Why Conspiracy Theories Survive the Failure of their Prophecies

QAnon sticker available from Amazon

John F. Kennedy Jr. is dead and has been dead for some time. In July 1999, the small plane he was traveling in crashed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, killing him and two others. The bodies of Kennedy and his fellow passengers were found five days later in the Atlantic Ocean. This is the version of events most people know to be true. But, in the world of QAnon, things happened a bit differently: JFK Jr. survived an attempt on his life by the so-called “Deep State” and will soon return to exact revenge and help Donald Trump fight back against a globally active cabal of satanic pedophile elites that’s responsible for all the evil in the world.

The QAnon worldview is particularly prone to these sorts of predictions, and many adherents eagerly anticipate earth-shattering future events that will completely change the world, from “the Storm” (a near future apocalyptic realization when members of this evil cabal will be arrested) to the “Great Awakening” (a time when the general population will come to realize that they’ve been lied to for decades). Years of research into millennial movements and how they survive the often-inevitable failures of these prophetic pronouncements make clear that most movements, as we outline below, can survive these failures as long as certain conditions are in place. QAnon is no different. 

The fact that JFK Jr. didn’t come back on Saturday October 17th at a Trump rally, is only one of many QAnon “prophecies” that haven’t come to fruition: Hillary Clinton has not been arrested, high profile elites have not been killed or sent to Guantanamo Bay, the hundred thousand sealed indictments were not released, and the promised Golden Age has not been delivered. And yet, the movement continues.

Surviving the failure of prophecy

Many researchers read these stories and point to a classic work by social psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter published in 1956: When Prophecy Fails. In the book, Festinger and his colleagues provide readers with an account of a small religious group they call “the Seekers,” whose leader, Marion Keech (a pseudonym), predicted the destruction of the entire United States in a great flood on December 21, 1955. 

The Seekers, though, would be saved from this destruction by aliens who were communicating with Keech telepathically. On December 21, as midnight came and went with no spacecraft, many of the members wept and sat in disbelief. Then Keech received a message from the aliens: the apocalypse had been called off. As Festinger and colleagues write, “This little group, sitting all night long, has spread so much goodness and light that the God of the Universe spared the Earth from destruction.”

This final message was just what the group needed. While common sense may suggest that in the face of such an obvious prophetic failure, the group would have crumbled and the leader abandoned and ridiculed, this is not what happened. The final message communicated to Keech convinced the Seekers that all their work was not in vain; rather, it was precisely their preparations and commitment that saved humankind from cataclysm.  

From this case study of the Seekers, Festinger developed what he called the theory of cognitive dissonance. Put simply, the theory asserts that people are uncomfortable holding inconsistent beliefs and ideas at the same time and are driven to reduce this discomfort. It should be noted that Festinger is not stating that reducing this discomfort is a preference. It isn’t something we wish to be the case; it’s a drive that will happen. As Joel Cooper put it, “people do not just prefer eating over starving; we are driven to eat.” 

One of the things that the Seekers did after December 21 was also something counter-intuitive: they began to proselytize. Once the initial cognitive dissonance had been reduced by the idea that their actions had saved the world, they sought to solidify this new sense of consistency by seeking validation from the outside world. 

When Prophecy Fails has faced some criticism for its methodology, but as Lorne Dawson points out, “on the whole the record shows that Festinger et al. were right to predict that many groups will survive the failure of prophecy. Why they survive is another matter. The reasons are much more complicated than When Prophecy Fails implies.” Festinger and his colleagues placed a lot of emphasis on proselytization as a key mechanism by which cognitive dissonance is reduced following prophetic failure. But research over the last several decades has added at least two more strategies: rationalization and reaffirmation. 

Rationalization is now seen by researchers as the most important factor in whether a group survives prophetic failure. Groups can do this in at least four ways:

1. Spiritualization: the group states that what was initially thought of as a visible, real-world occurrence did happen, but it was something that took place in the spiritual realm.
2. Test of Faith: the group states that the prophecy was never going to happen, but is in fact a test of faith: a way for the “divine” to weed out true believers from those unworthy. 
3. Human Error: the group argues that it’s not the case that the prophecy was wrong, but that followers had read the signs incorrectly.
4. Blame others: the group argues that they themselves never stated that the prophecy was going to happen, but that this was how outsiders interpreted their statements.

The third strategy—reaffirmation—is also one used by several groups discussed in previous research. In this approach, the group brushes aside the failure of prophecy and reaffirms the value of the group, the benefits of membership, and doubles down on the importance of their journey on the path of truth. 

According to Lorne Dawson, the body of research on failure of prophecy notes that these three strategies are most successful when at least six conditions are present:

1. In-group social support: the need to move on beyond the failure of prophecy is valiantly supported by others in the group. 
2. Decisive leadership: the leader does not “pause in confusion in the face of failure” but provides a confident and coordinated path forward. 
3. Sophistication of ideology: the prophecy is robust enough that the failure of one prophecy does not dismantle the entire edifice.
4. Vagueness of prophecy: the predictions are vague enough to be rationalized away.
5. Ritual framing: rituals are used to not only rationalize the failure but also purify the believers and reaffirm the value of the group.
6. Organizational factors: different kinds of organizations or networks will be impacted differently by prophetic failure.

Below, we use the JFK Jr. case study to elucidate how QAnon followers have dealt with this failure of prophecy and point out that similar mechanics may be deployed by followers as other anticipated events in the future similarly fail. These insights will also be important for understanding how followers react to the potential electoral defeat of President Donald Trump, whom they consider to be a savior in the White House.

When JFK Jr. didn’t come back

Screenshot of Qdrop 1082, from the 8kun board where “Q” posts (the string of numbers are Q’s previous messages he is replying to) , hinting at a link between JFK Jr.’s plane crash in 1999 and Hillary Clinton’s run for Senate in 2000.

In 2018, QAnon adherents became convinced that Q, whose identity remains a mystery, was JFK Jr. This conspiracy theory began in April 2018 following Qdrop 1082 [image left], which is a reference to the Clinton body count conspiracy. This was then followed by another Qdrop containing a 1956 memo from the CIA’s public website. The CIA document had nothing to do with the Kennedys but contained a reference to “guided missiles.” For QAnon adherents, this was a hint from “Q” that JFK Jr’s plane was shot down with a guided missile to make way for Hillary Clinton’s political career, which started with a U.S. Senate run the year after the plane crash.

While this theory makes no logical sense, considering JFK Jr. was not a politician and never seriously considered becoming one, for QAnon adherents the Clintons and the ‘Deep State’ considered him a great enough threat that he was worth killing to make way for Hillary Clinton’s political career.

Screenshot of Qdrop 1697, from a Qdrop aggregator Where “Q” repudiates “R.”

The JFK Jr. conspiracy theory picked up steam in July 2018, during Q’s first long lull in posting. Mike Rains, who hosts the Adventures in HellwQrld podcast, told us that in the 20-day gap between Q posts, “an Anon who called themselves R took up the slack of posting about the great struggle between the Patriots and the Deep State. R made it clear that JFK Jr. was working with Trump to defeat the Deep State.” Q never engaged R on these claims, but when Q engaged in an 8Chan Q&A on July 25, 2018, they flatly denied that JFK Jr. was alive [image right]. 

According to Rains, this caused a lot of division in the QAnon community. The influential QAnon documentary, “The Fall of the Cabal” even ends with the claim that JFK Jr. is still alive, and that Q is merely using disinformation as a tool to protect him. Although two more Qdrops have appeared insisting that Q is not JFK Jr. and that JFK Jr. is dead, it’s had little impact on some QAnon adherents. 

So why has this conspiracy stuck with QAnon adherents who usually hold Q’s word as gospel? Travis View, conspiracy theory researcher and co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, told us: 

“The belief that JFK Jr. is alive and will reveal himself soon is typically an extension of the belief that his father President Kennedy was assassinated by the deep state. This is seen in the claims from some QAnon followers that JFK Jr. is returning to avenge his father’s death. QAnon promises followers ultimate justice for those who have been harmed by the secret puppet masters of conspiracy theory lore. Those who believe that JFK Jr. lives simply assume that this promise extends to the tragic and traumatic deaths of JFK Jr and JFK. On top of that, these QAnon followers seem irresistibly drawn to the classic trope of a son reappearing to avenge his father’s death.”

In QAnon Telegram chats, after JFK Jr. did not return as predicted on October 17, 2020, the response was varied, but largely fell into the  “human error” and “blame others” categories discussed above.

QAnon adherents stated that the JFK Jr. conspiracy theory was a deep state plot that was put in motion to discredit QAnon and the work they’re doing. As one post noted: 

“Anons have gone way off base and they’re using it to make us look stupid. I personally prefer to stick with 3 years worth of hard evidence of government corruption and malfeasance on every level…things we CAN prove.” 

Another post made a similar point, noting: 

“Q spells it out very clear…stick to info in the drops…They cannot attack the information, because it’s all correct.. But they can attack Anons who stray from the dropped content…then they use the faulty and unsubstantiated claims by Anons to discredit Q…”

Screenshots from QAnon Telegram Channels reacting to the failure of the JFK Jr. prophecy.

In other words, adherents argued that some followers had strayed from the path of truth and were now dabbling in ideas that were hurting the cause. This argument was used to rally the true believers and reaffirm their commitment to Q and the “authentic” Qdrops. This is what QAnon adherents perceive as gospel, built upon three years of “evidence.”

It was also argued in some cases that those QAnon followers that were amplifying the JFK Jr. conspiracy theory might have been plants by the deep state. All in all, there was a real push for a reaffirmation of the movement, the cause, and a call for a return to the original source of insight: the Qdrops. 

The future of QAnon

One of the main questions that QAnon researchers continue to wrestle with is how the movement will carry on after the election. With President Trump being seen as the savior of the republic in the White House, one who’s poised to usher in the collapse of the deep state, his defeat in the election could very well be seen as the ultimate failure of prophecy. As such, the theoretical framework presented above is important to keep in mind once the election is decided. 

If Trump loses the election, we foresee potentially three responses from QAnon followers: 

First, there could be instances of violence, as followers undertake an urgent campaign to bring about the arrest of supposed corrupt elites, celebrities, and the deep state as a whole. The defeat of Trump could be interpreted as a major lost opportunity to save enslaved children and to save the country—one that cannot be abandoned without a fight. 

Second, we may see factionalism in the movement, with some followers being siphoned off into other movements and groups and continuing their activism in ways that become only loosely tied to QAnon. 

Third, we may see the movement carry on as if nothing has changed. Many of these followers may instead be rejuvenated in their quest, arguing that, as their ally in the White House has been defeated, they need to come together and fight harder than ever before; that the movement is older and bigger than Trump himself, and it’s now up to them to carry the torch. 

The path forward for QAnon followers is unclear. Their rise to mainstream visibility depended heavily on the current political climate, with the President of the United States amplifying their message and refusing to denounce them in public. If Trump is defeated at the polls, and adherents lose this megaphone, we can only hope that these baseless and ridiculous ideas don’t continue to taint our public discourse in the new year. If they do—as we expect them to, in some form at least—you’ll have an answer for the pundits who will repeatedly ask why they still believe even after the prophecies failed to come true. 

Source 

A very good summary of the QAnon conspiracy theory can be found here 

See also Trump - The Big Lie and How To Do It 

Favourite Gardens - Redenham Park

Redenham Park

Redenham Park, west of Andover, is an C18th Georgian house built for the Pollen family (Richard Pollen, was an old friend from the Meon Valley) and was also home to the Hambro's until it was acquired by Sir John Clark, the industrialist, famous for his long battle with Sir Arnold Weinstock. His widow, Lady Olivia Clark has created a beautiful garden behind the house over the past 40 years, notably for its huge yew hedges and topiary  It's fortunately open for the National Gardens Scheme once or twice a year.  

Lady Olivia Clark

For more photos from 2019 click here 

For more photos from 2018 click here

The Mystery of the Plaque and the Severed Head

 

The Mystery Plaque

This plaque, which stands on a table on the loggia at Old Swan House, lead to the following correspondence between Guy Boney, another friend and me in January 2021: 

'Guy, I trust that your ‘A' Ladder schooling is equal to the task of identifying this chap - and the remains of the chap who’s head he’s holding - both of whom whom rest on a bas relief cast on a plaque in my loggia. The main character appears to be a satyr - or might even be the great god Pan, judging by his hairy withers - but my ‘B’ Ladder and Graham Drew schooling fails me when it comes to identifying the allusion.  Perhaps the animal skins draped over his left arm are the key. Anyway, your thoughts are awaited with interest'.

To which Guy replied:

'Hm, v. interesting.  

The bloke with the hairy withers is undoubtedly Pan - Greek god of flocks, shepherds etc.indeed god of everything connected with the countryside and pastoral stuff, including hunting.   My long-unthumbed classical dictionary says he is usually represented as a sensual being with horns and goat’s feet, sometimes in the act of dancing - the lump in his forehead I think must be intended to represent a horn/antler, and he has something like a shepherd’s staff tucked away somewhere into his kit.   The tails of the cat(s) or whatever the headed animal is illustrate his interest in hunting, pastoral activities and so on.    All pretty clear so far.

I think the interesting bit is the identity of the apparently beheaded character.   I think the answer is Socrates, which is partly wild guess, partly a memory of having seen a bust of him (Roman, not Greek, so 4-500 years after his death) somewhere or other.   But his main characteristic (apart from a reputation for wisdom - put about in a big way by Plato in the Republic and the series of Socratic dialogues written by Plato, e.g. the Crito which we did exhaustively up to the head man) was of physical ugliness - “in features he is represented as having been singularly, even grotesquely, ugly with a flat nose, thick  lips and prominent eyes”, says my dictionary, and you can see he's hardly Greek god material as shown in your stoneware.   

He died in 399 BC at the age of about 70  i.e. right at the end of the Peloponnesian War and at the end of the golden fifth century which saw the building of the Parthenon (450 BC), the plays of Aeschylus and the comedies of Aristophanes.   Aristophanes, always good for a satirical laugh, took Socrates apart in The Clouds, in rather the same way as W.S.Gilbert took apart Oscar Wilde in Patience by caricaturing him as the poet Bunthorne (“…if you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand…And everyone will say as you walk your flowery way….”).

Poor old Socrates meanwhile was condemned after a trial in 399 to death  by drinking hemlock.   He had come badly unstuck by becoming involved in Athenian war politics and making an enemy of the wrong person (lucky he didn’t try his luck on Stockbridge Parish  Council, but the result wd probably have been the same).    He was charged with impiety and not worshipping the gods of the city (chief amongst whom was Athena - sounds like a stitch-up already), and with introducing new deities and also of being a corrupter of youth.  I don’t think, btw, that last bit implies the usual thing, i.e. he doesn’t seem to have been an enthusiastic shirt-lifter (and I can’t find the classical Greek for that), but he was friendly with one or two people who were, mainly a character called Alcibiades who brought a number of people down.

To get away from fascinating C4BC Athenian gossip and back to the main point, I think the clues to this are the identification of Pan (a slightly disreputable god in C4 Greek terms), and the fact that Pan is holding aloft the bust of Socrates in, perhaps, apparent veneration.   That would be a fine example of Socrates doing exactly what he was condemned to death for,  i.e. encouraging the worship of a new, unconventional and too-exciting, non- establishment god (Pan) and having an arguably corruptive influence on the young by doing so.

There is a fair amount of speculation in all that, but you did ask for my thoughts and it does more or less hang together.   An important factor of course is the origin of your piece of stoneware - is it ancient or modern?   It doesn’t strike me as being a standard-issue chunk of garden-centre central-casting classical sculpture - it seems too sophisticated for that because it  seems to betoken some degree of classical knowledge which nowadays no one has .   It may hark back to the C19 or possibly even a grand tour C18 handout.   Any ideas of where it came from?  Perhaps it’s an Eve Lane special!

Best,  Guy'

This was followed by this note to a friend with whom I was also discussing the plaque, and copied to Guy:

'I have at last heard from of our local classical scholar with his considered views on that rather ugly piece in my loggia, and fortunately it seems that our own education isn’t found completely wanting in that it’s 
a) not something that every snotty schoolchild has doodled in his Kennedy’s Primer since Remove; and 
b) might even said to be a bit of a conundrum to those who read Greek and Latin up to the head man at school (the one who was more remembered for his pretty daughter Polly than his magisterial translation of Plato’s Republic). So, 

a) honour is intact, and 

b) the game is still on to prove or disprove Guy’s current theory involving Pan and his veneration of Socrates.

I support his theory, tempered only by the fact that Socrates died from being made to drink hemlock, the C4th BC equivalent of a gallon of retsina, rather than being beheaded, but I will allow that this could just be a good example of artistic licence. After all, a prone body would hardly fit the design required tempt a C18th traveller - which is what I think we have here.

The piece was actually bought from a Jewish antique-dealer friend called Kuka Steiner, from whom we acquired quite a few of the more unusual pieces you can find dotted around the house, including the zebra skin that you will have almost tripped on more than once and which will probably be the death of me. He lives in France and Spain but is still a friend and in fact he was in touch over Christmas, so there it may be worth asking him to come clean about its provenance and which ancient collection he ‘acquired’ it from. As I say, my guess is that it’s the equivalent of a tourist trophy brought back by someone who took an obligatory C18th Grand Tour and was sold something more portable than the Elgin Marbles just to show his long-suffering parents that he hadn’t spent all his time among the flesh-pots of Paris, and had it mounted.

In fact, there is more - a reverse side - the design of which to my mind supports the Socrates theory as it seems to me to depict the owner of the severed head on the other side - who could be Socrates in full declamation mode - with what looks like a representation of the cave in which he was imprisoned - a curious chamber hewn out of the rock close to the Acropolis, as I recall from this photo taken when I was supposed to be doing some work down there'.

Socrates's cave in Athens 

Guy's response:

'The sight of the flip side of your hunk of antiquity from the Acropolis sent me scurrying back to the classical Dicker (a favourite subversive Badcockism on A ladder aimed at Gerry Dicker whom he loathed, as in “hand me the dicker, Boney”) and I agree the full passage there confirms the Socrates identification, because you will notice the old geezer appears to be barefoot, to the point where you can actually see his toenail (at least I think it is; it can’t be anything else).  The full passage which refers to his ugliness and grotesque appearance reads:

“…His physical constitution was robust and wonderfully enduring.   He went barefoot in all seasons of the year, even during the winter campaign in Potidaea, under the severe frosts of Thrace; and the same homely clothing sufficed for him in winter as well as in summer…..”,and there follows the  bit about him being grotesquely ugly.  He certainly appears dressed for the outdoors, a feature to which the sculptor seems keen to draw attention. 

I have tried to trace some reference to the hockey stick thing crowned with a kind of fleur-de-lys which he has in his left hand, because in classical sculpture these things when included are always there to make a nudge-nudge point.   For example, all the sculptures/images depicting  Hercules/Heracles always have him clutching or wearing a lionskin, I think from memory because one of his twelve labours involved him in sorting out an animal called the Nemean lion, presumably because it was giving a hard time to the people in Nemea (wherever that is).   

So the hockey stick is likely to have significance, and the fact that the dicker is silent on its significance to Socrates is a point suggesting that the image may not be Socrates after all. I will continue researches, and your dealer friend’s recollection of where it came from would be interesting. The c18 grand tour is the most likely source but it may in the end be worth consulting the antiquities department at Sothebys - but only if its provenance is squeaky-clean. They can be a bit twitchy about that sort of thing these days.'

Best, Guy

Since these exchanges, another friend, an art historian of some note, has opined that the figure we think is Pan, might instead be his son, Silenus. We will never know.

And there, for the moment, the. matter rests.

John Le Carre remembered by Matthew d'Ancona December 2020

David Cornwell 1931 - 2020

John le Carré was much more than the greatest chronicler of the Cold War. He saw the fault-lines in all that followed – and warned us of them till the end

“An unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.” Thus does one of the main characters in John le Carré’s final novel, Agent Running in the Field (2019), pithily summarise Brexit.

The book’s narrator, Nat, describes the Conservative government of 2018 with equal venom: “A minority Tory cabinet of tenth-raters. A pig-ignorant foreign secretary who I’m supposed to be serving. Labour no better. The sheer bloody lunacy of Brexit.”

That “pig-ignorant foreign secretary” is, of course, now Prime Minister in real life, desperately trying to extract a last-minute trade deal from the “clusterfuck” of Britain’s departure from the European Union. It is a measure of le Carré’s determined topicality that his final espionage thriller involved not only Brexit, Trump and Russian meddling in the Western democratic process, but even EU trading tariffs. How much further enmeshed with the reality of day-to-day politics could a fiction writer in his late eighties possibly have been?

To the very last, he raged against the dying of the light by remaining implacably vigilant; furious at the indignities to which his country was being subjected by bogus patriots, spiv nationalists and sloganeering charlatans.

Last year, I wrote a piece for Tortoise about le Carré’s significance as a “Condition of England” novelist: a writer who, for six decades, provided a compelling running commentary on the state of the nation, its transformations, ambiguities, and treacheries. From Suez to the sewers of today’s populist Right rhetoric, he was always observing, tracing every oscillation between hope and disillusionment.

When I learned of his death last night, I felt a sense of personal loss that was also a moment of disclosure: that, when all is said and done, he is, and has long been, the writer that I turn to most often and instinctively to understand politics, statecraft and their very specific character in this country.

As it happens, and as if to drive home the point, I had been watching an episode of Smiley’s People (1982), the second BBC dramatisation of le Carré’s novels to feature Alec Guinness as George Smiley. But my debt stretches back much further.

I can still remember my parents discussing the plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when it was first published in 1974. Much too complex for a child, of course, but magnetic all the same: Merlin, Witchcraft, Gerald the Mole, Karla the Moscow spymaster, “chicken-feed”, lamplighters, the scalphunters, the Circus. What magic was this?

It is true that le Carré does not write often about politicians, and, when he does, he is scathing: see, for instance, the portrayal in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy of the minister Miles Sercombe, whom Smiley’s adulterous wife, Ann, once described (“proudly”) as the only one of her cousins “without a single redeeming feature”. Sercombe’s baldness, we are told, “gave him an unwarranted air of maturity,” an absurdity compounded by a “terrible Eton drawl” and his “fatuous Rolls, the black bedpan”.

Yet – for all his mockery of the political class itself – every one of le Carré’s 26 novels is, in some shape or form, about power and its exercise: about the endless, nuanced interaction between principles and ambition; between decency and (a favourite word) “larceny”; and – most complex of all – the extent to which foul deeds are justified by noble ends.

In this sense, he used the secret world as a stage upon which to explore both questions of national character, and the personal dilemmas confronted by those who find themselves embroiled in clandestine activity. Often, the price they pay is grievously high.

In Smiley’s People, it is a terrible role reversal that ensures the final defeat of Karla – “He controls the whole of Russia, but he does not exist” – as Smiley tracks down his long-time adversary’s mentally ill daughter to a Swiss clinic: “On Karla has descended the curse of Smiley’s compassion; on Smiley the curse of Karla’s fanaticism. I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other’s frontiers, we are the no-men of this no-man’s land.”

Through the eyes of Smiley and many other characters, le Carré was a pitiless chronicler of national decline. In Tinker Tailor, the unmasked Soviet mole, Bill Haydon, tells Smiley that his own treachery was driven by a gradual recognition that “if England were out of the game, the price of fish would not be altered by a farthing”.

Given this metaphor, there is a bleak symmetry in the fact that, on the very day that the author died, government sources were briefing the media with the pathetic line that, if the EU and UK negotiators failed to reach a deal, gunboats would be deployed to “protect our fish”.

As a former officer of MI5 and MI6, le Carré had no time for traitors (he famously refused to meet Kim Philby in Moscow). But he never allowed his characters – or his readers – to take refuge in lazy jingoism. He understood that patriotism is meaningless if it lacks depth, reflection and a measure of uncertainty.

Nor was he a nostalgist: quite the opposite, in fact. The fall of the Berlin Wall awoke in him a great hope of a monumental rebuilding of the East – quickly dashed by what followed the historic events of 1989. In The Secret Pilgrim (1991), we are told of “Smiley’s aphorism about the right people losing the Cold War, and the wrong people winning it”.

Indeed, in novels such as The Night Manager (1993) and The Constant Gardener (2001), le Carré was quicker than most to foresee that the post-Cold War landscape would be inherited by a smug coalition of governments and corporations; that worship of reified “business” would infect public policy; and that the same breed of privately educated, endlessly charming Englishmen who had once defended the old order of the Empire and then the West against the Soviet bloc would smoothly switch their allegiance to this new and unaccountable cartel of states and plutocrats.

“The privately educated Englishman is the greatest dissembler on earth,” says Smiley in The Secret Pilgrim. “Nobody will charm you so glibly, disguise his feelings from you better, cover his tracks more skilfully or find it harder to confess to you that he’s been a damn fool.”

How true, yet again, that seems today, as Boris Johnson gurns his way through a crisis that will determine the trajectory of this country for decades. Not for nothing is one of le Carré’s (best, if lesser-known) novels titled Our Game (1995): a reference to Winchester College football. A fear of privileged men reducing the fate of nations to playtime runs through his work: in Tinker Tailor, Smiley imagines the mole Haydon “standing at the middle of a secret stage, playing world against world, hero and playwright in one: oh, Bill had loved that all right.”

In the end, the character of Smiley himself is le Carré’s most precious bequest to the world. He is a true public servant, reserved but never docile, unashamed of his erudition, ironic to a fault, sleeplessly aware that the world is full of lethal complexities and that those who pretend otherwise with their slogans and demagoguery are not to be trusted.

To the end of his life, le Carré understood that resilience in an age of pulverising technological and geopolitical change would require greater integrity than ever, greater wisdom, greater reflection. In Smiley, he imagined a profound form of Englishness that is worth preserving, not in spite of, but because of, its ambiguities. As Control, his mentor and boss, tells him after his first and unsuccessful attempt to ensnare Karla in Delhi: “I like you to have doubts…. It tells me where you stand.”

In le Carré’s penultimate novel, A Legacy of Spies (2017) – a coda of sorts to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963), the book that made his name – Peter Guillam, Smiley’s closest disciple, tracks him down to a library in Freiburg. Unbidden, the elderly spy tries to explain why he did what he did with his life.

“I’m a European, Peter. If I had a mission – if I was ever aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was leading Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.”

Those final, spare words read today – amid the infantile bedlam of Brexit – less like an elegy for something unrecoverable than le Carré’s mission statement for future generations. It’s a fine one, too. RIP.

Matthew d’Ancona

Favourite Poems - 'The Gate of the Year'

THE GATE OF THE YEAR

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” 
And he replied: 
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” 
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East. 

So heart be still: 
What need our little life
Our human life to know, 
If God hath comprehension? 
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low, 
God hideth His intention. 

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision, 
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him, 
All time hath full provision. 

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes, 
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail, 
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

Minnie Haskins (1908)

Pushing the Boundaries by Michael Grey

One Apus coming into Kobe

Pushing the boundaries

Following the astonishing sight of the ONE Apus arriving in the port of Kobe, there has been plenty of speculation as to why half her deck cargo suddenly hurled itself into the sea. I don’t know any better than anyone else but would venture a guess that it might just be the old story of a fatal flaw that eventually emerges with any clever departure from long-established design norms.[You can see a video of the ship coming into Kobe here] 

There is nothing new about adventurous risk-takers skewing traditional design or operational compromises to what might appear to produce the best profit for the least capital cost. Think of the extreme clippers, which were lethal when handled badly, or the “hell or Melbourne” skippers who took ridiculous risks with their ships and the lives of those aboard, for a record-breaking passage.

“If you push your luck, you will come unstuck”, said one of those little rhymes we learned to instil in us the value of professional prudence. And if you have been around in the shipping industry for a good few decades, there is no shortage of examples where snags have emerged after the introduction of something new or clever. It seems almost inevitable.

I might go back to the late 60s, when nobody bothered about fuel price or emissions and to the fine-lined cargo liners that started to appear. Sure, they reached their destination faster and were greatly admired for their passage making. One of ours was roaring down the Atlantic off the Azores one night when she dipped her bow into a swell and about 2000 tons of sea ended up on the foredeck, which was set down a couple of feet, before they got the way off her. Then a Ben liner was bent like a banana and a Neptune ship lost most of the bow, so word got about that these beauties needed some rather careful handling, compared to their simpler predecessors.

With Suez closed and everyone screaming for oil, tanker sizes were extrapolated to extraordinary levels, somebody deciding that it was a great economy idea to equip these monsters with a single boiler and bring them up estuaries on the top of the tide to sit in holes dredged off a terminal. It worked a dream, until they started to break down off lee shores and spectacularly explode, when washing their tanks in the tropical microclimate of their vast internal spaces.

Roll-on, roll-off ships would have been prohibited in a more cautious age – class would never have permitted a huge hole in a shell plate- but they provided so many solutions to cargo-handling problems that old horrors of free surface or watertightness were thought easily manageable.  Boundaries were literally pushed and we soon saw ro-ros where the main deck was under the load waterline, so a few degrees of list with the ramp open could prove fatal, requiring a new understanding (better later than never) of this type’s vulnerability.

Big bulk carriers were the cat’s pyjamas; too large, alas, for the crew to make the slightest impression on their maintenance requirements, while pliable regulators permitted deep loading, longer intervals between drydocks and a new and malevolent philosophy of “permissible levels of steel wastage” emerged. That took a lot of ships to the bottom, along with the lives of those who worked aboard them. And that’s before we considered issues of metal fatigue, weaker scantlings (who would pay for a stronger bulk carrier?) and cargo liquefaction.

Car carriers appeared to be a design that could be endlessly extrapolated, their specific vulnerabilities of instability and fire spread, contributed to by too much haste in port, eventually becoming apparent – after they had grown to huge sizes.

Maybe we shouldn’t frighten potential passengers about what cruise ship operators have learned the hard way and to their cost, over the years. As a simple seaman, it always seemed to me that there was something wrong when you couldn’t put the helm hard over without the grand piano carrying away and crushing half a dozen insufficiently nimble passengers. We won’t go into flammable balconies and careless captains getting too close to the shore.

And so to giant containerships, the current conduits of international trade, which have grown like Topsy, both in dimensions and capacity, where boundaries have been pushed in all directions. To somebody aged enough to have written about 1500 teu ships with “too many eggs in one basket”, and who can recall agonised debates about whether a third tier of boxes would be a hazard in the winter North Atlantic, it could be better to exercise caution about the current generation of monsters and their vicissitudes.

I recall a friend who had been in at the very birth of containerisation telling me about the experiments he took part in where they piled loaded boxes on top of one another and tilted stacks to test their lashings and design fastenings. Now, of course they have computer-aided design tools of remarkable sophistication, but you just wonder whether there is anything that really replicates the terrifying forces produced by an instantaneous 40 degree lurch, as the whole length of the ship finds itself unsupported, to stop dead and hurtle the other way, as green seas crash aboard and a hellish wind blows on the ten-high stack.

Maybe it would help a little if designers spent some time at sea. But looking at some of these recent incidents, it is surely not unreasonable to ask whether lashing rules and the equipment they prescribe are really fit for purpose aboard the ships on which they are now installed? Are the ships too long and the stacks too high? Or like so much else in an industry, where development is exponential and prototypes unknown, are the designers pushing their luck, in this case, too far?

Michael Grey is a former editor of Lloyd’s List.

Stockbridge at Christmas 2020

 

                                                       The pods at the Greyhound on the Test

Stockbridge is dressed better than ever for Christmas 2020 despite there having been no Christmas shopping evening and the Christmas tree in front of St Peter's was lit without ceremony. The shops and houses have put on a superb display and the principal eateries, the Greyhound on the Test and the refurbished Grosvenor, have installed wonderfully atmospheric pods - in the case of the Greyhound - and a fully-fitted out ski hut - La Hutte - in the case of the Grosvenor. Added to this the Whisky Shop has moved to the refurbished Lillies site and has a bar, while behind it another coffee shop - Kudos - has just opened. The former Hero is being transformed into the Clos du Marquis to be opened in January, bringing French cooking to the town for the first time. Meanwhile, the Three Cups and the White Hart continue to maintain a good trade as well as highly praised food, and Thyme & Tides have continued to provide superb deli, fish and cheese counters as well as a much favoured take-away service. 

For more photos of the High St. and the shops and restaurants, click these links.

The Grosvenor

The Test pool and the Town hall

The Whisky Shop

St Peter's and the tree

Beccy's and the Vine

The garden at the Grosvenor and Le Hutte

The garden rooms at the Grosvenor

Newman's Decorative Living

Providence Court 

The Whisky Shop and Kudos

The Three Cups

                                                                          The Three Cups

The Test

                                                     King's Head House and Old Swan House

The Roundabout

Nicky Boyle 1946 - 1997

Nicky with Rosemary Martin. Background - Dodie and Pug Wallis at Hill Farm.

Nicky (Lady Nichola) Boyle was a close friend throughout my teens and early 20s and I spent hours at her house, Marwell, having meals, playing tennis or after-dinner games, or just talking late into the night in the drawing-room surrounded by her mother's books*. The house was approached down a long drive and had an impressive front door flanked by columns on which I use to hang after ringing the doorbell, driving her dog, Oedipus, mad when he caught sight of me. Tennis was often played with her brother, Patrick Kelburn, as well as regulars such as Nick Duke and Johnnie Cooke. And indeed, although Nicky and I got on very well as friends, it was Nick who Nicky was keen on, although I don't think her love was ever requited.

Nicky Boyle (second from right) with me (top left), Mark Hatt-Cook, Belinda Wallis and Nick  Fry at a hunt ball c,1969. The photo was probably taken by Nick Duke. Photo from Belin Martin's album.

Regulars were Belin Wallis, who was a close friend of hers, Charlie Skipwith, Georgina Murison and Sandra and Terry, who rented a cottage on the estate and who usually joined in when they were there, and the Hellards who lived nearby. Nicky often spent time in London where she had friends such as Rosa Monkton. Her mother had a flat in Albany which came in useful after parties.  

I remember once going up to London with Nicky on the train when we drank a bottle of sherry between us (although whisky was her usual drink). Just as well Waterloo was a terminus!  She was also often a passenger in the Mini on Sunday nights when we drove up to London after watching 'The Forsyte Saga',

A point to point at which Nicky was riding. Left to right: Will Martin, Charlie Skipwith, Lucie Skipwith, Andrew Ward, Nick Duke, Herry and Prue

Her mother (Dorothea, Viscountess Kelburn - always known to us as Lady K - was a great favourite too, She was always welcoming and didn't seem to mind what hour we turned up and how long we stayed. There was usually a shepherd's pie to be had if we got hungry and there were some wonderful parties when we played after-dinner games, making full use of the many rooms and the back stairs.  Fairly glittery cocktail parties were also held, especially around Christmas time, when friends of Patrick's such as the Dufferin's would show up. Later his wife Isabel would be there too.

Sadly, I rather lost touch with Nicky in my late twenties after I got married. She had married Tom Carter in 1976 and they had a son, Mathew in 1978 and a daughter Ella, in 1986.

I was very shocked when in 1997 she suddenly died.

Nicky was a most interesting. person, quite intellectual like her mother, but not always happy. Her parents were divorced and I never heard any mention of her father. 

Nicky is commemorated in my garden with a pear tree.  

For all then photos of Nicky I can find, click here 

* I still feel guilty about a book (Vladimir Nabakov's 'Pale Fire') that I borrowed in about 1965 and never returned.