The high point of Daniel Craig’s portrait of James Bond over five movies is undoubtedly the moment in Skyfall where Bond runs through London to rescue M, portrayed by Judi Dench, as she finishes her testimony in front of a select committee—assembled to put her and her agency out to pasture—with the closing passage of Tennyson’s Ulysses. The duality of meaning embedded in this sequence is profound. In the movie itself, the depiction of the ageing and wounded, but still capable, hero encapsulates the narrative arc of James Bond, who in Skyfall has almost literally come back from the dead to save his country. In a wider context, Tennyson’s closing lines can be seen as the saplings of a post-empire English identity, in which erstwhile grandeur and power have been replaced with grit, determination, and pride—and more distantly, with common sense, decency, and respect.
Read MoreMillennials, according to the internet, are people born between 1981 and 1996. That's a bit of a gap, so it will be useful to narrow down the definition of our protagonist somewhat. This is a story about a relatively old Millennial, born in 1984. It is not at all inconceivable that this person will have a different perspective from a namesake born in the middle of the 1990s. This is a bias that we must accept such as it is. Even more specifically, this is a story about European millennial, born in Denmark, who has ended up in the United Kingdom. He is married to a Canadian woman of Guyanese, and ultimately Indian, descent, who is now a naturalised English citizen. The melting pot is real, and millennials are sizzling in its cauldron.
Read MoreI’ve recently spent ten days on the lovely Adriatic coast on Croatia. It is the second time I have holidayed in the country, and I wasn’t disappointed. Its inviting coastline—especially between Split and Dubrovnik—is as good a retreat for sun and relaxation as anywhere in southern Europe’s other more well-known holiday spots. Holiday tends to mean audiobook binging, and on this occasion I listened to John Banville’s Snow, narrated by Stanley Townsend in the Audible version. This was a bit of a risk. My wife recently bought Banville’s The Singularities, and struggled to get traction with it. I then had a go, and while I found the prose mysteriously hypnotic, I struggled to follow the plot, and eventually put it down, having reached only a bit further than my wife. I later realised that this was partly because The Singularities presumes knowledge of Banville’s earlier works.
Read MoreMy last post was a copout, but necessary for me to express where I think things stand without going off on a million tangents. I think that maintaining an ultra-cynical view on markets, and the economy, now is critical. Recent political events have injected a huge amount of emotion, and I dare say anger, into the economic and financial market debate. It’s tempting to jump in both feet first, but investors are ill served by letting their own views and biases steer their decisions. This will sound obvious, but it isn’t always easy to follow.
Sometimes, though, a cynical approach can only come after a cathartic release of your own opinion and views. This post does just that, and I am going to piss off a lot of people. So close your browser if you’re not interested.
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