One Summer: America 1927

The year the world tilted

OneSummer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson

Over the last ten years or so I have been playing catch-up with Bill Bryson and his books, and I have finally arrived at his 2013 offering.

It is by far the best researched and most interesting of his books for many years - a massive sweep through a short period of time, with carefully crafted chapters piecing together the details of a summer of ninety years ago. My knowledge of America of the 1920s was only sketchy, and after reading I was amazed at the continent-shaking changes that all seemed to come together in one summer. It is not a literary device to tell a story - Bryson does not have to, because so many amazing events came to pass that it’s almost as if a decade of events were compressed into a few short months.

Why was 1927 so special? From a European vantage-point, it might not seem special at all. One of the few startling things that happened on British shores was that Cardiff City of Wales won the FA Cup. But across the Atlantic, from spring to early autumn of the same year, every week seemed to offer another astonishing, headline-busting moment.

CharlesLindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. His achievement was heralded in the United States in a similar way to Hillary and Tenzing on Everest - except on a monumental scale. He spent the summer being mobbed by unimaginably vast crowds in every city in America. This one event is the one on which Bryson hangs much of the rest of his book. It was a first for America. As he points out, it was a sort of ‘first’ first for America. Until then, most advancements and achievements had happened in Europe with Americans looking on admiringly. Now Americans took the lead.

It was the summer of the largest flood of the Mississippi, and the amazing organisational skills of Herbert Hoover, who following his clean-up operation after the First World War appeared to metaphorically roll up his sleeves again and wade in to the flood waters, whilst a passive President sat and watched from a distance.

It was also the summer of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and stupendous baseball records tumbling. Bryson writes with real skill and affection for these two American heroes. The margins of their dominance is perhaps unmatched in any European based sport.

What else? Well, the late summer was the biggest boxing match of the century, JackDempsey and Gene Tunney.

‘The Jazz Singer’, the first real ‘talkie’, appeared and caused a sensation.

Charles Ponzi defrauded millions.

Two Italian ‘anarchists’ went to the electric chair, with the nation knowing that they probably did not do what they were convicted of.

It was a time when innovation and money were flooding into the United States, and for the first time the focus of the world tended to not be on what was going on in Paris or London, but what was happening in New York and Chicago. Chicago was the fourth largest city on Earth, and was ruled by officials so corrupt that in reality Alphonse Capone was pulling the strings. Life was brash, bold, and filled with excitement and tragedy in equal measure.

What Bryson does extremely well is to focus on the small and long-forgotten details of life. In the same way that today a world without internet is hard to remember, he explains how newspapers were fundamental to the experience of living at the time.

It was also a troubling time when the first stirrings of ideas that would have devastating consequences in the 1930s and 1940s were first expressed publicly. In 1927, the idea that eugenics could make for a better world was accepted by quite a few people, and listened to by academia. It proved to be the issue about which America finally fell out of love with Charles Lindbergh, who was an enthusiastic supporter. With almost a century of hindsight, it is easy to see how dangerous and misguided it all was. In 1927, there was no such idea.

A charming part of Bill Bryson’s writing is that he does the job for you that you usually turn to Wikipedia to do. At the end of the summer he includes a lengthy epilogue, explaining the fate of many of the world-famous figures on that long-ago summer. Many did not prosper, many did not live past their fifties, and there is sadness in reading in particular about the demise of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, who were so loved by the American people.

This is one of Bill Bryson’s most accomplished books - still full of the anecdotes that make his writing so enjoyable and easy to read, but backed up by lengthy and accurate research, and written with a genuine love for a vanished America. I am only sorry that it took me four years to read it. I doubt in the far future that the summer of 2017 will be viewed with such interest and affection.

Victoria A Life AN Wilson

One hundred and sixteen years after her death, you might think that all that can be said about Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901) has already been said. Certainly, there are a number of well-written biographies of her, each characterised by the period in which they were written. Elizabeth Longford’s study is a good example.

Enter A.N. Wilson, quite a colossus in the world of royal biography and serious historical writing. He has already written about Hitler, Jesus and John Betjeman.

Victoria: A Life, which was first published in 2014 and which I have just got around to reading, is an enjoyable book. All the usual anecdotes are present. He writes about how Victoria came to the throne, the misbehaviour of her Hanoverian predecessors, and the strange life of her father Edward, Duke of Kent. There is an examination of her libidinous marriage to Albert, and her withdrawal (excuse the pun) from public life after his death. John Brown looms large (again, no pun intended) and her friendships with Melbourne and Dissie are well covered.

What makes Wilson’s book different is that he is clear about just how deranged Victoria was. Her behaviour in the 1860s and 1870s was so difficult that Wilson views it as mental illness. For more than a decade, long after her bereavement, Victoria acted like a petulant child. Wilson quite rightly draws comparison with the stubborn, tantrum-prone middle aged woman and her younger self who used to fly into childish rages at Kensington Palace. You are left with the impression that Wilson would not have liked her had he met her, as he shows her little sympathy and is critical of her eccentric behaviour. His writing highlights the frustrations of the ruling class of the time.

A second strand which is refreshing is his attitude to the royal family. He views the Victorian family firm as quite apart from those who really held power, a mere figurehead. For the first half of Victoria’s reign the landed gentry were in charge, and after reform there is a fascinating shift towards the newly enriched industrialists and the newly enfranchised middle class. Even though Wilson’s book is principally about the life of the monarch, her story is told against this backdrop of change. Her anger at change is Hanoverian, and closer to George IV than her grandson George V.

Despite the tremendous change in the country over the sixty-four years, Wilson continues to remind the reader of the nuances of a fact that is often repeated. Victoria was German. However, he is clear that there were two Germanys at the time, and Victoria was an old-school Hanoverian, attempting to keep alive the dream of her husband of a liberal free-thinking Germany. She was never a Prussian Imperialist, and greatly mourned the fact that her oldest daughter Vicky was dragged into the circle of sabre-rattling militarists. He reveals the distaste that Victoria held for Willie, the firstborn of her firstborn.

Of course, there is the family. Just like the Plantagenets all sharing about six names (Richard, Henry, Katherine, etc) so the Victorian family tree can be baffling. Victoria and Albert were partly to blame for this by insisting that all children carry one of their names (hence a vast range of Alberts, Victors and Victorias). Wilson rather muddies the issue by placing a family tree at the start that is tree shaped and difficult to follow. All that was needed was a page each for the nine offspring, their children and many grandchildren.

What is clear is that Victoria really didn’t like a lot of them. Her relationship with her son and heir never recovered after her husband’s death, for which he was partially blamed. She favoured Hanoverian relatives and Wilson almost goes as far as suggesting that she would have been happier in a little Schloss than remaining in Britain. She was, as we all know, the grandmother of Europe, but it was a grumpy and remote grandmother. No wonder so many of the third generation thought visiting her a chore.

This study of the life of Victoria is an easy read because it does what it says – it describes her life and does not spend hundreds of pages explaining the reasons, for example, of the Crimean War. There is just enough historical common sense to carry you along. It is a worthwhile addition to everything that has already been said about Victoria.

2016: Why Was It So Rubbish?

2016 has been quite a year. For almost everyone with an interest in what goes on in the Western World, some unpredictable things have happened. At the start of the year, most people who professed to know about these things thought that the USA would have its first female president-elect by November. Regardless of what you think about Donald Trump’s amazing route to the White House, the startling fact is that it was not thought possible.

In the UK there was a similarly unsettling political change, with the vote to leave the European Union surprising many and dividing the country in a quite profound way.

The end of a calendar year is a good opportunity to gather around the Prosecco, take a step back, and look at what has happened. When Donald Trump was elected, why were so many people surprised? His name was on the ticket. It was a possible event, and not something that has never happened before. In 1948 the Chicago Daily Tribune event went as far as to print the headline ‘Dewey defeatsTruman’, when the opposite was true.

Likewise for the EU vote – the voting paper said ‘in’ and ‘out’, so one of two results was to be expected. There was a blurring of the lines between what could happen and what many believed ought to happen. The media manipulated the way everyone considered the either / or choice and made many believe that only one result was possible.

These two events have left many people distraught. At the end of the year, it is worth getting a little perspective.

For example, it is not one hundred years ago. We have not just gone through the experience of thousands of lives lost at The Somme, with Ypres just over the horizon.

Nor is it 1816, with Europe still shuddering after the upheaval of Napoleon and the events of Peterloo to come to the poor in short order.

There have been hundreds of individual years in the past thousand that have been significantly worse than 2016. We have to ask ourselves would we rather live through 2016 again, or 1941, or 1945, or 1917, or 1349?

And then Everyone Started To Die. If you take an interest in music, there was much sadness. Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Greg Lake. If you are a film enthusiast, you had to say goodbye to Carrie Fisher, her mother Debbie Reynolds, Zsa Zsa, Gene Wilder and Alan Rickman. Ali died. So did Castro. There were weeks when it seemed like something very odd was happening.

The rather dull truth is that nothing exceptional was happening at all. People die all the time. With seven billion of us on the planet and all of us mortal, it’s going to happen to everyone sooner or later. It happens to 150 000 every day.

What is changing slowly is that we know more of the people who are successful in any given field. We live in a media saturated world, where there is more room for people to be famous. As a result, more people are famous. Additionally, the phenomenon of celebrity or stardom exploded at the start of the 1960s. You can decide for yourself what started the ball rolling; but when it did a whole generation of people like Mohammad Ali, The Beatles, Neil Armstrong and Bobby Moore became super, super famous. And now they are all old, or worse. To be famous in 1966 means you were born either during the Second World War or shortly after it. A whole generation of people who were in this category are now over seventy. To be brutal, what is increasingly likely to happen to these people? They are likely to meet their maker.

So whilst there can be shock or sadness about the passing of a young famous person – and to the best of my knowledge nobody joined the 27 Club this year – should we really be surprised at the loss of Leonard Cohen (aged 82) or Fidel Castro (aged 90)?

So, as 2016 (The Worst Year Ever ©) comes to an end, I will feel regret that I will never see Prince on stage. I will also raise a glass to the memory of Carrie Fisher, who was such a part of my childhood. But instead of feeling maudlin, I will be thanking the Grim Reaper for leaving most of us alone. God Bless Sir David Attenborough (still making amazing television at ninety) and Jimmy Carter (still spreading common sense at ninety-two) and Stephen Hawking (still amazing us all, fifty years after being told his time was up).

It’s time to shake off 2016, celebrate the brilliant people still making this planet a better place, and step forward into 2017 smiling.