Author: Mark Hannam

Directly outside my home, level with the second floor, a train track runs along a cast-iron bridge that was built in the 1860s.  The track was disused for many years but re-opened just over a decade ago as part of the expanded London Overground network.  I like the shape and structure of the bridge, a reminder of London’s industrial past and the constant renewal of its material infrastructure, and I enjoy watching the regular passing of trains, especially since their noise is almost completely excluded by my secondary glazing.  On bright summer mornings, the sunlight that floods into my study through the east facing window, is supplemented by light from the glass of the moving train carriages reflected through the west facing windows.  When I catch the southbound train, from nearby Hoxton station, I sometimes glance at my home as we cross over the bridge, but the train moves too fast for me to see anything other than a blur of bookshelves.

Sometime later this year, this Overground line will acquire a new name: the Windrush Line.  The name refers to the ship, the Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought the first sizeable group of postwar immigrants from the West Indies to London.  The Windrush generation, as they are now commonly described, comprise those who arrived in the late-1940s and 1950s, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Many of this generation continue to live in the areas connected by this line: Dalston, Haggerston, New Cross, Peckham, and Penge, and they have contributed much to the vibrancy and variety of London life.  Transport for London, the body which is responsible for the management of this railway line on behalf of London’s Mayor, says that the new name celebrates the Windrush generation and the wider importance of migration that has created a lasting legacy that continues to shape and enrich London’s cultural and social identity today.    

Continue reading “Names for trains”

Last month I visited Antwerp.  I left my house early in the morning, and took a taxi to St Pancras station, to catch the train to Brussels.  After passing through the automatic ticket barrier and the security check, where my bag and coat were scanned, I queued to “exit” the United Kingdom by showing my passport to an employee of the UK Border Agency.  Immediately afterwards, I queued to “enter” France, showing my passport once again, to be stamped by an employee of the French Direction centrale de la police aux frontières.  Although my train was going to Belgium, it passes through France first, so my entry into the EU was controlled by the French border force.   Since France is a member of the Schengen Area, I was able to travel from France to Belgium without further identity checks.  It is a curious fact that entry into the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras station in London requires the permission of the French government.  Unfortunately, the quality and the price of the coffee available remains decidedly mainstream British.

A few days later, I travelled to Co Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.   I left my house early in the morning and took a train to Gatwick airport, to catch a flight to Belfast.  After passing through the automatic ticket barrier and the security check, where my bag and coat were scanned, I treated myself to another over-priced and bland coffee, before heading to the gate.  My ticket was checked again, however I was not asked to show any form of ID before I boarded the plane.  After landing, I picked up a hire car and drove for just over an hour to Derry, after which the A2 becomes the N13 as I crossed the otherwise unmarked border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  For the second time in a week, I had exited the United Kingdom and entered the European Union, but in this case, I had not been asked to show my passport to anyone.  Brexit has been enormously disruptive to life in Britain, but crossing the land border between the UK and the EU remains wholly unnoteworthy. 

Continue reading “Disrupted”

Next year — or perhaps the year after, since the historical record is not clear — will be the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of the death of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who was brutally tortured and then executed on the orders of his former employer, Theoderic, King of Italy.  In the history of philosophy, Boethius is both important and famous, but not for the same reasons.   His importance lies in the scholarly work of his earlier life, when he translated several Greek works into Latin, including texts by Aristotle, and wrote commentaries on other important classical works, particularly on logic, as well as some early Christian theological studies.  These translations and commentaries were highly influential in the philosophical and theological thought of the next millennium, leading one contemporary scholar to describe him, along with Augustine and Aristotle, as the fundamental philosophical author in the Latin tradition.  Despite his influence, as a person he plays a very minor role in most histories of philosophy, being viewed today mostly as a conduit of Greek thought to medieval Europe rather than as an important thinker in his own right. 

The work for which he is famous, and which remains easily available today in English translation, is the Consolation of Philosophy, a literary text written while he was in prison in Ravenna, awaiting execution.  Written as a dialogue between the author and a woman who personifies “philosophy”, part in prose and part in poetry, the book asks us to consider what true happiness consists of, and how we should understand life’s sudden reversals of fortune.  For a man who came from a leading patrician family in Rome and had been appointed to a position as a senior royal official, but who now faced imminent death for defending a senator accused of treason, and whose erudition and scholarship had attracted unjust accusations of participation in occult practices, this was a real and pressing question. 

Continue reading “The provocation of philosophy”

Many years ago, I attended a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall in London.  In those days, I could only afford the cheap seats at the back of the auditorium, and on this occasion, I was in the very last row, far from the stage on which the orchestra sat.  Just before the concert started, the man sitting next to me took a large book out of his bag, which I could see was the score of the symphony.  I was impressed that he planned to follow the music, page by page, during the performance.  Then he produced a small white baton and, as the audience quietened and the dramatic opening notes were played, he started to keep time with his right hand while turning the pages of the score with his left.  Unseen by the musicians and unnoticed by almost all the audience, for the next thirty minutes he conducted the symphony all the way through to the end.  Bravo!

I had not thought about this unusual musical experience for a long time, but it came to mind at the end of last year, listening to certain British politicians debating immigration, which has recently risen to levels which they describe as “out of control”.  Various policy proposals are being introduced to try to limit the numbers of incoming migrants.  This was the great prize that many British people thought they had secured when they voted to leave the EU a few years back, that we would now be free to control our borders and to reduce the number of people who can enter Britain to live and work.  These voters have discovered in the subsequent period that meaningful control of our borders is elusive, and that the so-called Brexit dividend is really an invoice.  Those politicians who have not understood this, and who continue to demand policies to reduce immigration, remind me of the man who conducted the orchestra from the back row: they wave their hands around with energy and passion but to no real effect, for the migrants like the musicians are moving to a different beat.

Continue reading “Out of control”

I have been reading an essay by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.  His theme is the changing character of the public sphere, where debate and discussion lead to the formation of public opinion, which in turn influences public policy making.  This was also the subject of his first major book – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – which was published fifty years ago and which I read when I was a graduate student.  (Full disclosure: I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Habermas’s work and its application to the theory of democracy.  In addition, I have just written a review of this essay plus the first volume of his history of philosophy, both recently translated into English, which should appear in the TLS early in the new year.) 

Today, the challenge to the integrity of the public sphere has less to do with the growth of mass circulation newspapers, which rely on advertising revenue, and more to do with new social media, which rely on the consumers themselves to become the producers of content.  Nowadays we are all authors, and this is a great advance in freedom as voices that had been excluded or distorted from the public sphere, can now be clearly heard.  To some extent, the media has been democratised, which is undoubtedly positive for the development of free and open societies.  And yet, these new freedoms are often being exercised with scant regard to the responsibilities that freedom brings.  As Habermas says: Just as printing made everyone a potential reader, today digitalization is turning everyone into a potential author.  But how long did it take until everyone was able to read?

Continue reading “Editing myself”