CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Simon Schama’s Story Of Us: Revealing 007’s secret agenda has Schama schaken and schtirred…
Simon Schama’s story about the US (BBC2)
The name is Schama, Simon Schama. . . Chess, not Schtirred. Telly’s most important cultural historian has a soft spot for literature’s most politically incorrect spy.
Drooling over an impeccable set of Ian Fleming first editions – “It’s wonderful to be in their presence,” he cooed – the 79-year-old presenter enjoyed reading passages aloud.
He didn’t opt for action-packed shootouts or car chases, any more than he was enraptured by the trashy James Bond paperbacks of my youth, with half-naked models draped around enormous pistols (covers apparently designed by Dr. Sigmund Freud). itself).
Sir Simon intended to advance his thesis that 007 was an artistic response to the decline of our empire, a right-wing fantasy that Britannia remained relevant in the Cold War world.
And you thought the books were just snarky thrillers soaked in vodka martinis and sex.
How wrong Shirley Bassey was when she called Bond ‘Mr Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang’. She should have nicknamed him ‘Mr Blinkered Denial of Waning Imperial Influence’. That’s much catchier.
To prove his point, Schama read an excerpt from You Only Live Twice in his Story Of Us in which Bond explained the causes of the Suez crisis.
It was teeth-grindingly bad stuff, although it might have been fairer to point out that Fleming was seriously ill when he wrote this, his worst novel.
Sir Simon intended to advance his thesis that 007 was an artistic response to the decline of our empire, a right-wing fantasy that Britannia remained relevant in the Cold War world, writes Christopher Stevens.
Simon Schama with Jerry Dammers, founder and main songwriter of The Specials
The rest of the episode was devoted to a discussion about mass immigration, which Schama unreservedly sees as a very good thing. “Call me a lame utopian,” he muttered, “but where you have the gift of immigration, you have the gift of many different cultures.”
Anyone who disagreed, he suggested, was a skinhead in a bootie waving a National Front sign and throwing petrol bombs at police officers. He scoured the BBC archives for clips of that kind of dirty hooligan, interspersed with newsreels of British-Asian women looking terrified.
The yobs were incited, he explained, by Tory cabinet minister Enoch Powell and his seething speeches. To illustrate Powell’s appeal to the idiotic underclass, we saw clips of the politician wearing a bowler hat while riding a horse. Pure encouragement.
When Schama’s retelling reached the 1980s, the charge against neo-Nazi racism led the Coventry pop group The Specials, writes Christopher Stevens.
When Schama’s retelling reached the 1980s, the charge against neo-Nazi racism led the Coventry pop group The Specials. Of course, no BBC report on the Thatcher era would be complete without a blast of their biggest hit, Ghost Town, with a clip of the band crammed into a Vauxhall Cresta.
Sir Simon was particularly interested in the band’s political aims, but he made a game attempt to criticize their radio-friendly style – ‘a musical fusion, the rhythm and melody lines of Jamaican ska, upgraded with raw punk and bite. . . skinhead aggression turned into charged fun.’
Unfortunately, we didn’t see him pogo on another of the band’s hits, Too Much Too Young. But credit where it’s due: for an opera lover, he tries to broaden his musical horizons. Last week he interviewed Cliff Richard.