normblog

Reflections on a post by Tim Burke

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Be fair. Be honest. Be sceptical. Never mind the bollocks.

That's from the normblog profile, a while back, of Tim Burke. It's a good precept - and not only for life generally, but also in blogging. In fact, especially there, since in terms of fairness, honesty and scepticism, there's a lot of the other stuff about, and if you wasted your time going after all of it, that's what you'd be doing with your time, wasting it.

Tim Burke has taken me to task over my post on Tony Judt. Were I to act on the advice Tim gave in that profile answer of his back in May 2004, I might not feel it necessary to respond to him now; because, except for the fact that 'bollocks' isn't a word I'm given to using outside private conversation, is the sort of expression I mostly refrain from in public debate, there are several elements in his criticism of my post that arguably belong in that very category and which certainly fall short of being fair.

Yet, for every valuable precept there's another, and it's in the nature of things that the second can yield a different practical conclusion from the first. So, while I prefer not to engage with forms of blogospheric discourse not measuring up to Tim's precept, and mostly don't, I believe in the principle, as well, that people who are fair-minded as a general rule and conduct themselves in a civil way should be treated likewise, their occasional departures from this norm notwithstanding. That's why I'm replying to Tim, despite those items in his criticism which I rate as belonging in the category I wouldn't normally bother myself with and he professes not to either.

1. Item. This is of the species 'He's not [that is, I'm not] such a bad guy in one important respect, but... he [that is, I] may not be altogether sound in that respect either.' Here it is in Tim's own words:

I'll give Norm Geras credit that this past summer, he took the time to criticize Alan Dershowitz' defense of torture, but that's a rare kind of gesture coming from the strongest proponents of the war. For someone whose blogging has been very extensively focused on the war and the Middle East, and has never missed an opportunity to rebuke someone on the left for associations with human rights violators, Geras has had nothing to say in the past month about the current conflict within the Republican Party in the U.S. over the issue of torture, secret trials, and the like.

'Geras has had nothing to say...' Well, you see, my view about torture is inflexibly simple: I'm against it. In all circumstances and for everybody, no exceptions. As it's a view I've made clear on this blog whenever I've posted on the matter, a view that is also continuous with my published work over many years and with the work I'm engaged in at present, as well as with my support (also over many years) for human rights NGOs, NGOs concerned specifically with torture, I don't feel the need of proving that my view hasn't softened or slipped, by saying something about torture at a particular time nominated by Tim Burke. 'Nothing to say in the past month' is an idle game, and I suspect Tim knows that. I could on the same basis note that during this September, when there occurred - just for example - a Global Day for Darfur and publication of a parliamentary report on anti-Semitism in Britain, Tim for his part had nothing to say about either. Or if he did and I've missed it, then he was silent about something else important. An idle game I wouldn't usually bother joining even by way of a rebuttal.

2. Item. With a link to this recent post of mine in which I made it clear (as I have many times) that I don't lump together into a single category everyone who opposed the Iraq war, Tim gives me credit for trying to be fair. Nonetheless, he draws out the following so-called 'implication' from my criticism of Tony Judt:

that because the critic of the pro-war liberals failed to ritually denounce the left that the pro-war people hate, the critic must himself or herself be part of that left.

It's most creative, this, but only in the producing-it-out-of-the-air mode. Or to put it differently, Tim makes it up. In the post on Judt, I precisely register a distinction between those I refer to as the 'Hizbolleft' and others of anti-war conviction who (I say) do not share the same political vices (roughly: accommodation with anti-democratic forces) as that left, but for whom the supreme virtue nonetheless has been that you should think like them, and for whom therefore the pro-war left has been a quite particular object of hostility. On the one hand and on the other hand: I distinguish different sections of the anti-war left and and criticize them for different things. Forget the Hizbolleft, I say, and their anti-democratic solidarities and allegiances; more interesting, I say, are these others, these of the one truth on Iraq and the one virtue, namely theirs.

Tim seems to think he can show that this latter category is empty by pointing to his own case - that he isn't a legitimate object of such criticism - and the case of 'lots of [other] liberal critics of the war'. But this is an elementary logical mistake. It doesn't have to be about him or about such others. Because I don't play the tenor sax, this doesn't mean that nobody does. Because Tim Burke isn't himself a sneering anti-'decent' - though not, one may note, above ironic use of the scare-quoted term - it doesn't mean that that's an empty set.

3. Item. Tim appears to believe that my use of a tu quoque form of argument against Tony Judt is beside the point. But, believing so, he misses what was in fact the central point of my criticism of Judt. It was that by treating under a common and prejudicial label - 'collapse of liberal self-confidence', 'liberal intellectuals... fast becoming a service class' - a large number of figures with whom he has political differences on some related issues, Judt in effect denies the legitimacy of there being an alternative liberal response on those issues. Leave aside that one might think at least some of the figures he names are owed better than to have their viewpoints reduced to being due to an insufficiency of emotional courage or the pursuit of ignoble motives and interests. The issue isn't whether Judt is right against them or they right against him on the substantive questions at stake. It is that he declines to treat those differences as legitimate differences among liberals (or within the left), as political disagreements not hard to explain in view of the gravity and complexity - or even merely the two-sidedness - of the problems it concerns. No, he prefers to traduce all these people as failed in their liberalism and on account of dubious motives. I would say that this provides more than reasonable grounds for charging Judt with binary thinking - 'If you're a real liberal (member of the left etc) you have to think like this'. And as binary thinking was what Judt alleged against others, the tu quoque is entirely merited.

That is not, in other words, a purely formalistic riposte. It is the very heart of the matter. Tim seems to think that what bothered me in Judt's article was its impugning the sincerity of those who supported the Iraq war from the left. Not so. Naturally, a person will be less inclined to engage intellectually with those who treat her as other than sincere - as dishonest, cowardly, venal and so forth. But this isn't the crux of what I was identifying as wrong with Judt's article. The crux is that, alleging against others a failure of liberalism, he defines the space of (genuine) liberalism in such a way as to suggest that support for the Iraq war must have been impelled by extraneous, unprincipled - or, at least, non-principled - impulses. I would say that that itself is a pretty dire failure of anything claiming the name of liberalism. So, yes, pot and kettle, and if Tim doesn't like this, he could spell out why it doesn't apply to what Judt wrote in that LRB piece, rather than just dismissing it peremptorily as a piece of you-too-ism without substance.

*****

For the rest, and in line with that last point, it is notable that Tim is less interested in Judt and what I in fact criticized him for - which centred on a list of people that included Adam Michnik, Václav Havel, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Michael Walzer - than in presenting us with his picture of the group of pro-war liberals he repeatedly identifies as 'decents' and 'Eustonites'. It is as if my post, just like it was supposed to be about Tim Burke, was primarily about us, the Euston Manifesto group - which it wasn't. But anyway Tim's picture, as you may confirm for yourself, is a rather disobliging one. In some details it is produced (as in 2 above) out of the air. Thus, he ascribes this accusation rather loosely to 'Geras and others':

Ah, so if you are not in favor of using military occupation to remove a totalitarian ruler, you are by definition a supporter of totalitarianism...

Not only do I not think anything like that, I've said that I don't on plenty of occasions; I can't speak for 'others'. But never mind stuff of that sort, hey. I meant to leave it behind at the asterisks above. Let's now get to the core of what Tim has to say that can be met as being his serious purpose - so to say beyond the asterisks.

This purpose is to lay upon us pro-war liberals and Eustonians an obligation to debate with those who disagree with us. We...

... are going to have to agree to put certain things into the space of debatability. I'm not saying it's a precondition that they [i.e. we Eustonians] have to agree with their critics, but they do have to preemptively agree on the legitimacy of certain arguments, both philosophical and empirical.

I pause to note the largeness of the concession: we don't have actually to agree with our anti-war critics, we only have to accept that they get to define the terms of debate. In fact, I don't accept this. Free intellectual and political debate is what it is, namely free, and no party to it has a monopoly on setting the parameters. But my refusal may not matter too much, since as it happens I do accept some of the terms Tim goes on to specify as obliging us. I do accept, and I always have, that 'some things about the war are ambiguous, uncertain, confusing, without easy resolution'; I likewise do accept the need of 'standards for success and failure in war and occupation' and the need to take 'responsibility for both conceptual and empirical error'. Of course, if there's an imputation there - as there surely is - that these things haven't previously been accepted, by me or 'others', then speaking for myself (which is all I can do) I reject that.

There's a connected trope in what Tim says on this score. Not only do we have an obligation to debate, he says, but we must...

... start joining people of good will in the intellectual spaces where there are difficult questions and uncertain problems that will be respected as difficult and uncertain.

Now, if 'joining people of good will in the intellectual spaces etc' isn't simply another way of saying being open to debate on questions that are complicated and hard, then Tim appears to be requiring something about where and with whom the debate takes place, and on this I have something to say.

I have been debating about the Iraq war since July 28 2003, when I launched normblog. Extensively. Intensively. Tim may not like what I've said. That's his right. He can engage with it or he can leave it alone. However, by doing this on my blog, the place where I've been doing it is the blogosphere, and this is a free and open space more or less. Anyone can take issue with what anyone else writes. Have I declined the opportunity to debate with others of opposing views? I don't believe so. Leaving aside that I have discussed, at length and repeatedly, positions adopted and questions raised by critics of the war - why Iraq and not other tyrannies, sovereignty, thresholds of intervention, alternative regime change scenarios, questions of responsibility, whether democracies are to be held to a higher (human rights) standard than other regimes, whether or not it matters if US and British leaders deliberately misled their publics, the 'incompetence dodge', whether or not democracy is nascent in Iraq, and a lot else than this but which I'm not going to trawl further through my archives to find – and leaving aside that I have written 11 of 17 Euston 'platforms' trying to clarify points in the Euston Manifesto and responding to its critics... leaving all this, as I say, aside, I have engaged with many bloggers of anti-war conviction. These include Tim Burke, Chris Brooke, Ken MacLeod, Michael Fisher, Brad DeLong, Dave Gwydion, Chris Young (and here and elsewhere), Stuart Turner, and others yet. Why, I even used to discuss things with Marc Mulholland, until his blogging turned obsessive in a particular way that I've come to know and leave alone.

The thing is, Tim Burke doesn't get to say - if this is what he indeed intended to say (and if he didn't, then he can treat what follows as merely general and not as addressed specifically to him) - where I debate or with whom. For in my book the kind of stuff which the word 'bollocks' is generally used to cover extends from the substance of what may be said and written to the manner in which it is expressed. Not only do I bypass objections of a substantively footling kind - the straining at a word here, the twisting of a phrase there, the noting of a failure to say 'yay!' or 'boo!' on some occasion when someone else requires it of you, the ascription of some viewpoint irrespective of what is amply on the record showing that the ascription is spurious - but I don't go (except rarely, reluctantly and at moments of my choice) into spaces where the mode of address is abusive or even just mildly insulting; and I scarcely ever engage with those for whom I have become someone without principle or conscience, a renegade, member of the pro-war 'left' with scare-quotes - generically, a BAD PERSON of one stripe or another. 'People of good will' is fine by me, but each of us gets to make the judgement for himself or herself of who displays it and who doesn't. There are spaces into which I don't go and people I won't engage with. I didn't reach the seventh decade of my life without learning not to walk where I'll get dog shit on my shoes. That says nothing against the act of walking.

One final point. There's something else beyond good will here. Not only is the blogosphere a relatively free space; blogging is a relatively free activity. Nobody is obliged by any particular thing that has been written by someone else - even if it was done with the most beautiful of wills. You blogged last week or last month or last year on the topic of fleas and rainbows. The fact that today you have a would-be interlocutor on fleas or rainbows doesn't mean you have to say the same thing again, or indeed a different thing on the same topic. You may just not want to repeat yourself. You may want to blog about... oh, I don't know, Iraq, or Zimbabwe, or The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady. You may want not to blog, but to watch a movie. No one else gets to set the terms, either of debate or of how and when you blog. I think I've done as much debating in the blogosphere as most people, and plenty more than some. And I could point to rather a lot of non-engagement, if I may so put this, with arguments I've made at length and by people to whom I therefore owe nothing in the way of discursive reciprocity. If Tim doesn't see eye to eye with me on these matters, bevakasha, my friend.

Mearsheimer-Walt debate

There was a debate last night at the Cooper Union, on the Israel Lobby (scroll down) and whether it has too much influence on US Foreign Policy. There's a report here in the New York Sun. (Thanks: MA.)

Apology without personal blame

Ben Macintyre questions the value of apologies for the distant past - such as for the Irish potato famine or the slave trade. Much of what he says is interesting, and his suggestion that there may be other impulses behind such apologies than genuine contrition is to the point. But in making the argument, Macintyre appears to claim that an apology isn't relevant unless the person making it bears some blame as an individual for the wrong done. He writes, for example:

[A]n apology implies acceptance of blame, an acknowledgment of wrongdoing and guilt... an apology without some sense of responsibility, for events that occurred far beyond living memory, is purely symbolic, an empty gesture.

And:

An apology is only meaningful if the breast being beaten bears some responsibility within it.

This can't be right. Not only individuals but also collectivities can bear responsibility for wrongs. And since collectivities - firms, universities, political parties, nations - are represented by persons, and it is only persons who can speak for them, it can happen that an individual who wasn't a member of the collectivity in question at the time the putative wrong was committed can - perfectly meaningfully and sincerely - be the one to apologize for it.

By the same reasoning, an apology can properly be made even if none of the present members of the collectivity apologizing were members at the time of the act or policy for which the apology is being made. Institutions and communities have a life of their own, beyond the individual memberships, careers, lives, etc, of those who belong to them. They are as capable of apology as of other acts (decisions, declarations, endorsements, making payments, forming partnerships and alliances, and so forth) that individuals perform.

This doesn't mean that all apologies for the distant past are prudent or useful, only that they are possible and meaningful.

A fundamental principle of justice

The bill, which Bush was forced to negotiate with a group of his fellow Republicans in the U.S. Senate, would bar inmates at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from using habeas corpus petitions to have their imprisonment reviewed by a court.

Habeas corpus - Latin for "you have the body" - has been a linchpin of Anglo-American jurisprudence since it was first developed over 300 years ago in Britain.

This, from Jared Goldstein, says the necessary:

Congress is now poised to do something it has never done before: Take away the right of prisoners to seek habeas corpus. Since long before the United States became a nation, the right to seek habeas corpus has guaranteed that anyone imprisoned by the government may ask a judge to determine whether he or she is properly imprisoned. The right to seek habeas corpus has applied to prisoners regardless of whether they are citizens or foreigners, and no matter how dangerous they are accused of being, or how horrible their alleged crimes.

The right to habeas corpus has been a basic part of English common law, and, later, American law, since the adoption of the Magna Carta, in 1215, which established that no one could be imprisoned on the mere say-so of the king.

The founders of the United States considered habeas corpus to be such a fundamental protection against tyranny that they enshrined it in the Constitution. Congress has expanded the right to seek habeas corpus several times, and it has never tried to take the right away. To do so now would turn our backs on our fundamental principles of justice.

The Bush administration has proposed revoking this fundamental right for the 450 or so foreigners held at Guantanamo. If Congress goes along, no limits will remain on the government's power to imprison people without evidence and without trial. Doubtlessly, the United States can and should lock up terrorists posing a threat to the nation - but it must do so within the bounds of law.

Our strength as a nation is demonstrated when we treat even our worst enemies within the rule of law.

See also Nat Hentoff here (free registration) and this editorial in the LA Times.

Another view of the NIE

In today's Australian, Michael Costello highlights some features of the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that haven't exactly been the centre of media attention in the last few days:

The media coverage and most political reaction suggests the summary [of conclusions] is damning of Bush's position on Iraq. I have two things to say about that. One is that people must be reading a different document from the one I am. The other is that the summary seems to me to ignore some significant considerations.

Bush says that if the US were to pull its forces out of Iraq it would lead to increased terrorism and, conversely, that victory in Iraq would be a blow to terrorism.

Here's what the NIE says: "Perceived jihad success (in Iraq) would inspire more fighters to continue the fight elsewhere." And "should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight". That's supportive, not undermining, of Bush's opposition to withdrawal.

Bush constantly emphasises that the spread of democratic processes, pluralism and support for moderate forces will eventually work against the terrorists. So does the NIE, not just once but in several places.

It says democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations during the next five years will drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives. There is a risk that such reforms could be destabilising in the transition period, but that's the case whenever countries move towards democracy.
.....
The NIE states: "We assess that the Iraq conflict has become the cause celebre for jihadists." Well, let's assume that's correct. My question is: And? What follows from that assessment? Israel is also a cause celebre for jihadists. Does that mean we should abandon it?

Read the rest. (Thanks: SM / JN.)

Open-ended atheism

I've had my criticisms of Richard Dawkins's attitude to religious belief and believers, and I'm not going to come to his defence here. But there's something in this piece on him by Stephen Unwin that's worth a brief comment. It's the implication in what Unwin writes that to be an atheist is to proclaim a form of certainty. It can involve that, but it needn't. You can be an atheist on the grounds that you've not yet seen (or felt) a compelling reason, piece of evidence or anything of any other sort to persuade you of the existence of a divine being. That is still an open and fallibilist form of belief. It's not the same as certainty of the non-existence of God; it's just an attitude of economy - not to accept the existence of entitities for which you can find no persuasive arguments or persuasive anything.

Peter Ryley writes to Sally Hunt

This is the text of an email from Peter Ryley of the University of Hull to Sally Hunt, joint general secretary of UCU. I post it with his permission:

Dear Sally Hunt

I was surprised to see an item on your web site urging support for the Stop the War Coalition demonstration in Manchester this coming Saturday and even more disappointed to see that the UCU has affiliated to the Coalition. As someone on the left who opposed the war, I personally find the Coalition to be an extremely dubious organisation consisting mainly of an alliance between the SWP and Islamist organisations, who are hardly friends of academic freedom. I would wearily resign myself to the fact that this is another consequence of the indefatigable energy of SWP activists within our Union, in contrast to those of us on the liberal left, if it were not for something else.

I followed some of the links posted on the UCU web site and was appalled. They led to several items on the killing of Iraqi academics. These were highly partial and suggested that academics were being murdered because of their opposition to the occupation, implying that this was an Iraqi government policy, possibly connived at by the American occupation forces. This is manifestly wholly or partially untrue.

There are many other, more reputable sources. For instance, the American Association for the Advancement of Science comments on its web site, "it is unclear who is doing the killing. Some scientists believe that the majority of the killing is being carried out by the Badr Brigade, the military wing of an Iraqi Shia rebel group that has been in exile in Iran. It is affiliated with a group known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq which worked first to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and is now focused on pushing for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq."

Whilst Reuters has reported the following:

"Dr Isam Kadhem al-Rawi, head of the Association of University Lecturers and a professor in earth sciences at Baghdad University, said the campaign against Iraq's leading intellectuals was being orchestrated by parties inside and outside the country.

["]He said the motivation was the perceived allegiance of an individual to one particular religious or secular party - the idea being that killing those who supposedly push a particular agenda stops the spread of those ideas."

There are two serious failings by the UCU webmaster here. Firstly, for an academic union to post unchallenged items that would fail any objective test of academic rigour gives me concern. At the very least, authoritative sources question the interpretation of the articles on the web site and it would appear that the murders are not reducible to a single cause.

Secondly, leading members of the Stop the War Coalition have given vocal support to the Iraqi "resistance", acting as apologists and justifying their right to resist the American-led occupation. That means that the UCU is affiliated to an organisation that has implied support for a movement that is involved in the systematic murder of academics, a curious position for an academic union to take.

Of course, there are no links to the reports of the brutal killings by the Taliban of teachers who have opened their schools to girls in Afghanistan.

There is an endless debate on the proper role of Trade Unions in respect of major political controversies and I certainly would not support an isolationist quiescence. In this case, there is a clear interest for an education union in that teachers and academics are currently being systematically murdered. However, the gravity of a situation that leaves educators in fear of their lives means that we have to be scrupulous in the positions we take and most certainly in the information we give our members. I am deeply concerned that this has not been the case in this instance.

Yours Sincerely

Peter Ryley

Euston by Manchester Piccadilly

Anthony at Blacktriangle sees evidence from the Labour Party conference 'that potential support for Eustonian principles may well be more widespread than The Guardian's editorial pages might suggest.'

That ball

For anyone interested in going behind the verdict on Inzamam-ul-Haq and Darrell Hair to the process by which it was arrived at, the Guardian has an account of the hearing by Omar Waraich:

[Geoffrey] Boycott in particular delivered a veritable tour de force. At one point, he took the infamous match ball in his hand, held it up and said: "That's a good ball, not just a playable ball."
.....
In spectacular fashion, and to the consternation of many, [Simon] Hughes produced two other balls bearing remarkably similar traces of wear and tear to the match ball from the fourth Test. There was nothing about the ball that should excite suspicion, he argued. Hughes then presented a deliberately tampered ball, replete with scuff marks and abrasions, to demonstrate the distinction.

The normblog profile 158: Lisa Guidarini

Lisa Guidarini was born in Houston, Mississippi, but grew up in a small, rural town in the 'Amish country' of central Illinois. She received her BA degree in English literature from Dominican University in suburban Chicago. She currently works part-time as the programme coordinator for her local public library district, and also as a freelance writer and reviewer. She is a staff reviewer for Jacket Magazine, and also works for a local independent bookshop in marketing/public relations. Lisa lives with her husband, her three children and one eccentric Jack Russell Terrier. She blogs at The Bluestalking Reader.

Why do you blog? > I enjoy sharing my thoughts with other like souls. I choose this method of 'online journaling' because I'm much more apt to sit down at the keyboard regularly than grab a pen and paper. I'm also less likely to lose the computer than the paper.

What has been your best blogging experience? > I've loved every minute of meeting and communing with others who enjoy talking about books and other mostly bookish topics.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Post often, post honestly, and be kind.

What are your favourite blogs? > dovegreyreader scribbles, Ex Libris and Random Jottings of an Opera and Book Lover.

Who are your intellectual heroes? > George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Margaret Atwood.

What are you reading at the moment? > The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune and a Dynasty by Jean Zimmerman, Susanna Childress's Jagged With Love, and re-reading Pride and Prejudice.

Who are your cultural heroes? > All the nameless scribes who ensured ancient literature would pass forward, working without any hope or desire for personal glory.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust. It has more of humanity in it than anything I've read before or since.

What is your favourite poem? > William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...'

What is your favourite song? > Simon and Garfunkel's 'I Am A Rock'.

Who is your favourite composer? > Bach. I love the music of the Baroque.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. We need to remember that, and be humbled by it, far more often.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > It's important to combat any thesis that begins with 'Everyone should believe...'

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It's a very raw and honest look at the ways we can heal ourselves after sadness, and how important it is to be kind to ourselves.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > I would break down the barriers created by the isolationist policy of our current administration. It might not solve all our problems but it would be a huge step in the right direction.

If you could choose anyone, from any walk of life, to be President, who would you choose? > I'd have to find someone with both an iron fist and a heart of gold, and the wisdom to discern when each was necessary. I don't know of this person in real life.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > I believe that would be the twin threats of ignorance and intolerance, on all sides.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Be true to yourself, and kind to others, but not to the extent you allow them to be unkind to you.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Compassion. Most other things fall into place if one is at heart a kind and compassionate person.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > I detest anything that compromises human dignity or in any way belittles others.

In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > I would lie in order to save someone's life, or to prevent a circumstance in which someone's well-being could possibly be threatened.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > I worry about the world we're handing our children.

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? > If I had the wisdom I have today, I'd not have given up on everything I've wanted (that would have been good for me) so easily.

Who would play you in the movie about your life? > Meryl Streep, ideally!

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > If I've won the lottery, somewhere in Great Britain. If not, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

What would your ideal holiday be? > I'd love to stay in a medieval castle in the Scottish Highlands (fully staffed, of course).

What do you like doing in your spare time? > I greatly enjoy taking my children to various festivals and events locally, either musical or cultural. I also read of course, but that's partly professional as it's mostly for review these days. True spare time is very rare for me.

What is your most treasured possession? > The quilt my paternal grandmother made specifically for me. She used scraps of her own clothing and made a pattern with cats, knowing I loved them.

What would be your ideal choice of alternative profession or job? > I'd love to do something in a similar vein to what I do currently in various jobs, but to have it consolidated into one position that pays the bills more effectively.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Shakespeare, Jesus Christ and Jane Austen.

[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.]