Saying [uz]

I didn't mean to go to London. I'd thought about Tony Harrison's poetry reading. I saw it advertised and considered buying a ticket. Then I realise it was on the evening of a day when I was working and that I'd have to rush to London after work and get home again the same evening. I thought about how tired I'd be, and how much the train tickets would cost. Plainly it wasn't sensible.

I blame Twitter for what happened next. I just glanced at my Twitterfeed – I don't have time to read every tweet of every person I follow – and saw a quiz question from the Poetry Society, offering tickets to Tony Harrison's reading as a prize. I knew the answer. I didn't stop to think but tweeted back to them – and won the prize. A journey to London still didn't seem sensible but, after a little dithering, I began to realise it was inevitable. I wanted to go.

I first became aware of Tony Harrison as a playwright and translator. I was still at school when I saw his translation of The Misanthrope – into heroic couplets, I think – at the Old Vic. It was clear and witty. It was more than a translation; instead of its original setting in the time of Louis XIV, Moliere's play was transposed to the Paris of Charles de Gaulle. And despite the outstanding acting of Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg, what struck me most was the pulse and neatness of the verse.

Harrison's poetry took longer to reach me. My reading has always been a chancy affair. Then I chose books following from the advice of others, because a couple of lines quoted in a review startled me into a response, or because of an encounter in a library or bookshop. I found Tony Harrison's collection Continuous in a second-hand shop and, in a quick glance through the poems, realised that there was something in the voice that interested me. It took me a while to read more but, as I did, I recognized not only the complexity and the wordplay. This was a poet who was saying something important – and something that mattered to me.

Harrison's work is grounded in his two experiences I share: a sense – emphasised by certain teachers at his schools – that he could never fit into the cultural life of his country because he was born into the working class, and a yearning to acquire knowledge and articulate it. These experiences are part of what fuels his sequence from the School of Eloquence but they are amplified by his awareness that in gaining the education he desired he lost the close communication with his parents that he knew in childhood.

I'm not sure how much that was caused by education. Children often do find a separation from their parents and education may be merely a convenient way to name it. However when a child begins to move in cultural circles which are peopled mainly by those who seem rich and self-confident, the child's apparent confidence among such people can add to the parents' sense of awkwardness, even as they enjoy their child's success. When that is allied, as so much is in Britain, to a rigid class system, the high class barriers – which really do exist – are bound to underline and intensify the separation of child and parent.

Harrison's reading at the Purcell Room began with some of his public poems, which characteristically move from a small personal perception: in one poem the starting point is fish-scales scattered as cormorants fly with gasping fish in the sky above Lindisfarne Castle. From this sight, glimpsed through a train window, the poem moves to consider history, war, politics and the tragedies of past and present life.

The length, scope and formal exactness of his public poems - often published on the news pages of a newspaper - makes them unusual. When Harrison said that his chief influence and model for these works was the messenger's speech in Greek tragedy, I suddenly understood what he was doing much more clearly. The messenger, who arrives towards the end of the play to explain what has happened, is not a major actor in events. He is someone who is on the edge of the action, who is not in himself particularly important but whose role is to tell what he has seen as he saw it. It's a good position for a political poet since it is neither powerful nor directly preachy. It is based in the “I” of personal experience.

I was glad that Harrison's reading included some sonnets from the School of Eloquence sequence. They are what is known as “Meredithian sonnets” and have sixteen lines instead of the usual fourteen. This allows for a more sustained conclusion or reversal than is possible in the fourteen lines of the Shakespearean sonnet. The poems were interspersed with illuminating anecdotes. Before reading “Classics Society,” Harrison explained that, as a schoolboy, he was instructed to translate all Greek and Latin into a high-flown language. This led to some absurdities. Translating a comedy by the Roman playwright Plautus, Harrison had a character who was the Roman equivalent of a policeman saying “Move along there.” The schoolmaster crossed this through and substituted the more elevated command: “Vacate the thoroughfare.”

Harrison also recalled overhearing a woman in the audience for The Misanthrope say (and I paraphrase from memory for I was listening too intently to take notes): “What a command of the English language, my dear – even though he comes from Sheffield” This led Harrison to address the question of his own articulacy. He added to the little poem “Heredity” the recollection of his father's deep shyness.

This made me return with renewed understanding to Harrison's concern to speak for the working class now and in history. The idea of someone speaking on behalf of a class makes me uneasy. I think that the problem is not so much that the working class are silent but that they are often unheard. The problem lies with the powerful who may mock but rarely listen.

But I share is Harrison's anger – an anger which plainly lives on. I have heard recordings of Harrison reading his paired sonnets “Them and [uz]” but I have never heard such anger in them. Harrison takes the teacher's contempt for him and his Leeds accent, expressed in the lines “You're one of those/ Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose” and turns it back against the teacher, using his knowledge to insist that poetry does not come only in Received Pronunciation. The voices of poets of the past have, as Harrison says, been “dubbed” into RP as a foreign language film is dubbed into English – and much is lost in the translation.

I can't give details of all Harrison said or all that he read. I was moved – as he was – by the poems grieving at his parents' deaths. There was also a more hopeful poem – though against a dark backdrop – which Harrison had addressed to his grandson Alfie. On this occasion he read it for the first time at a reading with his grandson in the audience. But one of the final poems came from a play – Harrison's adaptation of Sophocles' Trackers of Oxyrhyncus, which exists only in fragments of papyrus. I have neither seen nor read the play but when I heard the speech I wondered how I could have missed it.

 Harrison's introduction explained that the play had made allusions to the cardboard city that grew up beneath Waterloo Bridge and in other sheltered spaces on the South Bank in the 1980s. It was where the homeless lived and established a community. I remember walking past on occasions; it was not a dangerous place. In the end they were moved on, their homes were dismantled and the area was cleansed. I don't know where the people went.

But the fate of cardboard city and its people was beyond the scope or Harrison's reading. Instead he offered a speech in voice of the satyr Silenus, brother of Marsyas, who was flayed alive on the command of Apollo for daring to learn to play the flute. The satyrs – half man, half goat – are allowed to be comical and inexpert but the Olympian gods will not permit them to be are capable of art and culture. In the speech Apollo stands by, playing the lute as Marsyas is tortured to death. At the end of the speech Silenus resolves to conform and know his place – to take the safe option.

It's a while since Harrison has given public readings. He claims that he was prompted to resume by the discovery that newspapers are updating his obituaries ready for use. But judging from this reading, he's still unwilling to take the safe option. His anger persists and he still uses his poetry as a weapon to attack cruelty and injustice. And the rhythms still sing and the words play on.

 My very brief visit to London brought another joy.  For the first time in more than thirty-five years I encountered the English teacher who taught and encouraged me in my last year and a half at school.  She was also at the reading.  She was an excellent teacher who shared her love of literature and I owe her a very great deal.  Thank you, Miss Hann.

Svengali and strawberry cremes

I have seen Svengali and I was afraid.

I could just about cope with seeing him on stage, though in the small space of the Finborough that meant that, at times, I could have reached out to touch him – but who would dare to touch Svengali? But seeing Svengali in the bar afterwards, drinking Leffe and smiling in my direction …. that was scary.

I treated myself to two shows in London – an afternoon and evening out while visiting my parents. The first I booked for was Trilby. It's a long time since I read the novel but the thought of a late Victorian melodrama for Christmas was enticing. I enjoy shows that provoke thought and reflection but I also love to be caught up in events, to laugh and to feel a shiver down my spine.

On one level, it's impossible to take Trilby seriously. It purports to reinforce the virtues of manly Englishness but, although the actors deliver lines like “You must bear it like a man” with the necessary conviction, the audience can't take them quite seriously. The three would-be artists who share a Paris studio are endearing and appeal, like the cultural references, to the audience's sense of superiority. But the studio setting, however comic and delightful, is merely the background against which the relationship between Trilby, the artists' model, and Svengali, the dangerous oustider, is played out.

In theory, the story of Svengali and Trilby should be regarded with caution. Trilby is poor, charming and generous – her only ambition is to care for Little Billee, the diminutive artist whose respectable family warn her that their marriage represents ruin. As for Svengali, the East European Jew who craves power, wealth and adoration, and achieves all three through his mesmeric powers – he could easily seem no more than an anti-semitic fantasy.

But in David Cottis's production, the audience falls victim to the fascination of both Rebecca Brewer's delightfully Bohemian Trilby and the unblinking stare of Jack Klaff's Svengali, who in one instant assumes the fawning posture of a beggar only to dismiss his landlady and generous neighbours as “pig-dogs” in a venemously angry aside. The artists, whose English sense of superiority includes contemptuous xenophobia, are never as interesting as the man they despise. They are also little more than tourists in the Latin Quarter where Trilby and Svengali are so engagingly at home. The production also includes a brief scene in which Svengali, fearing death, identifies himself as a bad Jew, atypical of his race and religion.

The cast worked so well together that it's hard to single out any of the other actors. However I liked Jon Shaw's concerned and loyal Taffy and laughed a great deal at the prurience of Christopher Morgan's Rev. Bagot, justifying his pleasure in the nude drawings in the studio as specimens of “the antique.” Congratulations are also due to the artist whose work decorated the set.

It should have been enough to see Trilby but I reasoned that I could have a whole day at the theatre and see Quality Street as well. I couldn't resist seeing the play that inspired the chocolates, even though I've boycotted Nestlé for years.

This is the fifth play by J.M. Barrie I've seen. I've observed that they shine in performance. I'm also fascinated by his treatment of class (mostly servants) and how this is connected with ideas of self-deception and masquerade.

Quality Street seems to be about the virtues of ladylike behaviour and women's quiet strength and endurance. But other questions keep surfacing: the double standards applied to the behaviour or mistress and servant; the barely-suppressed desires of women for men and the financial stability they represent; the bad behaviour of English soldiers in war; and the maimed men who return home. Phoebe (charmingly played by Claire Redcliffe) may be the play's embodiment of strong and long-suffering female virtue but she is implicated in dishonesty from the first scene of the play. First she pretends to exert power over her servant and then, in a telling exchange with the Recruiting Sergeant, refuses to accept that English soldiers join the army to sack, to loot and even, it is implied, to rape.

Patty, the servant, wonderfully played by Catherine Harvey, seems to know all this. She is the real power in the household, though she too would like to escape into the security of marriage, reasoning that her chance may come with the returning soldiers who will need wives to take off and put on their wooden legs.

Louise Hill's delightful production sensibly plays down these elements, allowing the audience to revel in the comedy and frothy sweetness. The play is superficially reassuring, suggesting that England is at its best as a place of ladylike deception. But Quality Street has the synthetic sweetness of strawberry cremes – delicious at first but with a disturbingly metallic aftertaste.

I recommend the Finborough to everyone but hope that there isn't too big a rush to this tiny theatre -I'd hate to find a show sold out next time I try to book.

"The pity of war"

Shakespeare's Othello is a soldier. He had killed his opponents in face-to-face combat and ordered others to kill. This is what gives him value in Venice. He is defined as a Moor and, while it's not clear quite what Shakespeare meant by this in terms of race, it makes one thing plain: away from his military role, Othello is an outsider. His family comes from elsewhere. He has one memento of his mother: a handkerchief embroidered with strawberries – and he has given this to Desdemona, the woman he loves and his new wife. Apart from that, he is as absorbed as he can be by his military role – until his meeting with Desdemona, the army has taken the place of family affections and loyalties. Of course he trusts his comrades in arms but he is their general. He is unprepared for their jealousy or scheming.

Often in Shakespeare's plays I find a single repeated word that seems to provide a guide to one of the themes of the play. In Othello, that word is pity. Speaking of his growing love for Desdemona as he recognized her love for him, Othello declares that he perceived her growing love when she heard the tale of his life and found it “wondrous pitiful.” He continues: “She loved me for the dangers I had passed/ And I loved her that she did pity them.”

Pity returns with renewed force when Othello is finally, wrongly convinced of Desdemona's infidelity. He cries out to the soldier who has deceived him, “But yet, the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it ...” At the end of the play, Othello, seeing Desdemona asleep in the bed where he will strangle her, is almost overcome by pity. But instead he does what he believes his honour requires – he strangles her. Then, realising too late that he was deceived, he kills himself.

I wonder if Wilfred Owen had that famous cry of Othello in mind when he coined his famous phrase “the pity of war.” He used it twice: in his poem “Strange Meeting” and in the roughly-drafted preface he sketched out for a collection of poems. He listed the topics that his poems would avoid – they include, heroes, glory and honour. Instead he states baldly: “My subject is War, and the pity of War.”

Wilfred Owen's attitude to war was inconsistent. At times he enjoyed battle – he wrote of one conflict “I lost my earthly faculties and fought like an angel.” He collected at least one souvenir from a dead German: a blood-spattered handkerchief which he sent as a present to his young brother. Yet he also wrote “I am a conscientious objector with a very seared conscience.”

Owen's attitude was typical of many soldiers in the First World War and later conflicts. Sometimes they were frightened, sometimes they suffered, sometimes they killed and sometimes they exulted in the sufferings of others. The same men who performed heroic actions could abuse prisoners, enjoy slaughter and then endure acute pain stoically. Soldiers, like Othello, need pity. So do the civilians and the friends and families of soldiers.

I'm uncomfortable about war memorials which urge us to honour “our glorious dead.” War isn't about glory. It's about people who are trained to kill carrying out orders. Sometimes they are killed. Plenty of civilians – including children – are killed and maimed by soldiers every year. The soldiers who survive have to live with what they did and what was done to them.

First World War soldiers often found a strange dissonance between the experience of trench warfare and the myth of heroism, honour and glory to which they returned on leave. We seem to be creating similar myths. “I don't care how you wear your poppy, so long as you wear your poppy with pride,” the British Legion's representative declared on TV. Soldiers – all soldiers – are routinely referred to as “heroes.” It's seen as bad taste to mention episodes of warfare that aren't heroic. Whatever horrors are committed by other countries' soldiers, we're supposed to believe that British soldiers never, ever behave like that.

It's strange. There's little support for this centuries' wars but the public tends to support the army and cheers the homecoming soldiers as heroes. Every so often we're asked to feel sorry for the soldiers and how they suffer – and I do pity them.

But soldiers are more than suffering heroes. They have inner lives and consciences. They are also trained killers and, although it's not often mentioned, many of them kill people. The people they kill are not always soldiers.

I've no wish to condemn the soldiers. I don't wish to be in their position – and, if I were, I expect that, for all my pacifism, I would end by acting in much the same way but with less efficiency. Soldiers deserve something more honest than a myth of heroism and glory.

Another brave soldier-poet, Keith Douglas, who fought in the Battle of El Alamein, looked coolly at himself as a killer and at the corpses of those he killed. In his poem “Vergissmeinicht” (Forget-me-not) he returns to the scene of a tank battle three weeks afterwards and finds the dead body of a soldier he killed. The emotions of the British soldiers are not pleasant; they see the abused and decaying body “almost with content.” But the discovery of a picture of the dead man's girlfriend reminds the poet that the dead man was not only a killer. The poem ends:

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

The pity of war indeed. The pity of it.

Democratic duties

I last went to a candidates' meeting in 1997, uncertain how to vote. Part of me desperately wanted an excuse to vote Labour so that I could be part of the overthrow of Thatcherism and be sure that things could only get better. There was only one meeting. I sat on a hard pew in the packed local Baptist church, surrounded by hopeful voters, and wished that I shared their optimism.

This year, there's a choice of candidates' meetings: five, I think, in our part of the constituency. The local newspaper has got involved and is sponsoring debates. I wondered how many people would attend the meeting I'd selected. It was in a local school and clashed with the beginning of the first party leaders' debate on TV. Once again, I wasn't keen but I accompanied my son who's thinking hard about how to use his first ever vote.

We were ten minutes early. The organisers must have been pessimistic about attendance as there were only eight or ten rows – mostly full. We found two seats together in the second row – apparently no-one wanted to be too near the candidates. As the hall filled, more chairs were found until the rows stretched to the back of the hall. Then I settled down to watch.

The meeting was more carefully managed than some, perhaps influenced by the rules for the leaders' meetings on TV. Members of the audience weren't even expected to ask their own question – instead questions were written down and handed to a steward who would pass them to the chair who relayed them to the candidates. Whole areas of policy, including education and civil liberties, were ignored except when a candidate mentioned a single measure in passing.

I'm not sure how clear an idea it gave me of the candidates. I didn't get any sense of the BNP man, since he chose not to turn up. I wasn't going to vote for him anyway. Personal impressions counted for a great deal.

The UKIP man was surprisingly likeable - I didn't agree with him but he listened to people, answered clearly and seemed straightforward. He seemed the sort of man who would be a good friend, colleague or boss – and probably a good conversationalist over a coffee, beer or wine.

I wanted to be impressed by the Green candidate. Every survey I take tells me I'm more aligned to the Green policies than those of any other party. Again the candidate seemed personally likeable and his experience – as a self-employed craftsman and school governor – is just the kind of experience that's needed in the House of Commons. But he was unclear on policies – actually unsure what they were or how big questions could be addressed – and plainly unready for parliament. With six months of hard work he might become a decent candidate but he's not ready yet. It's a shame.

The Liberal Democrat is a sitting councillor. He was confident on local issues and broad policy areas and was probably the best speaker of the evening. He had a couple of good soundbites - “We were right on Iraq and right on the economy” and “Charlie Kennedy was drunk and he was still right on Iraq” - and spoke particularly well on the need for international aid, drawing on experience of life in Malawi. Apart from that, I was worried that his strengths were local rather than national – an MP has to deal with national questions.

There was only one woman among the candidates – the conservative. I’m far from being a tory supporter but I’ve seen some good tory initiatives such as David Davies’ support for civil liberties. I’ve also had enough experience of being the only woman in a male environment to know it’s difficult so I tried, at least, to like the candidate. I couldn’t. She seemed like a lacquered version of Margaret Thatcher without the smiles. There was no pretence at liking the audience or the other candidates, just an array of facial expressions that ranged from the sneer to eye-rolling incredulity. Her manner as a speaker shifted between the deliberately informal to the rehearsed speech with hand gestures, reminding me that she had been a broadcaster and was now a barrister. Some of the things she said were good – she asserted that she had opposed the war in Iraq and favoured international aid – but she also declared that she agreed with every word in the tory manifesto.

The Labour candidate had all the advantage of 13 years as the constituency MP. He was familiar with the major political questions as well as local concerns so his answers were thoughtful and knowledgeable. He was polite to his opponents and took the audience seriously. He even said he’d been wrong to vote for the war in Iraq and that he now opposed ID cards because they would cost too much. This was quite a U-turn – he used to be a keen defender of government policy and took personal credit for advancing the proposal for ID cards. His line was the hackneyed one that people who had nothing to hide have nothing to fear – perhaps he’s the only person in the country to reckon he’s lived an entirely blameless life. He also spoke against government policy on asylum seekers on the grounds that it was too harsh – but I don’t think he’s ever voted against it.

I like the Labour candidate. I think he’s an honest man who honestly convinces himself that, in most circumstances, his government and party is absolutely right. I live in a Labour-Tory marginal and, if I don’t want a tory government, which I don’t, logic demands I should vote Labour. I won’t do it.

Labour is better on some issues. There’s a historic link with socialism and, although it’s frayed almost to breaking during New Labour days, it probably still means that the cuts which the new government will impose will hurt the poor less under Labour. But this government has supported war and opposed civil liberties to an extent that has made me fearful. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act is one among many dangerous pieces of legislation. I used to think of myself of law-abiding. Now I take it for granted that, if the government wanted, they could find some law that I’ve broken and use it to imprison me. There’s a certain perverse freedom in that. I no longer worry much about what the law says.

New Labour has also supported mistreatment and torture of prisoners, including prisoners who haven’t been found guilty of any offence. These range from asylum seekers and their children – some very young indeed – to suspects who were kidnapped by the Americans, bundled into planes and transported overseas to be questioned under torture. It’s called “extraordinary rendition” and the Americans have now admitted that it happened. I wrote to my nice, tolerant Labour MP about this in January 2005, when the evidence was mounting up. There were witnesses who had seen what was happening, records of flights tallied and companies were named. My MP responded that the evidence was “thinly-based,” that the British government couldn’t be expected to ban flights from stopovers or subject them to scrutiny. He added, “If there was a specific allegation that a prisoner was being held captive in a plane … I’d take a different view and I’d think his lawyers would have a strong case for asylum.” The idea that someone who has just been kidnapped by the CIA will have access to lawyers us so ludicrous that it suggests my MP lives on a different planet.

When I think about the war, civil liberties and government attitudes to torture, I know I can’t vote Labour, even though I dread a tory government. I suppose it will have to be Lib Dem. I don’t feel happy about it. But at least it will annoy the press, which is on the attack. The Daily Mail this morning misrepresented a fine article Nick Clegg wrote as “Clegg’s Nazi slur”. I firmly expect an eve-of-poll headline saying “Nick Clegg will eat your babies.”

Goodbye to Christmas

For the moment, the artificial Christmas tree is aglow with white lights. Their fragile sparkle blurs across tinsel and imitation pine needles. The gold pear shines and there's a sheen of gold on the baubles made years back by my niece and nephew. There's even a brief warmth on the blank face of the wicker angel. But when I've finished writing this post, I'll turn off the lights, take down the decorations, dismantle the tree and put it away until next Christmas. I no longer wish to celebrate.

News of a friend's death reached me yesterday afternoon. It was sudden - he was on his way home from Skye where he's spent Christmas with his wife and a friend when illness and death overtook him. The day after he died I'd been wondering when he'd be home and online again - I didn't know that the answer was "never." There will be no more emails, no more poems, no more comments urging the value of liberty and the human spirit.

For me, 2009 has been a year of loss. The absence of friends marks this new year more than the uncertainties of the present.

I'm looking forward without much confidence. My vision for the future is a gloomy one: greater poverty and greater hatred - politicians and the press urging us to a frenzy of self-interest. I see thought discouraged, freedom curtailed, fear proclaimed as a sacred cause and armies sent abroad with bombs in the name of "peace". I fear for the language. I fear for the earth and all its people. It is not a future I wish to share.

Yet, in the early hours I had a dream. I thought I was awake. I lay in bed and there was a constriction about my chest, as though it was bound tight. My friends who had died were close and asked, "Do you want to join us?" I could see only faint reasons to say "no" - death seemed safer and friendlier than this perilous world. I thought of my responsibilities and paused. There are people I love who would grieve at my death, I think, as I grieve for the deaths of friends. Still the company of the dead seemed warm and pleasant. There would be stories to tell and laughter, I thought, and an end to struggle and worry. Yet despite that warmth I felt a small, dull urge to remain on earth and knew, reluctantly, that my place was still with the living.

I slid back from my dream into sleep. When I woke, hours later, it was daylight.

Derby revisited

I went back to Derby. I was determined to see L'Armee du Crime. This time I'd checked with QUAD that the film had been properly ingested. My cold was a bit better. Something at the back of my mind warned me that I wasn't quite well enough but I was fed up with limitations and headed back to the cinema.

I think this is only the second French film about the Resistance I've seen. The first, L'Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows), shook me with its darkness. It began and ended during the occupation and showed members of a Resistance cell punishing their own members - always with execution - when any disobedience made the group vulnerable to betrayal. Although I knew that the Occupation ended, there was no happy ending of Liberation.

The title of L'Armée du Crime suggested a dialogue with the earlier film. There are other similarities. The film is similar in shape: it begins and ends during the Occupation, shows a key character being captured early in the film and ends by explaining what happened to the surviving characters. But there are key differences.

In L'Armée des Ombres, the main characters are members of mainstream French society who therefore seem to represent French opposition to Nazi occupation. I may be misrembering, but the film seemed to me as shadowy as its title. Shades were sombre as though brightness had been leached from the film-maker's palette.

L'Armée du Crime, like the recently-released photographs by André Zucca, has sequences of light. There are moments of happiness when Paris is, as one of the characters says, "beautiful". Ordinary Parisiens get on with their lives in technicolor. They - like the Resistance members and Nazi occupiers - have picnics, enjoy food, sing and make love. The Nazi occupiers who are killed and blown up by the Resistance are not deeply characterised but - perhaps more disturbingly - are shown enjoying life in Paris. The stroll in the sunshine, look at the Eiffel Tower, attend a book launch, chat with laughing young women in the doorway of a brothel. Neither they nor the Resistance members have lost their capacity for happiness.

Inevitably the light and happiness is in tension with darker events. Communist prisoners are executed in revenge for every Nazi killed. First ten are executed for every one Nazi, then twenty. A policeman who seems as kindly and anxious as every hero of a police procedural sighs as he reports a woman's anxieties about her neighbour - and sighs again when he watched the neighbour being tortured. Jews, trusting the French commitment to the "rights of man" stitch yellow stars onto their clothes. Then they obey the French policemen who cram them into ordinary buses on their way to the internment camp at Drancy. The buses roll past ordinary Parisiens who are unconcerned.

As the film proceeds, the contrast between everyday happiness and the cruelties that ordinary people would rather ignore becomes sharper. A soundtrack of Charles Trenet singing "Je chante" plays as a Jewish restaurant is smashed. Human beings are tortured in a cellar and no-one - not even the victims - questions that this is how things are. Outside is familiar Paris. There is still sunlight and beauty.

This isn't a film about typical French heroes defending their country from an external invader. Its focus is the cell led by the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian. Almost all the cell members are immigrants or stateless refugees. Manouchian's father was killed in the Armenian genocide and the group included Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians and Spaniards. Some were Spanish Civil War veterans. Several were Jewish. Most were Communists and the story begins with news of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which brought the Nazi-Soviet pact to an end, heightening the vulnerability of communist exiles in France.

The decision to resist violently is not treated lightly in this film. Manouchian in particular, chooses to abandon his ethical principles. But there are no easy choices for the members of this Resistance cell. Most of them risk death merely by being "untermensch." But the official poster - l'affiche rouge - issued after their death failed in its attempt to show the cell members as criminals rather than liberators. Its description of the activities of the Manouchian group led to the accolade "morts pour la France" (died for France).

It's a long, complex and gripping film. I walked away from the cinema reflecting on French response to the film. Although it was shown out of competition at Cannes - and despite the director's reputation - the film did badly in reviews and at the box office. I wondered whether this was caused by the film's implicit response to L'Armée des Ombres. It's an uncomfortable film, given the way the Liberation of Paris is currently perceived: achieved by the Resistance with the support of the people of Paris. I wondered uncomfortably how current anti-immigrant feeling had worked against the film. Imprisonment and deportation of refugees take place regularly - in England too - to widespread silence from the safe, passport-holding citizens of Europe.

I was nervous on the dark, damp and empty streets that led to the station. After all the violence of the film, I was alert to the risk of attack. I glanced ahead and tried to check no-one was lurking in the shadowy spaces behind bollards or advertisements. Gradually, as the few strangers on the roads failed to attack me - I think they were more concerned with getting home or to the pub - I became calmer.

There was some time to wait before my train. I took up the recommendation of a commenter on my previous post and enjoyed a swift half in the Brunswick, a restored Georgian pub with micro-brewery. It's very convenient for the station and I hope to go there again when I'm next in Derby. A £1 cone of chips from the Station Fish Bar provided a warming supper as I headed home.

The all-purpose May Day march

It's May. Some of the empty shops have unexpected blossoms: bright new businesses nestling in bankrupt empty caverns and urging sunlit strollers to enter and buy. I have little hope they'll make it through next winter but there's something appealing about their optimism, even though I doubt a champagne bar will succeed in a suburban high street.

All over Europe, yesterday was May Day. In England, they waited till today for the marches and the holiday is on Monday. I read about Nottingham's march on Indymedia and decided to join in.

We assembled in Brewhouse Yard at the bottom of Castle Rock against a background of caves. There were flimsy but colourful stalls with banners, books and badges. A van was selling vegetarian food and the Clarion choir was preparing to sing.

Sometimes Nottingham's May Day marches have a focus - I've been on one which was against the war in Iraq - but this year all sorts of people were involved. The campaign against privatising the Post Office had top billing but there were marchers from several trades unions, peace groups, and left-wing organisations or parties. I was offered a CND placard, against the renewal of Trident, and agreed to carry it. That made it hard to take photos.

We ambled cheerfully through Nottingham, led by a samba band. Caught in the middle of the crowd of people and banners (police estimates reckoned about 500 of us), I couldn't see the band or many of the marchers. My view was largely of the backs of banners, police (with numbers and earpieces securely in place) and smiling crowds. No-one seemed greatly perturbed at the slight delay we caused - instead bystanders stopped to read the banners, raised their phones to take photos or even started dancing along to the samba band. Occasional attempts to start chanting slogans foundered. There was some annoyance at bankers but this didn't flower into anger. Instead brief conversations sprang up in which individuals shared their concern. But conversations subsided. We were enjoying the sun, the crowds, the company and the walk.

It was a short amble, causing no difficulties for the small children in family groups or the people in power-wheelchairs. We passed the edge of the Market Square, the Robin Hood statue beneath the castle and the abandoned Lace Centre before re-entering Brewhouse Yard. Then the marchers looked at one another's stalls, queued for vegetarian food and sat on the grass to hear the music and speeches.

I deposited my placard and bought a veggie burger before wandering round the stall. I paused for a while to talk to people at the Refugee Forum, still collecting for the destitute asylum seekers whose poverty shames us. I accepted a leaflet for the campaign to free Hicham Yezza. Like many people who are arrested with a great fanfare on terrorism charges, he's now been imprisoned on visa irregularities and is threatened with deportation. And I spoke to a fellow Quaker behind the stall for the City of Sanctuary campaign, which asks, simply, that we make refugees and asylum seekers welcome.

There was a speech by Alan Simpson, one of the few Labour MPs I would vote for. Unfortunately he's not my MP and he's retiring at the next election. He spoke passionately about the environment, but I was enjoying the sun so much my concentration wandered. I couldn't focus on the songs (by Red Banner) for long either. I wandered off to inspect the trades union banners, now propped against the caves that were carved from the sandstone centuries ago. (No-one lives there now.) I wondered briefly what the march might have achieved. At least we all enjoyed it - and the event was encouraging. I felt less alone in my concerns. And so, encouraged, I slipped away.

Billy and the bananas

On Friday evening I got to hear - and briefly talk to - Billy Bragg. On Saturday morning I encountered a large number of bananas. It was an unusual beginning to the weekend.

Billy Bragg was "in conversation." Tickets cost £3 and, as my son's a fan, I bought two. Then my son was ill with a virus. At the last minute, I asked a colleague. She turned out to be a fan and was delighted at the invitation - she'd been too late to get a ticket. "I'm going to marry Billy Bragg," she told me, as we headed to the event. "My husband says it's fine and he quite understands, so long as it's Billy."

I didn't have quite the same enthusiasm. I enjoy some of Billy Bragg's songs and was interested to hear him talk but half my reason for attending was to report back to my son.

Within two minutes' of Billy Bragg's arrival, I knew I'd made the right decision. He's quick-witted, intelligent, funny, modest and passionate about changing the world. One of the questioners from the audience asked why he didn't stand from parliament. Billy gave two answers. First, he's a singer, not a politicians. And second, he thinks politics is for ever, not just professional politicians.

I don't always agree with Billy. I can see why he thinks patriotism is important (and I'd like "Jerusalem" as an English national anthem) but I simply don't share his love of country. I love places and people but I'm not a patriot in that sense. Perhaps I felt an outsider to early in my life. And I think Billy is too optimistic - but that's a good fault. I wouldn't mind sharing his optimism.

What I share is his concern to involve people in political action and public debate. There are dangers in that - people won't always make the right decision - but sometimes the people are right and their leaders wrong. At least 1 in 50 people in Britain marched against the Iraq war and they were supported by the majority of the population. That opposition came out of public debate - but the leaders told us contemptuously that we were wrong, stupid and cowardly. On the question of Iraq, the majority was right and our leaders were disastrously, cruelly wrong.

Billy was on his way to a gig for the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike. He'd been involved in the campaign to support the miners. I wasn't. Living in London at the time, I thought Arthur Scargill should call a ballot - and that no government would ever close the coalmines on the scale Scargill suggested. I was wrong. I couldn't have done much to support the striking miners but I wish I'd done something.

On the day that Billy prepared for his gig, I too took political action - but it was more modestly expressed. I ate a banana.

It was part of an attempt to set a world banana-eating record (the most in a particular place in a 24-hour period) in support of Fair Trade. There were fairly-traded goods to try (mostly cake and chocolate) as well as games and information. Quite a few people were dressed as bananas.

I'm in support of Fair Trade. Rich countries have a bad record of exploiting poor people in poor countries, forcing them to work for low wages. Obviously we should pay decent wages rather than forcing farmers and labourers into near-destitution. But I'm uncomfortable about the way bigger companies have begun to use Fair Trade to lure shoppers away from small companies and shops. Cadbury is to start using Fair Trade cocoa in its chocolate bars, guaranteeing the minimum Fair Trade wage to its producers. But the world price of cocoa has risen so much in the recent market turmoil that it's not going to cost Cadbury anything just now.

The Fair Trade bananas which we ate for our attempt on the record were provided by Sainsbury's. Speakers thanked Sainsbury's for their generosity and the people in the square applauded. But I wonder what the small greengrocer on the edge of the square thought. Hallam's has been selling fish and vegetables for more than a century. I don't eat fish but the vegetables are good and often grown locally. They had a fine display of organic, fairly-traded bananas - but I wonder how many people bought from Hallam's when Sainsbury's was giving bananas away.

Propaganda and art

Only two minutes' walk from the exhibition of American prints is a smaller, less flashy exhibition with much narrower scope. As its title suggests, Windows on War: Soviet War Posters 1943-45 looks at the development of a particular kind of propaganda poster in a narrow but significant period.

The collection of posters survived in Nottingham by a mixture of chance and generosity. A university professor - Vivian de Sola Pinto - was posted to Moscow on war service and collected a number of the window posters and printed posters which were produced by TASS (the Central Soviet Telegraph Agency). He collected more than 100 big window posters as well as some smaller printed posters and brought them home with them. Eventually he donated them to Nottingham University. They're a fragile collection and rare too - although major artists and poets collaborated on the work, the posters were a response to the war and intended to have an immediate effect.

I've never worried that artists of all kinds create work that is labelled "propaganda." Every work of art is propaganda for something, whether the work is loudly and ostentatiously political or quietly insists that art itself matters. All artistic creators have views, beliefs and prejudices - not necessarily comfortable ones - and these inevitably leak into their work. I'd rather deal with the unpleasant beliefs of Pound or the jingoism of Kipling, which are openly proclaimed, than the respectable-sounding class and racial sneers of T.S. Eliot or the deeply embedded prejudices of Philip Larkin. But it's the Eliot and Larkin who make it into school syllabuses while Pound and Kipling are judged too propagandist.

On the whole I can deal with overt propaganda, though I may dislike it and disagree strongly. I'm less comfortable when artists have been forced to produce propagandist art, not just because of the danger of bad art (though insincere art isn't necessarily bad; the compliments to Elizabeth I in A Midsummer Night's Dream are as delightful as they were - almost certainly - insincere). What I dislike is the power structure that harnesses art in this way and treats its effects as utilitarian and quantifiable. There's almost always something brutal about governments that do this.

The Soviet posters disturbed me for a range of reasons. Few of these were to do with power structures. To my surprise, Soviet leaders were rarely present in the posters though there was one in which a child held up a picture of Stalin as if brandishing an icon for veneration. The posters in the collection were largely focussed on hatred of Germans and the desire for vengeance. I suppose that in the years since World War II we've become so used to the evils of Nazism that we expect war posters to assert some sort of moral high ground. Looking back on British posters and cartoons of the period, they probably show the same desire for hatred and vengeance. I notice it less because it's rooted in traditions with which I'm familiar. But that desire to inflict known and unbearable pain on other human beings makes me feel sick and hopeless.

Occasionally the posters were gentler in tone. A headscarfed woman held her finger to her lips, warning that careless talk costs lives. A nurse gave water to a wounded soldier. A sturdy blond woman stood surrounded by her sturdy blond children. She was a "heroine of the Soviet Union," officially honoured for giving birth ten times. Her children, it was implied, would grow into new soldiers, replacing those who had died repelling the invaders.

Invading armies are not loved. It's not a new thought. From Sparta to the present day, mothers have sent their children to kill or be killed - and poets have praised vengeance as wel as lovel.

The David of Michelangelo

When I was young, everyone knew the story. There was war between the Philistines and the Jews. The Philistines were brutal and bullying. Nonetheless, for some unspecified reason, they sent out their champion and invited the Jews to send their own champion to face him in single combat.

The Philistines' champion was Goliath - a giant and a one-man killing machine. The Jews had no idea who to send against him until David, the shepherd boy, volunteered with stories of how he'd killed a lion and a bear while looking after his father's flocks. King Saul did his best for David and dressed him in fancy armour but David couldn't even walk in it. Instead he chose to go out against Goliath in his everday clothes, armed only with a stick, a sling and five round pebbles. And of course, he had his faith in God - this is the Bible after all.

Even if you've never heard the story before, you know how it must end. David took his sling and a pebble and hit Goliath right in the centre of his forehead. When the giant toppled down, David hacked his head off. Then the Philistines fled.

The story's a popular one. I've known about the statues of David by the sculptors Donatello and Michelangelo. But I never wondered why they were made. It was only a few years ago that I learnt the way in which David was seen as the symbol of Florence, which saw itself as a weak city surrounded by larger, threatening states.

Florence certainly faced threats but these days we see it as strong and influential rather than weak and threatened. The symbol of David's weakness overcoming strength is one that could easily be appropriated by any faction, family or individual who ruled Florence. Even the strongest states and leaders often present themselves as victims.

Most states have been victims at some time. Britain, which ruled an empire with the usual mix of occasional benevolence and institutional brutality, saw rebellious "natives" as a threat - and the colonised could be cruel and violent. More recently, the Blitz in World War Two haunts us.

The United States grew out of British persecution of dissenters - and persecuted the American Indians to the brink of extermination. Recently the televised horror of 9/11 showed us America as victim again. What happened in Fallujah was not televised.

And Israel came out of centuries of persecution culminating in the mechanised brutality of the Shoah. When the state of Israel was founded, a horrified and remorseful west recognized the state at once. A culture soaked in Bible readings was bound to sympathise with the people of David. But the land was already inhabited and, shaken by its own war and refugees, the West didn't consider the newly dispossessed Palestinians.

And now we're watching Gaza, the land of Gath and Ashkalon, the land of the Philistines. There's another unequal contest between strength and weakness. Israel faces real threats. But it's a well-armed country, the only nuclear power in the Middle East. Gaza has starved under a blockade and most of its inhabitants are children. In the Bible the giant killing-machine is killed and a massacre ensues. In real life, I don't know what comes next. I long for an end to the violence and vengeance.

To whom it may concern

I heard Adrian Mitchell perform only once, back in the 1970s. Then it was his poem about Victor Jara (later set to music) that made an impression.

I'm hesitant about political conviction as I am about religious conviction. Both have the capacity for evil as well as good and justified anger can lead swiftly to the cruelties of hate and vengeance. But Adrian Mitchell's poem for Victor Jara didn't call for vengeance. It simply insisted that we listen to what had done. Victor Jara was a folk singer who had supported the socialist President Allende. In the wake of the CIA-backed coup (on September 11, 1973) that toppled Allende and installed the dictator Pinochet, Jara was one of thousands taken to the Chile Stadium. His captors tortured him before they killed him; the broke his hands to make sure that he could never play the guitar again. Sometimes it's the details of cruelty that appal - it's easy to let the wealth of statistics sweep over me. But I couldn't forget about Victor Jara's hands.

These days, like most people, I've become infected by a kind of cynical helplessness. There is more I could do to oppose injustice, cruelty and so forth, but it's hard to believe it will do any good. But when I heard that Adrian Mitchell had died, I sought out his most famous poem, "To whom it may concern," and found a youtube video of his performance at the Albert Hall for the Poetry International. When Adrian Mitchell performed in 1965, he seemed like the voice of an angry hope for the future. The huge audience included Alan Ginsberg. The Vietnam war is long over but the there are still wars and safe, convenient, public lies. Adrian Mitchell went on campaigning and writing, though the audiences were smaller. But something seems to have vanished from the world since the campaign against the Vietnam War. Perhaps it was lost when our government refused to listen to the people who marched against war in Iraq. These days the innocence of hope is almost dead.

The world is a poorer place for the loss of Adrian Mitchell.

Bringing home the dead

It may be the middle of the Olympics but, when I turned on the TV, there were no sports and the news had been delayed. The state funeral for ten French soldiers killed in Afghanistan was carried live.

I don't approve of war and I don't usually like state ceremonies. I'm opposed to most of President Sarkozy's policies, including his pursuit of the west's unwinnable war in Afghanistan. But when I watched the end of the funeral ceremonies in the courtyard of Les Invalides, he seemed to have done something right.

Certainly the funeral included rhetoric about the heroism of war. The the French President - and most of his cabinet - faced the ten coffins and watched saw the grief of the families of the dead. Wives, children, parents clutched one another and cried. In turn they stooped over the flag-draped coffin that held the familiar flesh and kissed it - some once, some many times. No-one could erase their pain - it was part of the ceremony.

Soldiers, ministers and families faced that grief as the band played the Marseillaise.

There was a strange ceremony - strange to me, though I think it's familiar in France. Sarkozy stood at the foot of each coffin in turn and appointed each dead soldier, by name, a knight of the Legion d'Honeur. So far as I could see, he had no notes. He had to speak the name of each soldier in turn before pinning the medal on a red cushion at the foot of the coffin. I couldn't help recalling what happened when Maya Evans and Milan Rai read the names of the British soldiers killed in Iraq at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Of course, there were gaps. The debate about the war and the funerals of the Afghan dead take place elsewhere. But it seemed right that a President should name and honour the dead while his cabinet stands with head bowed. It seemed right that the leader who pursues a war should pay homage to the men he sent to kill and be killed in pursuit of his policy. It seemed right that a country should see mourning and grief on live TV.

So far, 116 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan. 176 have died in Iraq. I haven't noticed any state funerals, though there have been public messages of condolence to the families. Sometimes the funerals have been reported. Sometimes these are intimate family occasions with uniformed soldiers joining the congregation. On other occasions they are full-scale military events. Sometimes there are no coffins because there are no remains. Some funerals include denunciations of the war and attacks on government policy.

The absence of British cabinet ministers from the funerals of dead soldiers seems a kind of cowardice but perhaps it's just the usual concern for image and spin. In the United States this goes further. President Bush has attempted to prevent journalists from acquiring any photographs of the coffins coming home.

At the end of the French state funeral I saw something else surprising. There was a soldier in a wheelchair. His comrades were helping him over the cobbles. In Britain we don't see much of the injured. A group of severely injured soldiers wanted to join the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the cenotaph last year. At first they were encouraged to take part. Then they were told they weren't welcome because serving soldiers aren't allowed.

They do things differently in France.

A killing machine

"Will you see the Victory?" everyone asks.

A trip to Portsmouth is unthinkable, it seems, without a visit to the historic dockyard. So we went to the dockyard. I found money-off vouchers at the tourist information office and bought annual season tickets, which meant that we could spread our visits out over the week.

The Victory came first.

In traditional British history, HMS Victory is iconic - the flagship where Nelson died while leading the British fleet to victory over the French and Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar. I'm of the generation that can quote Nelson's phrases: "England expects every man to do his duty" - his message to the fleet before the battle, and "Kiss me, Hardy" - his final words. (The respectable version says that his last words were, "Thank God I have done my duty" - perhaps that version is true.) I also recall that Nelson left his beautiful mistress, Emma, Lady Hamilton, as a "bequest to the nation". The nation, as usual, averted its eyes from this evidence of Nelson's scandalous misbehaviour and Emma Hamilton died as she was born, in poverty. The nation was more concerned in the return of Nelson's body in a cask of brandy to St Paul's Cathedral where, after a period of laying in state, public mourning and processions, it was buried. It's still hard to escape Nelson memorials - the most famous if Trafalgar Square in London, where a stone Nelson stands high on his column.

The romance of Nelson takes over from the reality - the small sailor, blind in one eye, with one arm amputated, never free of seasickness. The glamour cheered Britain in later wars - Winston Churchill was a fan of the 1941 Alexander Korda film Lady Hamilton in which Laurence Olivier played Nelson and Vivien Leigh was Emma.

Visiting the Victory took me away from the myth - to some degree at least, although the decks are scrubbed and the cannon shine. The ship seems spacious - big enough to take 200 tourists at once - but its full crew was 850 men. Much was made in my school history lessons of the opportunities for advancement offered by the navy - and there were certainly chances for the midshipmen who joined at the age of 11 or 12 from their middle-class families. But midshipmen had it easy compared with the common seamen who were often taken by the press gang. These took turns to sleep in hammocks between the cannon and were punished by brutal naval discipline if they broke any minor rule.

The Victory, like all warships, was a machine for killing people. But it maintained class distinctions. The captain's cabin was lavishly furnished and he had special supplies - as did other officers. The men had no space that was their own. They were fed and provided with water so that they could, when necessary, play their part. Each cannon needed 10 or 12 or 14 men to load and fire it. Cannon balls had to be stored carefully and gunpowder was sealed away in barrels. A single rat getting into the gunpowder could cause a spark that would destroy an entire wooden ship.

The ship is kept clean and tidy for tourists. But I was reminded of battle by a notice which drew attention to the role of the ship's carpenters. During battle, a corridor was kept free for them so that they could run up and down the side of the ship, stopping the holes torn by cannon balls.

57 men on the Victory were killed at the Battle of Trafalgar or died of their wounds shortly after. 102 further men were wounded. They came from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and eighteen other nations. For most of them the Victory must have been entirely unromantic - the place where they worked. The sea stopped them escaping from their workplace. And most of the corpses were slid overboard before the Victory returned with Nelson's body. And of all those killed in battle, Nelson's is the only name I know.

Sea views

I love seaside towns. Not big, brash holiday parks or tasteful resorts but run-down places with high-ceilinged apartments and quiet hotels. These are the places where grandparents take grandchildren, where a jogger or cyclist passes along the seafront every quarter hour and a swimmer is cause for comment. Here the piers are not quite deserted – but they close early if it rains. Half the ice-cream stands are boarded up and the pubs offer quiet corners, even on Saturday nights.

We came to Southsea where I'd booked an apartment with huge rooms, high ceilings and sea views. It was what we needed. In the mornings we slept late then watched the yachts strung out from the Isle of Wight. We read and played cards. There was no internet connection.

We meant to explore but did less than we intended. Occasional walks tended to take us along the sea front to Portsmouth, though we did try wandering through Southsea itself. I missed the two literary sites I'd hoped to explore: the house where Arthur Conan Doyle began his medical practice and Dickens' birthplace in Portsmouth. The teenagers weren't particularly keen and I lacked the energy for solitary exploration. Perhaps another time. In any case, the ghosts of Doyle and Dickens walked with me as I wondered how the quiet of Southsea and the military bustle of Portsmouth had seemed to them.

The beaches at Southsea are stony and all week the sea was calm. While there was rain elsewhere, we had occasional drizzle but mostly the sun shone.

Along the coast lay the memorials of war past and preparations for future war. We walked past tanks, an anti-aircraft gun, the D-Day Museum, ships crafted for battle from the Napoleonic Wars to the Falklands. (Nobody mentioned Afghanistan or Iraq.) In the shipyard, men worked on the huge aircraft carriers, some of which had been sold abroad. The navy and past deaths were marketed as a tourist attraction. We became tourists.

I looked at the young parents pushing buggies on the front, the preparations for war and the gently implacable grey waves. In the leisurely August sun I could find no point at which those three worlds met.

Sunshine and history

The gatehouse is what tourists expect - or near enough. You can imagine Robin Hood lurking. There's a statue of him nearby but it's not how I imagine Robin - but then my imaginings were built by Errol Flynn and Richard Greene.

Robin wasn't much in my mind as I climbed the steep approach to Nottingham Castle - but he had to be there somewhere. There are leafy, green walks at the base of the Castle Rock, a steep hill and winding pathways, and even the major oak represented in a mosaic of pansies.

I wasn't meant to be in Nottingham. I was meant to be in a meeting - one of those necessary committees with long agendas and jargon-filled papers for discussion. I'd decided to work from home in the morning and allow myself an hour in the office with the preliminary paperwork. Just before mid-day I left for the station.

The trains I needed were cancelled - there was a signalling problem. Station staff promised a bus but it wouldn't get me to work in time for the meeting and it would be hard to get back again. I rang in with apologies.

I was about to go home when I realised that some trains were running and, if I waited a few minutes, I could go to Nottingham instead. I waited a few minutes. After all, I had work in my bag and could get some done while enjoying a cup of tea - or even the picnic lunch I'd planned to eat at my desk.

Once in Nottingham, I wasn't sure what I would do, but the day was warm and sunny and gradually my wanderings drew me towards the castle. I remembered a tea-room and free admission on week-days.

There's much discussion in Nottingham of the disappointment tourists experience on first seeing the castle. The fine mediaeval building of Robin Hood's day was destroyed after the Civil War when Charles I fought parliament, lost and was executed. The Civil War used to be one of the best known parts of British history. I grew up on stories of battling Cavaliers and Roundheads which were told much as 1066 and all That put it: that Roundheads were "Right but Repulsive" and Caveliers "Wrong but Wromantic." It seemed like a contest of hairstyles and costumes, until I came across an account and portait of the young John Milton, a dedicated anti-monarchist who didn't fit the Roundhead image. The English Civil War is largely forgotten now - many young people are surprised to learn that England was once a republic. However it marked Nottingham. The king chose Nottingham Castle to raise his standard in 1642. I'm not sure why he chose Nottingham which became a parliamentary stronghold during the war - the castle was held for parliament and later used as a prison. In the end it was demolished, for fear royalists would attack and hold it. The site must have made it one of the most powerful fortresses in the country.

In the 1670s, after the Restoration of Charles II, the site was leased by the Royalist William Cavendish, first Duke of Nottingham, whose son built a small mansion on top of the rock. The poor lived and drank below, not just in houses but in man-made caves. Nottingham's caves were officially inhabited until the beginning of the twentieth century. Unofficially, people were living there a few years ago. Maybe they still are.

I wonder what the Cavendishes thought when they looked down on the poor, or if they spent much time in Nottingham. In 1831, the Duke of Newcastle opposed the Great Reform Bill, which proposed extending votes to the middle classes and providing parliamentary representation for the new industrial areas. The Bill was intended to undermine aristocratic patronage and the aristocracy objected. When the House of Lords threw out the Bill, which had been passed by parliament, there were riots in Nottingham and the Duke's castle was burnt down. The Duke left the burnt-out wreck as a reminder to the people of Nottingham.

The mansion was rebuilt in the 1870s and taken over by the local council, who used it to create the first municipal art gallery outside London. The castle is still owned by the local council. It's not one of the best municipal galleries but I always find something there to delight me. Every so often a campaign springs up to demolish the current castle and replace it with a Disneyfied tourist attraction but I would hate that. The current building may not be exciting but I'd rather not unpick 400 years of history. "City of legend" is a fine marketing slogan but there's more to Nottingham than that.

Yesterday, however, I was set on tea and a picnic. I drank Earl Grey while working, then moved to a bench on the terrace for my picnic and more work. There was a breeze. I could see the sails of Green's Mill turning. Beyond the houses, churches and office buildings there were high, sunlit fields. For an hour or so, this was my workplace.

Then I walked down the steep path through the trees to the memorial to Captain Albert Ball, V.C., a fighter pilot killed in World War I. It's a strange memorial showing the young airman with a female figure flying beside him - a Victory, perhaps. From some angles their cheeks seem to be touching. I don't suppose Albert Ball had much opportunity to be close to women. He was only 20 when he died.