Walk the Lines

I recently chanced upon a hardback copy of Walk the Lines by Mark Mason in a charity shop, and after reading the description on the dust-jacket, I thought I’d buy it and give it a go.

This book is a travelogue about walking the length of all eleven London Underground lines. In other words, London – and a fair bit of its outskirts – by foot. It’s undoubtedly an eccentric challenge, but it presents us with a very insightful view of modern London in all its forms – suburbs, industrial estates, open fields, the inner city and the point at which a poor area ends and an affluent one begins.

It’s not just about the places, mind you. On the way, Mason meets an interesting range of people, including the City of London planning officer, a novelist, a trainee cabbie and an actor from The Archers who did the ‘mind the gap’ announcements for part of the Piccadilly Line. He gets to climb up the NatWest Tower and Barnet Church. And he even manages to walk to Heathrow Airport.

As one would expect, there are some great pieces of Tube trivia here – for example, when the Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863, the Prime Minister (Lord Palmerston, who was 78 at the time) refused to attend on the grounds that at his age, he preferred to spend as much of his time above ground as possible. There is also an explanation for the convention of standing on the right on escalators. On a wider note, there’s a useful definition of what constitutes a modern-day high street from a man who, over the course of this book, has walked along rather a lot of them: “A high street ain’t a high street unless it can sell you a rawlplug.” (By this definition, I am pleased to report that High Road in East Finchley meets his requirement.) There is also plenty of food for thought for people who like maps, and in this sense Mason goes beyond the ‘I went to Stanfords to buy my maps’ travel-writer cliché.

Now an account of a series of walks, however interesting, may get dull after a while but Mason mixes things up to keep the reader interested. He is at various stages accompanied by fellow-walkers. He turns his Circle Line walk into a Circle Line pub crawl. Later on, he does the Jubilee Line by night, offering a nocturnal perspective on London. And by spreading his walks over several months, we see the city (and environs) through different seasons as well. Each walk tells a different story about the same metropolis.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that Mason is rather disparaging about Edgware (perhaps inevitably, it gets compared to that other Northern Line northbound destination, High Barnet, and comes off second-best). This was a good idea for a book, and in Mason’s hands it’s a very good read. If you live in London, or are interested in London, you’ll find something to like here.

A study in Sherlock

So after a wait of two years, it was over before we got half-way through January. I refer, of course, to the third series of Sherlock, which I had been keenly anticipating for several months.

(Before I go any further, I should warn you that this blog post contains various plot-spoilers, and if you haven’t seen the third series of Sherlock yet you may wish to stop reading at this point. You have been warned.)

On the whole, and I speak as a bit of a fan, I was pleased with what I saw. The first hurdle for this new series was always going to be the explanation of how he faked his own death (“short version: not dead”) and this part was well done, I thought, with plenty of nods to various online conspiracy theories (can you even have a conspiracy theory about a fictional TV drama? You can, apparently, if it’s Sherlock) before coming up with an explanation that referred, as the writers had promised, to events that had taken place earlier in the final episode of the second series. The clues were always there, apparently.

The only jarring note for me as far as Sherlock’s return went was not Martin Freeeman’s dodgy ’tache but he question of Tube trains – a pivotal plot point as the great detective raced to stop a North Korean sleeper-agent from blowing up Parliament on, of all days, 5^th November. Now I know that viewers who don’t live and commute in London may not be interested, but the use of the wrong rolling-stock for a District Line train did not go unnoticed by viewers who do, and left me anticipating a completely different twist than that which did occur. A rare slip by the writers, especially given their attention to detail and the fact that they’d just added a trainspotter to the plot; if information about Tube rolling-stock wasn’t in Sherlock’s mind-palace, surely he’d know?

For me at least, the second episode dragged a bit, with a couple of interesting-looking mysteries playing second fiddle to Sherlock’s best man’s speech and a couple of funny interactions between the self-confessed high-functioning sociopath and other guests, with things not changing gear until the last half-hour. Even though they all tied together in the end for a pretty interesting murder plot (after all, everything in Sherlock happens for a reason, even if you have to remember seemingly minor points from previous episodes as became apparent in episode three), it seemed to me as though the writers were paying more attention to character development than having Sherlock go and solve some mysteries.

Ah, character development. Mary Morstan gets more attention here than she did in the books (in which, with the obvious exception of The Sign of Four, she plays a surprisingly minor role as the narrator’s wife), being in this instance a fully-fledged character in her own right whose shady past provides a key plot point in the third episode. I’ll admit I didn’t see the ex-CIA assassin thing coming, although this being Sherlock there had been plenty of clues to indicate that she was not what she seemed, for example her code-cracking abilities. We got to see Sherlock’s parents, which may be a Sherlock Holmes first (they were played, funnily enough, by Benedict Cumberbatch’s real-life parents), and even Mrs Hudson got a bit of a back-story with the revelations about her involvement in a drug cartel (“I did the typing!”).

The final episode of this was, in my opinion, the best, probably due to the reptilian way in which Lars Mikkelsen played the villain. Did he really lick his victim? Yes, he did. Now, having a newspaper proprietor as the villain of the piece may be topical in the light of the phone-hacking scandal but it is not exactly an original idea (the baddie in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies ran a newspaper empire, and had the same rimless glasses as Charles Augustus Magnussen for that matter, although he merely attempted to start a war between Britain and China to boost circulation figures rather than use his power-without-responsibility to have a go at blackmailing people). Similarly, Sherlock’s use of a pretend-relationship to gain access to the baddie’s office may have drawn comparisons with some of the more questionable things that have been done by undercover policemen in recent years, but readers of the books will note that this underhand tactic is there in “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton” (which first appeared in 1904), the short story on which it is based.

A surprising amount of the material in Sherlock is from the original stories – while watching it, I always find myself thinking of which of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s adventures this character or that reference came from. The ‘east wind’ speech at the end of the third episode is taken from “His Last Bow” (chronologically, although not in the order in which the stories were written, the last Holmes adventure), the ‘John or James’ text-message in the first episode is a reference to Conan Doyle’s occasional habit of (probably inadvertently) changing Dr Watson’s Christian name, while the hat deduction scene is a take on “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”. In the third episode, the scene where John (it seems almost impossible to refer to the main characters in this series by their surnames, as one instinctively would when discussing the books or other TV and film adaptations) finds Sherlock in the crack-house is taken from “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, the Victorian-era opium den having been updated for modern sensibilities. Even Mary’s real initials, as shown on the memory-stick that she gives John, refer to the novel The Sign of Four, the one in which Dr Watson’s wife first appears. Moving away from Conan Doyle, there are even a couple of nods to The Day of the Jackal (how Mary obtained her new identity) and Casablanca (the scene at the airfield).

What I’m trying to say is that the plot devices used by the writers of Sherlock are not in themselves original ideas; they may have taken Sherlock Holmes out of the nineteenth century but they are being surprisingly faithful to the books. Even moving Holmes and Watson to a modern setting isn’t entirely a new idea – back in the 1940s, the Basil Rathbone version of the great detective was taking on the Nazis – but I do like the way this new, modern version of Holmes is so instinctively at home in the twenty-first century.

And why not? After all, there was also more to Sherlock Holmes than hansom cabs, fog and gaslights. Twenty-first century London has email and text-messages (which take the place of the near-ubiquitous telegrams that kept arriving at 221B Baker Street), and in the books Holmes was always keen to use the latest that modern technology and forensic science had to offer to help solve crimes. And, of course the twenty-first century Dr Watson is a wounded veteran from the war in Afghanistan, just like the original. Instead of chronicling his adventures with his somewhat unconventional flatmate for a magazine, he writes a blog (and there really is a blog to go with the show, created by the writers; for sheer detail, they’ll stop at nothing). There’s even some real-life London lore, such as the fake houses on Leinster Gardens, thrown in for good measure.

Sherlock Holmes has undergone quite the revival in recent years; as well as the BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, there have been two Guy Ritchie films with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as the original dynamic duo in a pseudo-late-Victorian setting, and an American TV series with Cumberbatch’s fellow-Frankenstein Johnny Lee Miller as a modern-day Sherlock who moves to New York and is assisted by a Dr Joan Watson. Thanks to all of this, sales of the original books have apparently shot up.

Here, it seems, is one literary character you just can’t seem to get rid of. Heck, even his creator had to bring him back after killing him off, and every new generation would appear to desire their own version of the great detective. We currently have three; I don’t know what that says about us, but it says a lot for the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes.

House of Cards

When Allison and I get into a TV series on DVD, we really get into it; the sixth series of Mad Men was a Christmas present which we got through over the course of Boxing Day. Following on from that, our new-found access to Netflix (enabled by the purchase of a new television in the sales) has resulted in the American remake of House of Cards getting a similar treatment.

Now I happen to regard the original, British version of House of Cards as one of the finest TV drama series ever made. Based on the novel by Michael Dobbs (who prior to becoming an author had been an advisor to Mrs Thatcher), it was filmed for TV in 1990, and starred the late Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart, a Tory chief whip who, when passed over for promotion, plots to bring down the Prime Minister and undermine all other contenders in the subsequent leadership election. He will do anything (up to and including murder) to get to the top, and Richardson’s portrayal was magnificent. By coincidence, the programme was first aired at the time of the 1990 Tory leadership election and so caught the popular mood; Richardson, more of a stage man for much of his career, won a BAFTA for it, and its success prompted Dobbs to write two more novels featuring Urquhart (To Play the King and The Final Cut), both of which were later filmed.

For the American version, Urquhart has become Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey), the Democrat majority whip in the House of Representatives who is out for revenge after the newly-elected President reneges on a promise to appoint him to Secretary of State. Like Urquhart, he breaks the fourth wall to address the audience – in this, the character follows in the tradition of that Shakespearean arch-villain Richard III, and in this context it’s worth noting that Spacey, like Richardson, has in his time played said king on the stage. There’s none of Urquhart’s impish charm in these asides, though – Underwood is pure menace (perhaps these days we like our TV villains to have no redeeming features; Underwood and his equally scheming wife smoke, for example, and TV characters aren’t supposed to do that unless they’re bad, or in a show set several decades ago).

Watching it in 2013, the British version – depicting a male-dominated Westminster of smoke-filled pubs and gentlemen’s clubs – looks as dated as the TV version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy which was first broadcast over a decade before. The American remake is modern in every sense of the word. The young female journalist (for Mattie Storin, read Zoe Barnes) writes for an online news-gathering organisation rather than a print newspaper, and everyone has either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. While we’re on that subject, I liked how text messages are shown as a speech-bubble on screen (just like in Sherlock) rather than as a close-up of a mobile phone. Its airing was also very modern, with all 13 episodes being released on Netflix on the same day so that viewers could watch it whenever they liked (even all in one go if they really wanted to).

Some things never change, though. Although there are of course exceptions, politicians as depicted on TV are invariably flawed, and if they’re not outwardly on the take then their weaknesses make it easy for them to be manipulated by ruthless schemers like Underwood. Or Urquhart.

How do the two compare? Well, it’s hard to say as they are the products of different times, and they were even made with different objectives in mind. The British version was a four-part drama which was not intended to spawn a sequel and so required all loose ends to be resolved (Dobbs hadn’t even written a follow-up novel when it was aired, and if you’ve ever read the book, which has a very different ending, you’ll realise that he did not intend to do so), while the remake is a much longer series which, if the somewhat anti-climactic ending is anything to go by, was done with a second series in mind. Here, perhaps, it’s worth noting that the opening credits say that it is based on the novels (plural) by Michael Dobbs.

Is the American remake good? Yes, very good. Better than the original? Well, you may think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Lamb curry, with sides

The other day I made a curry – but not just any curry. The photo, I have to say, doesn’t really do such a lovely meal justice.

The meat part of the dish is lamb with apricots (jardaloo boti), a dish that originates from Mumbai. Apricots aren’t really my thing, but they compliment the lamb well in this dish to give a hint of sweet and sour.

The veg side is cauliflower with shredded ginger (punjabi gobi). This is a northern Indian dish which is cooked without the addition of water, because cauliflower cooked with water can apparently cause wind. Who knew?

Both the lamb and the cauli recipes (and that last bit of information about cauliflower!) come from a fantastic book called 50 Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi. The founder of the Bombay Brasserie and the Masala Zone chain, she is credited, among other things, with changing the way Indian cuisine is perceived in this country by way of introducing regional dishes, and convincing us that there’s more to India food than meat in curry sauce (she’s on record, by the way, as having pointed out that there really is no such dish as curry, which if we’re going to be picky is the sauce, not the meal).

As for the rice, I relied (as I always do) on the principles laid down by Delia Smith: The volume of boiling water is double the volume of the rice, which gets simmered with the lid on, and no stirring allowed.

The stories behind the Union Jack

I have recently read Union Jack: The Story of the British Flag by Nick Groom – a wonderful read from which I have learned several things that I wasn’t aware of before regarding my country’s flag.

1. It was first devised in the early 17^th century as a result of much work by English and Scottish heralds to come up with an acceptable merging of the English and Scottish flags following James VI of Scotland’s accession to the English throne as James I. It is, therefore, heraldically correct (as per the rules of heraldry, at no point do the red bits touch the blue bits) and predates the United Kingdom, which didn’t come into being until the 1707 Act of Union.

2. Despite what some people may think, the terms ‘Union Jack’ and ‘Union Flag’ are in fact interchangeable, partly due to their both being used to mean the same thing in a Parliamentary debate about the flag in 1908 (which was also the first time that it was officially referred to as the national flag).

3. There used to be a Scottish version in which the white saltire (diagonal cross) of St Andrew was superimposed over the red cross of St George. Groom is vague on when this stopped being used, but it was definitely before the 1801 Act of Union which added the red saltire of St Patrick (even so, it would’ve been nice to have seen a picture of said flag in the book – my one complaint was that some of the accompanying photos seem to have been chosen at random, and it could’ve done with a few more photos of the flags described therein).

4. There is no representation of Wales in the Union Jack because Wales was never a kingdom (England, Scotland and Ireland all were). This is also why the Welsh dragon doesn’t feature on the Royal coat-of-arms.

5. Naval uses aside, there are hardly any rules about exact sizes and proportions of the flag – which may help to explain why some manufacturers get the fimbriation (the proportion of the thickness of the white bits) wrong. This perhaps also explains the varying shades that have been used for the blue parts.

6. With the exception of the rules that concern flying it at sea, there are also hardly any rules governing what you can and can’t do with the Union Jack (in complete contrast to, say, the rules concerning the Stars and Stripes), which may help to explain why it became a style icon in the 1960s (see, for example, its use by The Who and in the movie The Italian Job – and this phenomenon probably explains why the Union Jack, not the Cross of St George, was used by England fans at the 1966 World Cup).

7. There are more verses to God Save the Queen than anyone thinks there are. Most of them, admittedly, are about what General Wade was going to do to Bonnie Prince Charlie when they met on the battlefield, the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 being the context in which the song was composed as an anthem of loyalty to the Hanoverian dynasty (in the event, the Government troops were outflanked by the Jacobites, who marched down to Derby via Carlisle rather than Newcastle, which was where Wade was waiting for them; Wade was subsequently replaced by the Duke of Cumberland, whose troops thrashed the Jacobite army at Culloden).