PD Smith

Car­ol Van Strum has writ­ten an excel­lent piece about Leo Szi­lard’s 1961 col­lec­tion of sto­ries The Voice of the Dol­phins, as well as review­ing Dooms­day Men for the cam­paign­ing orga­ni­za­tion the Depart­ment of the Plan­et Earth.

Szi­lard — the bril­liant sci­en­tist who saw how to realise HG Well­s’s dream of atom­ic ener­gy in the 1930s — is the cen­tral fig­ure in my study of super­weapons. He was a won­der­ful­ly wit­ty and engag­ing char­ac­ter. He fierce­ly opposed the drop­ping of atom­ic bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki and after the war became a tire­less cam­paign­er for nuclear arms con­trol. After one of his arti­cles on the sub­ject was reject­ed by a news­pa­per edi­tor, he told a friend: “If they can­not take it straight, they’ll get it in fic­tion.” The Voice of the Dol­phins was the result.

It col­lects the sto­ries he had been writ­ing from the end of the war until 1961. As his­to­ri­an Daniel J Kevles has said, “it is a fic­tion of Swift­ian nature, addressed to major issues, includ­ing those of geopol­i­tics, the arms race, dis­ar­ma­ment, pop­u­la­tion con­trol, the moral­i­ty of war, and the mis­match between mod­ern man’s enor­mous tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties and his lim­it­ed moral capac­i­ties.” The col­lec­tion is also won­der­ful­ly expres­sive of Szi­lard’s own char­ac­ter and speaks pow­er­ful­ly of the influ­ence of HG Wells on his life and work.

One review­er not­ed its qual­i­ty of “half farce and half night­mare”. It was a qual­i­ty that Stan­ley Kubrick soon realised was essen­tial to depict an era liv­ing in the shad­ow of the Bomb. His clas­sic film Dr Strangelove also depicts Szi­lard’s most chill­ing brain-child: the cobalt dooms­day bomb.

As Van Strum right­ly says, “the satire, humor, and seri­ous issues in these sto­ries are as rel­e­vant today as they were forty-some years ago — a sor­ry reflec­tion on our fail­ure to heed the words of the wise.”

She con­cludes with a won­der­ful quo­ta­tion from Robert Law­son’s The Fab­u­lous Flight (1949), in which a boy called Peter and his seag­ull, Gus, steal a super­weapon the size of an aspirin which is pow­er­ful enough to wipe out all of Europe:

“ ‘Gus,’ Peter said sud­den­ly. ‘I’ve been think­ing about that cap­sule. We’ve got it and nobody else can get it and I don’t think we ought to give it to any­one — even our own Gov­ern­ment. It’s just too ter­ri­ble.’

“ ‘Ben sort of thinkin’ the same thing myself,’ Gus replied. ‘Of course I ain’t eddi­cat­ed, but seems to me that ain’t a thing any­body ought to be let loose with.”

You can read her excel­lent arti­cle here.

CND’s “Ban the Bomb” sym­bol is 50 years old tomor­row. It made its first appear­ance on a chilly Good Fri­day as thou­sands of British anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers set off from Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square on a 50-mile march to the gov­ern­men­t’s weapons fac­to­ry at Alder­mas­ton.

The demon­stra­tion had been organ­ised by the Direct Action Com­mit­tee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND) joined in. Ger­ald Holtom, a design­er and for­mer World War II con­sci­en­tious objec­tor, per­suad­ed DAC that they need­ed an image to express their aims. To cre­ate this he used let­ters from the sem­a­phore — or flag-sig­nalling — alpha­bet, super-impos­ing N (uclear) on D (isar­ma­ment) and plac­ing them with­in a cir­cle sym­bol­is­ing the Earth.

The full sto­ry is told in Ken Kols­bun’s new book, Peace: The Biog­ra­phy of a Sym­bol. There’s also a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle about it on the BBC.

They inter­view peace his­to­ri­an Lawrence S. Wit­tner who says that “it is still the dom­i­nant peace sign,” a fact part­ly due to its beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty. It’s per­fect for spray­ing on walls and is a uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised sym­bol of peace and resis­tance to repres­sion.

As Wit­tner says, although peo­ple are still fight­ing wars — this week­end is also the fifth anniver­sary of the inva­sion of Iraq — there has not yet been a nuclear war:

“There are many ways in which nuclear war has been pre­vent­ed. The hawks say that the rea­son nuclear weapons have not been used is because of the deter­rent. But I believe pop­u­lar pres­sure has restrained pow­ers from using them and helped curbed the arms race.”

I agree that pop­u­lar move­ments have played a big role in pre­vent­ing nuclear war. But I would also argue that fic­tion and film brought the unique hor­rors of nuclear war alive in peo­ple’s imag­i­na­tions. The role of writ­ers like HG Wells and Peter George (aka Peter Bryant), whose nov­el Red Alert was the basis for Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb, is often for­got­ten. They too helped pre­vent war.

A peace­ful East­er to you all!

If you are a pub­lished writer in the UK you prob­a­bly know that if you reg­is­ter with PLR you can receive a very mod­est pay­ment if your books are bor­rowed from a pub­lic library. What you might not know, how­ev­er, is that the gov­ern­ment intends to cut the amount of mon­ey it gives to PLR in the future, which of course means less mon­ey for writ­ers. If you want to let Gor­don Brown know what you think about this, you can sign an e‑petition on the 10 Down­ing Street web­site.

Appar­ent­ly, hun­dreds of UK vet­er­ans who wit­nessed nuclear tests in the 1950s have joined one of the largest com­pen­sa­tion claims against the Min­istry of Defence. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece on this by Hele­na Mer­ri­man at the BBC. She inter­viewed one wit­ness, Bob Mal­colm­son, who was an 18-year-old radio oper­a­tor on HMS Diana at the time. He saw a 98-kilo­ton explo­sion: “The explo­sion was tremen­dous. They actu­al­ly heard it in Aus­tralia 200 miles away from the islands. We turned our backs, cov­ered our eyes with our hands. I had my eyes open and I could see the bones in my hands, even with my back to this thing.” Mal­colm­son was lat­er diag­nosed with blood can­cer. I hope they are suc­cess­ful in the courts. Read the rest of the piece here.

Last week there was a won­der­ful arti­cle in the Guardian called ‘Read poet­ry: it’s quite hard’, by Sean O’Brien. He argues con­vinc­ing­ly for a poet­ic canon, in part because it “presents a chal­lenge to the read­er, of a kind which in our impa­tient times often pro­duces anx­i­ety and resent­ment”. I agree: canons can be help­ful when you’re a stu­dent, if only to give you some­thing to rebel against.

One of his con­cerns is that a new gen­er­a­tion of read­ers may be miss­ing out on chal­leng­ing texts, as teach­ers dis­card “clas­sics” in favour of more “rel­e­vant” pieces. He’s crit­i­cal of the con­tem­po­rary atti­tude to reading: “The dif­fi­cul­ty that read­ers face owes much to the fun­da­men­tal­ly pro­sa­ic and util­i­tar­i­an view of lan­guage which dom­i­nates our peri­od: speed, impact and ‘the facts’ are pre-emi­nent.”

I was inter­est­ed in this point as I have just been read­ing Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid, which is a fas­ci­nat­ing explo­ration of the neu­ro­science of read­ing. She is trou­bled by the impact of the Inter­net rev­o­lu­tion on the way we read, believ­ing it leads to a more super­fi­cial way of read­ing. Per­haps we need a slow read­ing move­ment, as well as one for slow food?

And final­ly, a very fun­ny piece on acad­e­mia by Ben McGrath in the New York­er: “Pow­der Room 101”. Enjoy.

Physics Edu­ca­tion has pub­lished a review of Dooms­day Men in its March issue. It’s by Peter Camp­bell who has writ­ten a long and thought­ful piece on the issues raised by the book. He gave it a five star rat­ing. Here are some excerpts:

“Dooms­day Men relates the grim sto­ry of increas­ing bar­barism dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry, asso­ci­at­ed with sci­en­tif­ic advance­ment and the pur­suit of super­weapons. … Smith argues that, like Faust, sci­en­tists gained ter­ri­ble knowl­edge dur­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry, at great cost: design­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, they sac­ri­ficed much of the ide­al­ism about sci­ence in the ser­vice of human­i­ty. … Dooms­day Men is a grip­ping but dis­turb­ing read, from which my review could only select extracts. What it high­lights for me is the unavoid­able social respon­si­bil­i­ty that sci­en­tists car­ry for their work and the con­stant dan­ger that sci­en­tists may be reduced to being lit­tle more than ‘tools of war’. Smith con­cludes with a warn­ing: ‘Weapons of mass destruc­tion have not gone away. Today, cold war ten­sions may have fad­ed from the pub­lic mind and the media may be pre­oc­cu­pied with glob­al warm­ing, but the weapons are still out there, and the dooms­day men are still at work devel­op­ing new ones.’ ”

You can read the review here.

Do the hous­es once lived in by famous writ­ers tell us any­thing about their work? After the Great War, Vir­ginia Woolf and her hus­band paid £700 for Monk’s House in the Sus­sex vil­lage of Rod­mell. It’s a sim­ple, weath­er-board­ed cot­tage beside a coun­try lane.

Behind it was a gar­den and an orchard of over­grown pear and apple trees, with views over the flats of the Ouse val­ley. When they bought it, Monk’s House had no bath, no toi­let, no hot water and just brick floors. Its pre­vi­ous own­er had gone mad and starved him­self to death. Vir­ginia wrote: “We went to Rod­mell, and the gale blew at us all day; off arc­tic fields; so we spent our time attend­ing to the fire.” One morn­ing they had to get up at 4 am to chase mice out of their bed. Today, most peo­ple would be put off by such conditions. But not Vir­ginia; she loved the cot­tage and her “soft grey walks” in the sur­round­ing coun­try­side.

Over twen­ty years ago (how time flies), my father and I researched the lit­er­ary his­to­ry of Sus­sex, where we lived. The attrac­tion for writ­ers was easy to see. The coun­ty is ide­al­ly sit­u­at­ed between Lon­don and the south coast of Eng­land. The land­scape varies from the low Weald, with its patch­work of fields and woods, to the sculp­tur­al Downs, the undu­lat­ing chalk hill­s that demand to be walked. In the course of two years we vis­it­ed the for­mer homes of fifty or so writ­ers. They ranged from William Blake’s pic­turesque flint cot­tage in Fel­pham, to Rud­yard Kipling’s impres­sive stone manor house, Bate­man’s, at Bur­wash.

Out of this research came a book, Writ­ers in Sus­sex (1985), writ­ten by my father and illus­trat­ed with my black and white pho­tographs. The play­wright Christo­pher Fry, who lived in Sus­sex, kind­ly agreed to write the fore­word. Indeed, it turned out he had been friends with one of the Sus­sex writ­ers whose home we had vis­it­ed: poet Andrew Young.

It was clear from talk­ing to Christo­pher Fry and from his fore­word that he was delight­ed to dis­cov­er a lit­er­ary dimen­sion to some of his favourite land­scapes. In 1936 he and his wife had lived in an old mill­house at Cole­man’s Hatch. They knew that AA Milne and his fam­i­ly were near­by at Cotch­ford Farm. What they did­n’t know was that twen­ty-three years ear­li­er WB Yeats and Ezra Pound had lived quite near to them: “Every time we had dri­ven to For­est Row we had passed the end of the lane which would have led us to Stone Cot­tage.”

It cer­tain­ly adds some­thing to our appre­ci­a­tion of a land­scape to find out that those same walks and views were also loved by a writer or artist whose work you know well. But can we learn any­thing new about a writer’s work from see­ing where they lived? Of course, fic­tion and poet­ry cre­ate their own tex­tu­al real­i­ty that does not depend on an exter­nal, empir­i­cal real­i­ty. But while vis­it­ing these hous­es and land­scapes I found it intrigu­ing to spec­u­late about the ways geog­ra­phy and place may have informed lit­er­a­ture.

For instance, it is fas­ci­nat­ing to walk through the beau­ti­ful coun­try­side near Mervyn Peake’s two Sus­sex home­s and to see the crenel­lat­ed walls of Arun­del Cas­tle loom­ing on the hori­zon. Did this view influ­ence his idea of Gor­meng­hast cas­tle while writ­ing Titus Groan in the val­ley of the Riv­er Arun?

The link between Ten­nyson’s poet­ry and the view from his home on Black Down is unde­ni­able. His study faced south over the Weald, a beau­ti­ful view described in these haunt­ing lines:

“You came, and looked and loved the view
Long-known and loved by me,
Green Sus­sex fad­ing into blue
With one gray glimpse of sea.”

Some hous­es we vis­it­ed seemed to be archi­tec­tur­al exten­sions of the writer’s char­ac­ter, in the same way as cer­tain sea crea­tures build them­selves pro­tec­tive shells from found mate­ri­als. Hilaire Bel­loc’s home — King’s Land at Ship­ley ‑ was orig­i­nal­ly a tithe barn built by monks. When we saw it ear­ly one sun­ny morn­ing it looked as if it had evolved out of the Sus­sex land­scape that Bel­loc loved so dear­ly. In the gar­den, I remem­ber pho­tograph­ing an old brick wall which was encrust­ed with yel­low and green lichens. At that time, the house was still owned by his fam­i­ly.

The loca­tion of oth­er hous­es was often deeply sug­ges­tive of a writer’s work. John Cow­per Powys’ Warre House (renamed by its mod­ern lit­er­ary own­er Frith House) nes­tled against the side of an ancient earth­work in the vil­lage of Bur­pham. A beau­ti­ful old house, it was sur­round­ed by high walls and trees, and was about as iso­lat­ed as it is pos­si­ble to get in Sus­sex. But not, appar­ent­ly, iso­lat­ed enough for Powys. He found the chil­dren play­ing on the earth­work out­side his study win­dow dis­tract­ing and so he erect­ed a large board labelled “Tres­passers Will Be Pros­e­cut­ed”. The vil­lagers prompt­ly threw it into the ditch and treat­ed a sec­ond board in the same sum­ma­ry fashion. Anec­dotes like this bring both house and writer alive in a very human way.

Cer­tain ter­rains appealed to many dif­fer­ent writ­ers and we found sev­er­al liv­ing with­in a stone’s throw of each oth­er. Powys, Peake and the nov­el­ist and bee-keep­er Tick­n­er Edwardes all lived near Bur­pham, in the shad­ow of Arun­del Cas­tle. Oth­ers lived in Sus­sex from neces­si­ty. Nov­el­ist and nat­u­ral­ist WH Hud­son moved briefly to Wor­thing to care for his invalid wife. He dis­liked the sedate sea­side town with a pas­sion. “I hate the place and have nev­er met any­one in it who has been of use to me. It is talk, talk, but nev­er a gleam of an orig­i­nal or fresh remark or view of any­thing that does not come out of a book or news­pa­per.” In anoth­er age, Harold Pin­ter would also live in Wor­thing.

Bel­loc and Ten­nyson fell in love with both the coun­ty and their homes, and stayed until their last breaths. A minor­i­ty of writ­ers, such as Conan Doyle, seemed utter­ly unaf­fect­ed by the beau­ty of the land­scape, or at least nev­er remarked on it in their work.

These hous­es and the land­scapes around them are part of the geog­ra­phy in which many cre­ative works of art are root­ed. After all, lit­er­ary texts, like all cul­tur­al artefacts, belong to a time and a place. As I look through these pho­tos today, I feel they do offer hints and echoes of the writ­ings cre­at­ed there. At the very least they prompt me to re-read some of the works them­selves which, of course, is what these Sus­sex writ­ers would have want­ed.

You can look at my pho­tographs here and you can also read the orig­i­nal copy of Christo­pher Fry’s fore­word, ham­mered out on his ancient type­writer, here [PDF].