Yet Another Gate

So that's this week's Grand Villains sorted out. The group who excite days of inflammatory headlines, public – i.e. media – outrage, chin-stroking analysis and calls for regulation, castigation and annihilation. I'm surprised there's anybody left. After expense-fiddling politicians, greedy bankers, crooked TV companies, women in burkhas, children in hoods, worshippers of Islam and (time after time) asylum seekers comes... the print media. The ones who always lead these moral panics. There's a whiff of the French Revolution here, the original persecutors ending up on the guillotine themselves. Though it's rather less bloody, of course, and much, much duller.

Basically, the claims go, the News of the World hired a legion of Philip Marlowes to bug and burgle assorted public figures. Then, when the figures found out, it paid them thumping out-of-court settlements to stop the cases coming to light. Which they have now anyway, largely thanks to the hush money paid to PFA head Gordon Taylor. The BBC has been gleefully leading with the story, probably still sore from the kicking which the NotW gave it over the phone-in scandal and the Queen docu-fiasco. The motive of the Guardian, which broke the story, is slightly different. “Murdoch's £1m bill for hiding dirty tricks” bellows the headline, and phrases like “Murdoch executives” and “Murdoch company” appear throughout. Nobody has yet profited by going after Rupe, as Setanta has just discovered, but the Guardian clearly thinks it worth another shot.

What stands out, as is so often the case, is the absurdity of it all. Gordon Taylor is one of the few high-profile union leaders left and so a hate figure for the NotW. There was conceivably an effort being made to destroy him. A couple of politicians, Tessa Jowell and John Prescott, were also bugged. But so were two agents, Sky Andrews and the egregious Max Clifford. The paper wasn't conducting an investigation into the secret mechanism of Britain here. It wanted gossip and tittle-tattle. Surely it could have just made all that up, as it usually does? Instead, though, it paid a lot of money to private investigators and a lot more to camouflage their actions. Even with Murdoch's funds to draw upon, this is a shocking waste for an industry supposedly in crisis. There is also similarities to the great scandals of the 1990's. From Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Archer, what got them was not the original act but what they later did to hide that act. If everyone wasn't so damn cautious all the time there would be a lot more happiness around.

Anyway, the journalists have been exposed by the journalists. We know how it works now. More papers will probably be pulled into the miasma. The whole industry will don a hair shirt and promise to reform itself. A great many self-righteous articles will appear; Gordon Brown will fire off some pompous sound bites and maybe appoint someone like Alan Yentob as Journalism Tsar. And then the next Grand Villains will appear. Personally I'm hoping for the novelists. They're too smug by half. And they must have done something. Everyone has; which is why these calls of outrage are always so shrill. Get your torches, you vengeful mob, and head off to Bloomsbury.

Rome 16/9/08

Well, the Galleria Borghese is one thing I'm destined not to do. Yesterday, like everywhere else, it was closed. Today I climbed up from Plaza del Popola, past the amazing viewpoint over the city and the disturbing beggar who sits on the stairs. Had a pleasant stroll through the Villa Borghese, once a private estate and now a public park. One highlight was the Piaza di Siena, a large oval space where you'd expect a lake or a lawn. Instead there's just a load of packed earth. To add extra surreal touches, parrots were squealing in the trees overhead. Finally got to the gallery to see a sign saying, full, advance tickets only. How can a gallery be closed? Especially this one, it's huge. So had to got to the Gallery of Modern Art elsewhere in the park. It was OK, if rather dominated by some bloke whose one idea was that large means good. There was some interesting pieces behind him, though, particularly from the Italian wave of Impressionists.

Meandered back to Popola afterwards and popped into Santa Maria dei Miracoli, one of the churches which frames Via del Corso. It was a nice, unpretentious little place, another rotunda with refreshingly subdued decoration. I then tried once more to navigate to the Trevi Fountain.
Eventually managed it this time, after losing my way and temper occasionally, and got a surprise. I was expecting, well, just a fountain. Instead it's a huge structure taking up the whole façade of a substantial building. A fountain does form part of it, but is almost incidental. You'd definitely call it baroque, you might easily call it hideous, but it certainly tries hard. Then went another backstreet way back to what I call the Dogs Bollocks of Rome, noting en route an alley which decided it had to have four covered bridges over it. Had lunch on a wall overlooking Trajan's Markets, Trajan's Column, Trajan's Anything Else. If it's Trajan's, as a rule, it's good.

Unable to stop myself I then took a farewell look at the Forum. I said it all earlier, so will just add: the place seems just as astonishing in later views. Then went into the Capitoline Museum. This was allegedly the first proper museum in the world, built in the Renaissance to house Roman relics. The first floor especially is fantastic. Part is housed in an ancient Roman temple, so the air of antiquity is enhanced by ancient brick barrel arched ceilings. There's also galleries overlooking the Forum and Palatine, giving me yet more farewell views of them.. The Renaissance rooms are almost overwhelming, each wall covered in a huge mural which illustrates part of Roman history. They have the famous bronze she-wolf, with its two suckling twins unfortunately added in later times. There's also the huge Marcus Aurelius statue, once housed in the Piazza del Campidoglio until they noticed it was falling apart. A lot of Renaissance paintings are upstairs, which reminded me that one can quickly grow bored of Renaissance paintings. They certainly didn't skimp on the paint though; one canvas must have needed a cherry picker to complete. Fantastic museum, despite the excessively snotty staff.

Afterwards I made a brief call to the Mametine, the old Roman prison. There's just two rooms open, an entrance chamber and a cell underground. It had the grim, claustrophobic air of all old dungeons, with added clamminess to the air. St Peter once allegedly nutted the wall, causing a fountain to miraculously spring up; after long in there I'd have been doing the same. (The headbutt, if not the miracle). Then popped into another church, where the presence of a single genuine worshipper eventually cleared the premises of all tourists. And then there was more wandering of back streets. Rome is a great place for it, with picturesque old buildings lining remarkably clean alleyways. The only trouble is that even here you're at risk of being run over by crazed scooters. The few pedestrian 'streets' are not so much alleys as cracks. Visited another church – if you're low on funds you tend to dive into any open church doors you see – this one a bit more Catholic. A daffy Bernini statue stood up front, and I'm not sure of the old lunatic designed the building itself but he might as well have done. Garish, and over-decorated again, with some beautiful paintings adorning the walls of the many side chapels. Nice to see some stained glass for once. Less sure about what seemed to be the waxed corpse of a past bishop underneath an alter.

Later on I managed to visit the Piazza Navona without it bringing on any seizures. It stands on the site of an old Roman arena and still has the contours, being a huge, sweeping rectangle. Three fountains decorate it. Sadly the central one, apparently the best, was under scaffolding. This, however, was one of the few examples I saw of the alleged Roman custom of keeping all their sites closed for perpetual maintenance. Walked back along the underused Tiber, got another look at the wonderful Sonte Sant Angelo bridge and found a novel way to get lost; following a city wall when I should have been following the Vatican's defences. And that was more or less it. I'm rather aware that each day on this vacation was slightly worst than the previous one. Nonetheless, they had a hell of a high point to descend from. Wonderful place.

How To Not Exist

In the absense of any interest in writing new posts lately, here's the opening paragraphs from an old novel I'm clearly not going to finish.

The building where they worked was hidden. The building where they worked had been ordered to not exist.
And this was a difficult feat. Because the building where they worked lay in the most famous segment of Marston. And Marston itself had considerable renown amongst the sterner class of tourist. The building was – or should have been – part of the vista which epitomised the city. The scene which appeared by default in the brochures and leaflets, which summed up what Marston offered its visitors. A sort of composite history, not confined to any one period but incorporating elements from many epochs so long as they were twee and vaguely authentic. An image of history generally given captions beginning with "Merrie" or "Ye Olde."

To the left was the station, a mass of gently curving girders emanating an inexplicable beauty. Equally bizarrely it was one of the largest stations in the land, in a city emphatically not one of the biggest; although it was chiefly full of people trying to go somewhere other than Marston. Stretching out ahead, almost beyond the reach of the eye, tumbling gently down a slight incline, were the city walls. The ersatz city walls, rebuilt by the Victorians, and so given a sombre perfection free of the miserable terror which inspired the original set. Standing, just to continue the jumble of authenticity and propaganda, on tall, functional grass banks which became a beautiful speckled pattern of daffodils every spring. The walls ended at a broad lazy river which was bridged by fussy Edwardian iron. And beyond that, the cathedral. The vast temple, so beautiful that it is hideous and vice versa. The creation of an ancient society which could do nothing well except create vast temples, doggedly rebuilt after the many occasions it had burnt or fallen down. The cause of the city, really, and certainly the donor of its entirely undeserved label of 'city.' The cathedral which waited haughtily for the tiny settlement around it to grow as magnificent as it was. Which waited in vain, even when industrial sprawls elsewhere accidentally shrivelled their own cathedrals into toys; which seemed at times to be considering moving to a more fitting location but finally accepted its role as a very large rock in a small pond. A cathedral still dominating a city which was not a city and which no longer believed in God.

And to the right of the famous panorama? What could you see there? Well, you would have to actually stand there to find out. The vision to the right did not exist in any of the pamphlets. There would always be a careful positioning of the cameras, the focus obstinately fixed onto the centre-left of the horizon. More recently, too, a drag of the mouse and a click of the crop emblem to eliminate any lingering traces. The building standing to the right was a pariah, a solitary outcast. It should not, could not exist.

Dark brown concrete. That was the building's final audacious touch which had made it special. That won the awards on its birth in the 1960's, when hideous architecture was as prized as free love, and which would ensure its revilement forever after. There were many other things bad about the building, of course. The unapologetic bulk of it, standing seven floors high in a mainly double-story town. The asymmetrical sprawl of the place, leaving people uncertain as to whether it was a complex or a single structure; and if the latter, why it bothered being so since this clearly did no good. One of the tallest towers was stuck sort of middle-left, the other some way to the right. Around them were a host of meandering annexes which looked like careless later additions though the building was actually designed as a whole. There was a central courtyard… Or rather, there was a courtyard, with the main reception hiding deferentially in one corner. It may have been in the centre or it may not have been. Nobody was certain where that was or where most of the edges were either.

All this was impressive. Likewise the decision to use concrete, the most belligerently ugly building material ever invented by mankind. And to leave the great walls free of any decoration which might soften their impact just a little. But dark brown concrete? So that, on gloomy mornings, the building squatted like a collapsing star, threatening to pull all the light and facile beauty of Marston into its hideous flanks? That was genius of a sort. It deserved awards. It deserved to not exist.

The timid main reception area, Sushma discovered, was really just a clearing house. Visitors only arrived to receive directions to the smaller receptions of the various companies hidden inside the building which did not exist. These directions were almost always wrong because internally there was no logic either. Few of the companies occupied a single, clearly defined space. They owned little clusters scattered hither and thither. Their territories frequently shifted, like medieval dukedoms in the midst of a convoluted war of religion. Their receptions drifted according to the vagaries of battle and were only ever a desk behind a door. The companies were happy with this state, content, to remain as invisible as their host. They were not the sort to build beautiful headquarters in prime locations, to worry about market penetration and brand diversification. They were small firms selling specialised goods and services which most people had never heard of, would need a long lecture about before they understood them and would buy even then. And the firms simply wished to continue selling their wares to the small cadre of connoisseurs who had always bought them. Such companies seemed the antitheses of modern capitalism. In fact, from one perspective, they represented the system in its most perfect form. They did not sell dreams or lifestyles. They just made money.

Costoq Rail was the largest of them. In the old days when vital services were still nationalised it had technically been part of the state. Always an odd part, however, and lying remarkably far from actual government. It was a self-contained consultancy unit which did small, fiddly things to small, fiddly parts of the railway track. No senior manager had ever learnt whether any of the actions carried out were entirely necessary. However, as they affected huge metal objects which travelled at something approaching the speed of sound, some prudence was considered necessary. The consultancy somehow split from the rest of the railway infrastructure units in the chaos which followed the government's decision to privatise all its essential functions and so leave itself with nothing useful to do at all. The consultants continued doing exactly the same things, only now charged much more for them as they were working for a separate entity. Several years later they were swallowed up by Costoq International, a vague conglomerate going through a phase of 'market diversification.' Namely, swallowing up companies in sectors where they did not belong. So the Permanent Way Design Consultancy became Costoq Rail; thus exchanging a name which none of its employees could say to one which they could not spell. That, so far, had been the only change effected by the takeover.

Or almost the only one. Sushma, who had pulled the above information from the company website after her agency told her about the job, discerned signs of corporate modernity pushing at the old railway mentality. The fact that there was actually a website, for one. Many small engineering firms still jeered at such fripperies. A degree of effort had been made with the reception area too. There was a huge day-glo orange board behind the desk boasting the new company name and logo; which, like most corporate motifs, seemed a product of a junior art class. The website was simply a digital version of the leaflets, however. Both tried reaching out to the public with a few photographs of men in hard hats smiling awkwardly. Then they flung themselves into esoteric descriptions of complicated actions conducted on rail tracks in unfashionable parts of the countryside. And the reception was really just another desk behind a door. Manning it was a genial, elderly lady who greeted the sporadic visitors as if they arriving for a bridge morning, threw occasional homilies at the impatiently waiting Sushma and tried to master Minesweeper the rest of the time.

The room itself was testament that open plan does not automatically result in light and air. Almost all illumination came from the humming tubes set in the dispiritingly low ceilings. Most of the carpet was nasty dark blue. Random strips of nasty dark green and red intervened, as if somebody had decided to redecorate and then ran out of materials or motivation. The stale, chilly air was filled with drones of antiquated computers, the squeals of dying printers. And the chatter of sleepy workers easing into a Monday morning, female voices discussing cruel television programmes, male ones dissecting unjust football results.

With A Bang And A Whimper

I got terrified of nuclear war in my early teens. Oddly enough, it was Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes video, the one with Reagan and Chernenko wrestling, which sparked it off. For some reason, the sight of two fat, elderly men grunting together in a ring really brought home the threat. For years afterwards I listened trembling for the sound of air raid sirens. I didn't ask if York still had any air raid sirens, which it almost certainly didn't. I just assumed I would hear them. When I though I did one morning, I got a hell of a fright. It just turned out to be one of the new US-style police sirens. They might have warned me.

It was a good period to have nuclear fears, I learned later. In the mid 1980's the Cold War was hotter than any time since the early 60's. All my generation lacked were our equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Or so I thought until watching Channel 4's excellent documentary 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse last night. It turned out we had one after all. They just never told anyone.

The program meticulously plotted the events which created the atmosphere of 1983. Reagan helped start it, of course. After his election he behaved like any unbalanced old gentleman let out of the home, swaggering over the place stroking himself and introducing useful concepts like 'good' and 'evil' into international diplomacy. He ordered missiles to be built which were bigger, faster and painted in the colours of his own penis. He also started the 'Star Wars' program, a plan to shoot down missiles from space. This terrified the USSR as it would totally negate their nuclear deterrent and leave them helpless. The Soviet leadership, if anything even more elderly and senile than Reagan, retreated into full paranoia. Under the quivering command of Andropov, a man I only recall from an unfunny gangrene joke, they ordered their spies to actively search for signs that the West was planning war.

Unfortunately, their intelligence was terrible and ours was little better. Soviet spies performed tricks like count how many lights were on at the Ministry of Defence each night. If a lot were burning, one British commander pointed out, it usually meant the cleaners were hoovering the floors. The spies took it as a sign that our leaders were in there, plotting domination and cackling. We had a single double agent who could actually tell us what the Soviet politburo were thinking. We seemed to meet with him for half an hour once every other month. And staffed by moral absolutists on both sides, the notion of the governments actually talking to each other had become laughable.

In 1983 America invaded Grenada largely to prove they could. The USSR shot down a domestic Korean plane which was simply lost and was already heading out of Soviet air space. And one night a Russian monitoring station received a message from its spy satellite. Five missiles had been launched from America, one after another. The base commander override the message, reasoning that if missiles came they would come 14,000 all at once. He was right to assume a malfunction. The satellite computer had confused missiles with clouds, as one does. But a less stubborn or sensible man might have panicked and started the sequence which led to 'retaliation.' Suddenly the lyrics of Nina's 99 Red Balloons seem slightly less ludicrous.

And in this climate, NATO chose to hold huge war games called Operation Able Archer in west Germany. War games were common enough. They mocked up the conditions of nuclear attack, mainly to test communications between bases. In 1941, though, Nazi Germany had invaded the USSR initially under the guise of war games. 42 years later, the Kremlin decided was being repeated, though not as farce. Intercepted messages between NATO bases were treated as actual orders. The Soviet nuclear bases, submarines and bombers were put on red alert. The West noted these preparations but just chuckled, assuming rival war games. They continued taking Able Archer to its conclusion. As they did, Andropov's finger crept closer and closer to the red button. And then…

Then Able Archer simply ended. The Soviet generals, one assumes, simply dithered long enough to realise their mistake. They all went home again, presumably avoiding each other's faces. The next time the West met their double agent, they found out what had almost happened and got the shock of their lives. Even Reagan decided it was wise to start talking with the enemy again.

That's how our civilisation almost ended though. In a swamp of paranoia, miscommunication, incompetence and macho posturing. With both a bang and a whimper of "Eh? What?" I'm glad of the escape but you have to admit, it would have been fitting.

As If

So that time is approaching again. The full list of my 2008 New Year resolutions (working title Things I Will Definitely Do This Year, Honest) has yet to be finalised. But I thought I'd set down the latest draft. In the hope of at least remembering a few of them after January 5th.

1. Get Fat. Obesity is now more reviled than glue sniffing and alcoholism, and is fast approaching paedophilia and heroin abuse. Therefore, fatties are rebels. Fatties are cool. Not quite sure how to manage this, however, given that the things which make you obese (watching TV, eating) are duller than the things keeping me thin (walking, chain smoking). How do they all do it?

2. Talk to more people at work so they don't think I'm a weirdo / dullard / sociopath / all of the above. I may have left this slightly too late.

3. Get addicted to at least one reality TV show. Rather necessary to fulfil Resolution 2, given that they're the only topic of conversation at work. Still trying to decide which one, however. Strictly GCSE Woodwork? Celebrity Big Brother with David Irving and Nick Griffin? How Clean Is Your Car Glove Compartment? It's a tough choice.

4. Spend more time on the things I cite as my hobbies and less on those I cover up. Which translates as: read history books instead of playing online games aimed at 10 year olds. This one tends to feature each year.

5. Stop crow-barring my epilepsy into conversations and then being so stoical that it's impossible to have a discussion about it. Though I've yet to decide whether to shut up about it entirely or turn myself into a martyr. Right now I'm leaning towards the "Woe is me" option.

6. Warn the people about Noel Edmunds. He hasn't changed, you know. He may have tried reinventing himself as a weird numbers freak on Deal Or No Deal. But I saw him on a Sky show over Christmas and he was as bad as ever. The same monstrous ego. The same smug cackle at his own joke. And obviously, the same beard. Stop him now before his terrifying resurrection is complete.

7. Do at least one blog entry a week. My fan base – two people in Sheffield and my mum – deserve no less.

8. Stop doing the same tired old joke about my blog fan base. Besides, I think the Sheffield crew have abandoned me.

9. Finally find out what the bloody hell this 'emo' is. So I can claim to still be 'down' with 'the kids.' Though I'll probably conduct three months of intense online investigations just to reach the same answer as the question about the blues. If you have to ask, you'll never know. And it'll have gone out of fashion by then anyway.

10. Get out and meet people. Yeah. That'll happen.

11. Smoke less, worship God, spend less, work harder, be nicer, greet each day with a smile on my face yah-di-yah-di-yah. See the footnote to Resolution 10.

Oh No They Aren't

Perhaps this isn't the right time of year to be doing a piece on arrogance. But I think I've said everything I've got to say about Christmas over the past 34 years. Meanwhile a couple of remarks in today's Guardian caught my attention.

One was uttered by everyone's favourite history bore, David Starkey. Starkey has made a decent career out of sucking up to British monarchs, so it's surprising that he's started laying into our current one. The Queen is a poorly educated philistine, he claims. In a late challenge to the most tasteless insult of the year, he compares her attitude towards culture to that held by Goebbels. By way of evidence, he cites an occasion when he was showing her around an exhibition he had curated. Practically her only comment was to say she needed a drink. (Or at least, to complain her gin and Dubonnet was late arriving, but this is the Queen). Frankly I think it very likely that the Queen is a philistine. It's telling, however, that Starkey doesn't even consider the alternative. That his exhibition was shite and she was trying to avoid saying so. Appreciating culture, apparently, is synonymous with appreciating David Starkey.

The other comment came in a wonderful piece about Santa Claus impersonators. Most were struggling actors, of course, and not happy with what they are reduced to. One moaned "Father Christmas is only one step up from panto." Which surprised me because I though it was quite a few steps down from that. In fact, it's possibly on an entirely different staircase. Pantomimes don't have the greatest scripts but they offer lines a bit more demanding than "Ho ho ho, what's your name, little boy?" Former celebrities banished from television tend to end up in panto; your Bonnie Langfords, your Ronnie Corbetts, your Les Dennis' (or should that be Les Denni?) None, to my knowledge, have been reduced to putting on a beard and getting groped by children in BHS.

Personally, I don't knock those in pantomime. I've been in one myself, while in the Sixth Form. It wasn't easy. There was the experience of playing at Bootham Mental Hospital in front of an audience barely able to feed themselves, let alone know when to chant "He's behind you!" There was the morning after the Christmas party when a severe hangover left me barely able to stutter a single line. There was the performance when hi-larious backstage pranksters replaced the cardboard beanstalk with a giant penis. And they were just the gigs themselves. Getting the thing onto the stage involved daily battles between the fundamentalist Christian directors who objected to every single irreverent joke inserted by the atheist writers. A struggle which turned into an all-out religious war, culminating in the Great Death Song Controversy. It was a tough time.

So if every performance of Mother Goose or Cinderella is half as rocky, respect is due to all those involved. I understand the Father Christmas' looking down on somebody. We all need to sneer at those below us. And this lot need more comfort than most, with work experiences varying from being propositioned by amorous mothers to watching your Little Helpers get drunk and fall in the lake. But they've chosen the wrong targets here. There are still street mimes, after all. There are Sealed Knot Society foot soldiers. There are people who dress up as Romans and give out leaflets. Don't pick on the man in the wig and the 44D bra.

A Clue, My Dear Watson

So on Friday morning, I returned to my desk to find I had written 'Grey Owl' on a post-it note. Frowning, I studied the words carefully. The script was definitely mine; and there was nothing else on the note. Given that:

a) We have no suppliers, clients, employees, contacts or enemies whose name fully or partially contains these words;

b) It is extremely unlikely that on Thursday I had heard, saw, thought of, talked about, eaten or copulated with a grey owl;

and c) There isn't technically, or even descriptively, anything such as a grey owl to be found anywhere near where I work;

Well, given all that, the message perplexed me a little.

I threw the note away eventually. And I regret this now. Just in case I am found slumped lifeless over my keyboard early one morning. Then a Poirot-type detective might have found the note and spent weeks trying to tie the words back to my killer. Until he finally reached the conclusion that I did. It is a clue simply of a mind going slowly but inexorably insane.

Not Shaken Or Stirred

Watched The Spy Who Came In From The Cold yesterday. Not for the first time and hopefully not for the last. John le Carré novels always worked well on film, where his fine plots and characters aren't held back by his rather mediocre prose. It also helped that they featured some especially brilliant actors. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starred Richard Burton, a man whose whisky-soaked charisma practically staggers out of the screen.. Later Alec Guinness would make spymaster George Smiley his own and infuse the role with his wonderful brand of sinister melancholy.

However, I also couldn't help thinking that le Carré must be in despair nowadays. His books seemed to be a concentrated attack on the glamorising of spies during the Cold War. A tendency epitomised by James Bond, of course, smirking around in his tux like an aristocrat, shooting or shagging everyone in sight. Le Carré created shabby, melancholic little men; and they knew the truth about their fellow operatives. "Drunks… hen-pecked husbands… civil servants playing Cowboys and Indians to brighten up their drab lives," Burton's character spits. He also sums up the level of morality involved: "Yesterday I wanted to kill Mundt because he was evil and my enemy," he says of a Communist double agent. "Today he's evil, and my friend." Le Carré's approach became popular for a while. Even a writer as mediocre as Len Deighton could put some balance and intelligence into his Cold War yarns.

And now? Spies are superheroes again and every bit as banal. James Bond is seemingly indestructible, each new film as inevitable and over-publicised as Christmas. In Jack Ryan, Tom Clancy somehow created a character even worst; morally impeccable, utterly lifeless. On TV, meanwhile, Spooks and 24 seem locked in a bitter contest to see who can be the most absurd. Cops, doctors and even, for that matter, superheroes, can be deeply flawed and barely functioning sociopaths. Spies have to be two dimensional.

It's unfortunate because a more balanced portrayal is needed right now. One of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold's central themes was that your methods cannot afford to be less wicked than your enemy's. Morality only plays a part in your ultimate goals. And this had grim consequences when the West was just fighting totalitarian regimes who shot individuals they suspected were guilty. How about now, when the enemy blows up groups without caring who is innocent? Have our tactics become more brutal to match? It would seem so, from the accounts which have seeped out from Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. But you'll be lucky to see any acknowledgement on screen.

'The Virgin of the Rocks'

In his impressive recent program 'This Is Civilisation,' Matthew Collins explored the different impacts the Greek and Christian religions had on art. The ancient Greeks were obsessed with physical perfection. Their gods and goddesses were supermodels; essentially like us but much more beautiful. This civilisation found both aesthetic and spiritual bliss in a well-proportioned statue of a naked boy. A notion which vanished when Christianity conquered Europe, Collins argued. Not only were statues of the gods condemned as idolatry, the human form itself became problematic. The body was seen as transient, it was the source of sin. So much so that the central image of Christianity became a body pierced and broken so that the spirit could live forever.

I knew which picture Collins would show to illustrate art's dramatic change of direction. There have been thousands of Jesus dying on the cross, but one still stands out. Grünewald, of course. His ghastly Crucifixion which is slapped across the Isenheim Altar. Jesus is twisted unnaturally on the cross, head slumped. His outstretched arms are as thin as twigs, his pierced skin already the colour of rotting flesh. Grünewald embraced the cruellest side of Christianity and became immortal as a result. His altarpiece is frequently used to show the gloom of the Middle Ages, just as Texas Chainsaw Massacre epitomises the 'video nasty' boom of the 1980's; though Crucifixion is more horrific than any of Leatherface's antics.

The gruesome Grünewald is only one part of Christian art, however. And the crucifixion is only one pole of the Jesus story. More artists clustered around the other, the one we are preparing to commemorate: his birth. Here we get not a hatred of the human form but a celebration of it. And with this comes a joyous representation of humanity itself. This happened most vividly in the Renaissance paintings. The Renaissance, of course, was a rediscovery of classical methods and ideals. And the body became beautiful again. More importantly it became living and three dimensional, after the flat mannequins of the Middle Ages. This was partly because of the development of scientific techniques and observation, a tendency which Leonardo da Vinci perhaps took to excess. It was also because of the notion that humans and human relations were worthy subjects of art.

Classical themes also became fashionable again. Such paintings were always a subsection of the Renaissance, though, and often a farcical one. They often feel like the old legends being used as an excuse to create images which would otherwise get the painter excommunicated. Want to show an orgy? Just call it a Feast of Bacchus. Violent pornography or bestiality more your fancy? Then resurrect the Rape of the Sabine Women or Jupiter getting his end off. Titian alone got away with this sort of thing and he only occasionally. The bulk of the Renaissance, and certainly the majority of its masterpieces, were Christian. Partly this was because of the piper's paymasters. Many pieces were commissioned by either Popes or Italian dukes wanting to suck up to Popes. But many artists were deeply religious too, sometimes – especially in Michelangelo's case – taking their devotion to the point of insanity.

So crucifixions dominate, and nativities and pietas and ascensions. There was also another popular theme. Christ as a toddler or a young boy with his mother. This is surprising because of its apparent irrelevance to Church dogma. Jesus rather drops out of the Bible in between his escape from Herod and his reappearance as a smart alec teen showing off in the Temple. Yet many Renaissance artists tried to fill in these lost years. The sheer variety of their images gives us a clue why. Michelangelo shows a muscular Mary leading The Holy Family, reaching up to grab her son. Caravaggio's Virgin and Child With St Anne has Christ helping his mother tramp on a serpent – the symbolic resisting of temptation turned into a nursery game. Raphael's Madonna of the Chair is all protective love, arms wrapped around her rather chubby son as she glares at us suspiciously. Again, the titles of some of these works seem to be a cloak. The images are simply the painters' statements about motherhood, maybe based on memories of their own childhood or observations of their wives. It is worth mentioning that the pictures are filled with love and devotion. The religious settings were probably useful here as well; such emotions are rarely fashionable in art otherwise.

Leonardo da Vinci's The Virgin of the Rocks is from this tradition. It has a more mysterious feel than many. The golden light which illuminates his characters and the subtlety of his shadows give it a touch of the divine. The darkness of much of the background, contrasting with a bright glow peeking through the rocks in the distance, hint of a grotto cut off from the rest of the world. Otherwise it is a realistic, if slightly stylised, representation of a family at rest.

One puzzling element, distancing it from many Virgin-and-child pictures, is that there are in fact two children. There is no obvious explanation why or even which one is Jesus. Conceivably the other could belong to the girl on the right. She has the look of a servant or a nanny, however. Da Vinci's careful arrangement of figures leaves her on the fringes; and states that the Virgin is the mother of both children. Her arm rests on the shoulders of the praying infant. Her gaze is directed towards the other while a cautioning hand sneaks towards him. This Madonna is much less protective than Raphael's. Leaning against a rock, her expression is as serene as the sunlight. Yet she emanates a calm authority over both children and seems capable of bundling them both up in an instant.

The actions of the children supply the only overtly religious details. One is down on one knee to pray. The other, placed by the water's edge, lifts a hand to bless him. Perhaps the latter is John, rehearsing the moment in later life when he will baptise his cousin. Their relationship is also suggested by Jesus' slightly higher vantage point, a sign of superiority. If so, however, it feels like an unconscious forecast. The children simply seem to be playing, mimicking the actions of adults. They also have the clumsiness of infants. Both appear to be in danger of unbalancing, the prayer not entirely secure on his rock and the blesser leaning rather too far over the water. You can understand why their mother is keeping a close eye on them both.

And the gaze keeps returning to her. She is placed almost dead centre of the canvas. And she rears over the other figures, her head the apex of one of da Vinci's triangular compositions. Not in the way Parmigianino's ridiculous Madonna of the Long Neck does, but in an arrangement which looks both natural and inevitable. This is another common feature of Virgin-and-child pictures. Mary's authority is total. Jesus may be the son of God but, at this stage, he is totally dependent on his mother. Meanwhile poor, divinely cuckolded Joseph barely features. Michelangelo puts him in the background and turns him into an old greybeard to emphasise his weakness. Da Vinci simply excludes him, replacing him with a servant girl.

The Virgin of the Rocks is so powerful because it works on two levels. The lighting and setting give it a mythical aura whilst the details are entirely realistic. In this it follows one a strand of Christianity especially strong in fifteenth century Italy – the cult of the Madonna. An ordinary woman worshipped because of her status as a mother. This was effectively an updating of the ancient tradition of the Mother Goddess – a figure somewhat terrifying but also benevolent and loving. The urge has survived because of our memories of the time when our own mothers seemed to be all-powerful beings who could guard us from anything.

Matthew Collins was partly right. When the Christian artists showed naked flesh, at least outside the classical legends, they tended to punish it. The blinded Samson blundering around the temple, a saint stretched out on a rack, Jesus dying on his cross. Only babies could do full-frontal nudity and survive. The Mother Goddess lost her multiple breasts and gained a healthy set of clothes. The Divine Conception reflects the new squeamishness towards sex – while also continuing the tradition of Jupiter's dubious 'seductions' – particularly when practiced by our own mothers and fathers. But this doesn't mean the human form itself was condemned. The opposite actually happened. The divine became humanised. Jesus was turned into a chubby, clumsy toddler dependent on his mother's protection. And religious art became a study of personal relations, rather than just the search for a perfect set of pecs.

A New Icon

I see my home, York, has won another Best City In Britain award. We get a lot of these accolades. Never the Best City To Live In, though. Just the Best City To Visit; and then escape from before you start getting depressed by the lack of, well, anything to do. My joy this time was also tempered by the fact that the award was voted by Daily Telegraph readers. To translate for non-Brits: you've heard of the phrase "just to the right of Genghis Khan"? Here we also say, "just to the right of the Daily Telegraph." Our supporters are elderly colonels who probably like York because it's "not full of all those black chappies."

Anyway, I was mildly interested by the photo accompanying the 'story' in the local free rag. It featured the Minster, of course. You still cannot have a general story about York without showing the Minster. There are laws. The cathedral was relegated to the background, however. Pride of place was given to the York Eye. A city with a history stretching back to the Romans is now epitomised by a damn great ferris wheel.

The York Eye, admittedly, is impressive. Erected a few years ago beside the National Railway Museum, it has been extremely popular with tourists. I gather that it gives remarkable views over what is still a low, flat city. It is also lit up by an ethereal light when darkness descends. You can see part of it over the Bar Walls from my office window. It is a nice spectacle to gaze upon as I work late into the evening and wonder what's happened to my life. Still, the York Eye is only a damn great ferris wheel. Moreover, it looks like all the other damn great ferris wheel which have sprung up across Britain recently; many of which, notably London's, are even damn greater.

What makes a building a symbol of a place? So much so that this one structure can always be used as a shorthand image of the whole city? Size, fame and bombast are sometimes seen as the only criteria. But I think the most important quality is originality. This building has to mean that place because nothing like it is found anywhere else. The Golden Gate doesn't work because, frankly, it's just a damn great suspension bridge. But the Guggenheim has to mean Bilbao, the Statue of Liberty New York and the Reichstag – at least since Norman Foster's deranged dome was added – Berlin.

So the Eye doesn't work as an icon of York. Nor did the Minster, however. Except for connoisseurs, it is indistinguishable from any other gothic cathedral. Or most cathedrals of any age, really – I only know it's gothic because enough books have told me so. It's just the biggest thing we have got. York has never been about size, however. If it was, it would have bothered growing into an actual city, rather than just a town which got a leg-up in status because it has a cathedral. What it does specialise in is quirkiness. There are plenty of structures here possessed by no other city, mainly because they can't imagine why they would want them. Any one would make a fine new symbol of York. As a starter, also giving a neat tie-in to my web site, I nominate A House Called House, the Rock Church or the Hand of Monkgate. And if they are less striking than a ferris wheel, if York becomes less popular and attracts a few less Daily Telegraph readers…. well, we'll just have to cope.