My dear friend Ewen Green died last week at 47, after years of wrestling with multiple sclerosis. His obituary appears in today’s Independent.
Month: September 2006
Patriotic Moment
I don’t often have patriotic moments, but my British heart swelled with pride when I read these words:
Figures from Mintel reveal that we eat a tonne of crisps every three minutes in the UK.
I think that’s a tremendous (multi-) national achievement. I’m not sure, however, that this is the reaction I’m supposed to be having.
Iraq UN Human Rights Report
Bandiera Rossa Trionferà
Following Bob Timbs’s by-election victory in Lye Valley last night, the Labour group is once again the largest group on Oxford City Council, and that’s a very good thing.
The Great Soviet Union Will Live Through The Ages!
Stephen Marks points me to this one-stop shop for all your Russian / Soviet anthem needs.
There’s an astonishing collection of recordings of the song formerly known as the Hymn of the Soviet Union here — Paul Robeson, obviously [and there’s more on Robeson today here]; but also the broadcast from the Victory Parade in Moscow in June 1945; a wartime version for the BBC conducted by Sir Adrian Boult; sung in Moscow before a rugby international against Wales; various pop and rock versions; and what may be my brother’s favourite recording of anything ever, the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble performing Gimme All Your Lovin’ / The Hymn of the Soviet Union as part of their epic 1993 Helsinki concert, the Total Balalaika Show; and so on, and so on, and so on.
And there’s more…
There’s the only recording of the Internationale made by a Nazi band, at the time of the 1936 Olympics (though in the end the USSR team didn’t show up). There are three pre-Revolutionary recordings of Bozhe, tsarya khrani, better known as the main theme from the 1812 Overture (and another recording by the Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards). There are lots of recordings of related songs, parody versions, historical curiosities.
It’s a fabulous, fabulous collection (and these are terrific songs, too). Why haven’t I stumbled across it before?
Dead Socialist Watch, #227
Annie Besant, Fabian Socialist and Theosophist, born 1 October 1847, died 20 September 1933.
Dead Socialist Watch, #226
Sean O’Casey, Irish playwright, and socialist. (Bibliography and timeline here.) Born 30 March 1880, died 18 September 1964.
Dead Socialist Watch, #225
Bruno Jasieński, Polish futurist poet and Communist. Born Wiktor Zysman in Klimontów, 17 July 1901; purged on 17 September 1938 in a Moscow prison.
Dead Socialist Watch, #224
Sergio Ortega, Chilean composer who wrote the songs “Venceremos” and “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido”. Born 2 February 1938, died 15 September 2003.
Dead Socialist Watch, #223
J. D. Bernal, Irish scientist and communist; born in Nenagh, 10 May 1901; died 15 September 1971.