'Maman, What Are We Called Now?' by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar

Persephone Book No 115 is the real-life diary of Parisian Jewish journalist Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar written during the final weeks of World War Two while her husband André was imprisoned by the Nazis.

Betraying her experiences as a writer, Maman, What Are We Called Now? is a beautifully constructed series of heartbreakingly sad snapshots into the terrifying, traumatic and chaotic existence for those left behind by the war, desperate for news of their stolen loved ones. 

The book’s title comes from a question one of Jacqueline’s confused children, Sylvio, asks her not only what they are now called (as in, are they Jewish, are they French, what are they?) but also how old she is – the wartime experiences having snatched away all of her childhood innocence and simplicity. At the time, Sylvio was just 10 and unaware that asking such a question risked their dangerous situation being found out – they were living under assumed names and with false identities.

In the lengthy diary entry of August 6, when it is announced the Americans have arrived in Paris, Jacqueline’s initial optimism that war is ending is perilously balanced with her fears for André’s safety. The diary entry is so beautifully written and spells out Jacqueline’s steadfast loyalty to her Jewish heritage, along with her sadness that she has no fixed home anymore. The prose brings to mind sociologist Zymunt Bauman’s iconic book Modernity And The Holocaust.  

Jacqueline writes: “Being Jewish has become even more of an obsession than being French, an obsession which, like a hidden wound, has worked its way slowly and insidiously under our skin and right into our souls. Little by little it has made us into ‘foreigners’ in our own country, French but ‘different’ … It has turned us into outsiders.”

This echoes Bauman’s theory of understanding the stranger. First you try to make the stranger one of you, then you keep the stranger at a distance, and then you try to get rid of the stranger altogether. For Bauman the Jew is the archetypal stranger in society. Many Jews tried to assimilate into German society having emerged from the ghettos. They started wearing the same clothes as Germans, adopting the same religion, living in the same areas. But these attempts to assimilate the German way of life led to hostility. It stoked fears of the outsider coming inside.

The haunting internal questioning that Jacqueline goes through as she tries to make sense of what it means to be Jewish in this new world is particularly heartrending. Not least because she identifies more as French than as Jewish, and the Jewish identity has been thrust upon her by the Nazis as a reason to exterminate people.

"Suffragette" film, 2015

This post contains plot spoilers about the 2015 film Suffragette.

On one hand I was very excited to see the 2015 film Suffragette because this is a period of history I have long been fascinated and inspired by. One the other hand I was very nervous to see the film precisely because I know so much about the era - and I was worried that the film industry would either a) over-dramatise things for effect to distort facts, or b) invent one or two things to make the plot more ‘Hollywood’.

I always refer to myself as a supporter of the suffragists rather than the suffragettes. The suffragists (the peaceful ones who campaigned for many decades but rarely made the news) far outnumbered the militant suffragettes (the ones who got the headlines for the few years they were active), and it frustrates me that the law-abiding, peaceful and effective suffragists are so often overlooked than their more sensational sisters. So while it looks unlikely that a film about Millicent Fawcett’s lifelong campaign and petitioning will be made any time soon, Suffragette is the best we’re likely to get for now.

Directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane) and written by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), there is a refreshing volume of women in key production roles here - which is of course very rare when still only about 10% of films released every year are made by women.

The dominance of Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst in the pre-release advertising for Suffragette is baffling considering she’s in the film for fewer than five minutes. Baffling… or a cynical marketing ploy to boost audiences? I would argue it would have been more impressive and significant to have a lesser known actor take the role of Emmeline for this film to avoid it derailing the narrative.

And while I’m normally a fan of Carey Mulligan, I felt her leading performance here as laundry worker Maud was unconvincing, especially when paired alongside the far more effective Anne-Marie Duff (militant worker Violet) and Helena Bonham-Carter (pharmacist and rabble rouser Edith). In fact Helena, whom I normally shy away from, was so good that I’d go far as to say that hers is easily the best performance in Suffragette.

But what about the menz? As hardened Inspector Steed, Brendan Gleeson is impressively cruel and conniving but with just the right amount of doubt in his heart. However, as Maud’s husband Sonny, Ben ‘Paddington Bear’ Wishaw gives the worst performance of his life. We have seen and enjoyed Ben playing all manner of fluffy roles over the years, from Pingu in Nathan Barley, to Q in James Bond and, of course, the new voice of Paddington Bear. So Ben was going to have to whip out the mother of all monsters to convince us as Maud’s tyrannical and cold-hearted husband… and he failed miserably.

Suffragette did not disappoint me for the reasons I had expected. Gavron and Morgan mostly avoided over Hollywood-ising the plot and inventing too much for the name of drama (as if there wasn’t enough drama in the suffrage campaign to start with). Instead I have two other. major issues with the plot.

The first is the cack-handed way in which the entirely implausible plot of Sonny giving up his and Maud’s beloved son George for adoption so quickly, and the tiny fragment of protest that Maud put up which is entirely at odds with the absolute devotion to her son she has shown until this point - the son whom she barely mentions again in the rest of the film. Yes, Morgan wanted to shoehorn in the issue that mothers were denied all legal rights to their children until 1925, but it was dealt with so clumsily and awkwardly that it made very little sense here.

Moreover, the bizarre narrative arc - or rather, lack of a narrative arc - across the entire film was disappointing. We start conventionally enough with Maud’s story, following her as a laundry worker, devoted mother, tired housewife, and we see her neatly fall into a prominent role in the Women’s Social and Political Union with some new and important friends. But then suddenly Emily Wilding Davison appears and her story takes over, and the film ends with Emily’s death under the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby. But what of Maud’s story? What happened to her son? Where did she end up living, as she can’t have stayed in that derelict church for ever? What did she go on to achieve in the WSPU? Her story is never concluded. It is a deeply unsatisfactory ending.

So while I wanted to embrace a film about the campaign for women’s suffrage because we have waited so very long to have one, I feel that Suffragette has fallen short in a huge number of areas. However, the trailer for He Named Me Malala made that film look extremely interesting. And on Monday I will be seeing the BFI’s newly curated strand Make More Noise: Suffragettes In Silent Film, which is a series of 21 original short films from the 1910s that document the suffrage campaign. So there is still hope that an excellent film about women’s history is out there. I will report back.

'Rebellious Spirits - The Illicit History of Booze in Britain'

Booze has always been on the cusp of banishment. It's part and parcel of what makes it so much fun. From the prohibition laws of the 1920s to the general fear of moral turpitude, the powers that be have frequently fretted about whether or not we know what's good for us. 

And now, Alchemist Dreams founder Ruth Ball has delved into the cocktail cabinet to research and write Rebellious Spirits: The Illicit History of Booze in Britain (published in a beautiful hardback edition by Elliott & Thompson). 

With a background as a chemist scholar and a career in handmade liqueurs, it's hard to think of anyone better placed to write such a book. What's that? You'd rather someone with alcohol-infused ancestry had put pen to paper? No problem. Ruth's very distant relation is Admiral Edward Vernon who, according to what it says on my bit of paper here, is "the man who invented grog as a way to serve the rum ration to the navy in 1740". It's safe to say that with Ruth at the helm of this book, we're in safe hands.

Rebellious Spirits is a damn fun read. How could it not be? With chapters devoted to each of the major spirit groups (whisky, gin and co), as well as the infamous speakeasies that have become so painfully hip again, Ruth has truly committed herself to the business of becoming the biographer for booze. So much so that she has not only recreated the recipes for several cocktails from days of yore, but also brought them up to date for more contemporary palates with a mixture of alcohols that are less likely to, err, blow the brains off our more delicate constitutions. If there's one thing alone we learn from Rebellious Spirits, it's that our forefathers were much harder drinkers than we are. 

I love the mix of historical facts with recipes and personal stories from the characters involved. And the characters we meet on the way are fascinating - as are the ingenious lengths they go to in order to conceal their illicit booze making from the authorities. To avoid giving away any spoilers, the best I can say is that you must read this book and learn that there are people out there who quite literally died so that you could enjoy a dram of whisky when you fancy one. 

For more information and to buy a copy, please click here. 

'The Crucible' at Bristol Old Vic

Cast photo by Geraint Lewis

Arthur Miller’s famous 1953 play The Crucible made its British debut at Bristol Old Vic in 1954, so it is only fitting that it returns to this famous stage to mark 100 years since Miller’s birth (and 10 years since his death).

This is my second viewing of The Crucible, having previously seen a very dry production at the Nottingham Theatre Royal in the late 1990s. I’d be lying if I said I had enjoyed that one back then. But the opportunity to see this production directed by Tom Morris - the theatre’s executive director - was too good to pass by.

Morris wisely chose to present a ‘straight’ production of The Crucible, with none of the puppets or other distractions some of his other shows have become known for. When the script and cast are as tightly knit as they are for this performance of The Crucible at Bristol Old Vic, there is really no need for anything extra.

Centred around the moral backbones of John (Dean Lennox Kelly) and Elizabeth Proctor (Neve McIntosh), the entire and expansive cast is faultless. Particular praise must go to Rona Morison whose performance as teenage troublemaker Abigail Williams is outstanding - and whose narrative threads the whole show together into a disaster of literally biblical proportions for the town and the Proctors.

We open on Rev Parris (Jude Akuwudike) and his niece Abigail fretting about Parris’ daughter Betty (Zoe Castle) who has apparently been struck dumb and motionless after a night of revelry in the woods with Abigail and some of the town’s other young girls. Rumours quickly spread that the girls were engaged in witchcraft and this escalates to suggestions the girls were conjuring the spirits of dead babies, drinking blood, dancing naked and flying through the air like spectres. The town is divided between those who are quick to gleefully believe such scandal and those who think the girls are just playing for attention. But Abigail’s devious past leads her to guide the girls into truly terrible behaviour… while the illogical actions of the religious zealots and Governor Danforth (Jeffrey Kissoon) is spine-chillingly horrific.

Famously inspired by the metaphorical Communist witch hunts that informed Miller’s experience of life in America in the early 1950s, he uses the actual Salem witch trials of 1692 as an allegory for the horror of publicly - and falsely - accusing innocent people of all manner of evils with not a care for evidence, proof or reason. As has been noted by many, the message of The Crucible can be applied to any era you care to mention and this is doubtless part of the play’s resounding power.

For a contemporary spin, just consider the current trend for social media shaming. Where interfering people illicitly take photos of strangers doing perceived wrong acts, and post them online for others to share, name, shame and compulsively vilify. At times this has even resulted in people losing jobs and relationships with no course of action to defend themselves… and even if they did, nobody would listen because it is much more ‘fun’ to believe the salacious rumours than to listen to facts and reason.

The haunting refrain of “There’s a beautiful home of the soul … ‘Tis a land where we’ll never grow old” through this production of The Crucible is heartbreaking in its truth and simplicity. There’s a reason why Miller’s play has survived for so long and with its timeless message it will surely survive for generations to come.

The Crucible is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 7 November. Click here for more information and to book tickets.