May 2023

Another month. Time seems to be passing very quickly (I keep saying that) but the world gets no better. Every month a new crisis seems to erupt. Sudan is of course the latest one, while the Ukrainian conflict rumbles on, reaching a dreadful peak now and then: yesterday the peak consisted of missile strikes on Kyiv and other places.

When it comes to the matter of man’s inhumanity to man, does anything ever change? During the month I finally took delivery of a book I have been tracking down for months: Alexandra Richie’s Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City. Richie, a Canadian historian, is an excellent writer and a meticulous researcher, but the effect on me is that at various points in the book I can read only a few pages at a time, as the suffering of the Poles and Polish Jews is scarcely credible. The Order for Warsaw, issued on the first of August, 1944, also beggars belief. The mad idea of the Nazis was that all inhabitants of Warsaw should be killed, and the city itself obliterated. 

Paris, Leningrad, and Moscow had also been on Hitler’s list of cities that he wished to raze completely, but Warsaw was apparently his big chance. Richie makes the point that by August 1944, post the unsuccessful attempt on his life, Hitler was showing many signs of insanity: he was certainly addicted to various drugs. I am almost half way through the volume and predict that I will be very much harrowed before I have finished it. But this reading makes me realise once again what a miracle modern Warsaw is: the casual observer would find it very hard to believe in its grim history.

I have also been reading another book, one that asks the philosopher’s vital question: How should we live? Robert Dessaix’s Abracadabra is a collection of talks he gave over ten years on the ABC, and at various writers’ festivals and other functions. He and I are much the same age, and were subject to the same formative influences. So I am pleased to report that there is a cheering chapter, for example, about Enid Blyton, the prolific author of children’s books, who later came under a cloud because of the preoccupations of a later and politically correct generation. At various stages Dessaix points out the value of reading, and the way in which the reading habit can make one live doubly, or more than doubly. Dessaix is not optimistic about the world’s prospects, but still manages to give positive advice. Yes, the situation is impossible, so let’s take the next step, keep turning the page, and have the time of our many lives.

The Coronation looms. I’m so old I can remember the other one, Queen Elizabeth’s. Times have definitely changed since then, and have become much more complicated. And one wonders whether King Charles III would much prefer a quiet life involving newspapers and slippers (he doesn’t smoke, so pipes don’t come into it) rather than having to take on a role that must be new, even though he has spent a long apprenticeship in preparation. The harsh fact is that the monarchy is not at all as popular as it was: this is particularly the case among the young. Republican movements in both Britain and the Commonwealth seem to be growing in strength, and measures being taken against even the mildest of anti-monarchy protests, at least in Britain, are doing the same, a fact that is very worrying. One protester, a professed Christian and a well-established teacher in his 40s, was given a very hard time after he called out ‘Who elected him?’ at a proclamation ceremony. Many people are becoming increasingly concerned about the monarchy’s hidden wealth, and general inequality. The King, for example, paid no inheritance tax after Queen Elizabeth’s death.

Greek Easter was a week later than Western Easter this year. The weather was not exactly clement, but we had a good time: the grandchildren seemed to enjoy everything. Natalia was pleased with herself because she had painted the eggs, and all three children won egg contests at various points. Daughter-in-law Nina cooked up a storm, one part of which was mageritsa, a traditional dish made from lamb offal. (I have to admit I have never liked offal of any sort, whereas my old Mum simply loved tripe.) The Greek dish is supposed to be eaten as the first meal on the breaking of the Lenten fast, and is the first thing on the menu after the midnight service has ended.

Because Nina had made such an effort, one really appreciated by her father-in-law, I felt I should make an effort, too, and thus ate a spoonful or two. I announced that the occasion was an historic one, and so Nina took a photograph. But I still dislike mageritsa.