SOME PEOPLE by Wislawa Szymborska
Some people flee some other people
In some country under a sun
and some clouds.
They abandon something close to all they’ve got
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens
Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.
What happens quietly: someone's
dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone’s
bread is ripped away,
someone tries to shake a limp
child back to life.
Always another wrong road
ahead of them,
always another wrong bridge
across an oddly reddish river.
Around them, some gunshots,
now nearer, now farther away,
above them a plane seems to circle.
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some greyish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or longer while
Something else will happen, only
where and what.
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and what intentions.
If he has a choice
maybe he won’t be the enemy
and will let them live some sort of life.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Polygamy
Polygamy - one woman's experience
Lined up with the other members of the Coda choral group at a Christmas concert in Southern Spain there is little to single out Maryam Len Beetstra. Her soaring soprano blends in the swelling choruses of carols and Christian anthems.
But Dutch-born Maryam travelled for nearly 48 hours to the gathering in Andalucia from her home in a little town in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco - and left behind her Berber husband and his wife.
Maryam who has lived in Morocco for nearly a decade is the older wife in a relationship few modern European women experience – a polygamous Muslim marriage. And remarkably it was Maryam’s idea.
Maryam met her husband Brahim el-Ferouali when he came to work as the foreman of workers renovating her home on the outskirts of the little town of Kelaat M’Gouna. She had moved to Morocco after losing her job in real estate in Holland, though she had been visiting Moslem countries for years.
“He explained many things to me in a way that was very different from most Muslim men. We became very close.”
So close that when the time came for him to go home to Marrakesh they both dreaded parting so he proposed marriage and she accepted.
There was a big age gap. She was 49 and he just 32. “We were very much in love, so it did not matter, “ says Maryam. “For me relationships have to be equal in spirit and thoughts which has nothing to do with age.”
But there was one problem. She knew he might want children. “I had decided when I was sixteen that I never wanted children and now I was too old anyway, says Maryam. “So when I agreed to marry I told Brahim he should marry a second woman – a traditional Berber girl.”
At first he refused and his elderly parents also told him that Maryam was a good wife and he needed no other. But finally she persuaded them all it was a good idea. So Brahim then asked if she could find a second Dutch woman.
“That was not going to work for me,” says Maryam. “I told him I did not think I could find another girl from the Netherlands. So we agreed to find a local girl.”
They began to explore the emotional and legal issues around Brahim taking a second bride. Maryam, born in The Hague but raised largely in Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles was already a Muslim. She had already converted during the process of marrying Brahim in 2003 and their marriage was formalized four years later.
“I converted not because I wanted to go to paradise after I die, but because I was living in a Muslim country where Islam is a part of daily life, and because my husband is Muslim. Anyway I think Islam is basically, a much more realistic and tolerant religion than Christianity.”
“I was already living like a Muslim. I would not talk to strange men and I adopted the headscarf. I have always been a spiritual person anyway. If I had gone to live in Tibet and married a Tibetan I would have become a Buddhist, “ she says.
Another key factor in converting was inheritance. With the age difference in mind, Maryam wanted Brahim to be able to inherit her money. They were told this was legally very complex but that if she converted it was part of the marriage agreement.
But arranging for Brahim to take a second bride was much more challenging. In Islam men are allowed to take up to four wives at any one time though under very rigorous rules. The Qur’an insists that a man who chooses to marry more than one woman must treat her “justly” or not wed.
But in Morocco men are allowed only two wives. A few years ago Morocco adopted controversial reforms to the Mudawana or family code. Many of the measures were designed to give women greater equally under the law and its complex rules about marriage were widely seen as a bid to curb polygamy.
Maryam and Brahim had found a suitable girl – a young Berber called Zaineb from a nearby village. Brahim spoke with the parents of about six girls before finding Zaineb. Marrying is a joint decision between the two partners. “It is very democratic,” says Maryam.
There was a second reason apart from children for the marriage. “Traditionally the oldest son stays in the house and looks after his parents, but Brahim’s brother’s wife didn’t want this and always fought with her mother-in-law, so there was also this reason for Brahim to have a second wife who would care for his mother and father.”
“We had to go to a judge and ask for permission to marry and then there was a lot of fuss and it took six months and during that time we all went to court about three times. I also had to go to a doctor and buy a declaration that it was impossible for me to have children. Because, you know, there is corruption – everyone wants to make money out of this process. Finally the judge gave permission for us to marry Zaineb.”
Maryam and Brahim’s wedding had been a simple civic affair. Two years on, the families organised a traditional Berber wedding for Brahim and Zeinab, then 22, that lasted three days. On the third day the husband’s family welcomes the bride into their ranks. Songs are sung about her suitability to cook and clean and her other duties as a wife.
And then Zaineb spent the wedding night at her husband’s home. “I was in the house as well, but I did not feel jealous at all. I have a very big love with Brahim. They love each other as well, but it is very different from the way we love. It is in a different culture.”
For Maryam the relationship with Brahim, with Zaineb and with her in-laws is complicated by linguistic and cultural divides. Maryam speaks no Arabic nor the Berber Tamazight language and Brahim speaks no English or Dutch. “But we communicate very well together. We share some French and we can always understand each other.”
“Brahim and me are equal. Because we both have a long history, but completely different backgrounds, we can always learn from each other. There is never a boring day. Both Brahim and me are very much independent. I keep thinking that he is a very special man.”
It is harder with Zaineb. “I cannot talk to her at all, but I can hug her and massage her and we are very fond of each other.”
Zaineb now lives with and cares for Brahim’s elderly parents in their village ten kilometres from Kelaat M’Gouna. He visits regularly.
But there has been no child yet. Zaineb has had two miscarriages and Maryam says that if a third bid at motherhood fails, Brahim might divorce her. “If he decides to, then I will support him and we would look for another wife.”
But if there is a child Maryam says she will be like a grandmother figure. “The child will be culturally a Berber. I think that it is important.”
The relationship with Zaineb offers other challenges. One is the local girl’s level of education. “She is a very simple village girl and has no frame of reference at all to understand the wider world, “ says Maryam. “We do not try to explain it to her.”
And though Maryam has no jealousy of the younger wife, there are other cultural challenges. “In law I have seniority over her, though it is a bit more complicated because I am not Moroccan.
“The thing that worried me at first was Zaineb’s bad temper. She likes me but there is a big distance because she doesn’t understand me and I have disciplined her after she did very bad things, screaming at Brahim’s mother. Because I also helped choose her I felt responsible.”
Maryam has travelled a long distance from her childhood. As a young woman she developed a deep dislike of Western materialism and was drawn to something simpler and more spiritual.
She spent much of her life working in theatre and dance. She also travelled widely seeking a simpler life. In 2001 she went to Morocco and finally found her home, a partially derelict Zaouia or Muslim seminary, on the outskirts of Kelaat M’Gouna. “When I found this place I felt it was paradise.”
As a Muslim she observes key festivals such as Ramadan and Eid. She attends Mosque and prays with Brahim. “I was living as a Muslim long before I converted. I like the moral values of Islam. Here in Morocco they do not judge people. They say God will judge. But I am also very spiritual. I know there is something higher. Call it Allah or God or Nature. I have always felt this connection.”
At home in Morocco she lives simply. Neither she nor Brahim have fulltime jobs, but she says she is always busy in the kitchen or garden. Brahim has a range of part time work.
She has largely left Europe behind. Her remaining links are family – three brothers who visit her – and her regular trips to Spain to sing in the chorus. In Morocco she dresses as a Muslim but in Europe discards the headscarf.
But she never returns to her old homeland which is confronting deepening divisions between its Muslim population and the rise of an intolerant right wing, spearheaded by Geert Wilders' Freedom Party. Does this concern her?
“I used to follow the news and I was very concerned with the relations between Muslims in Europe and the others. I think things are getting bad now. There will be a war. Maybe it has already started. I used to think I could be a missionary to show people that Islam is not bad. But I think things are getting worse. I cannot change anything so now I live in Morocco and that is my life.”
Lined up with the other members of the Coda choral group at a Christmas concert in Southern Spain there is little to single out Maryam Len Beetstra. Her soaring soprano blends in the swelling choruses of carols and Christian anthems.
But Dutch-born Maryam travelled for nearly 48 hours to the gathering in Andalucia from her home in a little town in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco - and left behind her Berber husband and his wife.
Maryam who has lived in Morocco for nearly a decade is the older wife in a relationship few modern European women experience – a polygamous Muslim marriage. And remarkably it was Maryam’s idea.
Maryam met her husband Brahim el-Ferouali when he came to work as the foreman of workers renovating her home on the outskirts of the little town of Kelaat M’Gouna. She had moved to Morocco after losing her job in real estate in Holland, though she had been visiting Moslem countries for years.
“He explained many things to me in a way that was very different from most Muslim men. We became very close.”
So close that when the time came for him to go home to Marrakesh they both dreaded parting so he proposed marriage and she accepted.
There was a big age gap. She was 49 and he just 32. “We were very much in love, so it did not matter, “ says Maryam. “For me relationships have to be equal in spirit and thoughts which has nothing to do with age.”
But there was one problem. She knew he might want children. “I had decided when I was sixteen that I never wanted children and now I was too old anyway, says Maryam. “So when I agreed to marry I told Brahim he should marry a second woman – a traditional Berber girl.”
At first he refused and his elderly parents also told him that Maryam was a good wife and he needed no other. But finally she persuaded them all it was a good idea. So Brahim then asked if she could find a second Dutch woman.
“That was not going to work for me,” says Maryam. “I told him I did not think I could find another girl from the Netherlands. So we agreed to find a local girl.”
They began to explore the emotional and legal issues around Brahim taking a second bride. Maryam, born in The Hague but raised largely in Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles was already a Muslim. She had already converted during the process of marrying Brahim in 2003 and their marriage was formalized four years later.
“I converted not because I wanted to go to paradise after I die, but because I was living in a Muslim country where Islam is a part of daily life, and because my husband is Muslim. Anyway I think Islam is basically, a much more realistic and tolerant religion than Christianity.”
“I was already living like a Muslim. I would not talk to strange men and I adopted the headscarf. I have always been a spiritual person anyway. If I had gone to live in Tibet and married a Tibetan I would have become a Buddhist, “ she says.
Another key factor in converting was inheritance. With the age difference in mind, Maryam wanted Brahim to be able to inherit her money. They were told this was legally very complex but that if she converted it was part of the marriage agreement.
But arranging for Brahim to take a second bride was much more challenging. In Islam men are allowed to take up to four wives at any one time though under very rigorous rules. The Qur’an insists that a man who chooses to marry more than one woman must treat her “justly” or not wed.
But in Morocco men are allowed only two wives. A few years ago Morocco adopted controversial reforms to the Mudawana or family code. Many of the measures were designed to give women greater equally under the law and its complex rules about marriage were widely seen as a bid to curb polygamy.
Maryam and Brahim had found a suitable girl – a young Berber called Zaineb from a nearby village. Brahim spoke with the parents of about six girls before finding Zaineb. Marrying is a joint decision between the two partners. “It is very democratic,” says Maryam.
There was a second reason apart from children for the marriage. “Traditionally the oldest son stays in the house and looks after his parents, but Brahim’s brother’s wife didn’t want this and always fought with her mother-in-law, so there was also this reason for Brahim to have a second wife who would care for his mother and father.”
“We had to go to a judge and ask for permission to marry and then there was a lot of fuss and it took six months and during that time we all went to court about three times. I also had to go to a doctor and buy a declaration that it was impossible for me to have children. Because, you know, there is corruption – everyone wants to make money out of this process. Finally the judge gave permission for us to marry Zaineb.”
Maryam and Brahim’s wedding had been a simple civic affair. Two years on, the families organised a traditional Berber wedding for Brahim and Zeinab, then 22, that lasted three days. On the third day the husband’s family welcomes the bride into their ranks. Songs are sung about her suitability to cook and clean and her other duties as a wife.
And then Zaineb spent the wedding night at her husband’s home. “I was in the house as well, but I did not feel jealous at all. I have a very big love with Brahim. They love each other as well, but it is very different from the way we love. It is in a different culture.”
For Maryam the relationship with Brahim, with Zaineb and with her in-laws is complicated by linguistic and cultural divides. Maryam speaks no Arabic nor the Berber Tamazight language and Brahim speaks no English or Dutch. “But we communicate very well together. We share some French and we can always understand each other.”
“Brahim and me are equal. Because we both have a long history, but completely different backgrounds, we can always learn from each other. There is never a boring day. Both Brahim and me are very much independent. I keep thinking that he is a very special man.”
It is harder with Zaineb. “I cannot talk to her at all, but I can hug her and massage her and we are very fond of each other.”
Zaineb now lives with and cares for Brahim’s elderly parents in their village ten kilometres from Kelaat M’Gouna. He visits regularly.
But there has been no child yet. Zaineb has had two miscarriages and Maryam says that if a third bid at motherhood fails, Brahim might divorce her. “If he decides to, then I will support him and we would look for another wife.”
But if there is a child Maryam says she will be like a grandmother figure. “The child will be culturally a Berber. I think that it is important.”
The relationship with Zaineb offers other challenges. One is the local girl’s level of education. “She is a very simple village girl and has no frame of reference at all to understand the wider world, “ says Maryam. “We do not try to explain it to her.”
And though Maryam has no jealousy of the younger wife, there are other cultural challenges. “In law I have seniority over her, though it is a bit more complicated because I am not Moroccan.
“The thing that worried me at first was Zaineb’s bad temper. She likes me but there is a big distance because she doesn’t understand me and I have disciplined her after she did very bad things, screaming at Brahim’s mother. Because I also helped choose her I felt responsible.”
Maryam has travelled a long distance from her childhood. As a young woman she developed a deep dislike of Western materialism and was drawn to something simpler and more spiritual.
She spent much of her life working in theatre and dance. She also travelled widely seeking a simpler life. In 2001 she went to Morocco and finally found her home, a partially derelict Zaouia or Muslim seminary, on the outskirts of Kelaat M’Gouna. “When I found this place I felt it was paradise.”
As a Muslim she observes key festivals such as Ramadan and Eid. She attends Mosque and prays with Brahim. “I was living as a Muslim long before I converted. I like the moral values of Islam. Here in Morocco they do not judge people. They say God will judge. But I am also very spiritual. I know there is something higher. Call it Allah or God or Nature. I have always felt this connection.”
At home in Morocco she lives simply. Neither she nor Brahim have fulltime jobs, but she says she is always busy in the kitchen or garden. Brahim has a range of part time work.
She has largely left Europe behind. Her remaining links are family – three brothers who visit her – and her regular trips to Spain to sing in the chorus. In Morocco she dresses as a Muslim but in Europe discards the headscarf.
But she never returns to her old homeland which is confronting deepening divisions between its Muslim population and the rise of an intolerant right wing, spearheaded by Geert Wilders' Freedom Party. Does this concern her?
“I used to follow the news and I was very concerned with the relations between Muslims in Europe and the others. I think things are getting bad now. There will be a war. Maybe it has already started. I used to think I could be a missionary to show people that Islam is not bad. But I think things are getting worse. I cannot change anything so now I live in Morocco and that is my life.”
Friday, August 07, 2009
A Week In The Life - Sarah Joseph
A Week In The Life
Sunday Times
July 2009
Islam is not only Britain’s fastest growing faith but also the world’s newest and most vibrant commercial market. Globally the Moslem spend is worth trillions.
It is something that excites Sarah Joseph, founder, chief executive and editor of emel - Britain’s only glossy lifestyle magazine for Moslems.
Joseph, 38, who converted to Islam aged 16, has plans for other projects to take advantage of this growing market, but won’t yet reveal them. “It’s a market with enormous potential – enormous. Consider the demographics. Most British Moslems are under 35. ”
Joseph is usually at her desk in Swiss Cottage as most Londoners struggle to work. She works long hours at the monthly magazine, but keeps weekends free for time with her husband, a human-rights lawyer, and three children.
Emel was launched in 2003 with start-up funding of just £20,000. “Someone who interviewed me guessed our seed capital was £3m - £5m and I collapsed laughing. It’s all been done on a shoestring.”
She has an in-house team of just six, but emel looks rich beyond its means, mixing articles on motoring, cookery, fashion and travel alongside features on faith, finance and politics – all infused with an Islamic perspective.
The readership, far bigger than its circulation of 20,000, is primarily from the professional class. It is widely read by opinion formers and decision makers.
Emel is the Arabic word for hope but also represents, phonetically, Moslem Lifestyle. It was Joseph’s first venture into journalism after editing a student magazine at King’s College in London where she studied theology.
Her family DNA has helped her success. Her background encouraged her to believe in achievement.
Her mother ran a top London modelling agency, but the fashion trade held no allure for Joseph. “Good God no – I was already profoundly religious and political at the age of eight. I was all fashioned-out by then. I was the sort of child who’d go into a supermarket and ask why they were selling South African apples.”
Her religious background was eclectic. Her grandparents were in the Salvation Army and her mother a Roman Catholic. “God has always been there in my life. But losing my Catholic faith was a devastating moment. But Islam began to offer me the answers. It is a simple articulation of faith in God.”
After university she became a successful spokesperson for her newfound faith. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 she and her husband spent a year giving talks to counter negative images of Islam.
The magazine continues that mission by other means. In 2003 she says she saw a need for a publication that went beyond politics and religion. A year later she was awarded an OBE: “for services to interfaith dialogue.”
Despite the recession, emel is thriving. “Downturns are good for new markets,” says Joseph, “and the Moslem market is the next big thing.”
Sunday Times
July 2009
Islam is not only Britain’s fastest growing faith but also the world’s newest and most vibrant commercial market. Globally the Moslem spend is worth trillions.
It is something that excites Sarah Joseph, founder, chief executive and editor of emel - Britain’s only glossy lifestyle magazine for Moslems.
Joseph, 38, who converted to Islam aged 16, has plans for other projects to take advantage of this growing market, but won’t yet reveal them. “It’s a market with enormous potential – enormous. Consider the demographics. Most British Moslems are under 35. ”
Joseph is usually at her desk in Swiss Cottage as most Londoners struggle to work. She works long hours at the monthly magazine, but keeps weekends free for time with her husband, a human-rights lawyer, and three children.
Emel was launched in 2003 with start-up funding of just £20,000. “Someone who interviewed me guessed our seed capital was £3m - £5m and I collapsed laughing. It’s all been done on a shoestring.”
She has an in-house team of just six, but emel looks rich beyond its means, mixing articles on motoring, cookery, fashion and travel alongside features on faith, finance and politics – all infused with an Islamic perspective.
The readership, far bigger than its circulation of 20,000, is primarily from the professional class. It is widely read by opinion formers and decision makers.
Emel is the Arabic word for hope but also represents, phonetically, Moslem Lifestyle. It was Joseph’s first venture into journalism after editing a student magazine at King’s College in London where she studied theology.
Her family DNA has helped her success. Her background encouraged her to believe in achievement.
Her mother ran a top London modelling agency, but the fashion trade held no allure for Joseph. “Good God no – I was already profoundly religious and political at the age of eight. I was all fashioned-out by then. I was the sort of child who’d go into a supermarket and ask why they were selling South African apples.”
Her religious background was eclectic. Her grandparents were in the Salvation Army and her mother a Roman Catholic. “God has always been there in my life. But losing my Catholic faith was a devastating moment. But Islam began to offer me the answers. It is a simple articulation of faith in God.”
After university she became a successful spokesperson for her newfound faith. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001 she and her husband spent a year giving talks to counter negative images of Islam.
The magazine continues that mission by other means. In 2003 she says she saw a need for a publication that went beyond politics and religion. A year later she was awarded an OBE: “for services to interfaith dialogue.”
Despite the recession, emel is thriving. “Downturns are good for new markets,” says Joseph, “and the Moslem market is the next big thing.”
A week in the life - Victoria Barnsley
A Week In The Life
Sunday Times
JULY 2009
The book business is facing its great revolution since the invention of printing, but Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins, says it’s an exhilarating time.
“I predict that, within ten years, fifty per cent of all books will be read electronically. We’re at the black and white TV equivalent now, but once the technology is perfected everything will change.”
Barnsley, 56, oversees the publisher globally – bar North America - from its Hammersmith HQ. This year has brought both personal achievements and professional challenges.
Books sales are down, the collapse of Woolworths severely disrupted distribution to supermarkets and job losses have slimmed the workforce to just over 1,000.
But Barnsley marked 28 years in the business and 25 years since founding the publishing house 4th Estate, whose sale to HarperCollins made her rich and propelled her towards her present position. She was also awarded an OBE for services to publishing.
It’s the digital future that demands her attention. “This move to digital does occupy an enormous amount of my time and we take it incredibly seriously. It is throwing up completely new business models. Will we go on charging for individual content, or will readers subscribe to libraries of content or will material be totally free and supported by advertising? The answer is probably a bit of all of these. Things are changing at such speed.”
She says the nature of books will also change. “Consumers now want images, music, video as well as words. It is no longer enough to say to authors you have to produce text. We need things to go with that text. Our business is not just about words, but content in all its guises. There are not many authors engaging with this yet.”
“I love change. There are incredible opportunities including a direct dialogue with consumers. This will make for better publishing.
HarperCollins is part of NewsCorp. Barnsley travels to New York at least 10 times a year, and also visits HarperCollins offices in Australia and India. She’d recently been to proprietor Rupert Murdoch’s summer party and was due to dine with him later in the week. Then there is the upcoming authors party where she’ll mingle with hundreds of writers.
“If you work in publishing you have to be a sociable person and much of my time involves meeting people. I see at least two authors a week and meet with agents. In publishing private and business life tend to merge and lot of what I do involves evenings – things like book launches or prize giving events.”
Barnsley ensures weekends are kept for an escape to her country house for family, to garden and read. “I read a lot for work, but on holiday I escape to the classics like Dickens or the Russians as I don’t have to worry about how they connect with my business. I recently re-read Vanity Fair for the first time since university. It was sheer bliss.”
Sunday Times
JULY 2009
The book business is facing its great revolution since the invention of printing, but Victoria Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins, says it’s an exhilarating time.
“I predict that, within ten years, fifty per cent of all books will be read electronically. We’re at the black and white TV equivalent now, but once the technology is perfected everything will change.”
Barnsley, 56, oversees the publisher globally – bar North America - from its Hammersmith HQ. This year has brought both personal achievements and professional challenges.
Books sales are down, the collapse of Woolworths severely disrupted distribution to supermarkets and job losses have slimmed the workforce to just over 1,000.
But Barnsley marked 28 years in the business and 25 years since founding the publishing house 4th Estate, whose sale to HarperCollins made her rich and propelled her towards her present position. She was also awarded an OBE for services to publishing.
It’s the digital future that demands her attention. “This move to digital does occupy an enormous amount of my time and we take it incredibly seriously. It is throwing up completely new business models. Will we go on charging for individual content, or will readers subscribe to libraries of content or will material be totally free and supported by advertising? The answer is probably a bit of all of these. Things are changing at such speed.”
She says the nature of books will also change. “Consumers now want images, music, video as well as words. It is no longer enough to say to authors you have to produce text. We need things to go with that text. Our business is not just about words, but content in all its guises. There are not many authors engaging with this yet.”
“I love change. There are incredible opportunities including a direct dialogue with consumers. This will make for better publishing.
HarperCollins is part of NewsCorp. Barnsley travels to New York at least 10 times a year, and also visits HarperCollins offices in Australia and India. She’d recently been to proprietor Rupert Murdoch’s summer party and was due to dine with him later in the week. Then there is the upcoming authors party where she’ll mingle with hundreds of writers.
“If you work in publishing you have to be a sociable person and much of my time involves meeting people. I see at least two authors a week and meet with agents. In publishing private and business life tend to merge and lot of what I do involves evenings – things like book launches or prize giving events.”
Barnsley ensures weekends are kept for an escape to her country house for family, to garden and read. “I read a lot for work, but on holiday I escape to the classics like Dickens or the Russians as I don’t have to worry about how they connect with my business. I recently re-read Vanity Fair for the first time since university. It was sheer bliss.”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Favourite website
There are a million websites out there. However some are especially useful. This is my favourite – and my homepage on all my computers. Check it out.
Http://www.aldaily.com
Http://www.aldaily.com
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Profile Andrew Freemantle
Profile Andrew Freemantle
Director of the RNLI
Due to be published in The Sunday Times
October 2008
During the course of today, lifeboats are likely have rescued around 20 people from coastal waters around the UK and Ireland. Over a year their unpaid volunteer crews save thousands of lives.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s chief executive Andrew Freemantle, a former career soldier says: “There is a nobility about these people who go out in these little boats in appalling conditions to rescue other people. One is very fortunate to be working in an organisation held in such high esteem. It represents the best of British – to give and not count the cost.”
Last year RNLI Lifeboats rescued 7,834 people, Another 10,000 were helped by the RNLI’s recently established beach life guard operation
It’s creation and the opening of the RNLI training college are two key achievements of Freemantle’s 10 years at the helm.
Before coming to the RNLI he saw combat in Vietnam with the Australian SAS after a career in the British Army, then ran the Scottish Ambulance Service. He says: “There are common skills, challenges and problems in running big organisations. There are lots of people in the Army and Scottish ambulance service - though not enough - and in the RNLI. “
The charity, founded in 1824, operates its lifeboat services without a penny from the British Government. Most of its annual £124 million budget comes from legacies and fundraising - though it does get a little financial aid from the Irish Government, a relationship that pre-dates independence.
Projects like the first memorial to commemorate lifeboat crew lost at work - to be unveiled late in 2009 – must be funded from other sources. Last summer Freemantle did his bit. The 64-year-old - not normally a cyclist - undertook a 1,100 mile sponsored bike ride from the RNLI HQ in Poole to Rome to raise £57,000 towards the sculpture.
The RNLI pays Freemantle just over £133,000 a year to oversee its 1,300 staff, 26.000 fundraising volunteers and about 7.000 men and volunteers who are in the front line at 235 lifeboat stations.
Freemantle’s office overlooks the RNLI’s training college, opened five years ago by the Queen. All lifeboat crew attend courses here, reflecting the RNLI’s saying: “Train one, save many.”
Though he can also see Poole harbour from his desk, Freemantle’s forays onto the water are infrequent because his week involves long hours in meetings. He does rub shoulders with visiting crews in the college cafeteria.
This week he addressed the Fire Services College – they collaborate on flood rescue operations – and prepared for an imminent visit to China.
The Chinese Rescue and Salvage Bureau have bought 20 lifeboats from the RNLI. “The Chinese sent people around the world and hit upon the RNLI to work with. We are regarded as providing a gold standard world-wide for sea rescue services.”
Director of the RNLI
Due to be published in The Sunday Times
October 2008
During the course of today, lifeboats are likely have rescued around 20 people from coastal waters around the UK and Ireland. Over a year their unpaid volunteer crews save thousands of lives.
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s chief executive Andrew Freemantle, a former career soldier says: “There is a nobility about these people who go out in these little boats in appalling conditions to rescue other people. One is very fortunate to be working in an organisation held in such high esteem. It represents the best of British – to give and not count the cost.”
Last year RNLI Lifeboats rescued 7,834 people, Another 10,000 were helped by the RNLI’s recently established beach life guard operation
It’s creation and the opening of the RNLI training college are two key achievements of Freemantle’s 10 years at the helm.
Before coming to the RNLI he saw combat in Vietnam with the Australian SAS after a career in the British Army, then ran the Scottish Ambulance Service. He says: “There are common skills, challenges and problems in running big organisations. There are lots of people in the Army and Scottish ambulance service - though not enough - and in the RNLI. “
The charity, founded in 1824, operates its lifeboat services without a penny from the British Government. Most of its annual £124 million budget comes from legacies and fundraising - though it does get a little financial aid from the Irish Government, a relationship that pre-dates independence.
Projects like the first memorial to commemorate lifeboat crew lost at work - to be unveiled late in 2009 – must be funded from other sources. Last summer Freemantle did his bit. The 64-year-old - not normally a cyclist - undertook a 1,100 mile sponsored bike ride from the RNLI HQ in Poole to Rome to raise £57,000 towards the sculpture.
The RNLI pays Freemantle just over £133,000 a year to oversee its 1,300 staff, 26.000 fundraising volunteers and about 7.000 men and volunteers who are in the front line at 235 lifeboat stations.
Freemantle’s office overlooks the RNLI’s training college, opened five years ago by the Queen. All lifeboat crew attend courses here, reflecting the RNLI’s saying: “Train one, save many.”
Though he can also see Poole harbour from his desk, Freemantle’s forays onto the water are infrequent because his week involves long hours in meetings. He does rub shoulders with visiting crews in the college cafeteria.
This week he addressed the Fire Services College – they collaborate on flood rescue operations – and prepared for an imminent visit to China.
The Chinese Rescue and Salvage Bureau have bought 20 lifeboats from the RNLI. “The Chinese sent people around the world and hit upon the RNLI to work with. We are regarded as providing a gold standard world-wide for sea rescue services.”
Profile Michael Dixon
Profile Dr Michael Dixon
Director the Natural History Museum London
to be published in the Sunday Times in October
The Natural History Museum in Kensington is on the threshold of the most dramatic chapter in its history since its foundation in 1881- the opening late next year of the Darwin Centre.
The giant concrete cocoon behind a wall of steel and glass will showcase the Museum’s hugely important scientific work. It will house hundreds of scientists, their research and millions of specimens.
“We are every bit as much an important scientific research institute on issues relating to the natural world as a place of public education and entertainment” says its Director Dr Michael Dixon. “ So our vision for the future is to advance knowledge about the natural world to inspire better care of the planet. It is about making a difference - making people who visit here feel differently about our planet and natural resources.”
He hopes that the sort of crowds who thrill to animatronic dinosaurs and showcases of creepy crawlies will also engage with the serious scientific work going on backstage. “Our ability to influence our visitors is underpinned and made credible by the scientific work we do here.”
It’s going to be a busy year for Dixon, 52, as he oversees the run-up to the opening of the £78 million project - a key element of 18 months celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. The scientist’s statue has recently been moved to look down on the Museum’s grand entrance hall.
A few days ago Dixon presided over the first public glimpse of the centre. He also gave the Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a tour and showed him the Museum’s research departments.
Dixon studied zoology but though his alma mater Imperial College is a few doors away, he has not been a working scientist since gaining his doctorate. Instead he embarked on a career in publishing.
But after 20 years he returned to his first love as Director of the Zoological Society of London and, for the past four and a half years, in his present post on a salary of £166,000.
He is a full time administrator “but with a knowledge of how science works and of the politics of how science works and is funded.”
“But I do try to get out into the museum. I love the place and love this job. Its hardly like working really, except getting up and getting home in the dark. Long hours.”
He has a big team – more than 900 full time staff, including 350 scientists and an additional 313 volunteers. And the spend is also big – annually around £65 million derived from government grants, money from other sources and from its own revenues.
These include merchandising, museum restaurants and corporate events. London Fashion Week has just used the Museum’s gardens. “It generated a healthy income.”
And the visitors have swelled since admission fees were scrapped in 2001. Last year there were around 3.8 million and once the Darwin Centre opens its expected to top four million for the first time.
Director the Natural History Museum London
to be published in the Sunday Times in October
The Natural History Museum in Kensington is on the threshold of the most dramatic chapter in its history since its foundation in 1881- the opening late next year of the Darwin Centre.
The giant concrete cocoon behind a wall of steel and glass will showcase the Museum’s hugely important scientific work. It will house hundreds of scientists, their research and millions of specimens.
“We are every bit as much an important scientific research institute on issues relating to the natural world as a place of public education and entertainment” says its Director Dr Michael Dixon. “ So our vision for the future is to advance knowledge about the natural world to inspire better care of the planet. It is about making a difference - making people who visit here feel differently about our planet and natural resources.”
He hopes that the sort of crowds who thrill to animatronic dinosaurs and showcases of creepy crawlies will also engage with the serious scientific work going on backstage. “Our ability to influence our visitors is underpinned and made credible by the scientific work we do here.”
It’s going to be a busy year for Dixon, 52, as he oversees the run-up to the opening of the £78 million project - a key element of 18 months celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary. The scientist’s statue has recently been moved to look down on the Museum’s grand entrance hall.
A few days ago Dixon presided over the first public glimpse of the centre. He also gave the Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt a tour and showed him the Museum’s research departments.
Dixon studied zoology but though his alma mater Imperial College is a few doors away, he has not been a working scientist since gaining his doctorate. Instead he embarked on a career in publishing.
But after 20 years he returned to his first love as Director of the Zoological Society of London and, for the past four and a half years, in his present post on a salary of £166,000.
He is a full time administrator “but with a knowledge of how science works and of the politics of how science works and is funded.”
“But I do try to get out into the museum. I love the place and love this job. Its hardly like working really, except getting up and getting home in the dark. Long hours.”
He has a big team – more than 900 full time staff, including 350 scientists and an additional 313 volunteers. And the spend is also big – annually around £65 million derived from government grants, money from other sources and from its own revenues.
These include merchandising, museum restaurants and corporate events. London Fashion Week has just used the Museum’s gardens. “It generated a healthy income.”
And the visitors have swelled since admission fees were scrapped in 2001. Last year there were around 3.8 million and once the Darwin Centre opens its expected to top four million for the first time.
Profile - Director of the Royal Opera House
Profile Tony Hall - Chief exeutive of the Royal Opera House
appeared in The Sunday Times
October 2008
Nobody could accuse Tony Hall, the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House of elitism.
This summer its productions have been busting out all over Britain. Nationwide 160 cinemas, plus others in Europe, screened Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” live from Covent Garden and other audiences watched opera and ballet relayed to giant outdoor screens across London.
Its offerings are promoted online – producing a cluster of first time customers and Hall, who left as BBC director of news and current affairs in 2001, also oversees the production and marketing of DVDs of performances and is involved in education initiatives to help foster interest in ballet and opera.
“We are becoming a total production house – not just on stage but on TV, radio and the web. When you are taking a large grant it’s important you should reach as many people as you can.”
Which means offering popular work alongside challenging pieces like “Minotaur”, by Harrison Birtwistle and the pop opera “Monkey” by Blur’s Damon Albarn, “Monkey was a really exciting moment for us. It was a very different audience - a younger crowd.”
The ROH spends £92 million annually and gets £26 million in grant aid. “But we raise more than twice as much in other ways - £38 million from the box office and over £60 million from sponsors and commercially.”
Hall, 57, took a pay cut when he left the BBC but now earns more than £250,000 a year. His team is smaller – 880 permanent staff but more for big productions.
He says the BBC and Opera House have similarities as creative organisations. “But the big difference here is you have to go out and make money.”
He doesn’t miss the BBC, “But I do get twitchy when a big story happens. I’m nosy and inquisitive about everything going on, like last week watching the financial world shudder. I have spent time thinking through what it means for us. We are not seeing any downturn in income yet, but we’d been foolish if weren’t thinking through the implications.”
It’s not a nine to five job. Hall attends all first nights and many other performances. Otherwise there is entertaining, management meetings and regular discussions with the artistic directors of the Royal Ballet and Opera.
“My job is to enable as many of their dreams to happen as possible. I know if finances go whoopsie, the art will suffer. In the end if we have to make an unpleasant decision it will be mine”
Then there is extracurricular work – chairing an industry skills council, masterminding a national skills academy in Thurrock, reporting on Dance Education and assessing media relations for the MOD.
But Hall’s love of Opera runs deep and helps him cope with any work pressures. “If things get stressful I drop into rehearsals. It reminds me what it is all about.”
appeared in The Sunday Times
October 2008
Nobody could accuse Tony Hall, the Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House of elitism.
This summer its productions have been busting out all over Britain. Nationwide 160 cinemas, plus others in Europe, screened Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” live from Covent Garden and other audiences watched opera and ballet relayed to giant outdoor screens across London.
Its offerings are promoted online – producing a cluster of first time customers and Hall, who left as BBC director of news and current affairs in 2001, also oversees the production and marketing of DVDs of performances and is involved in education initiatives to help foster interest in ballet and opera.
“We are becoming a total production house – not just on stage but on TV, radio and the web. When you are taking a large grant it’s important you should reach as many people as you can.”
Which means offering popular work alongside challenging pieces like “Minotaur”, by Harrison Birtwistle and the pop opera “Monkey” by Blur’s Damon Albarn, “Monkey was a really exciting moment for us. It was a very different audience - a younger crowd.”
The ROH spends £92 million annually and gets £26 million in grant aid. “But we raise more than twice as much in other ways - £38 million from the box office and over £60 million from sponsors and commercially.”
Hall, 57, took a pay cut when he left the BBC but now earns more than £250,000 a year. His team is smaller – 880 permanent staff but more for big productions.
He says the BBC and Opera House have similarities as creative organisations. “But the big difference here is you have to go out and make money.”
He doesn’t miss the BBC, “But I do get twitchy when a big story happens. I’m nosy and inquisitive about everything going on, like last week watching the financial world shudder. I have spent time thinking through what it means for us. We are not seeing any downturn in income yet, but we’d been foolish if weren’t thinking through the implications.”
It’s not a nine to five job. Hall attends all first nights and many other performances. Otherwise there is entertaining, management meetings and regular discussions with the artistic directors of the Royal Ballet and Opera.
“My job is to enable as many of their dreams to happen as possible. I know if finances go whoopsie, the art will suffer. In the end if we have to make an unpleasant decision it will be mine”
Then there is extracurricular work – chairing an industry skills council, masterminding a national skills academy in Thurrock, reporting on Dance Education and assessing media relations for the MOD.
But Hall’s love of Opera runs deep and helps him cope with any work pressures. “If things get stressful I drop into rehearsals. It reminds me what it is all about.”
Monday, September 15, 2008
Profile - Mary Rice
Profile of Mary Rice, head of the Environmental Investigation Agency published in the Sunday Times September 14th.
Profile Mary Rice
A week in the life
John Kelleher September 11 2008
When it comes to confronting the Goliaths of government, globalised crime and multinational corporations, the Environmental Investigation Agency, based in a tiny suite of offices above an Islington cafe is something of a giant killer.
The NGO, with just 22 UK staff runs as many operations as it can manage globally – exposing environmental crime, tracking, often covertly, trade in endangered species, gathering evidence and generally working to highlight and combat crimes against nature.
Mary Rice, its new chief executive, says present key campaigns include protecting forests and combating illegal logging, tracking the trade in Asian big cats, protecting whales and dolphins, fighting unlawful ivory exports and controls on ozone depleting chemicals.
Its notable past successes include stopping a massive ivory smuggling operation to Asia by a Zambia based crime syndicate.
Rice says: “We don’t have the resources to be a World Wildlife Fund or Friends Of The Earth, but we do regularly punch way above our weight. We have a documented history of campaign successes, but they’re not always recognised as ours. We find a problem and publicise it, but can’t always carry it forward so a bigger and better resourced group will come in and takeover.”
Rice, 50, trained as a journalist and spent 15 years teaching before she joined the EIA as a volunteer in 1995, 11 years after its creation as what she calls “a small sitting room outfit.”
It has evolved since then and Rice, who earns £43,000 annually, has spent much of the past week looking at how to continue its growth through restructuring to bring in more funding and to identify patrons or ambassadors. “We are looking strategically at where we are going and how we brand ourselves.”
She also had briefings with campaign teams and a full staff meeting “We’re rarely all in the office at the same time.”
The EIA is forced to target its work as it has just a trickle of regular funding from dedicated supporters. All major grants from bodies such as the EU and the Department For International Development are pegged to specific initiatives. One such three-year project is about to begin in Zambia, training local people to monitor illegal logging.
But compactness can be beneficial. Partnerships with larger bodies are frequent and the EIA can be somewhat maverick – taking direct action where larger organisations with offices and locally employed staff might be compromised. “ We can go in and come out and we won’t lose our offices and our people wont be bullied.”
She is not deterred by the EIA’s modest scale. “I think every single individual can make a difference. There is no failure in trying, only in not bothering. Working for a charity means sacrificing a lot. There are long hours, the remuneration is pretty dismal and you are faced with depressing things, but you meet the most inspirational people and each small success makes you realise that is how you build. It’s not an overnight thing.”
Profile Mary Rice
A week in the life
John Kelleher September 11 2008
When it comes to confronting the Goliaths of government, globalised crime and multinational corporations, the Environmental Investigation Agency, based in a tiny suite of offices above an Islington cafe is something of a giant killer.
The NGO, with just 22 UK staff runs as many operations as it can manage globally – exposing environmental crime, tracking, often covertly, trade in endangered species, gathering evidence and generally working to highlight and combat crimes against nature.
Mary Rice, its new chief executive, says present key campaigns include protecting forests and combating illegal logging, tracking the trade in Asian big cats, protecting whales and dolphins, fighting unlawful ivory exports and controls on ozone depleting chemicals.
Its notable past successes include stopping a massive ivory smuggling operation to Asia by a Zambia based crime syndicate.
Rice says: “We don’t have the resources to be a World Wildlife Fund or Friends Of The Earth, but we do regularly punch way above our weight. We have a documented history of campaign successes, but they’re not always recognised as ours. We find a problem and publicise it, but can’t always carry it forward so a bigger and better resourced group will come in and takeover.”
Rice, 50, trained as a journalist and spent 15 years teaching before she joined the EIA as a volunteer in 1995, 11 years after its creation as what she calls “a small sitting room outfit.”
It has evolved since then and Rice, who earns £43,000 annually, has spent much of the past week looking at how to continue its growth through restructuring to bring in more funding and to identify patrons or ambassadors. “We are looking strategically at where we are going and how we brand ourselves.”
She also had briefings with campaign teams and a full staff meeting “We’re rarely all in the office at the same time.”
The EIA is forced to target its work as it has just a trickle of regular funding from dedicated supporters. All major grants from bodies such as the EU and the Department For International Development are pegged to specific initiatives. One such three-year project is about to begin in Zambia, training local people to monitor illegal logging.
But compactness can be beneficial. Partnerships with larger bodies are frequent and the EIA can be somewhat maverick – taking direct action where larger organisations with offices and locally employed staff might be compromised. “ We can go in and come out and we won’t lose our offices and our people wont be bullied.”
She is not deterred by the EIA’s modest scale. “I think every single individual can make a difference. There is no failure in trying, only in not bothering. Working for a charity means sacrificing a lot. There are long hours, the remuneration is pretty dismal and you are faced with depressing things, but you meet the most inspirational people and each small success makes you realise that is how you build. It’s not an overnight thing.”
Monday, August 04, 2008
Profile - chief constable of Nottinghamshire
This profile is due to be published in the Sunday Times sometime in September/
A week in the life
Julia Hodson
Nottinghamshire’s first female chief constable Julia Hodson got a sobering reminder of the ultimate price a police officer can pay shortly after taking up her job in June. She attended a memorial service.
“I spent some time with Tracy, the widow of PC Ged Walker who was killed trying to stop a criminal escaping in a car. That was in 2003 and feelings are still raw here. He would have retired last weekend after 30 years service “
Hodson, 51, says everyone congratulated her when she took the £131,000 a year job. “ But some were quite dismissive about the area. There is still a phase ‘gun city’ and the notion that Nottingham is a violent place. For all the evidence I see I genuinely feel this is undeserved now.”
Her predecessor Steve Green had presided over four successive years of dropping crime statistics. When he left crime was at its lowest for eight years. She says one of his achievements was: “to have taken out most of the significant organised crime groups in the county – the cause of much of the very violent crime a few years ago.”
Only burglaries have nudged upwards and Hodson says this is a high priority.
She says one key is prevention both in developing greater public awareness and devising interventions to cut re-offending.
She is also worried the economic downturn might result in rising crime. “When people are under financial challenges it creates stress which can lead to domestic violence and if people have less money they’ll maybe move towards acquisitive crime.”
Hodson, a Derbyshire miner’s daughter, followed a conventional path from patrol officer to Chief Constable – though she also has two university degrees and joined the police accelerated promotion programme.
She was still on the beat in Merseyside during the miners strike. “Women weren’t involved in policing civil disorder so male officers went from Merseyside and across the country and women officers - there weren’t very many then - were left to police the streets. Perhaps that was part of the change towards accepting that women officers could play a full role in police duties.”
Right now Hodson is still getting to know Nottinghamshire where she oversees four divisions – with 2,500 officers and more than 2,000 other staff and support.
She meets the police authority fortnightly and her chief officers three mornings a week. She’s trying to meet as many ordinary people and civic and business leaders as possible. She has also joined patrol officers and met the victims of crime.
“When I joined I don’t think I ever envisaged being in a management position. I do miss the contact with the public and the best bits of the job are when I can steer towards meeting them.”
She says once her five-year contract is done, she may retire. “I’ll have spent 30 years as a police officer. University beckons. Maybe I’ll do an art history degree. Something completely different.”
A week in the life
Julia Hodson
Nottinghamshire’s first female chief constable Julia Hodson got a sobering reminder of the ultimate price a police officer can pay shortly after taking up her job in June. She attended a memorial service.
“I spent some time with Tracy, the widow of PC Ged Walker who was killed trying to stop a criminal escaping in a car. That was in 2003 and feelings are still raw here. He would have retired last weekend after 30 years service “
Hodson, 51, says everyone congratulated her when she took the £131,000 a year job. “ But some were quite dismissive about the area. There is still a phase ‘gun city’ and the notion that Nottingham is a violent place. For all the evidence I see I genuinely feel this is undeserved now.”
Her predecessor Steve Green had presided over four successive years of dropping crime statistics. When he left crime was at its lowest for eight years. She says one of his achievements was: “to have taken out most of the significant organised crime groups in the county – the cause of much of the very violent crime a few years ago.”
Only burglaries have nudged upwards and Hodson says this is a high priority.
She says one key is prevention both in developing greater public awareness and devising interventions to cut re-offending.
She is also worried the economic downturn might result in rising crime. “When people are under financial challenges it creates stress which can lead to domestic violence and if people have less money they’ll maybe move towards acquisitive crime.”
Hodson, a Derbyshire miner’s daughter, followed a conventional path from patrol officer to Chief Constable – though she also has two university degrees and joined the police accelerated promotion programme.
She was still on the beat in Merseyside during the miners strike. “Women weren’t involved in policing civil disorder so male officers went from Merseyside and across the country and women officers - there weren’t very many then - were left to police the streets. Perhaps that was part of the change towards accepting that women officers could play a full role in police duties.”
Right now Hodson is still getting to know Nottinghamshire where she oversees four divisions – with 2,500 officers and more than 2,000 other staff and support.
She meets the police authority fortnightly and her chief officers three mornings a week. She’s trying to meet as many ordinary people and civic and business leaders as possible. She has also joined patrol officers and met the victims of crime.
“When I joined I don’t think I ever envisaged being in a management position. I do miss the contact with the public and the best bits of the job are when I can steer towards meeting them.”
She says once her five-year contract is done, she may retire. “I’ll have spent 30 years as a police officer. University beckons. Maybe I’ll do an art history degree. Something completely different.”
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Profile Rehayn King
Rehayn King
A week in the life
Sunday Times July 27
Tall ships in the docks, ex-Beatles on stage and scores of other cultural highs. Liverpool is halfway through its party year as European Capital of Culture and making it all work is surely challenging for those behind the scenes.
For Rehayn King it’s an especially busy time. She became director of art galleries at the National Museums Liverpool just over a year ago. King, 43, who manages the flagship Walker Art Gallery together with Sudley House and the Lady Lever Gallery, is also overseeing judging for the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize this September and helping steer the Liverpool Biennial.
“I suspect this year’s John Moores’ may prove quite controversial” she says. It’s had a record entry but the jurors – including the art provocateurs Jake and Dinos Chapman – have selected fewer works for the shortlist.
King took up her £50,000 a year post after a decade curating in Birmingham with previous experience in Coventry and Boston. Born in Edinburgh, she lived in Tanzania and Surrey before studying art history at Oxford.
“Gallery going wasn’t in my family background, but I was dropped off for a morning at the National Gallery of Scotland when I was 16 and thought – ‘this is a whole new world’. It made a big impact. I wanted to share the pleasure I get from art.”
Merseyside seems to mirror her passion. “Liverpool is very special. It has a very strong creative culture. It is a city that grabs you by the throat - a very emotional place. It makes you want to do something for the city. I found myself very quickly a proponent of how wonderful Liverpool is and how strong it is for the visual arts. “
Now she has bolder visions for the Walker that occupy much of her time away from management work.
In the last week she had meetings with the head of Liverpool’s library that should result in an expansion of the Walkers’ exhibition space. She prepared and delivered a paper on “The Value of Art” for the annual conference of art librarians.
And she attended a fund raising dinner at which the new chairman of National Museums Liverpool, the high profile TV Producer Phil Redmond, was guest of honour.
Much of the week was about developing her vision for the Walker. She wants it to embrace a wider range of art, to increase visual literacy among the young and to increase visitor levels. “It used to get 600,000 a year in the 19th century. Last year we had 300,000.”
“Outside Liverpool it is thought of primarily as about Victorian art, but it is about so much more. I would like to get to the point where it is seen as the best place to see any European painting, from the Renaissance to the modern day, north of Oxford and south of Edinburgh.”
A week in the life
Sunday Times July 27
Tall ships in the docks, ex-Beatles on stage and scores of other cultural highs. Liverpool is halfway through its party year as European Capital of Culture and making it all work is surely challenging for those behind the scenes.
For Rehayn King it’s an especially busy time. She became director of art galleries at the National Museums Liverpool just over a year ago. King, 43, who manages the flagship Walker Art Gallery together with Sudley House and the Lady Lever Gallery, is also overseeing judging for the 25th John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize this September and helping steer the Liverpool Biennial.
“I suspect this year’s John Moores’ may prove quite controversial” she says. It’s had a record entry but the jurors – including the art provocateurs Jake and Dinos Chapman – have selected fewer works for the shortlist.
King took up her £50,000 a year post after a decade curating in Birmingham with previous experience in Coventry and Boston. Born in Edinburgh, she lived in Tanzania and Surrey before studying art history at Oxford.
“Gallery going wasn’t in my family background, but I was dropped off for a morning at the National Gallery of Scotland when I was 16 and thought – ‘this is a whole new world’. It made a big impact. I wanted to share the pleasure I get from art.”
Merseyside seems to mirror her passion. “Liverpool is very special. It has a very strong creative culture. It is a city that grabs you by the throat - a very emotional place. It makes you want to do something for the city. I found myself very quickly a proponent of how wonderful Liverpool is and how strong it is for the visual arts. “
Now she has bolder visions for the Walker that occupy much of her time away from management work.
In the last week she had meetings with the head of Liverpool’s library that should result in an expansion of the Walkers’ exhibition space. She prepared and delivered a paper on “The Value of Art” for the annual conference of art librarians.
And she attended a fund raising dinner at which the new chairman of National Museums Liverpool, the high profile TV Producer Phil Redmond, was guest of honour.
Much of the week was about developing her vision for the Walker. She wants it to embrace a wider range of art, to increase visual literacy among the young and to increase visitor levels. “It used to get 600,000 a year in the 19th century. Last year we had 300,000.”
“Outside Liverpool it is thought of primarily as about Victorian art, but it is about so much more. I would like to get to the point where it is seen as the best place to see any European painting, from the Renaissance to the modern day, north of Oxford and south of Edinburgh.”
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A WEEK IN LIFE – MARTIN DAVIDSON
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Published in the Sunday Times July 20th 2008
The sun never sets on the British Council. Britain’s vehicle for promoting the UK through cultural relations has 7,400 staff in 110 countries including troubled places where Government diplomats sometimes fear to tread.
In Zimbabwe and Burma, British Council people remain resolutely at their desks, despite official hostility to the UK. It also operates in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Martin Davidson, its chief executive says: “I’m enormously proud that our offices in Mandalay and Rangoon are probably the only public spaces in that country where you can read a foreign newspaper, look at the internet or see foreign television. We get about 350,000 people pass through our offices just to get that contact. I don’t think there is any doubt that they are identified and their names are taken.”
“In Zimbabwe we are providing a link to the outside world hugely valued by the young professional Zimbabwean for giving an understanding of what the outside world is thinking about Zimbabwe, contact with colleagues outside and helping to persuade them to stay in the country.”
Davidson, 52, says the Council’s role has changed little since its creation 75 years ago in response to Nazi propaganda. “Then we sought to demonstrate through education, culture and science that there was an alternative narrative about how people live with one another and across international boundaries. That is still what we are for. We use different language now and talk in terms of our role being to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas.”
He is paid £160,000 a year to oversee a hugely complex operation with a shifting set of priorities. The Council’s independence of government, “rather like the BBC” gives it credibility. It gets £190 million from Westminster, but makes £375 million from a range of commercial enterprises, especially education. Millions learn English through the British Council’s work.
Davidson’s week reflects the Council’s international nature. Recently he returned from trip consolidating educational links with Arab nations. Improving relations in the Islamic world is currently high priority.
So is climate change. Hours after returning from Beirut, he flew to Switzerland for a forum at which young people from around the world - recruited by the Council - presented their personal encounters with climate change.
Back in London he delivered an evening briefing at Chatham House followed by breakfast with Margaret Hodge, the Arts Minister. Then he briefed a Foreign Office forum on cultural diplomacy.
The key office event was an internal public accounts meeting. A report concluded the Council delivered significant value for money – promoting the present key idea of Britain as: “an open, diverse, interested and engaged society.” Our values are respect for the rule of law, the individual, diversity and for people who come from different places. “That is the narrative we are trying to present about the UK.”
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Profile - Nick Partridge
Profile - Nick Partridge - Published in The Sunday Times July 13th 2008
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
When rumours that a frightening new disease was killing gay men in America first surfaced in the early 1980s, Nick Partridge - now director of the Terrence Higgins Trust - was working in Amsterdam.
“I was fearful and horrified by the prospect of something that was completely unknown, but was killing people very quickly.” These early intimations spurred him back to London where he soon began working with the newly founded Trust, named after the first known British victim.
Twenty-five years later Terrence Higgins is Europe’s largest HIV and Aids charity and works in a very different landscape.
Aids has killed 25 million people around the world and there are 2.5 million new cases of HIV each year. But in developed countries HIV is now largely a chronic condition controlled by powerful antiretroviral drugs.
Partridge, 52, who earns £85,000 annually, has been director since 1991. This week he returned from a UN gathering in New York about the global Aids situation.
Terrence Higgins is now part of Britain’s health establishment and Partridge divides his time between the Trust and working as deputy chair of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, as a member of the Healthcare Commission and chairing INVOLVE which promotes public involvement in public health, NHS and social care research.
Meetings in London and Manchester with these organisations form key parts of his week together with the enjoyable business of attending the Trust’s annual fundraising gala dinner.
Partridge says he once believed the Trust would disappear when a cure and vaccine for Aids were found. “But research on this has stalled. I don’t now believe we will see either in our lifetime.”
The work of the Trust has changed after two watershed dates. In 1991 Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury died from AIDS. A million pounds in royalties from the re-released “Bohemian Rhapsody”, donated to the Trust gave it financial security.
More importantly Mercury’s death – and the Princess of Wales’s involvement in Aids issues - broadened public understanding.
But Partridge says by then he was close to emotional burn-out and would have quit had it not been for the development of effective antiretroviral drugs treatments in 1996.
“This was extraordinary. The numbers of people dying dropped by over 70 per cent in just 18 months. To see that dawning realization that people were going to live and not die was absolutely fabulous.”
But it also meant the Trust completely re-thinking its purpose. “Our services now reflect a very different relationship. They’re tailored around moments of crisis – such as the initial diagnosis or going on to treatment.”
A new challenge is sustaining awareness. A third of people with HIV in Britain don’t know they have the infection.
“There is a worryingly low level of HIV knowledge and that is where having proper and effective sex education in schools is vital. We have failed to do this and to equip each new generation to understand the risk around HIV and to better enjoy their journey into sex and relationships.”
Monday, June 30, 2008
Profile - Anthony Mayer
Profile - Anthony Mayer
Published in The Sunday Times June 29th 2008
A manifesto pledge by London’s new Mayor Boris Johnson to downsize staffing at the Greater London Authority is being fulfilled. Five senior posts held by women are being axed in the Mayor’s office including the job held by the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s long term partner Emma Beal who is mother of two of his children.
Another departure will have a different impact. Anthony Mayer, GLA Chief Executive since late 2000, leaves this autumn to become chairman of the Government’s new Social Housing Regulator, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.
“Did I jump or was I pushed? Neither,“ he says. “I’ve known about this since March,” before he presided over the Mayoral elections in his role as London’s chief electoral returning officer.
Mayer, who earns £183,000 a year, was CEO throughout the Ken Livingstone era. “It will be a wrench to leave. I’ve loved it and had good and cordial relationships with assembly members and both mayors. But I’m 62 and it is time to go if I want a post fulltime employment role. “
He oversees an Authority staff of 650 and an £11 billion budget for the wider GLA group which includes the police, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. He says his job is more like being a Permanent Secretary, but adds:” I’ve been a bit of a maitre’ d/bouncer in a rather rowdy nightclub. Whenever there’s been any conflict that needed resolving. I nearly always got involved.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I see myself and my successor as bureaucrats who facilitate. My successor’s biggest challenge will be getting things up and running and then facilitating the Mayor’s agendas – addressing transport problems, the Olympics and making the organisation more cost effective.”
Mayer’s mondays have been reserved for catch up meetings with directors. his management team and then with the Mayor. The rest of the week? “Anything and everything as it comes up.”
One of the GLA’s highest profile weeks was in July 2005 when winning the 2012 Olympics was followed by the 7/7 bombings.
“On the Thursday I had the massive adrenalin rush of the win, hearing about it on my way to fly to Shanghai for a conference. I heard of the bombings at 9.00 in the morning in Shanghai. I had this sense of horrible shock and then this huge difficulty of using the mobile phone system to enact all the trusted and well-tried systems of response. I was very proud of all those colleagues who did so well to get the recovery system going so quickly.”
How Boris Johnson differ from his predecessor?
“There is more than one style of Mayoralty. One of the things about Mr Livingstone was he was a great managerial politician. He knew how to operate all the levers. What Mr Johnson has made clear is that he is going to want to be absolutely at the forefront of leading London, but wants to have a have a first deputy mayor to implement his policies. So it’s much more a Whitehall model with a Secretary of State and ministers working for you. It would be presumptuous of me to say how that is going to shake down.“
Published in The Sunday Times June 29th 2008
A manifesto pledge by London’s new Mayor Boris Johnson to downsize staffing at the Greater London Authority is being fulfilled. Five senior posts held by women are being axed in the Mayor’s office including the job held by the former Mayor Ken Livingstone’s long term partner Emma Beal who is mother of two of his children.
Another departure will have a different impact. Anthony Mayer, GLA Chief Executive since late 2000, leaves this autumn to become chairman of the Government’s new Social Housing Regulator, the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords.
“Did I jump or was I pushed? Neither,“ he says. “I’ve known about this since March,” before he presided over the Mayoral elections in his role as London’s chief electoral returning officer.
Mayer, who earns £183,000 a year, was CEO throughout the Ken Livingstone era. “It will be a wrench to leave. I’ve loved it and had good and cordial relationships with assembly members and both mayors. But I’m 62 and it is time to go if I want a post fulltime employment role. “
He oversees an Authority staff of 650 and an £11 billion budget for the wider GLA group which includes the police, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. He says his job is more like being a Permanent Secretary, but adds:” I’ve been a bit of a maitre’ d/bouncer in a rather rowdy nightclub. Whenever there’s been any conflict that needed resolving. I nearly always got involved.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I see myself and my successor as bureaucrats who facilitate. My successor’s biggest challenge will be getting things up and running and then facilitating the Mayor’s agendas – addressing transport problems, the Olympics and making the organisation more cost effective.”
Mayer’s mondays have been reserved for catch up meetings with directors. his management team and then with the Mayor. The rest of the week? “Anything and everything as it comes up.”
One of the GLA’s highest profile weeks was in July 2005 when winning the 2012 Olympics was followed by the 7/7 bombings.
“On the Thursday I had the massive adrenalin rush of the win, hearing about it on my way to fly to Shanghai for a conference. I heard of the bombings at 9.00 in the morning in Shanghai. I had this sense of horrible shock and then this huge difficulty of using the mobile phone system to enact all the trusted and well-tried systems of response. I was very proud of all those colleagues who did so well to get the recovery system going so quickly.”
How Boris Johnson differ from his predecessor?
“There is more than one style of Mayoralty. One of the things about Mr Livingstone was he was a great managerial politician. He knew how to operate all the levers. What Mr Johnson has made clear is that he is going to want to be absolutely at the forefront of leading London, but wants to have a have a first deputy mayor to implement his policies. So it’s much more a Whitehall model with a Secretary of State and ministers working for you. It would be presumptuous of me to say how that is going to shake down.“
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Profile Dame Fiona Reynolds
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
DAME FIONA REYNOLDS
sunday times June 22
When Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, appeared on Desert Island Discs her luxury was a set of Ordnance Survey maps of Britain and her book The Making Of The English Landscape.
Dame Fiona, 50, says she has always had a passionate love of the countryside. “It is in my blood.”
So in 2001, when she learned the Trust’s top job was being advertised, she turned her back on two and a half years heading up the Cabinet Office Women’s Unit.
“It was fascinating and I had learned a lot, but this was my dream job. I never expected to get it,” she says, “and I just love it in so many ways.”
Dame Fiona, the Trust’s first female head since its foundation in 1895 by the Victorian social reformer Octavia Hill, earns more than £130,000. She studied geography and land management at Cambridge and has worked on green issues throughout her career apart from the interlude in Whitehall.
She now runs one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations. With 3.5 million members, the charity looks after more than 620,000 acres of land of outstanding natural beauty across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 705 miles of coastline and hundreds of historic sites including houses, castles, villages and lighthouses.
A permanent staff of around 500 is helped by some 50,000 volunteers.
“There’s no such thing as an average week. I love the variety and am out as much as I can be. One or two days a week are spent at properties. Last week I was in the South East. Tomorrow I am in Wessex and next week in Devon and Cornwall.
She is based at the new Trust HQ in Swindon and attends board meetings and looks after management tasks there, but visits London most weeks.
“My role as leader is to set a strategic direction and champion it. It is definitely not about telling individual properties or people what do.”
Her travels enable her to gather ideas from the experiences of staff and volunteers that can feed into the Trust’s new strategy.
“It is a move from encouraging people to join the Trust, to encouraging them to join in. It’s a simple proposition – for people to not just visit but to get involved.”
She cites a successful venture at Cothele in Cornwall where families now help to create the annual Christmas garlands that decorate the house.
But though the Trust remains the custodian of places of beauty and historical importance – “we need them for our spiritual and emotional and physical refreshment” - it is also confronting the challenge of climate change.
“I often call us the nation’s canary. Because of the scale of our property ownership we can see the bigger picture and spot trends that individuals might not always see. We’ve done a lot of work on the impact of climate change on gardens and on its likely impacts on coastline – more than government departments have done.”
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Profile - Director of RUSI
Profile of the Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
Published in The Sunday Times June 8th 2008
Professor Michael Clarke is the first non-military man to be director of Britain’s top defence think tank - the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies - since its creation by the Duke of Wellington in 1831.
“In the UK we’ve long since got over the military/civil distinction, but in many countries, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, if you’re not a military officer they wonder why you’re doing this job. I have to prove I know about defence.”
“RUSI’s Council was interested in me because they want it to become a more internationally recognised think tank. So as well as CEO I’m also a research entrepreneur.”
Clarke, 57, has impeccable credentials. He founded The Centre For Defence Studies at Kings College, London and ran it for 17 years.
“RUSI occupies a unique space in British defence and security, but the whole field is getting wider with terrorism, international crime, civil disruption and more. Our challenge is to fill this space.”
This means finding new funding sources. RUSI, a charity based on Whitehall near Downing Street and the MoD, works intimately with them, but gets no state funding – even though its patron is The Queen.
“I always tell people in Government that we’re of most use when the outside world sees how independent we are. If we are seen as an adjunct of Government people won’t take us seriously.”
The core of RUSI’s work is researching current trends in defence and security and their implications for Britain.
But RUSI’s independence means it can offer controversial views – a recent report argued the world should spend 10 times more on fighting climate change than on defence - and trenchant criticism. For example, Clarke says: “The invasion of Iraq remains a blunder from which Iran has gained most” and Britain and the West have a worse understanding of Middle Eastern politics than for generations.
But he also offers praise. “In terms of dealing with terrorism in the UK, the security forces have done really well. It was hopeless a few years ago, but they’ve made really good progress.”
After returning from a conference in Johannesburg on conflict resolution Clarke’s working week combined his duties as CEO with a whirlwind of sessions meeting politicians, senior defence figures, business leaders and visiting academics.
All feed back into RUSI’s work. Its fastest growing research area is homeland security with continuing studies on UK terrorism, radicalisation and protection of critical national infrastructure. So this week he also attended a Whitehall forum on policing London, spent a day at a terrorism trial as an expert witness, attended a reception for the departing Pakistan High Commissioner and recorded his fortnightly Forces Radio show.
Clarke’s personal academic focus is British defence policy making and nuclear issues – he is an advisor to the UN Secretary General on Disarmament - and this sprawls into his personal time. ”I have to keep up my professorial profile. In an institute like this it is important that we are all seen as big hitters.”
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Profile - Imperial War Museum Director
PROFILE SIR ROBERT CRAWFORD
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
John Kelleher
The Imperial War Museum, headquartered in South London was conceived in 1917 in the final stages of the conflict briefly known as the “war to end all wars.”
Across the century since it has chronicled innumerable conflicts around the world involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Sir Robert Crawford, its Director General, who retires this autumn after 40 years, has spent his career gazing into the heart of this darkness - the museum’s account of the impacts of war on the lives of ordinary people.
“I think war is part of our human condition. I don’t think it will go away, but I think it is important to remain optimistic about humanity’s ability to manage this challenge. Institutions like this have a role in equipping people with an understanding of the history of war and of the historical antecedents to current conflicts that should enable them to address the challenges of war more responsibly and effectively in the future.”
Crawford, who earns £129,000 annually, joined the Museum in 1966 as a junior researcher straight from Oxford. His first job was cataloguing part of its immense film archive of the build-up to D Day and ensuing battle for Normandy.
“I told the director it would take thirty-five of me the rest of the century to complete cataloguing this material in the amount of detail that was required! We now do it in a somewhat speedier manner.”
Crawford, 63 now has others among the Museum’s 645 fulltime staff who maintain the still growing archive. Although Museum overlord, he praises his team for such achievements as creating the Holocaust exhibition, the dramatic Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, HMS Belfast, the air museums at Duxford and the Cabinet War Rooms.
But at the Museum’s core is an unswerving vision – overseen by Crawford since he became Director General in 1995. Education is its enduring raison d’etre and, despite regular debates about widening its remit, he says The Great War – the first “total war” - is still the best starting point for the collection. Suggestions it might drop Imperial from its name have also been examined frequently and rejected.
With mere months before retirement Crawford shows no sign of flagging.
Recently he was in Washington for a fund raising dinner for the American Air Museum at Duxford. “Uniquely we managed to close Reagan Airport for a flyover of three second world war aircraft.” He also attended a Downing Street reception marking the cultural world’s contribution to the economy, opened the “For Your Eyes Only” exhibition on James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming and chaired meetings about funding and the museum’s future.
From October that future will be the responsibility of the Museum’s first female director, Diane Lees, presently running London’s Museum of Childhood.
“My retirement will be a clean break. Rather like headmasters and vicars, one doesn’t offer a ghost like tread in the patch of one’s successor. I do hope though they might invite me back for an exhibition opening or two.”
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
John Kelleher
The Imperial War Museum, headquartered in South London was conceived in 1917 in the final stages of the conflict briefly known as the “war to end all wars.”
Across the century since it has chronicled innumerable conflicts around the world involving Britain and the Commonwealth.
Sir Robert Crawford, its Director General, who retires this autumn after 40 years, has spent his career gazing into the heart of this darkness - the museum’s account of the impacts of war on the lives of ordinary people.
“I think war is part of our human condition. I don’t think it will go away, but I think it is important to remain optimistic about humanity’s ability to manage this challenge. Institutions like this have a role in equipping people with an understanding of the history of war and of the historical antecedents to current conflicts that should enable them to address the challenges of war more responsibly and effectively in the future.”
Crawford, who earns £129,000 annually, joined the Museum in 1966 as a junior researcher straight from Oxford. His first job was cataloguing part of its immense film archive of the build-up to D Day and ensuing battle for Normandy.
“I told the director it would take thirty-five of me the rest of the century to complete cataloguing this material in the amount of detail that was required! We now do it in a somewhat speedier manner.”
Crawford, 63 now has others among the Museum’s 645 fulltime staff who maintain the still growing archive. Although Museum overlord, he praises his team for such achievements as creating the Holocaust exhibition, the dramatic Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, HMS Belfast, the air museums at Duxford and the Cabinet War Rooms.
But at the Museum’s core is an unswerving vision – overseen by Crawford since he became Director General in 1995. Education is its enduring raison d’etre and, despite regular debates about widening its remit, he says The Great War – the first “total war” - is still the best starting point for the collection. Suggestions it might drop Imperial from its name have also been examined frequently and rejected.
With mere months before retirement Crawford shows no sign of flagging.
Recently he was in Washington for a fund raising dinner for the American Air Museum at Duxford. “Uniquely we managed to close Reagan Airport for a flyover of three second world war aircraft.” He also attended a Downing Street reception marking the cultural world’s contribution to the economy, opened the “For Your Eyes Only” exhibition on James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming and chaired meetings about funding and the museum’s future.
From October that future will be the responsibility of the Museum’s first female director, Diane Lees, presently running London’s Museum of Childhood.
“My retirement will be a clean break. Rather like headmasters and vicars, one doesn’t offer a ghost like tread in the patch of one’s successor. I do hope though they might invite me back for an exhibition opening or two.”
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
CHINA DESIGN NOW - A REVIEW
CHINA DESIGN NOW
THE V+A
A short distance from the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington there is a shop full of cool Scandinavian design. Elegant and curvaceous modernist creations by Marimekko and the like.
It offers a stark contrast to (and perhaps a ordered and restorative balm after) the cacophony of the current featured show at the V+A – “China Design Now” which runs until the middle of July.
The exhibition offers a reminder of Napoleon’s famous words: “Let China sleep for when she wakes the world will tremble.”
Indeed it could be sub-titled:” whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
The show is all about design in modern China – graphic and architectural ideas in particular.
Three cities are featured from the east coast of this continent of cultures -Shenzhen, Shanghai and the Olympic capital Beijing. Little is revealed about the vaster hinterland.
There is also little to put any of this in any historical context. Instead we are offered a welter of sensation. The overwhelming feeling is of bewildering confusion – of the Western notion of the fragile beauty of Chinese design and art confounded by a dam burst of youthful ideas – borrowed, stolen, pasted or smashed together from a thousand and one primarily Western youth culture sources to into an exotic hybrid.
One young visitor said she was appalled by the thought that millions of young Chinese children were growing up with this mishmash as their visual backdrop.
It is hard to find coherence or what we’ve come to think of as traditional elements of Chinese beauty here.
There are some fine modern variations on Chinese calligraphy, but primarily one can admire the sheer vitality and energy on show, of ideas going in a thousand different directions.
This is a world being endlessly born – something that parallels the nature of China since its entrance into the modern world. It’s a new cultural revolution and, rather akin to Mao’s political event, it grows by despoiling the past.
The section about the transformation of Beijing for the Olympics is revealing. When I visited nearly a decade ago the vast avenues were already becoming lined with modernist creations.
But behind them were still a maze of old streets – the hutongs or neighbourhoods.
Since then Beijing has gone into overdrive – exorcising the old and creating whole neighbourhoods of dramatic post-modernism. Just as with the smaller Canary Wharf area in London this blooming of a thousand new buildings offers a dazzling display.
But it is being done at a price - the seeming carnage enacted on a culture that has been swept away. It is easy for the Western mind, often fixated on the romantic to bemoan this.
After the visit to Beijing one feature I wrote talked of the willow-pattern prettiness of Behei Park in the early morning – its lake around a white Dagoba fringed with trees and people practicing t’ai chi. I was criticised for this by a Chinese friend - and for some elements of our film - for conjuring a romantic and backwards looking image of contemporary China.
Perhaps the criticsm was valid from the perspective of a young Chinese who saw change and modernisation in a wholly positive light. Quite correct from the perspective of creating a new nation where everyone benefits from its growing economy.
For them much of the past serves a commercial purpose – luring tourists – but in other respects signifies oppression by a now defunct ruling class and poverty.
The new China emerging now is getting wealthier and offering its citizens opportunities we in the West take for granted.
But such reservations about these changes also highlight the different things that are valued now in a West that went through many convulsions as it moved into the modern age.
In the UK we walk through the gutted hearts of many an old town or city and see fragments of our “heritage” poling through the soulless malls of multinational shopping outlets. We feel regret for a history now lost beneath the concrete and wish such a fate could be avoided elsewhere.
Now we seek to create a balance carefully between the benefits of continuing modernisation and a desire to preserve the best of the past. This is in stark contrast to the increasingly dominant idea in previously impoverished parts of the world which are modernising as fast as they can.
Such concern about the careful preservation of the past can be seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded.
We in the West seek to see our dreams of cultural continuity and of places in a finer harmony with their past in cultures that have trailed behind our embrace of the modern world. And we resent the sort of idea of progress that rocks that dreamboat.
In the Arabian Gulf for instance, the nomads of the desert have forsaken their tents and impoverished lifestyle for the vast gallop to modernism of Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
It is a shame, we feel, as we perceive something of what we see as the romantic Bedouin soul being lost among the concrete and glass. Such a perspective might be the folly of what Edward Said defined as orientalism.
For would we have accepted living in wattle and daub as serfs if a parallel world of wealth, comfort and improvement were on offer?
It’s a complicated question. The China being born today seems alien and challenging – but perhaps it embodies what western liberals once praised about Maoism - the challenge of constant revolution made solid.
THE V+A
A short distance from the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington there is a shop full of cool Scandinavian design. Elegant and curvaceous modernist creations by Marimekko and the like.
It offers a stark contrast to (and perhaps a ordered and restorative balm after) the cacophony of the current featured show at the V+A – “China Design Now” which runs until the middle of July.
The exhibition offers a reminder of Napoleon’s famous words: “Let China sleep for when she wakes the world will tremble.”
Indeed it could be sub-titled:” whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
The show is all about design in modern China – graphic and architectural ideas in particular.
Three cities are featured from the east coast of this continent of cultures -Shenzhen, Shanghai and the Olympic capital Beijing. Little is revealed about the vaster hinterland.
There is also little to put any of this in any historical context. Instead we are offered a welter of sensation. The overwhelming feeling is of bewildering confusion – of the Western notion of the fragile beauty of Chinese design and art confounded by a dam burst of youthful ideas – borrowed, stolen, pasted or smashed together from a thousand and one primarily Western youth culture sources to into an exotic hybrid.
One young visitor said she was appalled by the thought that millions of young Chinese children were growing up with this mishmash as their visual backdrop.
It is hard to find coherence or what we’ve come to think of as traditional elements of Chinese beauty here.
There are some fine modern variations on Chinese calligraphy, but primarily one can admire the sheer vitality and energy on show, of ideas going in a thousand different directions.
This is a world being endlessly born – something that parallels the nature of China since its entrance into the modern world. It’s a new cultural revolution and, rather akin to Mao’s political event, it grows by despoiling the past.
The section about the transformation of Beijing for the Olympics is revealing. When I visited nearly a decade ago the vast avenues were already becoming lined with modernist creations.
But behind them were still a maze of old streets – the hutongs or neighbourhoods.
Since then Beijing has gone into overdrive – exorcising the old and creating whole neighbourhoods of dramatic post-modernism. Just as with the smaller Canary Wharf area in London this blooming of a thousand new buildings offers a dazzling display.
But it is being done at a price - the seeming carnage enacted on a culture that has been swept away. It is easy for the Western mind, often fixated on the romantic to bemoan this.
After the visit to Beijing one feature I wrote talked of the willow-pattern prettiness of Behei Park in the early morning – its lake around a white Dagoba fringed with trees and people practicing t’ai chi. I was criticised for this by a Chinese friend - and for some elements of our film - for conjuring a romantic and backwards looking image of contemporary China.
Perhaps the criticsm was valid from the perspective of a young Chinese who saw change and modernisation in a wholly positive light. Quite correct from the perspective of creating a new nation where everyone benefits from its growing economy.
For them much of the past serves a commercial purpose – luring tourists – but in other respects signifies oppression by a now defunct ruling class and poverty.
The new China emerging now is getting wealthier and offering its citizens opportunities we in the West take for granted.
But such reservations about these changes also highlight the different things that are valued now in a West that went through many convulsions as it moved into the modern age.
In the UK we walk through the gutted hearts of many an old town or city and see fragments of our “heritage” poling through the soulless malls of multinational shopping outlets. We feel regret for a history now lost beneath the concrete and wish such a fate could be avoided elsewhere.
Now we seek to create a balance carefully between the benefits of continuing modernisation and a desire to preserve the best of the past. This is in stark contrast to the increasingly dominant idea in previously impoverished parts of the world which are modernising as fast as they can.
Such concern about the careful preservation of the past can be seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded.
We in the West seek to see our dreams of cultural continuity and of places in a finer harmony with their past in cultures that have trailed behind our embrace of the modern world. And we resent the sort of idea of progress that rocks that dreamboat.
In the Arabian Gulf for instance, the nomads of the desert have forsaken their tents and impoverished lifestyle for the vast gallop to modernism of Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
It is a shame, we feel, as we perceive something of what we see as the romantic Bedouin soul being lost among the concrete and glass. Such a perspective might be the folly of what Edward Said defined as orientalism.
For would we have accepted living in wattle and daub as serfs if a parallel world of wealth, comfort and improvement were on offer?
It’s a complicated question. The China being born today seems alien and challenging – but perhaps it embodies what western liberals once praised about Maoism - the challenge of constant revolution made solid.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Profile of Rear Admiral jeremy de Halpert
A week in the life
Sunday Times
May 4 2008
This summer a sunken German U-Boat that has lain undisturbed for 90 years will be shifted from a busy section of the English Channel – to clear a passage for giant supertankers carrying Russian oil.
“The English Channel and the Dover Straits are the busiest shipping lanes in the world. On a single day, there are more shipping movements there than air traffic movements at Heathrow,” says Rear Admiral Jeremy de Halpert CB, Executive Chairman of Trinity House.
Trinity House has overall responsibility for the safety of shipping here and around the coast of England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. It works closely with matching organisations for Scotland and Ireland.
“I always call us the highways agency of the sea. We mark the roads and clear the wrecks,” says de Halpert, 60, who took over the £95,000 a year job in 2002 - together with the pro-bono role of Deputy Master, running its charity.
The Rear Admiral’s 40 years in the Royal Navy included action in the Falklands. More recently he has held such high-ranking jobs on dry land as Director of Overseas Military Activity at the Ministry of Defence.
“I still try to spend about four weeks a year at sea. For the past two days I’ve been at sea about our new vessel The Galatea.”
In the same week he visited retirement homes near Dover run by the charity which, as one of the largest endowed maritime charities in the UK, has £3 million annually to spend.
As Executive Chairman he saw the naming of a new cruise liner in Southampton, attended meetings in London, Harwich, Edinburgh and Paris and had a formal dinner with deep-sea fishermen.
Trinity House spends £30 million a year on a wide range of safety responsibilities – running lighthouses and maintaining buoys, and ensuring safe navigation in coastal waters. It has 300 people – 100 at sea in its three vessels. The funding comes from levies on vessels using ports.
Henry VIII founded Trinity House in 1514 and his portrait gazes down on business at its’ HQ near Tower Hill. But today Trinity House uses technology undreamt of in Tudor days. Things have evolved radically even over de Halpert’s career. His office displays a sextant, a chronometer and a star globe. “When I started in 1966 this is what you navigated with out of sight of land. They’re museum pieces now.”
Marine Satnav using GPS is standard, with Britain’s now fully automated lighthouses and buoys becoming primarily visual aids for mariners.
Trinity House and its French counterpart are now testing something called eLoran – a high-powered landbased navigation transmission system. de Halpert says it performed very well in recent trials investigating how easily GPS signals could be disrupted or jammed by atmospherics or terrorism. “eLoran was rock steady wheras GPS was all over the place.”
In the still precarious world of marine navigation a secure new aid is welcome indeed and bad news for terrorists, or anyone else, hoping to cause chaos at sea.
Sunday Times
May 4 2008
This summer a sunken German U-Boat that has lain undisturbed for 90 years will be shifted from a busy section of the English Channel – to clear a passage for giant supertankers carrying Russian oil.
“The English Channel and the Dover Straits are the busiest shipping lanes in the world. On a single day, there are more shipping movements there than air traffic movements at Heathrow,” says Rear Admiral Jeremy de Halpert CB, Executive Chairman of Trinity House.
Trinity House has overall responsibility for the safety of shipping here and around the coast of England, Wales, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar. It works closely with matching organisations for Scotland and Ireland.
“I always call us the highways agency of the sea. We mark the roads and clear the wrecks,” says de Halpert, 60, who took over the £95,000 a year job in 2002 - together with the pro-bono role of Deputy Master, running its charity.
The Rear Admiral’s 40 years in the Royal Navy included action in the Falklands. More recently he has held such high-ranking jobs on dry land as Director of Overseas Military Activity at the Ministry of Defence.
“I still try to spend about four weeks a year at sea. For the past two days I’ve been at sea about our new vessel The Galatea.”
In the same week he visited retirement homes near Dover run by the charity which, as one of the largest endowed maritime charities in the UK, has £3 million annually to spend.
As Executive Chairman he saw the naming of a new cruise liner in Southampton, attended meetings in London, Harwich, Edinburgh and Paris and had a formal dinner with deep-sea fishermen.
Trinity House spends £30 million a year on a wide range of safety responsibilities – running lighthouses and maintaining buoys, and ensuring safe navigation in coastal waters. It has 300 people – 100 at sea in its three vessels. The funding comes from levies on vessels using ports.
Henry VIII founded Trinity House in 1514 and his portrait gazes down on business at its’ HQ near Tower Hill. But today Trinity House uses technology undreamt of in Tudor days. Things have evolved radically even over de Halpert’s career. His office displays a sextant, a chronometer and a star globe. “When I started in 1966 this is what you navigated with out of sight of land. They’re museum pieces now.”
Marine Satnav using GPS is standard, with Britain’s now fully automated lighthouses and buoys becoming primarily visual aids for mariners.
Trinity House and its French counterpart are now testing something called eLoran – a high-powered landbased navigation transmission system. de Halpert says it performed very well in recent trials investigating how easily GPS signals could be disrupted or jammed by atmospherics or terrorism. “eLoran was rock steady wheras GPS was all over the place.”
In the still precarious world of marine navigation a secure new aid is welcome indeed and bad news for terrorists, or anyone else, hoping to cause chaos at sea.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Profile - Amanda Neville
Profile of Amanda Neville - BFI - published in Sunday Times April 20th
The boundary between profession and passion is blurred for Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute.
Her working hours are full of the challenges of running an institution in the throes of radical re-invention. It is 75 this year and waiting for Government approval to create an ambitious £200 million National Film Centre on the South Bank in London.
But after hours and at weekends she can often be found – along with many other BFI staffers - at the present BFI Southbank centre, watching films or mingling with people from the business.
“I don’t know how many films I’ve seen, but I still get excited every time that curtain opens. I want other people to have the opportunity to get as excited and to be nourished in the same way that I do.”
Nevill, 51 who earns around £120,000 annually was appointed in 2003 by the then new chairman of the BFI, film director Anthony Minghella. He died this March.
“His loss numbed me. The BFI that exists now is very much his vision. He and I shared the same values. We wanted the BFI to be loved by a lot of people.”
His successor is former BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Nevill has just taken him to see the BFI’s film archive – the world’s largest - housed over 34 acres underground near Birmingham and in Hertfordshire.
During the week Nevill moves between meetings with colleagues to discuss things like the London Film Festival, conservation issues, the proposed National Film Centre and how to make the BFI’s vast collection increasingly accessible.
“We are like the British Museum for film – one of the great planks of UK culture. Our job is interpret this stuff in a way that is relevant and exciting for lots of different audiences.
The BFI is multi-faceted. As well as running the BFI Southbank and Mediatheque, it has the IMAX, a vast library and immense film archive, a distribution wing, Sight and Sound magazine, publications and more.
Nevill says there are many challenges for the BFI – all interconnected. These include protecting the archive and ensuring that everyone has access to the widest diversity of cinema and to knowledge about it in the digital age.
“Our distribution of films is spectacular now. We serve over 800 venues across the UK with around 12,000 prints in an average year.”
Then there are the Mediatheques in London and touring the UK and co-productions utilising forgotten archive film. But the single biggest vision is the proposed National Film Centre.
“Anthony used to say that BFI Southbank is a rehearsal run for this. It will be a collision of facets which have never sat together before.
We are in the throes of negotiating a very exciting formal partnership with higher education which will breathe the next level of scholarly engagement with our collections.”
“We want to create a destination where anybody who loves anything about film can come, a place to capture the hearts and minds of the public, for people from the industry and for everyone else.”
The boundary between profession and passion is blurred for Amanda Nevill, director of the British Film Institute.
Her working hours are full of the challenges of running an institution in the throes of radical re-invention. It is 75 this year and waiting for Government approval to create an ambitious £200 million National Film Centre on the South Bank in London.
But after hours and at weekends she can often be found – along with many other BFI staffers - at the present BFI Southbank centre, watching films or mingling with people from the business.
“I don’t know how many films I’ve seen, but I still get excited every time that curtain opens. I want other people to have the opportunity to get as excited and to be nourished in the same way that I do.”
Nevill, 51 who earns around £120,000 annually was appointed in 2003 by the then new chairman of the BFI, film director Anthony Minghella. He died this March.
“His loss numbed me. The BFI that exists now is very much his vision. He and I shared the same values. We wanted the BFI to be loved by a lot of people.”
His successor is former BBC Director General Greg Dyke. Nevill has just taken him to see the BFI’s film archive – the world’s largest - housed over 34 acres underground near Birmingham and in Hertfordshire.
During the week Nevill moves between meetings with colleagues to discuss things like the London Film Festival, conservation issues, the proposed National Film Centre and how to make the BFI’s vast collection increasingly accessible.
“We are like the British Museum for film – one of the great planks of UK culture. Our job is interpret this stuff in a way that is relevant and exciting for lots of different audiences.
The BFI is multi-faceted. As well as running the BFI Southbank and Mediatheque, it has the IMAX, a vast library and immense film archive, a distribution wing, Sight and Sound magazine, publications and more.
Nevill says there are many challenges for the BFI – all interconnected. These include protecting the archive and ensuring that everyone has access to the widest diversity of cinema and to knowledge about it in the digital age.
“Our distribution of films is spectacular now. We serve over 800 venues across the UK with around 12,000 prints in an average year.”
Then there are the Mediatheques in London and touring the UK and co-productions utilising forgotten archive film. But the single biggest vision is the proposed National Film Centre.
“Anthony used to say that BFI Southbank is a rehearsal run for this. It will be a collision of facets which have never sat together before.
We are in the throes of negotiating a very exciting formal partnership with higher education which will breathe the next level of scholarly engagement with our collections.”
“We want to create a destination where anybody who loves anything about film can come, a place to capture the hearts and minds of the public, for people from the industry and for everyone else.”
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