East West Street

Philippe Sands QC, a British and French international lawyer, professor of law at University College London, commentator and author has written a remarkable book: East West Street.

Dominic Sandbrook reviewed it in The Sunday Times. Here is an extract:

”Supremely gripping … Sands has produced something extraordinary … Sands tells it not just as history but as a family memoir, a detective thriller and a meditation on the power of memory … Written with novelistic skill, its prose effortlessly poised, its tone perfectly judged, the book teems with life and high drama … One of the most gripping and powerful books imaginable.”

It made a great impression on me, not least because I was near Lviv, in western Ukraine, earlier this year, went to the court house at Nuremberg in February last year and knew two of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials. That sort of thing makes a book come alive. If Sands had written about the legal justification for the trials and how it was carried out he would have been marching over well-trodden ground. He could have written a powerful history of how his own family suffered under the Nazis. He could have written about the men on trial and spoken to their children. He has done all of this.

Some twenty-five years ago I had lunch with Tony Marreco. I wish I could remember the occasion better. I wish I had known that he met both TE Lawrence and Gandhi – quite a double. I remember Peter Calvocoressi well and you can hear him briefly in this short film.

Philippe Sands writes dispassionately about horrific events that took place three-quarters of a century ago. You think it couldn’t happen again? He doesn’t let us off the hook.

“The cases go on, as do the crimes. Today I work on cases involving genocide or crimes against humanity in relation to Serbia, Croatia, Libya, the United States, Rwanda, Argentina, Chile, Israel and Palestine, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity abound across the globe … ”

I suppose China is not on his list because nobody has hired him to prosecute a regime where sanctions could not be imposed. It’s a book I would not have been drawn to, until I was given it by a friend whose opinion I value. She was right and I commend it to you; read it; then pass it on to your children, Godchildren and grandchildren.

Group Think

This is not totally unconnected with East West Street. Group Think is a theory espoused in 1972 by Irving Janis in his book, Victims of Groupthink. The late Christopher Booker took up the topic and formulated three rules of Group Think.

“Summed up briefly, rule one is that a group of people come to share a common view, opinion or belief that in some way is not based on objective reality; rule two is that, precisely because their shared view is essentially subjective, they need to go out of their way to insist that it is so self-evidently right that a “consensus” of all right-minded people must agree with it. Their belief has made them an “in-group”, which accepts that any evidence which contradicts it, and the views of anyone who does not agree with it, can be disregarded.

Rule three is the most revealing consequence of this. To reinforce their “in-group” conviction that they are right, they need to treat the views of anyone who questions it as wholly unacceptable. They are incapable of engaging in any serious dialogue or debate with those who disagree with them.”

Booker died before his book was finished but his friend and collaborator, Richard North, has completed the task and Group Think: A Study in Self Delusion will be published in February. Here is a flavour of what it covers.

‘It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, it is not microbes, it is not cancer but man himself who is his greatest danger: because he has no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating in their effect than the greatest natural catastrophes’.

This quote from the psychologist C. G. Jung sets the tone for this most important book. Politics has always been coloured by groupthink. Each political party of faction or grouping naturally has its own idea of how it sees the world more clearly than its rivals. Political decisions have ended badly because a little group of powerful men have collectively become so fixated on a single narrow view of what they hoped to achieve that they shut their minds to anything that contradicts it.

Take for example the recklessly obsessive way in which George W. Bush and Tony Blair launched their invasion of Iraq in 2003. The rise of Islamic movements recently such as Al Qaeda or IS. This has shown us the power of groupthink at its ultimate extreme. So contagious was the power of that particular form of groupthink that thousands more would-be jihadists flocked to join the cause so intoxicated by the thought of randomly killing ‘infidels’ that they were happy to commit suicide in pursuit of their fantasy cause.

Global Warming, Political Correctness (the new age of thought-crime) racism, sexism, positive discrimination, hostility to religion and the United States of Europe are all issues investigated. Mr Booker drills down to look at recent examples of groupthink: Charlie Hebdo, the collective emotion on the death of Princess Diana. Here, he argues, emotion is detached from its proper object to become a thing in itself.

It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those that are imposed upon them.

Hotel Dostoevsky

I have yet to visit St Petersburg. If I do I will certainly look at the facade of the Hotel Dostoevsky designed by Finnish architect, Alain-Karl-Woldemar Schulman (1863-1957) in the early 1900s. It is described as Finnish Modernist and is the only example of the style in St Petersburg. His employer, then the owner of the building, has his coat of arms above the central entrance; he is Baron von Besser and his daughter is buried in Margravine Cemetery.

Tsar Nicholas Meets a Giraffe

A while back I posted about Nesselrode Pie, named after Count Karl Nesselrode. In 1844 the Count was both Russian Chancellor and Foreign Minister under Tsar Nicholas I. On 24th May that year he had to eat humble pie; he told Britain’s Ambassador, then in St Petersburg, that the Tsar had given him the slip (as beagles do) and had left 12 hours before to visit England – he hadn’t been since 1817.

Robert Peel was Prime Minister and keen to build a strong relationship with the Tsar and Russia, as was Queen Victoria. A highlight of his visit was a party at Chiswick House given by the Duke of Devonshire. Prince Albert and the Tsar were there as well as the King of Saxony and some 700 of the British nobility.

“The Imperial Standard was raised over the Summer Parlour and the Royal Standard over the Arcade and a 21-gun salute fired from a battery within the grounds. The bands of the Coldstream Guards and the Horse Guards simultaneously played the Russian national anthem.

After a tour round the house, the Tsar and 16 other important guests adjourned to the Summer Parlour which was fitted out like a 14th-Century military pavilion where they dined off silver plate. To commemorate his visit, Emperor Nicholas planted a cedar tree in front of the house to replace a cedar tree that had been blown down.”  Chiswick House and Gardens: A History by Gillian Clegg.

On June 15th 1844, the Illustrated London News reported:

“The company dispersed in groups about the grounds – some few, among whom was the King of Saxony and his attendants, crossing the lake in boats manned by the duke’s watermen in in their state liveries, for the purpose of inspecting the giraffes, which were on the opposite shore. Before the King’s arrival, however, one of these animals waded across the water and joined the company; an incident which amused the Royal party.”

The Tsar planted a cedar tree to mark his visit. This seems to be the oldest specimen so it may be the one he planted; there again it may not.

The feel-good factor between Great Britain and Russia soon soured; ten years later we were at war in the Crimea.

In Margravine Cemetery there has been a recent interment and the two large war memorials have been tidied in preparation for the marking of Remembrance Day. The mornings have been cold and misty. Bertie likes rolling in the grass when it is frosty.