Educating Cardiff / The Catch

Reporting on an evening's documentary television ...

Educating Cardiff (episode 1) took us to Willows School, recently turned around, we were told, by ebullient headteacher Joy Ballard and her team. The focus in the first episode was on Year 11, the GCSE year, although we did get a charming look at a Year 7 class being assured that the sun did indeed rise in Wales ('it's the one thing that turns night into day'), even though it didn't always feel like it; and the same class, I think, were involved in fantastic act of brinkmanship around the lunch break ('We're not finishing until this problem's solved'). The teacher in this case, and the one we saw most of, was Mr Hennessy; probably the most arresting moment of the programme was learning that Mr H himself had left school with just two GCSEs. He remembered crying in the kitchen with his mother the day results came out. He knew first-hand how things could go wrong, and went well beyond the limits of duty in trying to make sure that a group of truanting girls rocked up to their classes and took things like mock exams seriously. One of them, Leah, even got a wake-up call from Mr Hennessy each morning. We saw a lot of Leah, a bright girl who didn't see the point in school, although she was inspired by drama (the drama classes looked wonderful, by the way, and the rescue line they offered Leah was thought-provoking at a time when drama and indeed anything creative / expressive gets so little official support.) The other truant girls didn't seem to get so much attention, but that might have been editing. We also met Jessica, the oddball swat who actually wants to use classtime to study. Jessica was more comfortable with adults than her peers, diffident, introspective, not a great mixer, 'quirky' to use the word of the head ('I'm quirky too'). In a great move, Ms Ballard made Jess editor of the school newspaper, and she and her deputies promptly set about interviewing aspiring reporters, collecting comments in a suggestions box and proudly distributing the paper when it was complete. Both Leah and Jess got good news on results day. Leah could go to college and study drama, Jess got a string of As. Ms Ballard's governing style was matter-of-fact, arguing a reasoned case for turning up to school rather than bawling at her charges. I suspect anyone with Oxbridge airs and graces in this environment wouldn't last five minutes. Mr Hennessy stepped neatly into the tough-teacher-with-a-heart-of-gold persona that a series like this needs. The programme was edited from presumably hours and hours of film taken by hidden cameras. Classes looked quite bewildering exercises in crowd semi-management. There were terrific moments of wit (I loved the comment that a group of shuffling teens coming across the playground to school looked like a bad outtake from Reservoir Dogs). Some bits, like a roving reporter eavesdropping on a staff meeting (as teachers bizarrely discussed their fear of crabs and beetroot) had the feel of being staged. But beneath the charm the picture was troubling. Teachers seemed to be working with a population of children who were entirely disaffected. Where do you start with that? We saw nothing at all outside the campus, but it is only when family life is taken into account that the whole picture can emerge. I understand that Willows is in a very tough, very run-down part of Cardiff. What are the likely prospects for these children? What are their parents' expectations? As ever, the music pulled me whichever way the producers wanted my heart to go. I hope we'll meet a Welsh speaker before the series is done.

The Catch took us to a very tough place indeed, the fishing vessel Govenek as it sailed through a storm to trawl in the Atlantic, two hundred miles off the Cornish coast. I realised I knew nothing about fishing at all. For example, I didn't know that the men are not paid a regular wage. Instead they share the income from each catch, and are at the mercy not just of the tides and weather but also of constantly fluctuating prices. It was because foreign vessels had flooded the market and driven down prices that Govenek's crew had to stay out in the storm and go deep into the Atlantic (the eleventh, whatever that means), in the hope of catching enough to cover the costs of the trip. In the event, they came across a school of turbot and netted (hey, is that where that metaphor comes from?) £50,000 worth. (The selling is done at auction to supermarket buyers, with Govenek represented by an agent. There is a mark-up of over 50%  by the time it arrives in the shops.) While crews are usually different for each voyage, skipper Phil has a loyal team who sail with him regularly, trusting his judgment and putting up with his occasional irate visitations to the deck, hurling crates around and stomping off in a blizzard of expletives. The crew also had under their wing novice seaman Loui, from Essex, an interesting young man with a background in home schooling, no qualifications, an adoring mum and an obvious desire to put on a good show and be accepted as one of the boys. He made a good enough job of it to be allowed the honour of casting a grappling hook (or something) and getting invited back for a second trip. The Catch made it clear that this trade is serious, dangerous business. 'What's the worst injury you've seen?' 'Death. Death over the side, by drowning.' Phil remembered a man going overboard. He reached him in the water but didn't have the strength to get him back on board. 'He's still out there somewhere.' Great television. Humbling. Willows and the Govenek. Which would find me more of a useless burden, I wonder? And who would jump in to save me? (Why, Phil or Mr Hennessy, of course, two of Britain's last real men.)

School Swap: The Class Divide

School Swap was a two-episode documentary in which small contingents from a private and state school swap places for a week, to see how the other half lives (or, in the case of the privately educated, how the other 93% lives). In episode 1, the Headmaster of (private) Warminster School travelled with three of his pupils to (comprehensive) Bemrose School in Derby. And in episode 2 Derby visited Warminster. There were shots of the children in class, at the homes of their host families in Derby or the small dormitory at Warminster, and we got at least a glimpse of the workings of the two institutions.
Of course a series like this is primarily entertainment, not research. You never know how spontaneous scenes are, how much was shot again, what scenes were selected out for not following the gameplan, and so forth. Nonetheless, I found School Swap more enjoyable and illuminating than many documentaries, and less obviously manipulative. There were several thought-provoking moments. One of the private schoolboys, entered as a lower tier candidate for maths at Warminster (meaning he could not get higher than a C) was regarded as a potential A 'at least' at Bemrose. Was his school too anxious to stream, one wondered? Brett from Derby seemed positively euphoric in his dorm at Warminster, dressing for a formal dinner with evident pride and being motivated by some simple remarks on his potential and the need for hard work. Had no adult said this to him before? Both heads came over as warm individuals; Jo (Derby) made some insightful comments on how privately educated children take up a disproportionate number of top university places and jobs in the professions. Self-confidence, built through relentless positive messaging, seemed to be the answer. I liked her comment on the Warminster children already adopting the nonchalant Oxford walk. She was sharp, but not chippy, and completely devoted to the children of her community. Full credit to Warminster Head for giving a history lesson at Bemrose, too. Speaking of which, the teaching seemed to be much the same in both schools, though the extra discipline at Warminster (made possible by smaller class sizes) was remarked on with admiration by Brett.
School Swap had its weaknesses, of course. Most obviously, it was an experiment that decided its conclusion in advance: private schooling is better because the days are longer and crammed with goodies. Filming techniques underlined this message. Warminster was forever bathed in golden light and surrounded by ethereal music as the camera soared celestially upwards as we contemplated the transcendent beauty of the campus. It is, we were told, 'exclusive', a word delivered with no apprent sense of irony. Bemrose was shot much more from ground level. No ethereal music accompanied the punishment room, or the session on nutritional eating, though to be fair the street-fest we saw looked a lot more fun than hymn practice at a Warminster assembly. Parents on both sides were remarkably absent, though they are surely the most important figures of all.  Warminster Head's comment that 'we have two education sectors in this country: private and state' is technically true but disguises - as he would know - a mass of complications. State education differs widely according to distribution of wealth; state schools in affluent areas are de facto largely private, serving those who can afford to live in the catchment area. And whatever school they use, families will still be differentiated by wealth: parents with money can afford after-school music lessons and drama clubs and the like, and those without can't. Did Warminster have to go all the way to Derby because the local comps weren't grim enough? I welcome the project to have joint clubs for both schools, on equal terms, but it's hard to see how that could work across such a great distance. Still, collaboration and some measure of integration across sectors is surely, both morally and practically, the way forwards. There was no time to examine how well children at either school were served by the national curriculum, but perhaps that is the subject for another documentary. And while Bemrose was shown working brilliantly to address the socioeconomic problems of its intake - the breakfast club for disaffected boys and the pastoral mediation session were inspirational - Warminster seemed to have no problems whatsoever to deal with besides the Head not having room for his dessert at dinner. That can't be true, surely? No one is perfect. Was there no case of homesickness, obsessive helicopter parenting, individuals not fitting into the vision? You believe the good things more when you hear about the not-so-goo things.
All the same, School Swap was a good two hours of television, and while at the project stage it might have expected shock and confrontation, it delivered instead a heartening mood of curiosity and genuine burgeoning friendship. When the ethereal music was over, one could only reflect that there are losses on all sides when the young from different backgrounds are separated during their schooldays, which is exactly when they should be getting to know each other. I don't think it's a question of private establishments having a superior approach to the business of educating, much as they love to philosophise about their art: of course Bemrose would have lectures and clubs and dinners if it could afford them. It really does seem to come down to money. Class divide, indeed.

Pallant House: Conscience and Conflict

Merlyn Evans, Distressed Area (1938)

The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was an internal conflict; but it was also a crucible in which the world forces of left and right met each other, and thus a battleground for competing international ideologies. In England, we are familiar chiefly with the literary responses - Auden, Laurie Lee, George Orwell. Last year's exhibition Conscience and Conflict showed us the waves sent out through the art world by what now feels like a dry run of WWII.


The closeness of art, society and politics is made clear in a photograph in the vestibule, 'Artists painting a hoarding in Bouverie Street, London, 17 Feb 1939' (John F Stephenson). They are painting the slogan,  'Send Food to Spain'. Bouverie Street was one of the 22 hoardings made available by London County Council. Soon it was defaced by Sir Oswald Moseley's blackshirts.


During the Spanish Civil War, artists found themselves committed to a public cause, and thus to a publicly available artistic language. Art was also stepping in where politicians feared to tread: in 1936, Britain and 24 other countries signed a non-intervention agreement, terrified of the conflict escalating. France and Britain maintained an arms embargo, and the Republicans could only buy weapons from Soviet Russia, while the Fascists were supplied by Fascist Italy and Germany. Many organisations were founded to send aid to Spain, and we get a poignant sense of grass-roots activity in Clive Branson's documentary paintings: Noreen and Rosa (1940), studying a volume from the Left Book Club; Daily Worker (1939) showing a newspaper seller in Battersea and Selling the Daily Worker outside Projectile Engineering Works (1937), the point of the last being the attempt to create a feeling of solidarity among the factory workers for their Spanish comrades. Henry Rayner's drypoint etchings, There is no Peace, There is no Shelter make a more direct appeal to human compassion.


The war coincided with the Surrealist movement, which had an important exhibition in June 1936, on the eve of the conflict. One might have thought that the art of the unconscious would have little to say to, or about, the political. On the contrary, there was an intense and precise engagement. Papier-mâché masks at an anti-Chamberlain protest mark surrealism's presence on the streets. A surrealist pamphlet provides an acute analysis of the situation: 'We know that capital will not respond to socialist democracy with only constitutional means; we know that violence is not only the weapon of the proletariat; Britain's policy is implicitly pro-fascist, it freely allows Portugal to arm fascists'. Perhaps the most iconic picture today to come from this engagement is Miró's 'Aidez Espagne'. This was originally intended as the image for a one-franc postage stamp, but the French government didn't issue it. Surrealism captured, too, the monstrous and desolate, in Edward Burra's Medusa, or the faceless nuns of John Middleton's works, drawing on Jung's female archetype and at the same time pointing the finger at the Catholic Church's complicity in fascist atrocities. This theme is addressed in other works, such as André Masson's La Messe a Pampelune (1937) and John Banting's Absolution: Spanish Civil War (1937). Beyond the surrealist ambit, John Armstrong's tempera paintings of bombed-out buildings in scorched plains are more powerful for being drenched in Mediterranean colours: the light associated in art with gorgeousness and the relish for life here illuminates only a splintered emptiness.


Not all artists were sympathetic to the Republicans: the modernist Francis Rose (1909-79) was strongly pro-Nationalist. His satirical The Reds are Really Not Bad Sorts, or the Tastes of War (1936) bristles with contempt for what he must have seen as a communist menace. For Rose, at least, the right side won, and the exhibition ends with a reminder of the misery of war: Clive Branson's Hut Against Trees, Prison Camp in Spain (1938) has tremendous further impact when we learn from the label that he himself was imprisoned in Spain. Many ghosts hover over the gallery, among them John Cornford, dead at 21, and Julian Bell, volunteer ambulance driver, brother of Quentin, daughter of Vanessa, who suffered a breakdown on hearing the news of his death. Or Felicia Browne (1904-36), artist and communist, the first British volunteer to die in action, whose sketchbooks were brought back from the Front and stand as testament to the high emotions and high ideals recorded in this wonderful and revealing exhibition.

Tate Britain: Barbara Hepworth

When does art become over-familiar, so ingrained that a surprise response becomes impossible? Hepworth's smooth, primal forms, Moore's landscapes morphed into human form; walking around Tate Britain, where I spent many hours many years ago, I found myself nostalgic for the time when the modern pressed itself into my consciousness, when it wasn't familiar or embalmed in reverence.

Tate Britain's Hepworth show was a fruitful re-introduction to this stern yet serene creator, giving us a clear account of stages in Hepworth's artistic career. Room One introduced us to direct carving: while the classical way was for a sculptor to model in clay and then leave it to assistants to cast the work in bronze, in the 1920s a number of sculptors (Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska among them) carved directly into stone. This method was not, it seems, all that revolutionary, and was in fact taught in art schools; but it was associated with decorative rather than fine art. This is always a tricky distinction;. Is John Skeaping's charming Fish (1929-30) a mantelpiece item, while his (attributed) torsos, because they are sort of Grecian, 'fine'? Whose values are at work here?  But perhaps, albeit sceptically, one can detect a kind of higher seriousness in the austere figures which look back to archaic and classical forms next to the charming animal sculptures by contemporaries like Alan Durst, Ursula Edgecumbe, Elsie Henderson. Who were they?  We wonder how fame's trail was blazed, exactly. How many artists, like Leon Underwood, were just not that interested in the networking and self-promotion that lead to a place in the galaxy? How meritocratic is the art history we tell ourselves?

Anyway, I found myself fascinated as much by the kinds of stone as by the works themselves: anhydrite, polyphant, white alabaster, Hoptonwood, Bath, Corsehill - each one suggesting something to the artist's mind by its heft, grain and texture. There is always the magic of working against the stony matter, too: hard, cool Parisian marble becomes the warm soft bodies of Hepworth's Doves (1927). There is a strong sense of contiuity with other epochs, in the seated, inwardly asorbed female figures with their ancient geometrical hair (Contempative Figure, 1928). While the block of stone is suited to bust and seated figure, its grain and curve following sometimes a twist in the body, wood tends towards the vertical. But it, too, steps out of its time: Standing Figure (1929-30), with its stylized face and blank eyes recall the kouroi of Egypt. This was a time, we remember, when artists were finding in the so-called 'primitive' a path away from the oppressive canons of academic tradition and the vacuity of modern life.

Room Two, 'Studio',  is about the partnership, artistic and personal, of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. A work of art makes us wonder about the process of its making, and one of the best ways of tracing that process is to become, imaginatively, the artist herself. And so, in front of Head (1930-31), I feel the Cumberland alabaster in my hand, my body latched on to its vast geological history and the landscape it comes from, my skin answering to its smoothness, my mind's eye picking up the face pushing outwards from within the stone. Carving is unearthing, dis-covering. Everything leads to a kind of simplicity which resonates, which has presence. Modernity makes its mark room: in the Cubist abstraction of Two Heads (1932), in the formal experiments of the Mother and Child series (1934), or the Freudian moment in the phallic imagery of Two Forms (1933) and Standing Figure (1934). Yet at the essential, mystical level, the view is always in the direction of the primal, the prehistoric, the work which bypasses the rational historic mind and speaks to our instincts, as a cliff-face or a cloud may speak to us.
Room 3, International Modernism, puts Hepworth in the context of abstract artists of the period: Alexander Calder, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Piet Mondrian, Auguste Herbin. There are pages from the magazines through which their work became visible.  And here are the kinds of pieces I auto-associate with the name 'Hepworth': smooth, polished, elemental forms (simply called 'Forms'); smooth and gleaming, like distended eggs, tapering standing figures like megaliths; distillations of sand-dunes, the undulations of landscape, forms in a rock pool. The base becomes part of the work. There is something theatrical going on, a feeling that that stones have a mysterious life and speak to each other across quiet spaces. Serenity, purity of a ritual kind takes over from the roughness and mess of ordinary life. Here, and in the next room, we find the family of wooden carvings, hollowed out, painted, strung like Aeolian harps - expressions of the feelings of a landscape, dream versions of caves, tunnels and subterranean streams.
We move into a room of larger wooden sculptures, from the hard tropical wood guarea. These are inspired by a visit to Greece, soon after the tragic death of the artist's son Paul, aged 23. We are invited to perceive a funereal quality to the sculptures, and perhaps there is one, or is that simply a case of reading what we know into what we see? Before we leave, there is a reconstruction of a pavilion for a 1965 exhibition in the Netherlands, with the bronze works exhibited there - looping and folding concentric bands, petrified ripples.
I didn't mind seeing Hepworth indoors. Of course these works take on another dimension in a landscape setting, but sculpture shouldn't depend on a particular environment, and I thought they kept their charge in the soft-toned spaces of the Tate's downstairs galleries. The main weakness of the exhibition was the rather anxious promotion of Hepworth as an international modernist - which she was, but there isn't enough here about Cornwall and the St Ive's community, as if that would make her seem parochial to London gallery-goers; and the more her modernity was stressed, the more I saw the prehistoric and the turning away from modern life. But that is a paradox within Modernism itself. More importantly, the exhibition let the sculptures do their work, speak to the spirit, and quicken our response to the earth, the land, the undulations of that wave, that hillside.

John Finnemore, Teddy Lester

John Finnemore, author of Teddy Lester Captain of Cricket (London: Chambers, 1916), you have given me a joyous lifelong memory. I discovered this book as a boy in my uncle's house. Its orange boards and thick flaky paper intoxicate me still. Now I have rebound Captain of Cricket, I have one other  title in the series, and I search for more whenever I'm in a second-hand bookshop. Teddy, easily the best cricketer in Slapton School, takes the reputation of the house seriously and comes down hard on bullying. He is firm but fair and does what is right. Frank Sandys, brilliant new boy, bowls with a queer shuffling run. His stock ball is a googly (odd, since that is meant to be a surprise delivery), occasionally mixed up with a straight fast one. Ito the Bat is Japanese and bowls with a bizarre action, hence his soubriquet. Teddy and his chums play cricket, in a strange form of the game where bowlers 'find a spot' and become unplayable. They stroll around Slapton school and save the country. Their teachers barely exist.

Penny for your thoughts, Ito, old man.

Who were you, John Finnemore? Wikipedia says there is nothing left now but census returns, and reconstructs your (childless) life with Emma, teaching in Welsh schools, and eventually making real money from writing. I imagine you in your elementary classroom, speaking Welsh, dreaming up Boy's Own plotlines. Is there really nothing out there? No school archives In Aberystwyth, no letters, no manuscripts? Why did you buy a house with fifteen bedrooms?

John Finnemore, you died aged 52. Your books are rare finds today. You are not listed on goodreads, but you are a good read. When I pass by an empty cricket ground, sometimes, at dusk, I stand quite still. The whole of Slapton watches with hushed breath. Everything depends on this last wicket stand, and Frank Sandys is shuffling in to bowl.

Erika Langmuir, A Closer Look: Still Life

This short book, one of a series produced by the National Gallery, is a very helpful introduction to the genre of still life painting. The author explains its beginnings in the Greek xenia (offerings to guests), now known only from description, and Roman wall paintings, like those preserved at Herculaneum and Pompeii. In the medieval and Renaissance period the naturalistic depiction of flowers and objects was justified by their inclusion in narrative paintings, though there are fascinating instances of stand-alones like Gaddi's painting of a cupboard with eucharistic objects in Santa Croce, Florence. The genre really comes into its own around 1600. In just a few pages we get a clear idea of the essential elements of the Dutch still life and the Spanish bodegón, and the subgenres of flower painting and breakast piece. There is an interesting comparison of still life elements in paintings by Caravaggio and Velazquez, in which the author is not shy of expressing an opinion (avoiding the flat even-handedness that can mar expository writing). Other questions are contemplated: how are we to understand the symbolism of a still life, obvious in the case of a vanitas but in other cases more obscure to the modern viewer? What internal dramas are evoked in these mesmerising compositions? I like the thought that often the still life bypasses thought and speaks directly to our sensuous response to the world. The great Chardin is touched on - I would have liked more on him, remembering the wonderful RA exhibition - and there are close engagements with works by Cezanne and Picasso. Because the book is centred on the NG collection, it does not take us further into the twentieth century or into other media like photography and video. I am reading Charles Sterling's book on Still Life, which is superb but weighty with knowledge and lists of painters I have never heard of. This book provided a useful summary of the key episodes of the story. Erika Langmuir, former Head of Education at the NG, has a gift for clear yet passionate writing, and the series as a whole (rebranded as A Closer Look) is beautifully produced.

Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom

The basic thesis of Fear of Freedom is this. We want more freedom for ourselves, but at the same time we are afraid of it. As individuals, we grow up and become more independent. But the more independent we are, the more alone, the more isolated we are: the help of our elders is taken away and at the same time we see others as competitors for the same goods – success, attention, comfort. It’s hard to be alone and embattled for too long.  So it becomes natural to seek refuge in a group, in a system which gives us guidance and protection. We say we dislike authority, then, but at the same time we want it. At a deep level, we feel a need to submit to something which makes us feel part of something bigger: membership of a religion, of a class or a political movement can all do this.

All of this is part of Fromm’s attempt to explain the rise of fascism in the twentieth century, the phenomenon of modern society renouncing the freedoms it has won and embracing the most authoritarian of codes. Here are three kinds of authority which Fromm talks about: these we can call external, internal and invisible.

External authority we can cover very quickly. It is simply anyone out there who is in some position to tell you what to do, or stop you doing something. Parents, teachers, policemen, religious leaders, doctors, perhaps writers – depending on the circumstances, people such as this will have some authority over us. That authority might be legitimate or illegitimate, we might be right to obey it or morally obliged to rebel against it, it might be exercised benignly or maliciously, it might have been acquired honestly or by corruption. The only point here is that it is external to us, we can clearly see that it comes from outside us.

The second kind of authority is internal. This is when the rules we gathered from the outside become internalized, become part of the way we regulate ourselves. The whole point of making young people go to bed at certain times, I suppose, is that eventually this becomes second instinct. In the same way, the various codes and values that we pick up in our early lives will get internalized. To a large extent, they become our conscience, the little voice inside us telling us what’s right or wrong. Conscience is actually a massively important element in Western culture. In the Protestant Reformation, a huge weight was placed on the importance of the individual conscience, which took over from the external authority of the Church. Moral philosophers like Kant elaborated on this idea at length. Just possibly we might be living at a time when that idea is weakening. I can only speak anecdotally, but there seem to be many examples of people acting without any reference to internal conscience at all: some MPs bleating that their expenses were within the rules is a case in point. But I suspect that a lot of the anger directed at politicians comes from an uneasy feeling that they in some way reflect our own behaviour. What can I get away with? How can I play the system? We all dislike those who remind us of our own faults.  Is conscience still a strong determining factor in modern daily life? Maybe it is. In today’s paper, the boarding card airport shop story, where retailers have been making millions in VAT savings and not passing them on to cutomers;  on another page, City of London people collectively lifting a car off someone who’s got hurt. Evidence points all ways.

After external and internal, Fromm’s third type of authority is what he calls ‘invisible’. This is when you’re obeying an authority without even realizing it. How does this work? If you’ve ever seen someone being hypnotized, you’ll know how easy it is to plant ideas in another person’s mind. A person can genuinely believe he is lost and feel distressed, for example, simply because those thoughts have been put in his mind by the hypnotist, even though he has no recollection of having these suggested to him. According to Fromm, you and I are for much of the time in a very similar condition. We all have, say, likes and dislikes in music, political opinions, preferences for particular clothes and so on. But how did those ideas arise? Much as we like to think that we figured it all out ourselves, we would also recognise that a lot of opinion forming is going on around us: advertisements, newspapers, and so-called common sense can all provide us with pre-packaged views that we willingly make our own. And, like the hypnotized man, we come to believe they are our own. It’s useful. We don’t have time or energy to think through the whole of politics for ourselves, for example, so we read our preferred newspaper to learn what our opinions are on a range of subjects. Influential figures in the media can help us too. Except, of course, we think those really are our opinions. Here’s a scenario to illustrate the point.  You watch a football match on TV. You listen to the analysis of an authority figure, a pro. You think, yes, that makes sense. And, later, when someone asks you your opinion of the game you more or less repeat what he said. Only, when you’re saying it, you actually think it’s your own analysis. I’ve expressed opinions on books and films and realized later that I’ve really just repeated a review I read. And I’ve heard highly educated people do just the same thing. Partly it’s because we all need to belong to a group – it’s a basic human requirement – and membership depends on sharing the same ideas as others in the group. The group might be a religious community, or a class, or a union, or a group of political activists; or we might yearn to be accepted into a wine-tasting and opera-loving set, or a merry band of computer game fanatics. Any such group will have its required set of beliefs which you need to embrace to get the full benefits of membership.  And pretty soon and pretty painlessly you’ll believe that they really were your own private views and tastes all along.

So, one suggestion in this book is that while we’re considering, and maybe resenting, one external authority we’re very much in the grip of another authority altogether, the current of popular opinion that carries us along.  Does it matter? To some extent, it must be inevitable that we simply pick up certain views from what’s going on around us. It’s impossible to think everything through individually, and there’s no great shame in adopting at least some of the fashions of the time. But if we really want to stand as individuals, we should leave some space to think some things through ourselves. Academic work provides some opportunity for that, though maybe not much. But everyone knows the satisfaction that comes from thinking something through in some area of life. You might really think about the football match and find Alan Hansen thinks the same thing. Fine, your thought is original because it originated in you, not outside you. Man is a pack animal, and we will all to an extent go with the pack. But we also have a capacity to pull away for a moment, and do the incredibly hard work of actually forming thoughts and judgements in our own minds. We can draw on external authority if it helps; we are free to reject external authority, if we have good grounds for doing so and it’s not just disagreement for its own sake. That way we begin to develop our own voice, to be authentic. That is where our real authority as persons begins.