Jonathan Meades in Nazi Germany and Shoreditch

Time to catch up with one of this blog's heroes,

At the start of the month Jonathan Meades had an article in the London Review of Books reviewing two books on Nazi Germany:

• Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos
• Speer: Hitler’s Architect by Martin Kitchen

Unlike many earlier authors, neither Kitchen nor Meades tries to exonerate Speer of his crimes. Meades writes

Speer’s earliest war crimes were largely restricted to evicting Jews from properties that Nazis coveted or which might provide shelter for bombing victims. He also effected the demolition of many homes to make way for the bloated white elephant of Germania, Hitler’s new capital. 

These clearances were paltry put beside the consequences of his work on concentration camps. He had no part in running them but it was part of his brief to get them built, to quarry and fire the materials. He was close to Himmler and enthusiastically subscribed to the Reichsführer SS’s dauntingly simplistic policy of Annihilation through Work.

Turning to Hitler at Home, he writes of the construction of the Führer's public image:

The note that ... dutifully credulous journalists struck was remarkably consistent and testifies to the manipulative efficiency of Hitler’s publicity machine. The same words recur: destiny, toil, youth, culture, music, authentic, sacrifice – oh the sacrifice. 

That publicity machine was also sedulous in courting useful idiots, none more useful than Lord Rothermere, who happened to own a newspaper and whose potential as messenger boy to the British establishment Hitler exploited, just as he exploited the New York Times Magazine, which on 20 August 1939 enthused about his love of chocolate and of gooseberry pie and his rapt attention to the petitions of ‘widows and orphans of party martyrs’.

Then came news that in April Jonathan Meades is having a one-man show of treyfs and artknacks at the Londonewcastle Project in Shoreditch.

Treyfs? Artknacks? You will have to follow the link to find out.

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Jonathan Meades vs Jackie Ballard

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A paragraph in a 2013 interview with Jonathan Meades intrigues:

He loathed the Taunton public school to which his parents managed to send him, a "philistine place" he has described as "hell". It took him, or so he says, 27 years to return to the town, and when he did, he got his revenge by sending it up in one of his restaurant reviews (he was then the offal-scoffing and somewhat porcine restaurant critic of the Times). The locals and its liberal democrat MP went nuts.

Can this be true?

A 1998 story from BBC News shows that it is:

His article has angered residents so much that the MP has demanded an apology. 

Meades asked in The Times article if the restaurant would thrive in the town. 

He questions whether the "three headed sheep shaggers" would come down from the hills to support the establishment. 

And if they did, he continues, where would they park their combine harvester or tie up their cow?

And who was the Liberal Democrat MP who went nuts?

Local reaction to the article has led the town's Liberal Democrat MP Jackie Ballard to table a Common's (sic) motion seeking an apology. 

She said: "I think its a disgraceful slur on the county town of Somerset and also Mr Meades made some crude comments on the natives of Somerset who he thinks are not sophisticated enough to enjoy a good restaurant. 

"I can assure him they are."

And Jackie Ballard really did table an early day motion on the subject. It ran:

That this House deplores remarks made by Jonathan Meades in The Times Magazine of Saturday 4th July regarding the people and town of Taunton; knows that Taunton is the county town of Somerset and it has many natural and man-made assets including the River Tone and the recently enhanced, thriving town centre; recognises that Taunton is at the heart of a rural community and is also the home of Somerset county cricket, the Charity Commissioners, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, The Castle Hotel and many other nationally known organisations and businesses; and calls on Mr Meades to apologise specifically to the people of the Somerset levels and the Blackdown Hills for his obscene and offensive comments and to the people of Somerset for his unwarranted slur on their county town.

There were 11 signatories: Jackie, nine loyal Liberal Democrats and, for some odd reason, Ken Livingstone.

Meades's reaction to the affair? According to BBC News:

Mr Meades said he will not withdraw his comments as they were meant light heartedly . 

He said: "She has no sense of humour, she is after all a Liberal Democrat."

People can be so unfair.

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Jonathan Meades on Robert Clayton's 'Estate'

An excerpt from a forthcoming film short about Robert Clayton's photo book Estate - colour documentary photographs shot a generation ago.

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