EDW: Countess Elizabeth Bathory

Since it's Hallowe'en, I had toyed with the idea of doing a fictitious vampire (Nosferatu perhaps?) a succubus or demon. Maybe even this enterprising fellow from Germany.

But real life affords horrors enough, some of them rather well-dressed too. Few people have taken vanity to the extremes that Countess Elizabeth Bathory (or Bathory Erzsébet, if you prefer) did. You will note that her outfit is quite the thing for a 17th century Hungarian aristocrat to wear, understanded but elegant and flattering to the figure – but what good is the outfit if you don't have the milky white complexion to match? Fortunately, the countess didn't have to spend a fortune on lotions and creams and make up and all the rest when she had a cheap and effective alternative: the blood of young girls.

There are so many legends, exaggerations and lurid accounts that it's difficult to say how many people she killed in her castle at Cachite, in what is now Slovakia. (I've been there, if you care about these sorts of details, well worth a visit). The higher estimates list more than six hundred victims. To slightly spoil my own story, too, the bit about bathing in blood is probably a legend (for what it's worth, that's what Wikipedia says).

But the basic facts are still sensational enough: dozens of girls were lured to the castle, often they were hired to work as maids, where Bathory and her associates tortured, murdered and mutilated them.

Now since she was a Hungarian aristocrat who was offing a load of Slovak peasant girls no one paid her too much attention at first. But she did take things a bit too far – people were starting to notice the lack of peasant girls in her part of the world and, a mistake this, she'd moved on to the daughters of the minor nobility. All of which eventually prompted the authorities to act. Following a trial, two of the countess's associates were burned alive, the dwarf (really, it's no wonder this is going to be a film) was beheaded and another women jailed for life.

As for the countess herself, her exulted position and family's status (they ruled large chunks of – inevitably – Transylvania) meant that it would be far too embarrassing to execute her, so the authorities fell back on the tried and tested method of putting an embarrassing problem out of sight. Bathory was imprisoned for a life in a sealed room of her castle and – a final, pleasingly macabre bit this – fed only on scraps that could be pushed under the door. At least she wasn't going to lose her figure.

I know sex offenders usually get a hard time in prison, but not for this, surely?

It's natural enough to laugh at the story of the man who was convicted of having sex with a bicycle. What's not to laugh at, apart from the fact that he was doing it in private and was only caught when two cleaners unlocked the door and walked in to his hotel room.

Oh and the fact that he's been put on the sex offenders register for it. How does that work, in any case: is he banned from going within 200 metres of any bicycle shop? Could he be arrested for hanging round railway stations and colleges or any other place where there a likely to be a lot of bicycles? Is this a really poor use of the legal system and an idiotic misuse of a register designed to protect the public from genuinely dangerous people? Or is there some aspect to this case we're missing? (But just think, William, what if it was your bicycle, how would you feel then?)

So many questions. I'll leave it to finer minds than mine to ponder the last. How did he do it?

Harvard mathematician to blame for juvenile depravity

Keep a short look at him, for that's the scoundrel, there. At least according to the writer of this letter to the Irish Examiner.

YOUR report headlined ‘Gang feeds cats to killer dogs’ (October 16) is a serious indication of how low we have gone in this country.

The behaviour of those youngsters in Cobh, Co Cork, who threw cats to dogs to be savaged alive, was nothing less than sadistic.

Yes, but clearly it's enough to argue that kids are predisposed to be little shits. Someone else must be to blame. But who? Society? Capitalism? The Catholic Church? British colonial rule?

Nope. Tom Lehrer.

Soon after I read Séan O’Riordan’s report about the appalling treatment of the cats, I became aware of the inclusion of a so-called poem entitled ‘Poisoning Pigeons in The Park’ in the English curriculum for secondary schools.

Oh, that Tom Lehrer. It might seem like witty, musically adept satire to you. But to the kids on the streets its deadly serious stuff.

Children are being corrupted by such material and there is no doubt that what is being taught in the classrooms is now being acted out on the streets.

I'm just surprised, and not a little disappointed that this moral crusader did not, in the interests of the children point out that, contrary to Mr Lehrer's assertions that it's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon, Hinduism takes a very dim view of that sort of thing.

I just hope that no one ever tells Michael Sheehan of Ballyarra, Co Cork about Leherer's National Brotherhood Week. "Oh the black folk, hate the white folk." God only knows what it would do to race relations in Ireland.

Wouldn't go to Moldova if you paid them

Much barely restrained amusement at the resignation of the civil servant responsible for checking that public servant don't fiddle their expenses after he ran up a rather embarrassing £365,000 on foreign travel and meals.

My favourite detail:

Lady Bourn accompanied him on jaunts to the US and Brazil, but not to Moldova, Kazakhstan and Belfast.

Oh come on, Belfast, isn't that bad. In fact, as the map here shows, Lady Bourn also joined Sir John in the Bahamas, Venice, Lisbon, Paris, Berne, St Petersburg, Bulgaria and Budapest. Doubtless with such an arduous schedule, Sir John Bourn would have been glad of the support and comfort his wife offered on this trips. I hope St Petersburg taught him a few things about how to catch crooked politicians with their fingers in the till.

EDW: Charles Baudelaire

So it might technically be Thursday by now. But the dead of night is the best time to write about the quintessence of decadence. His very appearance manages to combine all that is squalid and unhealthy with a quite magnificent dash.

His own words will surmise this dual nature better than I can: L'un t'éclaire avec son ardeur, L'autre en toi met son deuil, Nature! Ce qui dit à l'un: Sépulture! Dit à l'autre: Vie et splendeur!

Debauched, syphilitic, obsessional, deranged, immoral, demonic, obsessed with death – but never, ever dull, Baudelaire's artistry is, I hope, clear to you. If not, let me just urge you to read Les Fleurs du Mal and decide for yourself. There is, however, something especially evocative in the sensual misery with which he writes about such topics as romantic derangement, sexual debauchary, revolt against God and nihilism. It is also hard to dislike any book which has been banned for obscenity, especially when that obscenity is an enthusiastic description of lesbian sex. (Il faut épater la bourgeoisie, innit?)

The thing I especially like, though, his this supreme artist did not presume to be a great teacher to all mankind. Not that Baudelaire was apolitical, he participated in the 1848 revolution, after all – but he didn't use that as a bully pulpit. Nor would he have countenanced the sort of damn foolery I've written about below. He might have had the supreme gift of transmuting the base metal of everyday life into artistic gold, but he never made the mistake of believing that there was something morally worthy or uplifting to this sorcery. Let me give you some more lines from L'Alchimie de Doleur (Alchemy of Sorrow), the poem quoted above. It's a favourite of mine, and possibly the saddest and wisest thing written about the artist and creativity.

Hermès inconnu qui m'assistes
Et qui toujours m'intimidas,
Tu me rends l'égal de Midas,
Le plus triste des alchimistes;

I do not presume to give a translation. But it's there in the links.

UPDATE: The pic has vanished from the site, but I can see it when I'm editing the page. All very confusing and doubtless the ghost of the poet himself has something to do with this essential being there and not being there-ness.

I'm writing, damn it, writing, can't you see?

Of all the bad ideas there have been, the one about poets being the unacknowledged legislators of the world must be up there with the worst of them.

In fact, poets are pretty much the last people you would want passing laws are literary figures – hell, artists in general – seem to have a propensity to spout the most staggering bollocks. (Imagine, say, DH Lawrence, TS Eliot and Philip Larkin passing laws. It doesn't bear thinking about). All that creative endeavours, no matter how worthwhile, seems to do something to the common sense and ability to see the world as it is. I suppose that's the point of having an artistic vision, you make something else of reality; but it does come at the price of the most terrible tosh. I can hardly remember an artistic figure saying anything even vaguely sensible in a non-literary form.

But recently it's been a boom time for literary idiocy. Doris Lessing's al-Qaida wasn't as bad as the IRA comment was just silly (to be honest I was more, pleasantly, surprised by her comment that however bad Bush is, he isn't as bad as Ahmadinejad. The fact that this urprised me, probably illustrates my point here). Anyway, we need not let it detain us (for up to 90 days without trial).

Far more energy has been expounded in the past week or so by the brain farts of Anne Enright and Martin Amis. I'm surprised that the various commentators haven't linked the two more explicitly, because it seems to be that both Enright and Amis are guilty of the same thing: thinking out loud and then trying to claim some special virtue for so doing.

Norm's point, that owning up to discreditable thoughts still means you have discreditable thoughts and thar airing them does not necessarily benefit anyone is well made. In both cases there's more. In Enright's case she's written a jumped up Daily Mail piece that somehow combines knee-jerk emotionalism and over-intellectualising (she has previous). However, because she published it in the London Review of Books, it has been dressed up as a look at what her knee jerk tells us about the media (they hype things up) and ourselves (er nothing really, Ann, it's just you).

In the case of Amis, his thought experiment – should we be nasty to all Muslims?, er maybe not – has been poured over more thoroughly. Even if we leave to one side his over-analytical and over-emotional (yes, that again) approach to the topic and his distancing looks pretty weak to me having re-read the interview "; even allowing for the impression that Amis is struggling to keep up with his far more incisive (and decidedly non-creative) chum Christopher Hitchens, there is the same old problem. Having realised that he is, like all of us, I suppose, capable of mean, base thoughts, he doesn't decide to squash them. Instead he thinks out loud, tried to draw a universal meaning and significance for all of us from his own squalid mental processes.

That is, I suppose, the job of the artist. But the idea that a writer (non of your common hacks here) can draw lessons that are applicable to everyone from their own stupidity is something else. Call it hubris, call it arrogance, but I'd say it's one of the best proofs we have that writers aren't the best placed to engage with day-to-day issues. I'd sooner unacknowledged legislation passed by dustmen. As Orwell, kind of, said they wouldn't be such damn fools.

World's Oldest Football Club

Sheffield FC marks its 150th anniversary. Happy birthday and all, but who on earth did they play against?

And being first isn't necessarily the best thing. Sheffield FC play in the heights of the Unibond League Northern Premier League Division One, South, whereas there is at least one, rather more successful (the term is relative), team in the city. Sheffield Wednesday, however, started life as a cricket team. So where did it all go wrong?

Language and its meaning II

Plenty of political stories will refer to a rough division in Gordon Brown's cabinet between the 'grey beards' and 'young Turks'. It's pretty obvious what this means, isn't it? – why, here's the youthful chief secretary to the treasury making this very point.

It's just that the phrase doesn't just mean what he seems to think it means. If I were a member of the cabinet (and you just don't know what you're missing out on) I'd be a tad wary about comparing myself to the perpetrators of the first genocide of the 20th century.

Language and its meaning

Surely it's not just me who was left with a very unpleasant image thanks to this Irish Sunday Independent headline.

How a boozy dinner lead Dunphy to finger Bertie

It's not, you say? Thank goodness for that.

Unblinking political courage

Easily the best political insult of the week is Alex Salmond's description of Gordon Brown as a "big feartie from Fife" which rounds of an entertainingly playground-ish week of exchanges.

(Brown: "No one likes you. Just you wait, I'll call an election, then you'll be sorry." Cameron: "Oh, yeah? Bet you wouldn't dare." "Yes I would". "No you wouldn't". "Will". "Won't". "Just kidding.")
Still it must be a bit galling for a man whose paid someone to write a book about political courage, something about not living up to your high ideals.

However, I am pleased to report that there are still politicians out there capable of real courage and dignity. Some may think of Aung San Sui Kyi, others of Nelson Mandela. But for me both are dwarved by Irish Defence Minister Willie O'Dea (pictured right).

I say "dwarved", but this is only a metaphor because Willie is but 5ft 2. This diminutive stature notwithstanding, this political battleship last week showed he was not afraid to put it all on the line by challenging a critic to a fight in a pub.

As The Irish Examiner reported: "At that, he turned around and said, ‘Who is that big p***k?’ and asked me out saying he would like to hit me. I told him, if he was any bigger I might. He then turned to Geraldine Morrissey and said, ‘I don’t give a f**k about you’.”

Inspirational stuff, but it's not the first time the Corporal Willie has distinguished himself. The photo above made the front page of several newspapers after Willie braved the jeers of the metropolitan elite, intellectuals and media to promote the culture of his native Limerick. Gordon Brown, take note. This is the sort of thing that wins elections.

PS: It might interest readers to learn that the Irish have expectations indeed of their Defence Ministers. One of O'Dea's predecessors Paddy Donegan is best remembered for telling a group of soliders that their commander in chief was a "thundering bollocks and a fucking disgrace" (or "thundering disgrace" in the bowdlerised version".) Donegan was succeeded by the legendary Oliver J Flanagan ("there was no sex in Ireland before TV"), a man whose career is so remarkable I urge you to read a fuller account of it here. Just the chap to take over state security at the height of the troubles.

EDW: Noël Coward

Where to begin? A raconteur, entertainer, smoothie and wit, Coward is one of the greatest Englishmen of all time. Where would Morrissey and Stephen Fry be without him, after all?

There are so many reasons to admire the man. Don' t be fooled by his debonair drawl, Coward came from distinctly humble south London stock, but, decided as a young man to create a rather more exotic persona for himself. And, as any true gentleman would tell you, one's style and character are far more important than mere upbringing.

He was a consumate performer, as this clip illustrates. His final movie role, as Mr Bridger in The Italian Job would also be reason enough to remember him.

But Coward was also a formidably talented writer and songwriter. His wit is most obvious in songs such as Mad Dogs and Englishmen (I like to think of it as the first hip hop song), Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans ("though they've been a little naughty to the Czechs and Poles and Dutch, I don't believe those countries really minded very much") and Imagine the Duchess's Feelings.

Then there are the plays. Witty, drawing room comedies on the whole, things like Blithe Spirit and Present Laughter. The latter is on at the National Theatre just now. I was fortunate enough to be invited along to the preview, it's most entertaining.

But some of his cinema screenplays show he was that he was capable of stirring – moving even– stuff. Coward was the writer of the superior World War Two propaganda piece In Which We Serve (he also starred as the ship's captain) and, possibly his finest hour, he also wrote Brief Encounter (based on his play Still Life).

There is an element of the wartime to this saddest of love stories too – it was shot in 1945, after all. The decision of the characters played by Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard to sacrifice their own happiness for "duty" probably resonated better with wartime audiences than it does today. One can also see a coded message about Coward's homosexuality in the film, especially the idea that social mores might make personal fulfillment impossible.

Still – and I'm assuming you've all seen it; if not, go get a copy now – you'll know there's so much more to it. Even my upper lip might quiver slightly after watching it.

Oh, and couldn't he just wear a dinner jacket?

Public school man 'too common' for Today

The Telegraph has given it a slightly different slant, but that's the essence of it.

For the true toffs, of course, Brentwood – alma matter of Peter Allen, the presenter in questions – is rather infra dig. By contrast, the BBC's Today programme is unquestionably a top school type of show: so unshakably sure of its own merits and worth that it scarcely notices the ruthlessness and self-fulfilling arrogance that it employs to stay at the top.

You may be aware of one of the more popular lurid myths about the top (and top-ish) public schools: the existence of a clandestine daisy chain club (or some similar name) in which, at some time after lights out, the boys all reach out to the bed next to them, grab hold of their neigbour's bits and start to stimulate each other until they reach the climax. Anyhow, Today has always seemed a bit like that to me: a cliqueish circle jerk.

I say the daisy chain stuff is a myth, because I am not aware of it ever happening in real life, although there used to be a tacit toleration for some similar practices. To quote one Harrow housemaster, "I don't mind mutual masturbation, but I draw the line at buggery." Anyway, I try and remain equally unaware of the Today programme happening, partly because I try and avoid being awake during the hours at which it's broadcast (unless I'm just getting to bed), but also because I draw the line at John Humphrys if I do find myself conscious at that time.

I think far too many people take it's "this is the show that important people listen to, so therefore listen to his and feel important" shitck seriously and let it, and it alone, decide what is important and right. Certainly, given its particular and limited listenership, it shouldn't be allowed to dictate the media agenda to the extent it does.

One could continue the BBC Radio Four as metaphor for what's wrong with the British middle classes thing indefinitely – for all the self-regarding arrogance of Today, there's also, in various measures, tweeness, insularity, whimsy, reverence for idiotic institutions (the day you start listening to The Archers is the day your life has lost all worth) and so much boring smugness dotted around the schedules. Worse, all these things seem to have a particular, finely calibrated place within a definite hierarchy that outsiders struggle to grasp.

But too much of this class gradation stuff can drive you mad, so I think I'll stop there. Instead, let's return to Brentwood School as an illustration of why much of this status malarkey is over-rated. While the place may be expensive and have a certain public school cachet, really, it's not terribly good: an Eton for Britain's chavocracy (alumni include such classy characters as Jodie Marsh, Frank Lampard, Noel Edmonds and Keith Allen). Even more depressingly, an awareness of the school's third rateness has been known to induce a pathetic status anxiety and neurotic self-importance in some of its more snobbish former pupils to the extent that it renders them insufferable in real life.

Not that other public schools don't produce their own horrors, and I'm not just thinking of my own dear school chums here. As one former teacher in a Kentish public school has observed:

[A] young offender was far more polite towards her than many of those she taught whose parent’s pay between four and eight thousand pounds a term for the privilege of their offspring behaving like ignorant, spoiled brats. I am not in the least bit surprised.

Me neither. The solution, don't get obsessed with all the self-mythologising. Public schools don't represent some sort of gold standard, nor does the Today programme. And its presenters, no more than public school boys, really have no particular reason to swank. It's most un-gentlemanly behaviour, after all.