Enjoying retirement
In The Red Rose County
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Without doubt one of the stupidest 'politically correct' decisions taken recently (and there are many of course) is the decision to ban us in the UK from watching the film 'An Officer and a Spy' all because it was directed by Roman Polanski. This smacks very much of burning books. Whatever. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the book itself by Robert Harris - undoubtedly one of the very best of modern novelists. There isn't anything of his that I haven't the utmost respect for and delight in reading. Respect because he has done more background research than many a historian. And delight because all his books are the very model of the phrase 'page-turner'. This tale is based on the true events of the at the time infamous Dreyfus Affair. 'Alfred Dreyfus, an army captain, has been convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment on a far-off island, and publicly stripped of his rank. Among the witnesses to his humiliation is Georges Picquart, an ambitious military officer who believes in Dreyfus’s guilt as staunchly as any member of the public. But when he is promoted to head of the French counter-espionage agency, Picquart finds evidence that a spy still remains at large in the military—indicating that Dreyfus is innocent. As evidence of the most malignant deceit mounts and spirals inexorably toward the uppermost levels of government, Picquart is compelled to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country, and about himself'.' The Dreyfus Affair divided France and exposed an ugly vein of anti-Semitism running through French society. And anti-semitism, and what it means, is at the heart of this novel just as much as the spy story. Dreyfus, who would be pardoned in 1898 and then exonerated in 1906, endured three years in the hell-hole that was Devil’s Island, just off the coast of French Guiana in South America, while the real spy was protected by the army he had betrayed. The whole affair blew up into a public scandal of such proportions that on 13 January 1898, the front page of L’Aurore, a French newspaper, was taken up by an open letter from the author Emile Zola to the President of France, Felix Faure. The simple headline, “J’accuse ...!”, became one of the most famous in history. Moving from one room to another whilst reading this I held it out in front of me so that I could carry on reading. I just didn't want to put it down. And the exciting thing is that all the characters, all the events, almost without exception, all relate to what happened. Highly recommended.
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August 2023
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