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Democratic self-determination and nationhood

James Grant is aiming to disengage the principle of self-determination from the idea of nationhood. The context of his argument is Scottish nationalism, to which he is opposed; but I won't be dealing with that specifically in what follows. I want to examine the general arguments he makes for thinking it might be time 'we abandoned claims to national self-determination'. I think Grant is wrong on three counts.

1. He says that there's 'no single, common will of the Scottish people, only a multitude of individual wills'. Whatever may be true about the state of Scottish opinion, it is not true that a multitude cannot have a common will. The members of a bridge club, for example, may be united in the common purpose of playing bridge on a more or less regular basis, so that it makes perfect sense to speak of them having, in this regard at least, a shared purpose or a common will. It can even make sense where a small minority of club members aren't particulary interested in playing bridge but belong to the club for social reasons: getting out of the house, spending the evening in company, etc. If the great majority of members are there primarily for the bridge, there is, meaningfully, a common will. This doesn't mean, however, that there is some metaphysical entity 'higher' than the people who make up the club - hovering somewhere above the building in which they meet. Their 'common will' is just another way of describing the fact that there is a purpose that most of them share.

2. Grant writes as if, for democratically-minded individuals, membership of humanity might suffice; for he counterposes our common humanity, our human dignity, to more particularist, national allegiances, which divide us. But this is - empirically - a false counterposition. It is false even for those of us strongly wedded to universal and humanist values. Nobody is satisfied with being part of the human race, as good as this is. It can still feel rather impersonal when the collectivity in question is numbered in the thousands of millions. So we have friends, families; looser affiliations with people of like mind in one matter or another; and ethnic or national identities. Of course, particularist memberships can take ugly, exclusivist forms, but they don't have to. A person can have friends without this implying any contempt towards those who are strangers; he or she can feel attached to the fact of being French or Norwegian without disparaging the culture or identity of Italians and Danes.

3. Finally, not only does the democratic self-determination of rationally autonomous individuals not rule out the idea of nationhood, it actually allows it - its procedures accommodate it. National divisions may well be 'accidental by-products of human history', but that doesn't mean they are of no significance to the people they affect. (It is an accident of history that you grow up speaking English or Greek or Swahili. That doesn't mean it's of no consequence to you that that is the language you know, as becomes apparent to anyone who is forbidden the use of their own language.) If rationally autonomous individuals have rights to act collectively in certain ways, as they do so long as they respect the democratic rights of everyone else, one of the things they may legitimately decide on is to associate with others in ways that mutually suit them. This doesn't require the coincidence of nations with states but it does permit that - subject to the proviso (protecting minority rights) just registered.

Pressure point

Here's a report by Polly Curtis on the latest effort within the UCU: a motion for the upcoming annual conference, to 'consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions'. Curtis fills in the background:

Previous attempts at a boycott have caused international outcries, especially in Israel and the US.

When the union backed a boycott in February 2005, the story hit the front pages in Europe, North America and Asia. The debate raged for several weeks when a delegation of Israeli academics put pressure on the union by touring UK campuses.

Run that one again: 'put pressure on the union'? Interesting turn of phrase. A group of Israeli academics stating a view constitutes pressure. What, is it the University and College Union or the Union of Wilting Flowers?

The normblog profile 242: Tim Newman

Tim Newman spent the first 15 years after his birth in 1977 in an isolated farmhouse without a TV, a mile outside Pembroke in south west Wales. At age 19 he was glad that he was at last able to live independently when he went to study Mechanical Engineering at Manchester University. In 2003 he was sent to Oman for five weeks' work, from which he didn't return. After three years of working the oilfields of the Middle East, he got married on the spot and moved himself and his new bride to Sakhalin Island, where they now live. Tim blogs at White Sun of the Desert.

Why do you blog? > I started because I wanted to answer back at what I was reading in the papers. Nowadays, it's because I am living an interesting life which a small group of people seem to like reading about.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Meeting people in Sakhalin for the first time who go on to tell me they've been reading my blog for months.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Stick to what you know, shut up about everything else. Don't post for the sake of it.

What are your favourite blogs? > Oliver Kamm, Tim Worstall, Samizdata.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. You can smell the atmosphere of a winter night in Moscow rising off the pages.

What is your favourite poem? > 'If' by Rudyard Kipling.

What is your favourite movie? > O Brother, Where Art Thou?

What is your favourite song? > 'Six Days on the Road' by Taj Mahal. [Other versions here - NG.]

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I used to be a traditional conservative, but have since become an avid libertarian, meaning I've changed my mind about so much. There was a time when I would have opposed homosexual relationships in certain circumstances; nowadays I couldn't care less.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > The state is not your friend.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > Statism in its many forms.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > The Forgotten Soldier, by Guy Sajer. It is the account of a young French-German soldier fighting on the Eastern Front. I read it at a time when I was dead set on a career in the military. Once I'd finished reading it, I decided against that.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Drastically reduce the areas in which government is involved, most importantly in the provision of health and education services.

If you could choose anyone, from any walk of life, to be Prime Minister, who would you choose? > Perry de Havilland.

What would you do with the UN? > Remove all members in whose country you cannot drink the tap water.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The exerting of excessive political control over the lives of individuals, be it the imposition of Islamic law, adoption of communism, or formation of an EU superstate.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > The best is yet to come.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > We are only here for a quick look around, so live life to the full and don't waste a second.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Loyalty.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > I'm not sure whether there is a word for it, but when somebody continually takes pleasure in exerting power over those in a weaker position. I had a school teacher who used to do this. I have never seen anything so despicable in my life.

In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > If the question was grossly inappropriate. If the answer was going to cause deep offence unnecessarily. If I'm negotiating the commercial terms of an oil and gas contract.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > None. If people are enjoying something, it is almost by definition not a waste of time, or at least not something I should pass judgement on.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > My wife or me losing our health too young. I'm scared stiff of this.

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? > I'd treat an former girlfriend much better than I did. I used to be hopelessly insecure, getting very jealous over the slightest thing, and this caused her nothing but misery. Also, I didn't pay her half as much attention as she deserved. Fortunately, we're still friends and I've been able to make amends and apologize profusely, but I still feel extremely guilty about it. The upside is that I have made it absolutely certain that I don't make the same mistakes with my wife.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > Somewhere in the US: the Pacific north-west, the Outer Banks, southern California. But really, anywhere will seem good after Sakhalin Island.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Photography, hill walking, mountain biking, snowmobiling, playing computer games, and propping up bars drinking vodka and speaking Russian.

What is your most treasured possession? > My passport. My life would shrink immeasurably without it.

What talent would you most like to have? > To be able to play boogie-woogie piano.

Who are your sporting heroes? > Ryan Giggs and Andrew Ettingshausen for being such outstanding role models.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Three close friends of mine: Simon, a Captain in the Royal Marines for whom I was Best Man and vice versa; Jaimie, another Captain in the Royal Marines who recently won the Distinguished Service Order for his actions in Afghanistan; and Kenny, a former soldier who is the most extraordinary man, and biggest idiot, I have ever met.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Israel in comparative perspective

Reproducing an op-ed piece written by him for the Buenos Aires Herald, Eamonn McDonagh explains why 'there is nothing unique about either the circumstances of Israel's birth or its history', and extends congratulations on the country's 60th birthday. It's a post well worth your time.

Zimbabwe's continuing agony

It is one of the unhappy laws of this world that the occurrence of a new calamity doesn't erase ongoing injustice. Attention to Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the recent election has waned somewhat, but the assault by Mugabe's regime on those who voted against him continues unabated.

Gangs of ruling party youths beat to death 11 opposition activists in a remote Zimbabwean town Monday, setting a gruesome new standard for the post-election violence surging through that nation, according to opposition party officials.

And:

Zimbabwe's ruling party, bent on retaining control after 28 years in power, has broadened its campaign of intimidation and violence to include teachers and even aid workers, disrupting education and basic care for tens of thousands of children across the country, according to humanitarian groups, union officials and the teachers themselves.

Oscar, Ginger and Zoe

Low-energy cardboard perfomance art. Also the 'I'm not paying any attention to you' game. Watch out for both in this instructional video on engineers and cats. (Thanks: GH.)

How to help the people of Burma

The email below was circulated by Mary Callahan, a Burma specialist at the University of Washington, and has reached me via a friend:

A number of friends and colleagues have asked how to help the people of Burma in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. The malevolence of the Burmese government toward their people is incomprehensible. The junta is making it very difficult for foreign relief agencies to get desperately need[ed] medical assistance and other supplies to the hundreds of thousands (more likely millions) of victims of the cyclone. International media report that foreign relief workers are not being granted visas. Even if aid personnel can get into the country, existing government regulations are likely to make it difficult for expatriate relief workers to travel very far outside Rangoon.

There are, however, dozens of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Burma that have worked there for years. There are also several hundred local NGOs, which include faith-based organizations (Christian churches and monasteries) and other social service organizations. And finally, UN agencies such as UNICEF and the UN Development Program have staff throughout the country. Most of these organizations have years of experience carrying out disaster relief during both the annual monsoon and fire seasons. Until yesterday, US economic sanctions against Burma made it quite difficult to donate money to non-governmental operations inside the country. As of last night, the Treasury Department has loosened some of those restrictions at least in regard to international organizations.

The international and local NGOs and the UN agencies already on the ground employ thousands of Burmese professionals and support staff, who - unlike the foreign/expatriate staff - can travel to affected areas. Already, the NGO community has assembled assessment teams (including medical personnel) to go to the Irrawaddy Delta, where upwards of 20,000 are already confirmed dead.

Realistically, in the early stages of this relief operation, it will be the Burmese staff of INGOs, local NGOs and UN agencies who will carry the lion's share of the burden. They have worked in this aid-hostile environment; have intimate knowledge of how to carry out aid without putting beneficiaries at risk; and are well-placed to identify community needs. When foreign relief operations do finally get access to Burma, it is of the utmost importance that they coordinate with and support these locally-based nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies that understand the complexity of working in Burma.

Both the Burmese government restrictions and US economic sanctions make it very difficult to give money to local NGOs directly, but it is possible to support their work by donating to the international groups that have longstanding partnerships with local NGOs and community-based organizations (including churches and monasteries). The following international organizations are already in the Delta and have launched fundraising campaigns to support broader efforts. All of them have proven track records in Burma, and especially in the Delta.

ADRA International
Myanmar Cyclone Fund
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(800) 424-ADRA ext. 2372
http://www.adra.org

CARE
151 Ellis Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
(800) 521-2273
http://www.care.org

Project HOPE
255 Carter Hall Lane
Millwood, VA 22646
(800) 544-4673
http://www.projecthope.org

Save the Children
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
(800) 728-3843
https://secure.ga4.org/01/cyclone_nargis

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
125 Maiden Lane, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10038
(800) 4UNICEF
http://www.unicefusa.org

World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. North
Seattle, WA 98133
(800) 755-5022, ext.7706
http://www.worldconcern.org

World Vision
P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063
(888) 56-CHILD
http://www.worldvision.org

Hillary Clinton looks a bit like my late mother-in-law

Anne Applebaum:

If you've found the election hard to follow of late, that's because the only real issue at stake is Hillary Clinton's extraordinary, irrational, overwhelming ambition.

The picture (behind the link) says it all.

Israel at 60

Today I'm celebrating the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the state of Israel, and I invite readers of normblog to join me in doing so. Here are six reasons, one for each decade, why Israel's existence is something worth celebrating.

1. The destruction of the European Jews. This remains what it was when it happened - a gigantic, terrible, irredeemable fact. Two thirds of European Jewry and one third of the Jewish population of the world were wiped out in an organized project that left a stain upon the face of Europe. The relevance of this crime to the moral claim of the Jewish people to independent nationhood should be evident without need of further explanation, even though there are those for whom it is not.

2. Anti-Semitism. This has been a hatred stretching across millennia, but we may leave the entry above to stand for the anti-Semitism of the past. Anti-Semitism continues to exist today and has been on the increase as compared with the immediate post-Holocaust decades when it inhabited only the margins, and the sewers, of political life. Now you don't have to look for it; it will find you. From the ravings of the president of Iran to the obsessions of commenters at many a well-known left-liberal website and the unrelenting ambitions of the boycotters of the UCU, anti-Semitism is again a part of conventional discourse.

3. Israel's cultural achievements. David Grossman, Amoz Oz, Aharon Appelfeld, Daniel Barenboim, Pinchas Zukerman, A. B. Yehoshua, Israeli medicine and science and inventions... etc.

4. Israel's democracy. This is a country which, through years of hostility from its neighbours and periodic warfare, has created a democratic political life, upheld the rule of law, sustained a free press.

5. For solidarity. Those who cannot celebrate the existence of Israel but only criticize it, put themselves beyond all sense of sympathy with the legitimate concerns of the Jewish people - as if these had no basis, no rationale, no historical genesis; as if Israel's history was solely about usurpation and error; as if it was not itself born under the threat of annihilation, a threat that is ever renewed. To celebrate with Israel is to be able to speak criticism of its mistaken policies from within, so to say, criticism without demonization.

6. For a just settlement. To celebrate the 60th birthday of the Jewish homeland is to look for a continuity with old Jewish ethical traditions, traditions of justice and freedom, and to argue alongside all those Israeli voices, all those other Jewish voices, and all those other critical but non-demonizing voices, for a solution to the problems of Israel and Palestine that accommodates the just rights of both peoples to democratic self-determination.

Disconcerting

Gideon Rachman considers the problems, as he sees them, with the idea of a league, or concert, of democracies. The idea is associated with the name of Ivo Daalder and has been taken up by John McCain. One of the problems Gideon points to is that many of the democracies themselves aren't keen on the idea:

Almost all of America's closest democratic allies have deep reservations about a league of democracies. The Europeans are committed to the UN and would be loath to join an alliance that undermined it. They are also suspicious of America's democratic evangelism. Talk to senior French and British policymakers and you will find a rare unanimity on the league of democracies. A French diplomat calls it a "really bad idea". A British diplomat scoffs: "How are you going to decide the membership? Is it going to be like a football league, where you are going to have promotion and relegation at the end of the season?"

America's democratic allies in Asia - wary of antagonising China - are unlikely to be any more receptive.

There are different elements here and they aren't all of equal weight. If the proposal cannot win the support of a majority of democratic countries, then it's obviously a non-starter. But the suggestion that criteria of membership present an insuperable obstacle is less compelling; a small working party, suitably composed and working intensively, should be able to sort that one out in a matter of months. Then, such a body doesn't have to be seen as undermining the UN - though it should be seen as acting as a beneficial influence upon it. The UN is not, after all, an organization so unblemished that one should want to protect it from the pressures that a concert of democracies might exert. Finally, that the creation of a concert of democracies wouldn't be well received by the non-democracies surely can't be taken as an overriding objection: the exclusion of these latter is remediable by them. And it is especially odd for some of the democracies themselves to lend weight to this objection by worrying about the sensibilities of undemocratic regimes.

Responding to the crisis in Burma

My buddy Ian Holliday, Dean of Social Sciences at Hong Kong University, assesses the situation in Burma after the cyclone and the prospects for political change:

[A] scenario in which the military regime collapses and the country embarks on an inclusive transition to democracy embracing political parties and ethnic groups long excluded from power remains improbable. For half a century, the military has been so pervasive in national politics, and competing institutions have been so weak, that such a sequence of events is a distant dream. By contrast, the possibility that the junta, for many years prickly, stubborn and isolated, will be forced to reach out across ideological and ethnic divides to stabilize and reconstruct the country is distinct and real.

It is to this possibility that the outside world should direct its efforts. The task now is not to berate the junta for its manifold failings past and present. Rather, it is to use the opening afforded by national tragedy to build bridges into and out of the army that has for so long ruled the land. Through new links, the generals can be bound to key stakeholders within the country and without. Through fresh contacts, top leaders can be persuaded that the primary responsibility of all parties is to work collectively for the benefit of Burma as a whole, and not for any particular group or faction. In varied ways, confidence in joining hands with others can grow on all sides so that the country first emerges from national disaster, and then starts to chart a new course.

In spearheading such efforts the United Nations, much maligned for its inability to force change on a junta that responded with brutal repression to monk-led popular protests last September, remains the essential institution. The U.N. can and should coordinate relief efforts, at least attempt to bring different sectors of Burmese society together (the military, opposition groups, ethnic groups) and build an external coalition of support for this sort of collaborative strategy.

Being there and remembering

There's this question whether or not to take photos of an event you're part of and how doing so will affect your memory of it. Tyler Cowen says that if you do take photos you'll remember the event more vividly because you're stopping and noticing things. Andrew Sullivan thinks your experience of the event is more authentic if you're living it in the present and not worrying about storing it for the future.

I don't know about taking photos, something I hardly ever do, but from a comparable activity, namely, taking (or not taking) notes on an event, in order to write about it, I'd say that neither of these generalizations can be sustained. There's no single right way of being 'in the moment'; Andrew's suggestion that you could be there 'without mediation' doesn't make sense. You're seeing it from where you are and this affects what you see and what you fail to. Think only how, with football, seeing a goal again on TV that you've already seen at the game can reveal something about it that you missed. Your 'raw' experience of it wasn't necessarily the more accurate one. As Tyler points out, your view is bound to be mediated in some way (which is not to say that every view or account is as good as every other).

At the same time, even if it is true that recording the event - taking photos, taking notes - while you're there obliges you to pay attention in a way you otherwise might not, it doesn't always follow that your memory of it will be more vivid. The process of recording can itself get in the way of observing with full concentration. It can also happen that the record you have made itself becomes your memory of it, displacing images or aspects that might otherwise have remained with you.

No right not to be offended

In a long piece by Sam Harris at The Huffington Post you will find the claim that 'it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general'. This is not quite of the same bizarre order as the complaint one sometimes comes across to the effect that opponents of the Iraq war were 'silenced', but it is preposterous all the same - particularly at a time when the arguments against religion of Harris himself, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been so widely publicized. The claim should not, however, detract from the principal point of Harris's article, which concerns the chilling effect on free speech of Islamist threats of violence and the capitulations to them. (Via Andrew.)

Not so much a failure of understanding

Ian Black in today's Guardian:

Few of those who subsume Zionism into the narrative of western colonialism understand that what oppressed the Palestinians simultaneously represented a movement of national liberation for the Jews.

Is it that they don't understand? Isn't it rather that they simply refuse to allow? This is of critical import, since what it shows is that the very right that those 'subsumers' demand - and quite rightly - for the Palestinians, they will not extend to the Jews: the right to national self-determination.

Sixty-eighters

Looking back on 1968, Christopher Hitchens sees things differently from Geoffrey Wheatcroft. No surprises there:

Looking back on that year of color and rage and excitement and (yes) hope, I can now see well enough to separate the different kinds of revolutionary with whom I became acquainted. Some of one kind went on to become victorious rulers, either of nascent dictatorships in Vietnam and Angola or of nascent democracies in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and South Africa. Some of a second kind would invert the hieroglyph "68" on the odometer and become the triumphant figures of the anti-Communist revolution of '89. (For this particular irony, see Tom Stoppard's brilliant play Rock and Roll.) And some of another kind wound up either dead or in prison, having tried to launch movements of "armed struggle" from Northern Ireland to West Germany. The first two evolved a sort of social-democratic modus vivendi that has some battle honors to its credit; the third lot mutated into the fans of Saddam Hussein and the apologists for al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood - in other words, into the most reactionary force on the planet. There are also soixante-huitards whose adventures are less well known and far from over. I have met them among the tiny minority, from Bosnia to Zimbabwe to Iraq, who have struggled to evolve a consistent antitotalitarian politics and to marry it to a thoroughgoing internationalism. One day, perhaps, their less glamorous story will also be told.

(Via.)

Exit music

As in, for a film. And as covered by Brad Mehldau. Why now? Well, why not?

Man of the people?

John Wayne, swaggering, macho, conservative. Think again. In the essay here, Charles Taylor challenges some of the standard images of Wayne - in particular, of his 'gung-ho cheerleading for American right and American might' - by offering an interpretation of Howard Hawks's masterpiece Rio Bravo as a celebration of democracy. The film was made by Hawks in self-conscious opposition to High Noon, in which Gary Cooper's sherrif is obliged to stand alone against those threatening the community. Rio Bravo, by contrast and as Taylor explains, shows a community in action on behalf of the wider community of the town, drawing on the courage and the talents, such as they are, of each individual member. 'If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the idea of America,' Taylor says, 'it would be Rio Bravo.'

Hawks seemed taken with the theme, going on to make two more Westerns, El Dorado and Rio Lobo, in which Wayne is at the centre of a group that stands up to those intent on doing ill.

Book ends

Marc Abrahams assembles a list of non-fiction titles registering the end of this and that:

The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben; The End of Science, by John Horgan; The End of Medicine, by Andy Kessler; The End of Medicine, by Rick Carlson; The End of Medicine, by Kaare Bursell; The End of History, by Francis Fukuyama; The End of History, by Philip N Moore; The End of Food, by Thomas F Pawlick; The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts; The End of Shareholder Value, by Allan Kennedy; The End of Finance, by Jan Toporowski; The End of Software, by Timothy Chen Kuang Chou; The End Of Globalisation, by Alan M Rugman; The End of Laissez-Faire, by John Maynard Keynes; The End of Work, by Jeremy Rifkin; The End of Politics, by Carl Boggs; The End of Democracy, by Abid Ullah Jan; The End of the Poem, by Paul Muldoon; The End of Words, by Richard Lischer; The End of Art, by Donald Kuspit; The End of Illusions, by Joe Loconte; The End of Print, by Lewis Blackwell and David Carson; The End Of Obscenity, by Charles Rembar; The End of Thought, by Charles Waldron Thomas; The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs; The End of Suffering, by Russell Targ and JJ Hurtak; The End of All Evil, by Jeremy Locke; The End Of Religion, Bruxy Cavey; The End of Faith, by Sam Harris; The End of Desire, by Kyle Keefer and Tod Linafelt; The End of Privacy, by Charles J Sykes; The End of Youth, Robert Gibson; The End of the Beginning, by Tim Clayton and Phil Craig; The End of Days, by Gershom Gorenberg; The End of Time, by Isaac Watts; The End of Time, by Richard K Fenn; The End of Time, by Julian Barbour; The End of Time, by David Horowitz; The End of All Perfection, by Josiah Owen; The End of Order, by Charles Mee; The End of the Line, by Charles Clover; The End of the Line, by Barry C Lynn; The End of the Line, by Kathleen O'Connell; The End of the Line, by Richard Feldman and Michael Betzold; The End of the Line, by Kathryn Marie Dudley; The End of the Line, by Joseph Vranich; The End of the Line, by Joanne Jacquart; The End of the Road, by John M Allegro; The End of the World, edited by Simon Schama

What, no ends of cricket, blogging, socialism, jazz? Here are a few, anyway, that he missed: The End of Ideology, The End of the State, The End of the Nation State, The End of the Jewish People?, The End of Utopia, The End of Victory Culture, The End of Education, The End of the Terraces.

Writer's choice 153: Karen Maitland

Karen Maitland lives in the splendid medieval city of Lincoln. She has travelled extensively, from the Arctic Circle to Albania, and has worked in Nigeria, Northern Ireland and Israel. Her first novel, The White Room, was shortlisted for The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. A three-month tour in the middle of winter with a multicultural show playing in 21 isolated and rural locations from Cumbria to Devon first sparked the idea for her medieval thriller, Company of Liars, as she began to appreciate what life must have been like for those people who had to earn their living on the road. Below, Karen discusses Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory.

Karen Maitland on The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

When I was fourteen I fell madly in love with a man old enough to be my grandfather. He was not charming or good-looking. In fact, he was a lecherous stinking drunk, with stomach ulcers, foul breath and badly decaying teeth. And if that were not enough to make any mother lock up her teenage daughter, he was also an ordained priest and I was not even a Catholic.

For weeks I secretly climbed into bed with him, knowing my mother would put a stop to the relationship at once if she ever discovered it. I hugged him in the dark, unable to sleep, breathless with the excitement of being hopelessly in love. I couldn't believe that anyone so wonderful could ever have been created. I even tore down all my treasured photos of pop idols that I'd carefully cut from Jackie comics. They all seemed so childish now. I had become a woman and all I wanted was that priest.

It was my English teacher who introduced us. I was behaving badly in school, disrupting lessons by arguing with staff, refusing to work in class or do any homework. Punishment had absolutely no effect, so a wise teacher decided to try the carrot instead of the stick. She told me that if I handed in my homework on time for the next week, I could have the keys to the sixth-form reading cupboard where, as every pupil knew, the 'adult' books were kept. The bribe worked and on my very first visit to the locked cupboard, I stumbled upon one of the greatest works of English literature - Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the tale of the whisky priest.

The novel was a revelation. Up to that time, having devoured fairy tales and Enid Blyton, then being force-fed the classics at school such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Moonfleet, and the complete works of Jane Austen, I had come to believe not only that it was compulsory for all fictional heroes to be handsome, clever and brave, but also that they could never on any account get killed. Heroines were no better. Jane Austen's female leads may not have been great beauties, but they certainly didn't suffer from acne. They were suitably accomplished at everything from playing the pianoforte to dancing. And, worse still, from the first chapter, you knew that somehow they were going to become betrothed to the smouldering eligible bachelor by the final page.

Even at the self-absorbed age of fourteen, I knew that real life was rarely composed of happy endings. People died frightened and in pain, and the cavalry did not come charging over the hill to rescue them in the nick of time. Besides, how was I supposed to relate to these impossibly good, talented and handsome characters? I wasn't clever or pretty and I certainly wasn't brave. I longed to be all those things. But I knew deep down that faced with a choice between shouting defiance at an armed enemy or running for my life, I would run. There in the pages of Greene's novel I encountered, for the first time, a character who thought and behaved like a real person, not a superhero.

Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory was inspired by a trip to Mexico in 1938, where he had been sent to report on religious persecution, having himself converted to Catholicism in 1926. In the novel, the main character, an unnamed priest, finds himself the last priest left in the southern states of Mexico during an anti-clerical purge. Terrified of being tortured and shot, he goes on the run disguised as a peasant, trying to escape across the border to safety. In a land where most people are starving and there are mass arrests, the priest knows that anyone he meets could betray him to the authorities to save their own loved ones or because they desperately need money. God seems to have abandoned him and he has little faith left. But terrified though he is, the priest finds himself having to make the life-or-death choice between saving himself and administering the sacraments to those who desperately want them.

In the unlikely person of the whisky priest, I finally found a character in fiction I could identify with, someone who, like me, was truly human. He vomited and pissed. He felt pain and abject fear. He made mistakes, he repeatedly broke his vows, and like any normal person faced with certain death, his natural instinct was to want to run away. And who could blame him?

There was something else I found in Greene's novel too, an overwhelming sense of place. I'd never been to Mexico, but the heat and dust, the filth and flies, crawled over me from the very first page and I was right there sweating in that urine-drenched, flea-ridden hut with him. Through this novel I discovered that it was possible to make a reader see, smell, taste and feel a time and a place totally outside of their own experience, and that amazing possibility was more enchanting to me than if I'd found myself magically transported to Narnia.

Of course, now that I really am a woman, I delight in the gentle satires of Jane Austen's romances. I enjoy the adventure of Moonfleet. And, along with the rest of the world, I did find myself hoping that the good, clever and brave Harry Potter would live to defeat Voldemort. But you wouldn't have to torture me to get me to confess that through all seven books I was secretly rooting, not for Harry Potter, but for Professor Snape with his greasy hair and greying underpants.

They say you never forget your first love, so I'm afraid in any novel I read my fictional hero will always be the unloved character lurking in the corner, the shabby, ugly man covered in dandruff who never, ever gets the girl of his dreams.

[All the pieces that have appeared to date in this series, with the links to them, are listed here, here and here.]

Left supposing

Doris Lessing:

Years later, in New York, when the Soviet Union was no more, I asked William if he had ever thought like this: Suppose the Left everywhere had never paid allegiance to the Soviet Union, had said, "That struggle has nothing to do with us" - then certain things could not have happened. The Left's support of the Soviet Union meant concentration - that above all - on failure, on lying, on the defense of mass murder, meant, inevitably the corruption of itself, because of always having to swear that bad was good, lies the truth, failure success. A left wing independent of all that would have meant a healthy Left, instead of one mortally wounded and corrupted. Yes, said William, he had indeed pursued these ideas, but surely I must agree with him that this was unhistorical thinking? Yes, yes, I admitted, true, but just suppose...

And yet. Even then there was a section of the left that did not defend mass murder and lying; and even now there is a section of the left that 'understands' it. (Thanks: IT.)