Material Witness

REVIEW: The Three Graces by Amanda Craig

One of the great strengths of Amanda Craig’s novels is that she is able to keep so many different ideas and themes alive in the same story but without complicating the narrative.

The joy of reading her books is that this is always achieved with humour, humanity and a lightness of touch.

So it is here in The Three Graces in which she takes a typically rich cast of characters to a spring wedding in Tuscany – a return to the scene of Love In Idleness, her hugely entertaining retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  

The themes she addresses range from the tyrannical inevitability of aging through the plight of cross-Mediterranean refugees, the influencer economy and the growing impossibility of life in London for Gen Z. For good measure there is a Russian oligarch cowering in his fortified mansion fearful for his life after speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine. There’s a lot going on, but never too much.   

At the heart of the tale are her graces, three elderly legal immigrant women living out their days in varying degrees of comfort and health in the fictional town of Santorno. Ruth, who is fretting about the weight of responsibility that falls on her to organize her favourite grandson’s wedding at her home. Diana, Lady Evenlode, who has fallen on hard times and is looking after her abusive dementia-ridden husband. And Marta, the piano maestra, whose health is deteriorating fast as she prepares for one final performance.

Bound by ties of marriage, and an unlikely friendship forged in their foreignness, together they confront their mortality and their demanding and careless families with a fragile stoicism.

The drama hinges around one of the few locals on the scene, the disappointed, disaffected handyman Enzo.  Waking one night to find an unwelcome visitor to his house, Enzo believes he has seen one a migrant breaking in and shoots into the darkness. He finds evidence that his shot hit its target but not a victim. The aftermath of this violent act embroils the community into a mystery that clouds preparations for the wedding celebrations.

Regular readers of Craig’s work will not be surprised to find a meticulously plotted story in which she weaves together seamlessly the many plot strands while laying bare the hopes and fears of all her characters, despite their attempts to hide them. 

The resulting tapestry is as rich and colourful as the glorious Tuscan landscape she so beautifully evokes - a moving, entertaining and thought-provoking novel. Cinque estelle.

Lessons in Love in the Prado

How Madrid, and Velázquez, taught me to appreciate art

Room 30 of London’s National Gallery is hardly off the beaten track. From the Central Hall you wonder past Canaletto, take a left at Turner and then again at the 17^th Century Italians. It’s a matter of a minute and yet it always feels somewhat overlooked, far from the madding crowd.

And this is good, because tucked away in one corner of the National’s Spanish collection is the Rokeby Venus. There is a comfortable bench in front of her and one afternoon in March I take a seat and spend some time indulging myself in a growing obsession: the paintings of Diego Velázquez. I have him, and her, more or less to myself. It is heaven.

The Rokeby Venus, painted in 1647 is so named for the Durham country house in which it hung for most of the 19^th Century. It is London’s most celebrated Velázquez and his only surviving nude. Like many of his most acclaimed works there is both challenge and a sense of interaction with the world. The face of Venus, blurred and indistinct, stares into a mirror, not at herself but, like the infanta Margarita in Las Meninas, back at the painter and the viewer. I stay for half an hour but it could be longer. Velázquez invites lengthy contemplation. His portraits never display just a face, but an entire personality and life story.

Alongside Venus is Felipe IV, all Hapsburg chin and awkward nobility. I have mixed feelings about Felipe. His was a tough reign, managing foreign wars and domestic decline. The portraits of Velázquez, who was an important administrator in the court as well as its most celebrated artist, chart the King’s trajectory from youthful hope to tired disappointment. In her marvellous book “The Vanishing Man” the art critic Laura Cumming writes: “The greatest achievement of Philip’s life was to employ Velázquez.”

Without Felipe’s patronage, there may be no Velázquez. Equally, if the painter had spent less time counting beans for the King, we would have a far greater wealth of his work.

I found Velázquez, as so many do, in Madrid where he’s not hiding in a side room. Madrid is a city that opens even the most untrained and disinterested eye to art. I moved here a decade ago with little appreciation, but the museums are irresistible.

The Thyssen collection might be the world’s most accessible art history tour. I first went there to see Henry VIII, more in search of Hilary Mantel than Hans Holbein. I can never go to the Reina Sofía without stopping in on Dalí’s Young Woman in a Window. Sorolla’s house is a personal favourite. The watercolours of Valencia’s beaches are marvellous but his family paintings move the soul. Find someone who loves you as much as Sorolla loved his Clotilde.

And then there is the Prado, the jewel in Madrid’s crown. At first its scale and grandeur are intimidating. Where does one start in such a treasure trove?

Fortune intervened.  In early 2019, I was invited to a private tour and supper. A guide whisked us through Rubens, Bosch and Goya until we finally found ourselves in front of Las Meninas. There we dwelled a good long time learning something of Velázquez and his unique talent, and much about the painting, its meanings and its messages. And there I learned something of how to look, appreciate and love art. And I fell in love with Velázquez.

There’s no painting in the world that is harder to walk away from. And the longer you look at it, the harder it becomes because the painting looks back.   The piercing eyes of the Infanta; the quizzical face of the master himself; even Felipe in the mirror in the background. “The figures of the past keep looking into our moment,” writes Cumming. And I keep looking for Velázquez.

So four years later, I am in the National Gallery, with Felipe and Venus. On the way out, I stop to look at Goya’s Wellington, but the Duke doesn’t do it for me in the way that even Felipe does. Goya’s canvass is a portrait, a great one, but Velázquez tells a story. 

The Iron Duke, as it happens, had a couple of Velázquez canvasses of his own, found among other loot in the abandoned baggage train of Joseph Bonaparte after his defeat at the battle of Vitoria. As soon as he knew what he had – 83 canvasses stolen from the Spanish Crown – Wellington ordered them sent back to Ferdinand VII. The new King refused his offer.  And so my next trip is to Apsley House to spend time with The Water Seller of Sevilla, the Portrait of a Man. And Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, the genius hidden in plain sight.

This is the text of an article published in the British Spanish Society magazine, Revista. 

https://www.britishspanishsociety.org/la-revista/

 

Glenda Jackson, Notting Hill and see you next Tuesday

In the spring of 1998, the year-old Labour government of Tony Blair fulfilled one of its manifesto promises by giving Londoners a referendum on reviving City-wide government in the capital, 12 years after Margaret Thatcher shut down the Greater London Council.

As a young and very junior staffer at the Greater London Labour Party, I had the chance to participate in the campaign for a Yes vote that was widely regarded as a foregone conclusion. 

The only element of my role in these historic (Isn't this overdoing a bit? Ed.) events that I remember was driving various celebrities and politicians around the city to campaign stops in a party-issue red Rover 45.

Among those I chauffeured was Prunella Scales, who was charming and witty, a handful of largely unmemorable MPs, and the great, now sadly late, Glenda Jackson.

Glenda was both politician and celebrity. She had jacked in her extraordinary, Oscar-winning film career and been elected as Labour MP in the marginal Hampstead and Highgate constituency in 1992. Six years later, with a new majority of over 14,000, she was a minister with responsibility for transport in London and was regarded as a potential mayoral candidate. 

She was then highly active and visible in the campaign, and I drove her on three occasions. One passed off peacefully, and I remember little of it, except realising that for the general public, she was still a huge star. People loved her. 

I loved her. She was very very funny, smoked like a chimney, swore like a trooper and was enormously entertaining company. In private at least she was acerbic and spoke entirely without filters. She was also generous. I smoked at the time too, and she liked that. Coming away from one of the visits, she suddenly yelled, "Stop the car", and jumped out, diving into a local newsgagent. She came back with four packets of Dunhill, two of which she gave to me. 

On the second of the three visits we went to the Arndale Centre in Wandsworth, a down-on-its-luck shopping mall. Glenda was there to support the local party and Tony Colman, the MP. Colman's chief claim to fame was that he succeeded David Mellor in Putney on May 1 1997, and at his own declaration was a mere witness to one of the most dramatic and memorable moments of the night, when James Goldsmith taunted Mellor with his "out, out, out" chant. 

I digress. I drove Glenda from Westminster to Wandsworth and dropped her at the entrance to the shopping centre before going to park the car. That could only have taken 15 minutes, and I returned to the Arndale ready to support the campaign activities.

None of which lasted long. As soon as I reappeared, Glenda, clearly fuming, snapped, "Get the car, we're leaving."

Somewhat bewildered, I did as asked. I brought the Rover back around to the front of the shoppung centre. Bidding her adoring public goodbye, Glenda climbed in. 

"That man is a cunt," she said.

"What? Who? What?" I am no shrinking violet and have been known to swear, but I was shocked. 

"Tony Fucking Colman," she said. "We came all the way down here to support him, and he spent the whole time on the fucking phone."

Please understand that there is an element of paraphrasing some of the dialogue in this story, and so while it might not be a 100% accurate transcription of the conversation, I can assure you it captures both the spririt and the substance as well as individual words and phrases that are etched in memory.

It turned out that Colman had been on the phone when Glenda arrived and treated her to a series of raised fingers indicating he'd only be a couple of minutes. She lost patience quickly and that was that. 

A few days later, I was asked to collect her again. On this occasion she was to visit an active set to promote London as a destination for filmmakers, something that would be made easier somehow by having a Mayor and elected assembly. 

Off we went to West London and the Portobello Road market where I deposited Glenda on the perimeter of the set from where she was collected by a flunky. Or met by dignitaries. I don't know, because on this occasion I was to take the car away and return at a pre-set time to collect her. 

And I did, Glenda got in the car, in all likelihood lit up, and was off.

"What a cunt," she said. 

I was less shocked this time. 

"Who's a cunt this time?" I asked.

"Hugh Grant."

OK, so now I was shocked. My entire exposure to Hugh Grant at this time had been watching Four Weddings and a Funeral, which I loved, and who could possibly not love floppy-haired Hugh?

"What did he do? Wasn't he nice to you? Did something happen?"

"He was perfectly charming," she said. "It all went fine."

"So, er..."

"I will tell you this, if someone had come to one of my film sets and asked to interrupt for something like that there's no fucking way I'd have allowed it."

It seemed to me somewhat ungrateful and I said so.

She spluttered bit and sort of agreed I may have had a point, although she neither looked or sounded like she meant it. And so we smoked a bit more and moved on. It turned out that Grant had been filming the famous scene in Notting Hill where he walks through the market as the seasons change, although I only realised that later after watching the movie. (Which I also like)

I dropped Glenda back in Westminster and never met her again. Although almost 20 years later I did see her in the flesh one last time. She was cast as King Lear at a production at the Old Vic, and despite living in Madrid I wouldn't have missed it for the world. She was powerful and magnificent and it made me regret I hadn't had the chance to see her on stage in her prime. She must really have been something.

The poster for that production hangs in our house, and I cannot help but smile and whisper a four letter word when I walk past it. 

So long Glenda, and thanks for all the fags.  

The Greatness Of Antoine Griezmann

Between the 90^th and 95^th minutes of Atlético de Madrid’s 2-1 victory over Real Sociedad in their final home game of the season, Antoine Griezmann made three critical interventions around his own penalty area.

With his side defending a narrow lead and seeking to avoid throwing away a victory from a position of total control for the second time in four days, Griezmann, the team’s best forward, led from the back.

Earlier in the match Griezmann had first given Atleti the lead with a golazo from the right hand edge of La Real’s penalty area, striking the ball through a sea of bodies into the far left corner of the net. Later he provided the assist as the excellent Nahuel Molina gave Atleti what was to prove the decisive goal. And still, deep into injury time, the team’s best attacker was also its most effective defender.

It has been thus since December 29. Griezmann, with Nahuel and others, went off to the World Cup in Qatar in November with his club in crisis. Atleti finished bottom of its Champions League group and stood fifth in La Liga having earned just one point from the previous three matches, all of which were against very modest opposition. The mood in the club was sour, and for the first time in the decade I’ve lived in Madrid, Diego Simeone’s long tenure as manager seemed under serious threat.

Griezmann came within a couple of penalties of returning from Doha with a second World Cup Winners medal, but even as runner up he enhanced his reputation as one of the world’s greatest players.  Nahuel and fellow Argentine Rodrigo de Paul went one better, starting in the team that beat France into second place.

All three came back to Madrid with confidence and form. Nahuel, nervous and hesitant before Christmas, may now be the best right back in La Liga. Griezmann, who was hardly out of form before, has been transcendent. He might be the best player in the world in the last six months.

During the 6-1 demolition of Sevilla in early March, the Guardian’s Spanish football guru Sid Lowe tweeted, “That was a glorious pass from Griezmann”. Seeing the Tweet after the game, I couldn’t figure out which pass Lowe meant. I narrowed it down to three. The slide rule through ball to Memphis for the first goal. An improvised lob over three defenders’ heads onto the right boot Alvaro Morata for the fourth. Or my personal favourite, a 40-yard, blind, swivelled volley into the path of Yannick Carrasco mid way through the second half. This one I still see in my daydreams, although I suspect Lowe was referring to the Morata assist, a sumptuous piece of creativity. For good measure, Griezmann also scored a golazo into the top right hand corner of Sevilla’s net from about 25 metres.

The Sevilla game was probably the highlight of the season, but in every single match there has been at least one moment in which he takes the breath away. It has been an incredible privilege to watch this man play this season. In my many years of watching live football, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed watching a player more.

It got to the point in later games in the season that I’ve watched Griezmann rather than the ball – to see how, where and when he moves, but also to try to understand how opposing teams are trying to deal with him.

The reality is that they don’t. Griezmann is constantly in motion, usually somewhere between the midfield and his forward partner, playing the pivot role between defence and attack and making sure of a steady stream of possession to Nahuel on the right wing and Carrasco on the left. The range of passing is extraordinary from deft flicks and back heels, to long range drives that land on the head of a pin. His movement and sharp reading of the game means he regularly finds space between defenders that opens up dangerous situations.

And then there is his prodigious work ethic and tracking back to help out with the grunt work, as seen in the dying minutes of the win against La Real. Griezmann, unlike the departed Joao Felix, understands how to play a full role in a Diego Simeone team and does it as well as anyone.

Underlining just what a phenomenal season he had, Griezmann finished with 31 goal contributions (15 goals and 16 assists), comfortably more than any other player despite having started the season playing only 30 minutes of each match as Atleti engaged in a bizarre contractual wrangle with Barca.

In another country he would be the face of the league, a celebrated superstar of the game. The reality in Spain though is that such privilege is restricted to the players of Real Madrid and Barcelona.

That doesn’t matter too much. He is loved and cherished at Atleti, where he has now completed his full redemption arc following his ill-fated and badly handled move to Barcelona in 2019. Since his return at the beginning of 2022 – a move not welcomed by everyone at the club – he’s fought hard to win back the affection of fans. His performances this season and obvious love for the club seem to have earned that.

At the end of that final home match Griezmann, with his three daughters, approached the Fondo Sur to salute Atleti’s ultras. Moments later, he was in the stands himself with the microphone leading the singing. It was a wonderful sight and as he walked away, the ultras sung his name for the first time since 2019. The new season cannot come soon enough.