started to have intense, brief meetings before each session of play.  These talks helped revitalise a unit that had become sloppy and even dispirited” p320

But these too have a broader significance and application, which the author sometimes draws out himself:

“RC Collingwood, philosopher, writes ‘A tribe which dances a war-dance before going out to fight its neighbours is working up its war-like emotions’” p321

To me this is great practical philosophical and psychological advice insofar as I am often guilty socially, in my work and in a family context of not being in the right frame of mind for the task in hand or totally focussed on it.  I certainly think it’s good practice to meet with those you’re trying to achieve something with or to state clearly to yourself; what it is you intend to do and what attitude this requires.  

One area I thought the author was excellent on was confidence, its mercurial nature, and its importance as a counterbalance when attempting to correct faults, both personally and in others.  He makes the following suggestion:

“It ought to be a basic provision of the coaching system of any professional club to make an extended tape of each player when in good form.  He should be filmed both in the middle and in the nets such a tape would be a touchstone for the individual; in lean days it would remind him of his strengths.  And it could be used by coach and player to pinpoint the ways in which his method had deteriorated or improved” p72

This is a rare occasion where the practicality of immediate parallels with broader life may be harder to implement.  Sport has the advantageous quality of being visible.  We can easily watch a recognise a player playing well and point out various technical features in a way which is not possible for an academic doing fantastic research or a parent providing excellent emotional support and leadership to their family! However, the concept is, I feel, a really important one.  We all have periods of better and worse performance in almost every complex part of our lives and when things are going badly it can feel like they’ll never go well again.  As such, any tool that can remind us of the temporary, volatile nature of performance in the short term is valuable.  Furthermore, the idea that some praise before addressing the rather more tricky topic of criticism is a good idea strikes me as intuitive and obvious:

“We need constantly to be reminded of our good qualities in order to get into a frame of mind which is suitable for amending our faults” p76

However, having never stated this principle explicitly, I can now think of many instances where I certainly have not followed it!

Managing anxiety and helping others to cope with it was another area where I thought the book was very strong.  Again, as with almost all complex issues, there are elements of antimony in the suggested approach and it is all the more persuasive for it.  First, it is crucial not to frame anxiety as something easily controllable, which the victim should not be worried about.  We’re probably all familiar with response akin to ‘there’s no point worrying about that, you just need to forget it and pull yourself together’.  My own experience is that almost nothing could be less helpful than this strategy!  The anxiety in question must be discussed thoroughly and calmly in a way that is cognisant of its reality and severity before attempting to think of modes of thought or action that might help to alleviate or make its appearance more manageable.  For a captain, attempting to lead and manage a team and its attendant anxieties, this is a desirable and valuable attribute:

“The capacity to take in and take on the pressures of a team, both individually and collectively, and then enable the team to reach creative solutions without denying these anxieties” p353

But also on an individual level, and again the parallels with other areas of life are obvious, it is crucial not to repress or deny feelings of anxiety but rather to try to recognise them when they occur, identify potential causes and try to invent or discover ways of reducing the intensity of the anxiety and the frequency of its occurrence.  Hence, while the focus initially might be on taking the time to recognise and discuss the existence of anxiety once this discussion and analysis has taken place there is, at least partially, a switch towards thinking about it as something manageable.  Or at least, something that can be exacerbated or alleviated by certain patterns of behaviour or thought.  This could be seen as, in some ways, at odds with the initial focus given that part of this was explicitly NOT to see anxiety as something easily controllable by the victim!  However, I feel the process of discussion, recognition and analysis, even if this all takes place internally, really reframes the feelings of anxiety and the way a person can interact with them so that I don’t really see the two as being in conflict.  The author says this of dealing with individuals suffering from anxiety:

“It then has to be conveyed, often subtly, to those in the team that their predicament and anxieties are bearable...containing anxiety and handing it back in a form that can be thought about” p349

You could assume that wanting to win was the clear objective of any sportsman and its dominance of thoughts and emotions would be a given.  However, this would be to understand sport divorced from its wider context in society and from the psychology of its participants.

“Some find it hard to play all out to win; if they did so, they might be revealed as nasty and unlikable.  We dislike our own barely suppressed tendency to gloat.  A tennis player often drops his own service the game after breaking his opponent’s, his guilt now assuaged, is stung into uninhibited aggression.  The sportsman, like the doctor, should not get emotionally involved with the his ‘patient’.  Neither should he let pity get in his way.  Hutton’s advice to me on the eve of the England team’s departure for India in 1976 was, ‘Don’t take pity on the Indian bowlers.’  Respecting an opponent includes being prepared to finish him off.” p289

I thought this passage was excellent both in diagnosing the problem and prescribing a solution, however difficult it might be to implement!  I feel like a lot of successful sports and business figures have a single mindedness, sometimes akin to that of a child or someone with a personality disorder, that prevents or suppresses these unhelpful emotions.  This childlike behaviour can cause amusement amongst teammates or colleagues but may also cause friction and ruptures.  Such is the dual nature of most abnormalities, offering gifts with one hand while bestowing problems with the other!  The author makes a fascinating observation, well technically quotes a fascinating observation from the TLS, in this regard:   

“I read in the TLS of 26/6/81: ‘The ability to tap the boyhood sources of energy and illusion is essential in most highly competitive activities, and one would hesitate to back a fully adult person (should one exist) in any serious contest.  There is nothing like a sudden surge of maturity to impair the will to win’” P339

It made me think about what sort of emotional and psychological conditions sporting success is usually an expression of.  Undoubtedly the answer will vary depending on the individual but I thought there was truth to the suggestion most will involve drawing on childlike energy and illusion.

A couple of years ago I visited the Chihuly Museum in Seattle and espied some of his extraordinary glass sculptures.  The art wasn’t really to my taste but the museum was wonderfully curated and Chihuly himself was a truly fascinating individual.  He said of his work that all the steps of the process must be done quickly and freely with little thought so that it is, as much as possible, a product of what he calls ‘nature’.  His take on the act of thinking was that if you have to think then, at some level, you don’t know what you are doing.  So when you are doing something creative, you want to try and think as little as possible or not at all.  In a technical game like cricket, involving repetitive actions to varying degrees, you might think in terms of concentration and focus.  However, with most high level sportsmen their technique is probably naturally good or, at least, naturally effective.  As such, we also find letting go and not thinking too much can be a successful strategy in sportt as well as art:

“I read A Life Of One’s Own by Joanna Field.  The author was writing about table tennis: ‘What surprised me was that my arm seemed to know what to do by itself, it was able to make the right judgements of strength and direction quite without my help.  Here the internal gesture required seemed to be able to stand aside.  

Standing aside feels, to the Puritan mind, shockingly like responsibility.  But it can, often, be the only way to let potentialities flower, to allow one’s body to do what it is capable of.” p75

Of course, there are other times mentioned in the book when quite the opposite is required but this dichotomy encapsulates the essence of captaincy and leadership.  One danger that seems ever present regardless of whether one concentrates or lets go is thinking too much about factors outside of your control. For example, the batsman for a bowler or what other people think of you in life.  In both cases, we must be aware of the external and its character but focus on, and have faith in, our own abilities:

“It is often sound advice to say to a bowler, ‘Just bowl.  Don’t think about the batsman.’  In conditions that help the bowler, this approach is particularly likely to be valid; if you, the bowler, get it right any batsman will be stretched to deal with you.  Everything else may be irrelevant.  The bowler should feel that he will dictate to the batsman, not vice versa.” p226

Inevitably, leading a successful team is usually easier than leading a failing one and because of this it is all the more important how a leader responds in times of low morale or outright crisis.  

“I will end these chapters on captaincy in the field with two general points.  First, the team - and the captain in particular - must never give up.  Occasionally things get so bad that you have to laugh.  But cricket is full of surprises.  A wicket falls, and three more go, for no good reason.  And, secondly, do not mistrust your intuition.  Mike Gatting commented, when asked about taking over at Middlesex, that this was the main lesson he had learned from me; what in fact he would certainly have noticed was my irritation when hunches that I did not follow turned out to have been right.” p264

When things are going well, it seems to me that it is easier to make decisions, because your confidence is high, and that these decisions are also less likely to negatively affect performance as everyone is feeling good.  I feel quite the opposite about when things are going badly.  First, you’re usually afraid or hesitant to make decisions, most probably because you have already made some bad ones! As such, there may be an inclination to make a reckless decision or just to choose any decision because you feel fatigued and disillusioned after making a lot of decisions with bad results.  Here, as the passage above points out, it is important not to let morale get too low and to continue to invest the same time, thought and energy into decisions as, often, the cycle will turn or the psychological dynamics at play will swing in the other direction.  I’m reminded of the earlier passage on playing all out to win and also of my experiences in gambling on sport and in the stock market; it is often when things look absolutely hopeless and a foregone conclusion that the biggest opportunities arise.  For this reason I feel it is crucial not to give up and not to look at the recent evidence and doubt your decision making ability:

“Certainly it is a requirement of captaincy not to panic in such situations.  Another failing is to be reduced to helplessness.  However bad things are there are always options that would be less catastrophic than others.” p14

4.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the previous section, the distinction between ‘Captain’s Handbook’ and ‘PPL’ are somewhat artificial.  However, while a lot of the material above is essentially cricketing in nature, albeit with far broader applications, there’s also a lot of material that is explicitly about leadership in all its forms and needs no interpretation.  A good example of this deals with responses to difficult questions and, to me, it represents excellent advice:

“There is something relevantly testing in how you respond to rude or apparently naive questions; are you provoked into a tight-lipped defensiveness?  Do you betray a telling arrogance?  Are you reduced to pleading or irascibility? Can you find, amidst the hectic shards of anxiety and alleged failure, a place to be, if not serene, then at least solidly present, up for the next challenge, neither shrill nor uptight, neither manic nor depressed, optimistic but not triumphalist, bold and cautious?  Do you, in short, have what it takes when the pressures mount whether on the field or off it?” intro, xxi

Again, as with the ultimate example in section three, the focus is on hard times when psychological and emotional conditions are testing and the leader really earns their keep.  However, the author also warns against simplistic interpretations of the role of the leader.  In cricket, as in life, there is a constant state of flux and what may work well in one situation maybe disastrous in another.  As such, it’s wiser to adopt what I would describe as a broadly Stoic approach:

“There are, in the short and the long term, inevitable phases of crisis, drama, calm and aimlessness.  Nothing stands still for long.  There is no recipe.  Some leaders thrive in crises, some on hard work and stabilisation in periods of relative peace and well-being” into xxix

A leader will often find themselves in position whereby they have an unusually large influence over the lives of others and their psychology.  This being the case, leaders may use psychological tricks to motivate and get the best out of the group.  There are examples mentioned in the book, firing up a fast bowler with insults before he bowls, and this kind of motivation and leadership occurs in all walks of life.  One extremely high profile practitioner is the current Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho.  Zlatan Ibrahimovic is quoted in Carlo Ancelotti’s book Quiet Leadership as saying, ‘“Mourinho is the disciplinarian.  Everything with him is a mind game - he likes to manipulate” (p87).  However, this tactic of manipulation resulted in a spectacular underperformance when Mourinho was managing Chelsea.  Then reigning champions, the players seemed to rebel against Mourinho and refuse to play for him losing an almost unthinkable 9/16 games after starting the season as the bookmakers’ favourites!  Writing some 30 years previously, Brearley is acutely aware of the style and its potential drawbacks:  

“The proximity of leader and led makes cunning a dangerous tool in man-management.  I have always doubted the value of manipulation - that is, the attempt to influence by subtle control in which the controller keeps the strings in his hands - as a method of leadership.  Sooner or later people resent being played upon like flutes or tricked into dancing to a certain tune.  In sport, there is even less room for such dissimulation.” p335

That having been said, Mourinho’s track record amply displays that such a strategy can produce short term results.  It is often mentioned that he has never held a managerial position for longer than three years and perhaps the problems of manipulative man management highlighted here are to blame!

It would be folly to think of Mourinho as a totally inept leader and there are other parts of his philosophy that concur precisely with Brearley’s own ideas on the subject.  Points on which two such different, but both successful, leaders can agree on should perhaps hold special interest.  The most obvious, to me, was the importance placed on being oneself as a leader:

“Without doubt we have to be natural to be captains, too; we must be ourselves.  Every good captain leads his side in his own way, as suits his own personality.  He must be willing to follow his hunches.  The captain, like the batsman or the mother, is impeded and stilted in his performance if his head is constantly cluttered up with theories.” p9

Mourinho, famously a translator and then coach under Bobby Robson at Barcelona, is quoted in Mike Carson’s book The Manager, as saying:

‘With a mentor you can improve and have a base for evolution, but when you try and copy, the copy is never the same as the original.  So I think you have to learn from people with more experience who have had success, but always keep your own personal identity’

No one can pretend to be someone else the whole time and no one can know how another person would react to a new or unusual situation.  Leaders usually face new and unusual situations regularly and for this reason the idea of being ourselves and adapting our style of leadership to our personality seem absolutely central to me.  Another vastly complex area of decision making and psychology I’m familiar with is investment and here we find the discipline’s most famous practitioner saying exactly the same thing.  Warren Buffett did not go on from Ben Graham’s Columbia University course to become a pure value investment and arbitrage specialist, although this was a part of what he did.  Rather, he went on to develop his own style and investment philosophy commensurate with his personality.  When I was reading Alice Schroeder’s Snowball it mentioned that one of Buffett’s favourite movies was The Glenn Miller Story.  Why would this 1954 film about a big band leader hold such special importance for him, I wondered?  After watching it things became far clearer, it’s the story of a man struggling ‘to find his own sound’ and, without wanting to spoil the plot, it doesn’t happen overnight!

What more can we say definitively about leadership?  I hope the preceding paragraph has shown it is paramount to be oneself and to lead in the style of your personality.  However, this advice itself will result in totally contradictory styles of leadership and because of this we might conclude there is very little more we can say on the subject! External circumstances, the personalities of those led, group dynamics all are constantly changing so where is one to look?  Practical experience seems the most obvious answer and one I’m sure Brearley would endorse; he seems to be continually learning.  I would argue also in the reflections and observations of successful leaders.  A constant curiosity for new ideas and perspectives to augment understanding regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the idea in question.  Here, we can look at what has worked for someone else and make some attempt to judge whether it accords with our own beliefs and character.  Brearley is clearly a deep thinker, someone open to, and curious about, new ideas and experimentation, intelligent and emotionally sensitive, he strikes me as highly aware of the importance of psychology.  Clearly, his latter career points in this direction.  In this context,  it is unsurprising to find him focussed on a style of leadership that prioritises the individual:

“The ‘military model’ would stress uniformity and fairness.  The leadership model that I am advocating does not deny the importance of justice, but it suggests that justice does not reduce so simply to the same treatment for each individual, since different individuals have such different needs.” p328

Even within this quote, it's clear how much of leadership must be an unscientific matter of judgement.  The subject does not lend itself well to hard and fast rules or infallible truths.  Rather, for me, it is more akin to an art with the artist struggling to interpret, influence and express the conflicting forces they find inherent in the raw material with which they work.  I liked this book because I feel it is an expression of Brearley’s personality and, because of this, it is a decent account of his skills as a leader.  Of course, there were drawbacks like the memoirs involving players most people under the age of 50 would have no idea about.  At one stage I thought it might be better as three or for different books, such is the quantity of diverse material contained within it.  However, this could arguably damage the book’s expression of Brearley’s personality and it is impossible for me to say that I haven’t enjoyed it in its current format.  He is undoubtedly an expert on leadership and there’s a lot to learn from him!

I’ll finish with Brearley’s concluding comments, initially discussing the Australian Test team under Steve Waugh, as I feel they’re a far better summary of the vagaries of leadership than I could offer:

“The morale, the attention to detail, and the tenacity exhibited have been a lesson to us all.  But these are, in the longer view, merely ships that pass in the night.  Captaincy, leadership, getting the best out of individuals, bringing children up, educating - from the Latin, ‘lead forth’ - these call for universal, but also complex and individually characterised qualities, qualities that are inherently in tension with each other.  We could speak of antinomies of leadership - passion and detachment, vision and common-sense, an authoritarian streak and a truly democratic interest in the team and points of view.  One requires conviction, but also the capacity not to rush to answers but to be able to tolerate doubt and uncertainty...

...In 504 BC, when the Greek city states faced with threats of invasion from Persia, the Greek historian Xenophon wrote the following about the personal requirements for an elected general.  He should be ‘ingenious, energetic, careful, full of stamina and presence of mind….loving and tough, straightforward and crafty, ready to gamble everything and wishing to have everything, generous and greedy, trusting and suspicious.’  Xenophon had it about right.” p355