The Queen, Princess Margaret, and Lady Chatterley

Sisters reading Lady Chatterley's Lover 

outside a bookshop in 1960

 

 

I. 

 

Following the Lady Chatterley Trial in 1960 - a key moment in the sexual, social, and cultural revolution that was to follow in the UK and elsewhere - there was widespread consternation in some quarters at the jury's decision to find for the defendant, Penguin Books, and thereby open the doors to a more permissive era.   

 

Indeed, if one ever pops along to the National Archives, in Kew, one can find a Home Office file of letters sent to Her Majesty's Government concerning this case, including one from an Angry of Mayfair type imploring that the Queen personally intervene:     

"I beg of your Majesty to use your influence to reverse the decision to allow Lady Chatterley's Lover to be retailed to the public at a price within the allowance of youths and girls still at school. The depravity of this book is unspeakable, and with your sheltered upbringing in a Christian home Your Majesty cannot conceive the immoral situations which will be put before innocent minds." [1]

 

Whilst the writer's views were duly noted - and, indeed, his letter filed - the Queen did not in fact attempt to overturn the court's decision; as a constitutional monarch, Her Majesty does not involve herself in any political or personal disputes and letters requesting that she do so receive a standard reply to this effect.

 

 

II.  

 

The question that comes to my mind is: Did the Queen read Lawrence's notorious novel? 

 

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to this. 

 

I do know, however, that she was familiar with works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Romantic poets including Keats, Coleridge, and Tennyson, and didn't just settle down with The Racing Post and a copy of Tatler when she retired to her reading room. 

 

So, it's not inconceivable that she would know more recent works of English literature, although she undoubtedly preferred the novels of P. D. James and Dick Francis to books by writers such as Lawrence (even if the character of Lady Chatterley was partly based on her first cousin twice removed, Lady Ottoline Morrell, who once had a brief affair with a young gardener and stonemason employed at Garsington Manor) [2]. 

 

Her younger sister, Margaret, however, was a different kettle of fish ... 

 

III.

 

Princess Margaret was one of the world's most celebrated socialites; famed for her glamorous (somewhat bohemian) lifestyle and reputed romances, including, most scandalously, her affair with Peter Townsend, a married RAF officer in the royal household that was to end in heartbreak for both parties [3].

 

In 1960, she married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, whom Elizabeth created Earl of Snowdon. The couple had two children, but both parties engaged in extramarital affairs [4], and they separated in 1976, divorcing two years later. 

 

Margaret, then, was an unconventional member of the British Royal family; an intelligent, amusing, and lively young woman with a rebellious streak, whom I'm sure would have read Lady Chatterley's Lover and been delighted by it. 

 

But again, I don't know that for a fact and, ultimately, she seems to have been more passionate about music, dance, and fashion, rather than books. 

Notes

 

[1] See the article 'Primary Sources From the 1960s Show Public Reaction to The Trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover' (16 December 2010) on the website amdigital.co.uk: click here. 

[2] To what extent Ottoline Morrell influenced the fictional Lady Chatterley is debatable. But Lawrence certainly had her in mind when he created the character of Hermione Roddice in Women in Love (1921) - much to her chagrin, as she thought the portrayal grossly unkind and unfair. Lawrence, of course, denied there was anything more than hint of Ottoline in Hermione, along with traces of a million other women. 

      Readers interested in this might like to see an article by Maev Kennedy entitled 'The real Lady Chatterley: society hostess loved and parodied by the Bloomsbury group', in The Guardian (10 October 2006): click here.   

[3] Townsend divorced his wife in 1952, the year that Elizabeth ascended to the throne. He proposed to Margaret the following year, but the powers that be decided he would make an unsuitable husband for the Queen's 22-year-old sister. When the Archbishop of Canterbury made clear his opposition to Margaret's marrying a divorced man, she abandoned her relationship with Townsend.

[4] Claims that Margaret was romantically involved with Mick Jagger, Peter Sellers, and Australian cricketer Keith Miller are unproven. But there is evidence to show she had affairs with, amongst others, David Niven, Warren Beatty, and London gangster John Bindon. 

 

Serge Gainsbourg: l'improbable artiste reggae

Serge Gainsbourg and his Jamaican cohorts 

(including Sly & Robbie)

 

 

I. 

 

Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of the Clash were not the only white recording artists to leave the safety of their European homes in the late 1970s [1] and travel to Kingston Jamaica in the hope of finding inspiration. 

 

Always happy to hop on the latest bandwagon and experiment with musical genres, the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg also flew to the Caribbean island, in September 1978, with the intention of recording a reggae album with super-talented local musicians and producers Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare [2].    

 

Surprisingly perhaps, it was the 50-year-old Frenchman - whom many regarded by this date as past his prime - and not the younger, cooler duo of English punks then at the top of their game, who seemed to have a better time of it in Jamaica and fit in more easily with the scene; particularly when it was discovered that he was the man responsible for the notorious love song 'Je t'aime ... Moi non plus'. 

 

And it was Gainsbourg, not the Clash, who arguably made the more challenging album ...

II.

 

Released in March 1979, four months after the Clash released their second studio album, Give 'Em Enough Rope - a fairly standard rock record with minimal Jamaican influence, apart from on the opening track - Gainsbourg's Aux armes et caetera is a unique but genuine reggae album; i.e., one recorded in Kingston and featuring some of Jamaica's best reggae musicians, as well as vocal support from members of Bob Marley's backing group, the I Threes [3].

 

The album, which has since been remixed, dubbed, and expanded with previously unused material, is now considered an absolute classic (and I'm not sure that's something that can be said of Give 'Em Enough Rope) and has gone on to sell over a million copies. 

The title track, released as a single, is probably the most notorious; a reggae adaptation of 'La Marseillaise' that is guaranteed to offend the more conservative and reactionary sections of French society. Indeed, it provoked an equivalent amount of media-driven outrage as 'God Save the Queen' by the Sex Pistols had produced in the UK in the summer of '77 [4].  

 

Gainsbourg, however, was so happy with the album and so taken with reggae as a genre, that he recorded another album in 1981, Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles, employing the same Jamaican musicians and backing vocalists (even though Bob Marley was less than pleased to discover that Gainsbourg had persuaded his wife Rita to sing erotic lyrics). 

 

This album too was eventually given a dub-style remix a decade after Ganisbourg's death (in 2003) and continues to find new fans, although it isn't a patch on Aux armes et cætera and pales in comparison.  

 

 

III.

 

Whether performing Aux armes et caetera live on tour was Gainsbourg's idea or his record company's isn't known, but it was Gainsbourg who insisted that they fly his Jamaican support band - the Revolutionaries [5] - over from Jamaica (sadly, the I Threes were not invited along for the ride).  

 

The short tour in culminated in a number of Paris gigs - the first of which was attended by various French artists and intellectuals (including Roland Barthes) - although it was the show in Strasbourg (4 Jan 1980) that is often best remembered, after a group of angry ex-paratroopers threatened to violently disrupt the event. 

 

Deciding to courageously confront - whilst at the same time disarm the protestors - Gainsbourg walked on stage alone and sang the national anthem, in its traditional form, amusingly obliging the soldiers to stand, salute, and sing along [6].

 

 

Photo of Serge Gainsbourg holding the French flag 

by Jean-Jacques Bernier (1985)

 

Notes

 

[1] See the recent post 'Where Every White Face ...' (11 Jan 2025): click here. 

 

[2] For the full story of this working trip to Jamaica, made at the suggestion of Gainsbourg's producer and musical director, Philippe Lerichomme, see the article by Sylvie Simmons entitled 'Serge Gainsbourg: the Reggae Years' on the Red Bull Music Academy website (26 Oct 2015): click here. 

       Ms. Simmons is the author of the first English biography of Serge Gainsbourg - Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes (Helter Skelter, 2001).

 

 [3] Aux Armes et caetera (Universal, 1979) was the first time a white artist had recorded a full reggae-influenced album in Jamaica. The I Threes consisted of Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley, and Judy Mowatt.

 

[4] Gainsbourg received (all-too-predictable) death threats upon release of his reggae cover of the French national anthem. But, bravely, he neither backed down nor apologised. In fact, after purchasing the signed manuscript of 'La Marseillaise' at an auction, in 1981 (for a sum of 135,000 francs), Gainsbourg argued that his take was closer to the original than any other recorded version (not least of all in revolutionary spirit). 

      For full details of the reaction in France to Aux armes et caetera, see Sylvie Simmons 'Serge Gainsbourg: the Reggae Years', as linked to above. And to listen to the track, please click here, or here where it comes with an accompanying video.

 

[5] The Revolutionaries were a Jamaican reggae band, formed in 1975. Moving away from roots reggae, they created the new (more aggressive) rockers style. Over the years, numerous musicians played in the band, including Sly & Robbie (on drums and bass respectively). The Revolutionaries played on various dub albums and recorded as a backing band for many artists, including Serge Gainsbourg.

 

[6] Again, for further details, see Sylvie Simmons, 'Serge Gainsbourg: the Reggae Years', as previously linked to. To watch a French TV report from the time with footage from Strasbourg, click here.

Where Every White Face ... Remembering That Time When the Clash Went on Their Very Own Dreadlock Holiday

 

They got the sun and they got the palm trees ... 

I'd stay and be a tourist, but I can't take the gun play

 

I. 

 

As we all know, the Clash liked to pose as working-class heroes and rebel rockers, even though lead singer, Joe Strummer, was the son of a British diplomat (Ronald Ralph Mellor, MBE) and attended public school where his fees were paid for by the UK government, thanks to his father's job.

 

In other words, Strummer was a privately-educated middle class boy who went through his folk-loving and pub-rocking phases, before encountering the Sex Pistols in April 1976 and deciding to cut his hair, put on a pair of bondage trousers, and reinvent himself as a punk outlaw. 

 

Equally irksome, is the fact that the Clash also liked to wear musical black face from time to time and experiment with reggae, producing a kind of dub-inflected rock that is more Notting Hill than Kingston Jamaica; a pale imitation of the real thing, although, to be honest, I don't care too much about issues surrounding authenticity and cultural apropriation.

 

Amusingly, however, Strummer was given something of a rude (boy) awakening when he and fellow Clash City Rocker Mick Jones went on a songwriting trip to Jamaica, at the end of 1977, and it turned into their very own dreadlock holiday ...  

 

 

II.   

 

My knowledge of the long-haired English rock band 10cc is very limited [1]. 

 

However, I do remember being invited to load up with rubber bullets by them in 1973 [2] and I also remember their recounting the tale of someone having a series of unfortunate experiences whilst on a Caribbean vacation later in that decade [3].   

 

Whilst the song's narrative is essentially a lyrical fiction, it was, apparently, based on real events experienced by one of the founding members of 10cc, Eric Stewart, during a visit to Barbados, and by the band's bassist and singer Graham Gouldman, when he went to Jamaica. 

 

The former, for example, recalled seeing a white tourist trying to look cool and generally acting like a dick, go up to a group of Afro-Caribbeans who rebuked him in no uncertain terms and told him that he needed to show some respect (a concept that is central to the code of informal rules that govern behavior and interpersonal interactions amongst certain groups).    

 

In the song, having been mugged for a silver chain - given to him by his mother - said tourist retreats to the relative safety of his hotel to drown his sorrows with a piña colada by the pool, only to be approached by a good-looking young woman offering to supply him with some weed. 

Thus the track and accompanying video - whilst reinforcing several stereotypes - does at least touch upon the politics of race, tourism, and cultural appropriation (even if it's in a manner that might make many people uncomfortable today).

 

 

III. 

 

Returning to the Clash ... 

 

The opening track to their second studio album, Give 'Em Enough Rope (1978), is entitled 'Safe European Home' and it provides us with an honest admission by Messrs. Strummer and Jones that it's one thing being a white man in Hammersmith Palais for an all-night reggae gig [4], and another thing entirely cruising round Kingston after dark; a place where, according to the song, "every white face is an invitation to robbery" [5].  

 

Both men were, just like the tourist on a dreadlock holiday, out of their depth and out of their comfort zone, and so mightly relieved to get back to their hotel [6] alive - and even happier when they were finally able to return home to Blighty.   

 

Why they decided to go to Jamaica in the first place - leaving bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon behind (much to the former's anger and irritation, as he was the genuine reggae devotee in the band) - I don't know. Probably it was one of Bernie's bright ideas; hoping they'd find inspiration in a land riven with political violence and criminal gang activity.    

Which perhaps they did: though it came also with a certain disillusionment. For ultimately there's nothing more glamorous, more radical, or more authentic about life under the Carribean sun - and certainly not when you're living in slums or shanty towns with poor quality housing and almost zero social infrastructure. 

 

One wonders why Joe never asked himself why it was that large-scale migration from Jamaica to the UK (as well as to the US and Canada) occurred in the 1950s, '60s and '70s; and why most of these people (and their descendants) really didn't want to return.   

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be amused to discover that I once had a job interview with Godley and Creme, in the mid-1980s, long after they had left 10cc and established themselves as successful pop video directors. The interview was held at the Cadogan hotel. I remember they offered me a spliff, to which I responded by asking in my best Rotten voice: Do I look like a hippie to you? Needless to say, I wasn't offered the job.  

[2] 'Rubber Bullets' was a number one single released from the band's eponymous debut album in 1973. Whilst not particularly relevant to this post, readers who want to give it a listen and see the band perform it on Top of the Pops can do so by clicking here.

 

[3] The white reggae track, 'Dreadlock Holiday', by 10cc, was the lead single from the band's 1978 album, Bloody Tourists (Mercury Records, 1978). It became the group's third number one in the UK and was a huge hit internationaly (with the exception of the US, where many radio stations refused to play reggae of any kind). To watch the video for the song on YouTube, dir. Storm Thorgerson, click here. The image used with this post is a screenshot taken from the opening of this video, whilst the lines underneath are taken from the lyrics to 'Safe European Home' by the Clash (see note 5 below). 

 

[4] This reggae night was on June 5th, 1977, at the Hammersmith Palais, a famous dance hall and entertainment venue on the Shepherd's Bush Road, London. It was headlined by Dillinger, Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson. Strummer was accompanied by the dreadlocked figure of Don Letts (I won't say for protection, but so as to add to his own credibility as a reggae aficionado). 

      Ironically, Strummer was disappointed by what he saw - not rootsy enough for his tastes - although the evening did give rise to the song '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' (1978), which has become a fan favourite: click here to play. 

 

[5] 'Safe European Home', written by Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, is the first track on the second studio album by the Clash, Give 'Em Enough Rope (CBS, 1978): click here. This line, about every white face being an invitation to robbery, may be intended humorously, but it echoes the white anxiety captured on the 10cc track 'Dreadlock Holiday'.  

 

[6] Joe and Mick stayed at the Pegasus hotel, in the heart of the business and financial district, rather than the hipper Sheraton hotel, which is where Rotten stayed when he went to Jamaica a few months later (in March, 1978), accompanied by Don Letts and Richard Branson, who picked up the bill and ensured Lydon would remain under long-term contract with Virgin. Interestingly, Rotten seemed to fit in with the local scene much better than Strummer and Jones. 

 

 

For a related post to this one on Serge Gainsbourg as an unlikely reggae star, please click here. 

 

Colour Her Gone: In Memory of Pauline Boty

Pauline Boty (1938-1966) 

photographed in 1962

 

'Actresses often have tiny brains. Painters often have large beards. 

Imagine a brainy actress who is also a painter and also a blonde, 

and you have Pauline Boty.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Reluctant as I am ever to place the word poor before a person's name in order to express sympthy for them, in the case of the British artist Pauline Boty, I'm really tempted to do so. 

 

For hers was a fabulously free-spirited life cut short by a tragic fate and whilst, as a Nietzschean, one is tempted to characterise her death as a heroic affirmation of unborn life - she was pregnant when a routine prenatal exam revealed she had cancer and Boty refused both an abortion and chemotherapy so that a healthy child might survive her - it's hard not to also feel a wee bit sorry for her [2].

 

 

II.  

 

Born in 1938, Pauline Boty, along with her friends and contemporaries including Peter Blake and David Hockney, was one of the pioneers of the British Pop art movement of the 1960s. 

 

Conscious of the fact that this movement was, like most other modern art movements, essentially a boy's club - she was the only acknowledged female member - her work is a joyfully defiant expression of her womanhood (including her sexuality), as well as a feminist assault upon the man's world in which she not only painted, but sang, danced, and acted [3].      

 

A clever and well-educated young woman who could reference many poets and European filmmakers, even early on Boty's work also betrayed the influence of popular culture. 

 

Known by fellow art students as the Wimbledon Bardot (on account of her looks), she actually had a greater affinity with Marilyn Monroe, of whom she painted a very lovely portrait in 1962, the year of Monroe's death and the year in which Warhol also began a series of iconic paintings inspired by her passing [4].  

 

Boty's last painting is believed to be one commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for his nude theatrical review Oh, Calcutta! (1969) and entitled BUM (1966), which, I suppose, provides a fitting (rear) end to her career, though I can't say I'm a fan of the canvas which sold at Christie's in 2017 for £632,750 - more than twice its estimated sale price [5].

 

 

III.

 

Sadly, after her death, Pauline's Boty's name was largely forgotten and her work stored in a barn on her brother's farm. 

 

However, beginning in the 1990s, her contribution to British Pop art has undergone a thoroughly deserved re-evaluation and there is now significant interest in Boty's life and work: see the authorised website paulineboty.org for further details.

 

Pauline Boty: Colour Her Gone (1962) 

Oil on canvas (122 x 122 cm)

Wolverhampton Art Gallery

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This taken from a front page article in the magazine Scene (Nov 1962) is an example of the kind of sexist bullshit that Boty had to contend with.

 

[2] Boty was diagnosed with a malignant thyoma; a rare type of cancer that forms in the thymus gland, an organ located in the upper chest between the lungs and which is part of the lymphatic and endocrine system. Having refused treatment that might harm the foetus, Boty accepted the terminal nature of her condition and carried on living and creating new work. She died, five months after the birth of her daughter, on July 1st, 1966, aged 28.  

 

[3] Friends and family may have encouraged her to pursue an acting career - not only did it pay more than painting, but it was regarded as a (slightly) more respectable and conventional career path for an attractive young woman at that time - but Boty always prioritised her art over anything else.

 

[4] Like Warhol, Boty would often repurpose publicity and press photographs of celebrities in her art. As well as Monroe, she painted several of her male idols, including Elvis and the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, in a manner that celebrated their status as objects of female desire.   

 

[5] For those who wish to view Boty's BUM (1966) on the Christie's website, click here.  

Who is Mencius Moldbug?

Photo of Curtis Yarvin 

By David Merfield (2023) 

 

'It is much easier to delude others if at the same time you delude yourself.'

 

 

I. 

 

Curtis Yarvin is one of those shadowy intellectuals who looks a little creepy and in fact is a little creepy (all that long-flowing hippie hair doesn't help).

 

Unfortunately, he isn't someone who can just be dismissed as a creep or ignored as a crank; not when he seems to have the ear of some powerful figures in the incoming Trump administration, including vice president elect J. D. Vance [1], who has spoken approvingly of some of Yarvin's ideas. 

 

Steve Bannon, who briefly served as the White House's chief strategist during Donald Trump's first administration, (before being unceremoniously fired by the President), is also a Yarvin fan.    

 

 

II. 

 

Also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, Yarvin (b. 1973) is an American writer (ironically from an educated secular liberal background) who - along with the British philosopher Nick Land - is credited as being the founder of the neo-reactionary movement (NRx) or so-called Dark Enlightenment - about which I will be speaking at Kant's Cave next month [2].  

 

In brief, Yarvin argues for a post-liberal, non-democratic America led by a powerful individual who is somewhere between an old-fashioned monarch and a tech-savvy corporate CEO. If you can imagine Elon Musk dressed in ermine, you pretty much get the picture.

 

Yarvin's early influences include those libertarian thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, although he's taken their ideas in an increasingly authoritarian direction.

 

In 2007, he started a blog - Unqualified Reservations - in which he set out his (formalist) political vision and announced his aim of destroying progressive ideas and illusions. This blog - which influenced Nick Land's thinking - was formally abandoned in 2016. 

 

As of 2022, Yarvin blogs on Substack under the page name Gray Mirror, where he continues his assault upon the Cathedral (his name for the liberal elite who determine what passes for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful today via the media and higher education) and advocates for a hard reset of society along neo-cameralist lines.  

 

III. 

 

Ultimately, whilst some may be seduced by Yarvin's utopian vision of Singapore or Shanghai über alles, I'm not. Nor am I convinced that Yarvin really believes what he says and he's clearly not above trolling and provocation for its own sake (which is not to say that we shouldn't take him seriously).

And, given the choice, I'd sooner go down the pub with Old Nick than Mr Moldbug. 

 

Partly, that's for old time's sake - Land was briefly my co-supervisor at the University of Warwick, in the 1990s, when working on my Ph.D. - but it's also because there are significant philosophical differences between the two that incline me towards the former.     

 

As Elizabeth Sandifer rightly says:

 

"The differences between Land and Moldbug, however, are vast. Moldbug is at his heart a utopian, his vision of neoreaction rooted in a Silicon Valley-style idealism that clever people can just engineer solutions to everything. Land, on the other hand, gave his big essay on the matter the deliciously gothically overripe title 'The Dark Enlightenment' and peppers his work with imagery of tentacled horrors and grim eschatology." 

 

Sandifer continues: 

 

"Indeed, what's really interesting about Land is that he presents his take on neoreaction as a logical extension of his earlier work. To him, the point is not so much that neoreaction is 'correct' in any sense, but rather a sort of cynical pragmatism that views reactionary tendencies as an inevitable force that can be harnessed productively for his larger goal of accelerating towards the bionic horizon where we all grow face tentacles." [3] 

 

In other words, Yarvin seems to retain a certain American optimism; whilst Land is a nihilist at heart and thinks that nothing human will make it out of the near-future ... [4]  

  

Notes

 

[1] See Jason Wilson's profile of Yarvin in The Guardian (21 Dec 2024): click here.

 

[2] Essentially, this post is a teaser for my upcoming paper on the Dark Enlightenment: see the TTA Events page for details: click here. Alternatively, visit the Philosophy for All website and go to the section on Kant's Cave: click here. 

      The paper is based on a four-part series of posts published on Torpedo the Ark back in July 2024: 1: On the Politics of Hate; 2: On Exiting the Present; 3: On the Zombie Apocalypse; 4: On Rejecting Universalism.  

 

[3] Elizabeth Sandifer, 'Haunt the Future', Art Against Art, Issue 3 (Winter 2016/17): click here to read online.  

 

[4] See Land's essay 'Meltdown' on the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit website: click here.  

Authorial Insouciance contra Editorial Zeal

What do I care if "e" is somewhere upside down?

 

 

I. 

 

I was amused to see John Worthen's 'Corrections to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence' in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] ...

No one can deny that it is a remarkable feat of editorial hard labour and Lawrence scholars owe Professor Worthen an enormous debt of gratitude for his tireless efforts to ensure that Bert's books are as close as they possibly can be to what he intended. 

 

The fact that Worthen continues to feel such peculiar responsibility - his phrase - not just for the volumes he worked on, but for the entire Cambridge Edition published between 1980 and 2018, is admirable and also rather touching [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

However, whilst I agree entirely with Worthen's own assessment that the Cambridge Edition was a wonderful achievement, I don't share his sadness at the fact that the above contains minor errors (of spelling and punctuation, for example) and correcting typos is never going to be something that I'll have his unflagging enthusiasm for.

 

Ironically, that's in large part due to Lawrence, who expresses his unconcern for first or last (or most textually accurate and authoritative) editions of books; objects which, whilst often containing strange voices and beautiful visions, should never be allowed to 'disturb the haze of autumn' or 'blot out the sunflowers' and whose printed appearance didn't concern him in the least: 

 

'What do I care if "e" is somewhere upside down, or "g" comes from the wrong fount? I really don't.' [3]

   

 

Notes

 

[1] Volume 7, Number 1 (2024), ed. Susan Reid (published by the D. H. Lawrence Society).

 

[2] Worthen edited three volumes in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence, co-edited five others, and was closely involved with the last three books. In total, there are forty volumes, published between 1980 and 2018. In addition, there are eight volumes of Lawrence's letters published by Cambridge University Press and a three-part biography, the first volume of which - D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 - was written by Worthen (CUP, 1991). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books': introduction to A Bibliography of the Writings of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Edward D. McDonald, in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 75. 

Zen Fascism on the London Underground (Don't Be Kind - Be Cruel!)

Toby Triumph and one of his posters produced for 

Transport for London's #TravelKind campaign 

tobytriumph.com

 

 

I. 

 

Transport for London is the local government body with a multi-billion pound budget responsible for most aspects of the capital's transport network. 

 

The management board is appointed by the Chair (and Mayor of London) Sadiq Khan - or, as he doubtless now likes to be referred to, Sir Sadiq Khan [1]. It's the board's job to ensure Khan's transport strategy is implemented, whilst a Commisioner and several chief officers oversee day-to-day operations.

 

TfL likes to promote a caring corporate identity concerned with promoting and protecting various rights and ensuring that their customers (i.e., passengers) eat healthily (in 2019 Khan introduced restrictions on the advertising of foods and drinks high in fat, salt, or sugar). 

 

Some would describe this as a form of wokeness, but coming as I do from a punk background indebted to the Dead Kennedys, I prefer the term zen fascism [2].    

 

 

II. 

On 13 November 2017, TfL launched a new campaign - #TravelKind - which encouraged customers (i.e. passengers) on trains and buses to consider others and help make public transport a more enjoyable experience for everyone. 

 

The campaign is still running today and includes a series of posters designed by the illustrator Toby Triumph; a hippie originally from North Yorkshire, but who now spends his time betweeen London and New York. 

 

Working with the wonderful guys at the advertising agency VCCP [3], Triumph produced nine posters for use across the TfL network, all designed in his colourful 1960s and early '70s influenced style: smiley faces, peace signs, rainbows, etc.

 

Obviously, I'm not a fan: nor of TfL; nor of VCCP; nor of Sadiq Khan; nor of Toby Triumph; nor of hippie idealism; nor of corporate wokeism; nor of zen fascism. 

 

Indeed, one is almost tempted to channel the spirit of '68 and put a big black X through the injunction BE KIND on the poster that hangs at a nearby bus stop and replace it with the words SOYONS CRUELS! [4].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Khan was awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours List (2025) in recognition of his achievements and extraordinary service. Whether he deserved such - and whether he should have accepted such (and thereby open himself up to the charge of gross hypocrisy) - is debatable.

 

[2] The phrase - Zen fascist - is used in the band's debut single 'California Über Alles' (Alternative Tentacles, 1979) and is one that I have incorporated in several posts on Torpedo the Ark. 

      What Jello Biafra says of Jerry Brown I think we can also say of Sadiq Khan; he too is a left-leaning moral authoritarian who enjoys exercising power just a little too much, whilst insisting that all Londoners wear a happy face and share his vision of a diverse multicultural, multi-ethnic, net-zero city. To play the song, click here.   

       

[3] Founded in 2002, VCCP describe themselves as a global integrated communications agency that creates innovative and exciting advertising designed to transform brands. Their founding principles include being happy and unprecious.

 

[4] Soyons cruels! was a slogan painted on the walls of the Sorbonne during the student uprisings in Paris, in May 1968. 

      This might seem an outrageous and offensive statement to many people today. However, if you remember your Nietzsche and Foucault - and know something of the politics of the period, infused with the ideas of the Situationists - then the injunction takes on a certain philosophical character.

      James Miller suggests some interesting readings of what being cruel might mean in practice in his essay 'Carnivals of Atrocity: Foucault, Nietzsche, Cruelty', in Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sage Publications, August 1990), pp. 470-491. Click here to access on JSTOR.

 

 

Bee Consciousness: the Latest Buzz from the World of Melittology (and How D. H. Lawrence Stung First)

Lars Chittka: The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022)

Stephen Buchmann: What a Bee Knows (Island Press, 2023)

 

I. 

 

According to Lars Chittka - a man who, after thirty-odd years of pioneering research, knows more (and cares more) about insect intelligence than most people - bees are sentient beings that deserve our respect and affection.

 

Not only can they count, recognise human faces, and learn simple tool use, for example, but Chittka's studies suggest that bees have a distinct sense of self, experience emotions, and conceptualise the world around them in abstract terms [1].

 

 

II. 

 

Stephen Buchmann, another insect-loving academic and author, has also arrived at the conclusion that bees have complex feelings - ranging from fear and frustration to joy - and, despite being small-brained, are far more mindful than even he imagined three decades ago [2].    

 

This, of course, raises ethical questions about how we treat bees, who play a vital role in food production (many fruits, nuts, and vegetables rely on bees for pollination). Presently, they are subject to shameful exploitation and abuse by an agricultural industry that makes billions of dollars from their intensive labour. 

 

Whilst the phenomenon of colony collapse disorder is often blamed on emerging diseases, the use of pesticides, and/or climate change, Buchmann and others concerned with this issue argue that the shocking decline in bee numbers is also due to the physical and psychological stress caused by the practices of industrialised agriculture; billions of bees are literally worked to death each year so vegans can pour almond milk on their organic cornflakes and feel virtuous [3].       

 

 

III. 

 

Like Buchmann and Chittka, I hope that things will change if enough people accept the fact that bees are sentient creatures - and can therefore suffer - and not merely tiny living machines [4].

 

And like both men, I am filled with a sense of wonder when I consider the mysterious, alien mind of a bee. 

 

However, coming as I do from an intellectual background heavily influenced by D. H. Lawrence, it does not surprise me in the least to discover that what is often called instinct in creatures such as bees, is the working of a primary mind - i.e., a form of spontaenous consciousness arising directly from the body, centeralising in the blood and nervous system.

 

Lawrence writes: 

"When a bee leaves its hive and circles round to sense the locality, it is attending with the primary mind to the surrounding objects, establishing a primary rapport between its own very tissue and the tissue of the adjacent objects. A process of rapid physical thought takes place [...] That is, there is a rapid sensual association within the body of the bee, equivalent to the process of reasoning; sensation develops sensation and sums up to a conclusion [...] which we may call a sensual concept." [5]

 

It's amusing, to me at least, how scientists, such as Buchmann and Chittka, have arrived at similar conclusions with reference to bee consciousness more than a century after Lawrence - who was a novelist and poet, not a zoologist, ethologist, or entomologist - wrote this astonishing passage.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lars Chittka is Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London and author of The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2022). 

      Not only has Chittka carried out extensive academic research on bees and their relationship with flowers, but he has been involved in a number of creative projects involving bees. For example, in 2006 he worked with installation artist Julian Walker to evaluate what bees think of Van Gogh's Sunflowers - click here - whilst in 2019 he and fellow members of the alternative rock band Killer Bee Queens released an album entitled Strange Flowers, which explores the world of bees and hopes to raise awareness of their fascinating biology. 

      Click here to play the first track on the album, entitled 'The Beekeeper's Dream'. The video uses footage from David Blair's surreal sci-fi documentary film Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991).

 

[2] Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees and an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Entomology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. See his book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees (Island Press, 2023). 

 

[3] Unfortunately, as Annette McGivney points out in an article in The Guardian (2 April, 2023), finding a method to mass-produce crops whilst at the same time reducing the pain and suffering of bees is not going to be easy: "If vegetarians and vegans who avoid eating animals for ethical reasons were to apply the same standards to foods pollinated by bees, they would have very little on their plates." Click here to read McGivney's piece in full. 

 

[4] Presently, there are no animal welfare laws protecting insects in a lab setting and experiments are often deliberately designed to fatally stress bees in order to determine out how much the insects can tolerate when working in the fields.  

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne', chapter VII of the First Version (1918-19) of Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 241.

 

 

On Herman Melville's Moby-Dick & Larry David's Mopey Dick

Leon Black / Herman Melville / Moby Dick

 

 

I. 

 

A friend of mine, Anja, has decided to read Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick (1851) between now and the end of May (she plans to digest a chapter a day for the next 135 days).

 

It's not a book that I've read: I've tried, but have never managed to get through more than a few pages. For some reason, I find it irritating. And this, despite the fact that Lawrence describes it as "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" [a].

 

Indeed, in his chapter on the book in Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), Lawrence also insists that Moby-Dick is "the greatest book of the sea ever written" [146]; a work whose profound symbolism inspires him with a mixture of fear and wonder. 

 

And, let me assure you, that's rare praise coming from Mr. Lawrence, who doesn't often gush about books or their authors. But Melville is, for him, the greatest poet of the sea:

 

"His vision is more real than Swinburne's because he doesn't personify the sea, and far sounder than Joseph Conrad's, because Melville doesn't sentimentalise the ocean and the sea's unfortunates." [122] [b]

      

Perhaps that's because, according to Lawrence, Melville has "the strange, uncanny magic of sea-creatures, and some of their repulsiveness" [122] - i.e., something not quite human. 

 

But never mind Melville, let's focus on the huge white sperm whale, Moby Dick, and discuss what it is that Lawrence finds so fascinating (and yet so terrifying) about these magnificent mammals whose commercial hunting began in the 18th-century and only came to an end in the 1980s [c].   

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence, he is more interested in Moby Dick as a symbol. Although, like Melville, Lawrence is not quite sure what the warm-blooded whale symbolises. 

 

But that doesn't prevent him from declaring Moby Dick to essentially be a phallic symbol; "the deepest blood-being of the white race [...] our deepest blood-nature" [146]. 

 

And the fact that he is so cruelly and relentlessly hunted "by the maniacal fanaticism of our white mental consciousness" [146] symbolises the fact that we are motivated by a kind of death drive: 

 

"We want to hunt him down. To subject him to our will. And in this maniacal  conscious hunt of ourselves [...] is our doom and our suicide." [146]   

 

Lawrence continues:

 

"The last phallic being of the white man. Hunted into the death of upper consciousness and the ideal will. Our blood-self subjected to our own will. Our blood-consciousness sapped by a parasitic mental or ideal consciousness.

      Hot-blooded sea-born Moby Dick. Hunted by monomaniacs of the idea." [146]

 

A tragic fate. But one that Lawrence accepts: 

 

"Ah well, if my day is doomed, and I am doomed with my day, it is something greater than I which dooms me, so I accept my doom as a sign of the greatness which is more than I am." [146]    

 

 

III.

 

Of course, there are some fates worse than the collective doom of a people; worse even than having your leg torn off at the knee, or being drowned at sea. 

 

For example, one can be so heart-broken following a painful separation from a loved one, that one takes to one's bed, depressed, and lacking the energy to do anything. This form of spiritual impotence is what Leon Black famously describes as mopey dick [d]. 

 

Whether the cure for this psycho-physiological condition involves inserting a gerbil into one's anus remains, please note, highly controversial.  

 

 

Notes

 

[a] D. H. Lawrence, 'Herman Melville's Moby Dick', in Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 145. 

      Future page references to this text - and to the preceding chapter, 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' - will be given directly in the post. 

 

[b] Despite his admiration for Melville the artist, Lawrence can't help taking a pop at Melville the man; "a rather tiresome New Englander of the ethical-mystical-transcendentalist sort" [134]; someone often clownish and clumsy as a stylist who writes in sententious bad taste. 

 

[c] Commercial hunting led to the near-extinction of large whales, including sperm whales. The International Whaling Commission only granted the species full protection in 1985 (although hunting by Japan in the northern Pacific Ocean continued until 1988). Recovery has been slow, but remaining sperm whale populations are now large enough that the species is no longer listed as endangered. 

 

[d] See the season 6 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'The Bat Mitzvah', dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, and first broadcast on 11 November 2007: click here. The character Leon Black is played by J. B. Smoove.

 

 

Torpedo the Ark Post 2399 on SCP-2399

SCP Foundation logo

 

 

According to the SCP Foundation [1], there's a complex alien superstructure (known as a Malfunctioning Destroyer) located beneath Jupiter's Great Red Spot [2] capable of causing an end-of-the-world event. 

 

It has been designated with the Special Containment Procedure number 2399, although it's really just knowledge of this object that has been suppressed. For due to SCP-2399's location and very nature, it can neither be physically contained nor destroyed at this point in time, as we simply do not have the technological means to do so.  

Where it originated and how it travelled to our solar system are unknown. However, electromagnetic-based commands seem to be being sent to SCP-2399 from the Triangulum Galaxy, approximately three million lights years away. 

 

Fortunately, SCP-2399 seems to be severly damaged, so currently presents no direct threat to life on Earth. 

 

Unfortunately, SCP-2399 also seems to possess an unlimited power supply and be programmed to self-repair using a series of drones to complete the necessary work. And so, in a few decades time, we might be in trouble.

 

For now, however, we can relax and endeavour to have a happy new year (and worry more about how to pay the energy bill than some made-up machine of extraterrestrial origin stranded on Jupiter).

 

Notes

 

[1] The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organisation featured in texts created by contributors on a wiki-based collaborative writing project known as SCP Wiki: click here. It is primarily concerned with mysterious phenomena known as anomalies and its mission is to secure and contain these anomalies so as to protect humanity from them. 

 

[2] Located in Jupiter's lower atmosphere, the Great Red Spot is a persistent high-pressure region responsible for the largest anticyclonic storm in the solar system. According to those who belong to the SCP Universe, SCP-2399 uses highly advanced anti-matter technology to create this 10,000 mile-wide spacial voretx.