The Iconoclast

MEMRI - TV Interviewers bully people in the street and mock them for their sense of style. One boy makes the statement that Iranian society is "going back to what it was" meaning what it was before the revolution - a relatively modern, fairly secular state. Time will tell.

Unfortunately it is not clear from this story whether or not they will be deported to back to Bosnia or Albania where they came from. Nor does it tell us what happened to the 17 Uighurs who were ordered released in October, but who were barred from re-entering China and therefore were likely to be released into America instead.

We do have to grapple with unlimited detention of the 250 or so inmates who remain. It seems Guantánamo was set up on the assumption that there were at most one or two thousand terrorists out there and if we could just round up the ones we didn't kill outright and interrogate them for information on the rest, we could mop up the whole problem and win the "war on terror" in no time. The real situation is more on the order of 250 million potential terrorists (or low-level foot soldiers) world-wide and so we look pretty silly holding those 250 at such great expense, both monetary and political.

IHT:

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran's progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country's main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

Several experts said that was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

"They clearly have enough material for a bomb," said Richard Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades. "They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that's another matter."

It was my understanding that those designs were readily available from the Pakistani "Father of the Islamic Bomb," A.Q. Khan and his network. Khan, you may remember, originally stole the plans from The Netherlands and then sold them far and wide to the highest bidders, including to North Korea and Iran.

From The Australian
SOME Muslim imams condone rape and domestic violence within marriage, exploitation of women, welfare fraud and polygamy, a report has found.
The report was based on a study commissioned and funded by the former coalition government and produced by the Islamic Welfare Council of Victoria, Fairfax newspapers report.
The report, presented on yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies conference at the University of Melbourne, alleged that some Victorian imams:
* Apply Sharia law only where it benefits men;
* Hinder police investigations of domestic violence claims; and
* Knowingly perform polygamous marriages, which allow a second wife to claim Centrelink payments because they are regarded as de facto wives under Australian law.
The study was based on extensive community consultation; interviews with police, lawyers, court staff and academics, and meetings and interviews with the Victorian Board of Imams, Fairfax said. The report said the 24-man board ignored or did not directly answer many of the questions put to it.
Former husbands entered the houses of their separated but not religiously divorced ex-wives, demanding sex and, in some cases, committing rape.
"Workers who have assisted women in this situation said that the advice women received from the imams was that it was `halal' - permitted - because there was a valid - `nikah' - marriage," it says.
Melbourne Muslims were increasingly accepting polygamous marriages while police in Shepparton say many de facto relationships were really polygamous marriages, the report said.
The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, denied the complaints "absolutely".

The other day my young nephew’s class was treated to the story of the Princess and the Pea. You know the one: a prince wishes to marry a “real princess”, not an impostor, so his mother tests a claimant by placing a pea under twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Only a true princess is delicate enough to feel the pea, while a commoner would sleep like a log. The class was asked to illustrate the story, and my nephew drew a spindly princess atop a pile of huge mattresses. So far so good. But his pea was the size of a boulder. The most strapping, robust princess in the world would feel that “pea”. Even Tracy the Fat Slag from Croydon would feel it. My nephew had rather missed the point.

The true princess proves her royal blood by complaining that she was kept awake all night by something hard in the bed. Surprisingly, she and the prince go on to marry and live happily ever after. This is a fairy tale, however, and - pace Richard Dawkins – does not need to be true to life. But we have a modern day version: The Princess and the Pee. Madonna, according to The Times, demands a new toilet seat at every tour venue. Ben Macintyre writes on this, and other diva-like behaviour:

Mariah Careyensis [is] an ailment that afflicts ageing film stars, highly strung supermodels, tottering dictators, big fish in small tanks, otherwise entirely sensible politicians who feel the need to exert their authority and, in this case, ministers who used to be management consultants. Symptoms include referring to oneself in the third person, framing personal foibles as unshakeable rules, delusions of grandeur, holidaying in Corfu with Russian billionaires and requiring underlings to peel oranges for you.

[…]

Powerful people develop very specific needs: Beyoncé Knowles, it is said, demands extra-spicy chicken wings and a dressing room at exactly 25C; Prince Charles requires a footman to squeeze his toothpaste; Mariah Carey doesn't do stairs and the new Minister for the Cabinet Office must have his soup by 1pm.

[…]

The word diva, coined in the 19th century, comes from the Italian divina, meaning divine, an accurate root for the sense of godly entitlement that comes with too much attention, and too much power.

Surely it just comes from diva meaning goddess?

So far from reflecting confidence, extreme diva behaviour is more often evidence of superstition, and a peculiar celebrity paranoia. The prima donna who needs to be kept at a specific temperature and protected from smells is secretly worried that if anything disturbs her equilibrium, she will be unable to perform.

Similarly, self-conscious and anxious politicians seek to control the environment, often in eccentric ways. Cardinal Wolsey insisted on carrying oranges studded with cloves wherever he went, in case he caught a whiff of the common herd.

[…]

One of the more encouraging, aspects of Barack Obama's election campaign was his complete lack of prima donna fussiness. He is reputed to be sublimely indifferent to his surroundings, creature comforts and the size of the hotel bathroom. Where George W. Bush insisted on travelling with his own pillow and liked to be tucked up by ten, Obama barely noticed where he was sleeping and seemed able to drop off, like Winston Churchill, almost at will.

[…]

Young regimes and new performers do not care about the cleanliness of the floor, the size of the bouquet or the shape of the briefing note. Those preoccupations come only towards the end of a career and a government, when the minutiae and trimmings matter more than the performance itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoGWvR1txxE

It may be that the change of name from Saracen's Head to St Nicolas Place does reflect change of use, rather than a wish not to "offend" Muslims. Even so, the offending name should be kept. If Muslims think it has been changed to avoid giving offence, they will see it as a victory - "another yard of territory".

Remember, too, that infidel concessions are never enough. A pub is still a pub, whatever it is called, and thoroughly haram. And "St Nicolas Place" is just as offensive to Muslims in its own way.

I have a suggestion for a pub name. By analogy with French Connection UK's double-take-inducing "FCUK", let us call a pub "PBUH". That would set the cat among the pigeons.

There is a show at the Boston Public Library entitled Imitation, Influence... and Coincidence showing various book covers and the original photographs which may (or may not) have influenced the illustrators.

"The cover of Mark Kline Taylor's Remembering Esperanza presents some similarities [to Warhol's use of iconic images - RB]. In 1983, Elizabeth Catlett (an important artist in her own right) took one of Dorothea Lange's better-known photographs, Ex-Slave With a Long Memory, Alabama 1938 and hand-copied it as a linocut, flipping it horizontally in the process. The 'new' image was subsequently exhibited and published, under Catlett's name, with the title The Survivor. Seven years pass, and this new translation finds its way onto the cover of Taylor's book, now reduced in size, compromised in detail, shifted in color; that is, not quite the same work that would be found on gallery or museum walls. Since Lange's 'original' was made while she was working for the Farm Security Administration, it is 'owned' by the Library of Congress, and therefore free of most copyright restrictions. Catlett may use the image as she pleases. Her interpretation of Ex-Slave may be seen as transformative and skillful, and it can even be argued that, as an African-American, Catlett may claim a symbolic form of 'ownership' to a picture that references slavery. In transforming the image, Catlett has also made it her own from a legal standpoint; the picture's caption in the book informs us that it appears 'courtesy of Hancraft Studios. All Rights Reserved'."

The online tour is here.

Thanks to Nana Landenberger for finding this in the Twin Cities' City Pages:

Since 2003, the main beneficiaries of the P3 visa have been Africans, 35,000 of whom have gained entrance with the visa. Not all of them, it turns out, were legal. Last spring, a State Department investigation discovered widespread fraud within the program: People were claiming strangers as relatives for up to $10,000 a head.

In response, the State Department cracked down, adding a DNA test requirement to prove that family members are related.

"We had heard there was some fraud in the program, so what we wanted to do was check it out and make sure the law was being observed," says Todd Pierce, a spokesperson with the Bureau of Populations, Refugees, and Migration at the U.S. State Department. "This is the first time we've used DNA testing as a way to substantiate the results, and we found a very high fraud rate."

While the program is well intended, the sudden change and the lack of communication have thrown legitimate refugees into chaos.

While the effects of the decision have been felt throughout many of the nation's African immigrant communities, nowhere has that been more pronounced than here in the Twin Cities, home the United States' greatest concentration of Somalis, estimated to number 60,000. Catholic Charities in St. Paul, a local refugee resettlement organization, says the decision has affected nearly 1,600 people who were hoping to immigrate to the area. Since March, only one person has arrived from Africa to the Twin Cities, while nationwide estimates are in the low hundreds. Last year Catholic Charities helped resettle between roughly 50 and 135 people to the Twin Cities each month.

Omitted is what fee Catholic Charities collects from the government per refugee and what each refugee costs taxpayers over the long haul. Also omitted is any mention of Islam and its role in creating the "worn-torn" conditions in Somalia that caused these Muslims to flee to America where they continue to practice Islam, inculcating the same attitudes and behaviors that caused those conditions in Somalia in the first place. Very few Somalis have the mental courage to ask themselves, as did Ayaan Hirsi Ali, if Islam is the best system, then why is Somalia such a mess?

Thanks to Patrick Poole for sending in this story on Somali violence in Minneapolis:

Since December, seven Somali men under 30 have been slain in the Twin Cities. The motive in three of the cases may have been retaliation.

U.S. shifts its approach in Iraq

BAGHDAD - It was billed as a peace concert in war-scarred Baghdad. But after 30 minutes of poetry and patriotic songs, only a scattering of tribal leaders and dark-suited bureaucrats were sitting in the vast expanse of white plastic chairs before a stage painted with doves.

That didn't trouble Col. Bill Hickman, whose soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division helped organize the event.

"We have sheiks from different places who will sit here and talk to each other," he said, standing at the edge of the audience with his men, a striking sight in their body armor and night-vision goggles.

With violence down sharply this year, the U.S. military is broadening its efforts to reconcile Sunnis and Shiites, reintegrate former insurgents into society and repair the rift between residents and their government.

But as American forces begin to withdraw, some Iraqis question the long-term impact of the pacification campaign. Iraq has no history of democracy, and the government that has come to power since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion is sharply divided along sectarian lines.

"The idea or identity of this is American, not Iraqi," Kassim Daoud, a former Iraqi national security minister, said of the U.S. efforts. Although the Iraqi government has declared its support for reconciliation, he said, "it hasn't got a real program or a map."

Reality lags behind rhetoric
At the concert, city officials spoke glowingly about reconciliation. But some in the audience acknowledged that reality lagged far behind.

Abdul Ameer, 48, a Shiite who attended the event with his two young sons, said he had Sunni friends but couldn't visit them. The friends live in the town of Tarmiyah north of Baghdad, he explained: "It's only for Sunnis. I can't feel safe if I go there."

The U.S. reconciliation campaign includes some major projects, but much of the American effort is decentralized, consisting of reconstruction programs, peace marches and meetings with rival tribal leaders over platters of rice and lamb. In many cases, soldiers are making up the details as they go along.

Lt. Col. Monty Willoughby, 42, has had to figure out how to keep the peace in an area of northwestern Baghdad that was previously a hotbed of Sunni insurgents. He became worried last spring when U.S. commanders announced a plan to release thousands of Iraqis detained for alleged ties to insurgents.

"We're like, man, how are we going to keep these guys from falling back into it?" asked Willoughby, an earnest, freckled officer from Clever, Mo., who commands the 4th Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, which is attached to the 101st Airborne.

Willoughby decided he needed someone to help the detainees reenter society. And that is how a squadron of macho U.S. infantrymen and gung-ho tankers came to hire their first professional nurturer.

Fawaz Kashmoola is their "rehabilitation manager."

"The role I play is, when the prisoners get released, I show them love and mercy," said the Iraqi lawyer, a 45-year-old with combed-back hair.

Love, housing and jobs
Love isn't all the former detainees get. Kashmoola and his fellow managers line up housing as well as jobs or training programs. Then the managers check up on the men to ensure they stay out of trouble.

On a recent sunny Thursday, Kashmoola and Willoughby attended a detainee release ceremony on the lawn of a blue-domed mosque. The U.S. military has made these into gala affairs, with flag-waving crowds and speeches from Muslim leaders and Iraqi army officers. The 48 newly freed men were handed gift-wrapped bags of chocolates by U.S. soldiers who a year ago might have flex-cuffed them.

Willoughby said the military is sending a message to men who might be tempted by insurgents' offers to attack the Americans: "We have reconciled with you. We are giving you your next chance. Your community cares about you. We want you to learn a trade, provide for your family -- not be putting IEDs for $200."

In his area, only one of 82 freed detainees has been rearrested. Several other battalions in Baghdad have hired their own versions of Kashmoola.

Detainee-release ceremonies reflect a dramatic change in military doctrine. The Army issued a field manual last month on "stability operations" to guide its troops in facilitating reconciliation and providing essential services. It was produced after the Department of Defense in 2005 elevated "stability operations" to the same level in its doctrine as offensive and defensive operations.

"It's a very different Army from the one that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003," said John Nagl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security and a former Army officer.

Building support for government institutions is a key part of the U.S. military's pacification effort in Iraq. In Willoughby's area of northwestern Baghdad, for example, American troops have cleaned out sewers, rebuilt schools and put in a swimming pool.

"As you, as a citizen, are looking on, you've got to say, 'It's nice to live here,' " Willoughby said. If insurgents return, the U.S. officers hope, Iraqis will consider what they have to lose.

It can be difficult to assess the effectiveness of some of the American programs. Hickman's soldiers, for example, have helped organize soccer games between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, providing the young players with T-shirts or uniforms.

The matches aren't billed as peace events, he said, but the parents mingle, re-creating an atmosphere that existed before the invasion. The games draw them from neighborhoods divided by giant blast walls and painful memories of sectarian warfare.

"The nuance here is for the Sunni and Shiite to come together," said Hickman, who commands the 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

Peace concert problems
U.S. troops had envisioned the Baghdad peace concert as an event for the public to enjoy. But they organized it jointly with Iraqi officials, who are still unaccustomed to such unscripted activities. Park officials barred most people without a government invitation from entering, resulting in scores of empty seats.

Iraqi government officials have praised the American peace efforts but say they have their limits.

Safa Rasul Hussein, the deputy national security adviser, said the U.S. programs had been helpful, particularly on outreach to the Sunni minority. But he noted that some Iraqi parties and armed groups refuse to talk to the American military.

"Maybe reconciliation will be more when they leave," he said.

The Iraqi government has launched a number of its own reconciliation activities, from organizing political conferences to setting up assistance centers for families displaced by violence.

Sons of Iraq fear U.S. pullout
One of the U.S. military's biggest reconciliation efforts involves the Sons of Iraq, once-hostile Iraqis who became American-paid neighborhood guards. The U.S. military considers the mostly Sunni guards to be a critical factor in the drop in violence over the past year.

It has urged Iraq to integrate the guards into its security forces, but the Shiite-led government has been slow to do so. On Oct. 1, the Iraqi government assumed control of about half the 100,000 guards and last week started paying them.

But the U.S. military is taking no chances. It held two high-level meetings with Iraqi officials to ensure they were prepared to pay the guards under their control. When the Sons of Iraq protested that the Iraqi government wanted to cut their monthly salaries from $300 to $250, the U.S. military stepped in and got the decision changed. On payday, American soldiers sat next to the Iraqi troops handing out the cash.

The Sons of Iraq say they're nervous about what will happen if the American role diminishes, especially because many of them haven't been told yet what their new jobs will be.

"There was some talk in the Iraqi media that the Iraqi government wasn't accepting the Sons of Iraq as it should. We don't know what is going to happen in the future," said one guard, Alaa Ghazi.

Ghazi, 27, is one of hundreds of guards who have been accepted into the Iraqi police academy. On a recent day, he took a break from drilling on a dusty parade ground outside the facility.

The Sons of Iraq program would continue to work well "with the help and support" of the U.S. forces, he said. But asked whether it could succeed without them, he shook his head.

"No, no, no!" he cried.

Hitler, who was morose and monorchic,  must not be confused with King Charles II, who was merry and monarchic.

But is it true? From The Telegraph:

The Nazi leader lost a testicle during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, the doctor claimed.

The medical condition, for which there has never been conclusive proof, was mocked in the Second World War ditty which begins: "Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall."

The disclosure is made in a document noting a conversation in the 1960s between German war doctor Johan Jambor and his priest, Franciszek Pawlar, according to The Sun. The priest's document has come to light 23 years after Jambor's death.

Although it was known Hitler suffered a groin injury in the Somme, evidence that he was 'monorchic' - the medical word for the condition - has evaded historians.

[...]

The popular song emerged in 1939 and is thought to have been written by a publicist for the British Council, which was tasked with helping build propaganda that would damage the Nazis.

The commonly-recalled version is an adaption of the original, which ran: "Göring has only got one ball, Hitler's [are] so very small, Himmler's so very similar, And Goebbels has no balls at all."

“Sim’lar”, not “similar”. So the song come from the British Council? That was in the days when the British Council was useful, and didn’t pander to Arabs or sack intelligent, prescient employees like Harry (Will) Cummins.

There are a lot of variant verses if anyone's interested. Go on, have a look. You know you want to. Or listen to this version on YouTube:

Readers of a fastidious disposition are warned that Göring is sung without its umlaut and rhymes with boring. It is said that the umlaut was shot off during the Battle of Ablaut.

From The BBC
The Indonesian government says it has called on a blogging website to take down two cartoons which depict Muslim Prophet Muhammad in sexual situations.  Just two? He had 12 wives and numerous sex slaves; I would have thought the scope was endless!
The communications minister said the drawings were "very inappropriate", and said if necessary he would ask internet service providers to block the site.
The cartoons, which appeared on the website last month, have provoked fierce debate among viewers.
Many Muslims believe it is forbidden to depict Muhammad in any form.
The two cartoons, which are several pages long, each tell a sexually explicit story involving the Prophet, interspersed with verses apparently lifted from the Koran.
Indonesia's communications minister described the cartoons as "very unethical and very inappropriate".

I found the story below, about the Saracen’s Head in Birmingham in the next column to this story, also from the Birmingham Post.
MUSLIMS across Birmingham believe the police and security services are constantly monitoring their movements and feel “imprisoned in their own city”, a performance report into government anti-terrorism projects claims today.
An independent analysis into 11 community-based projects under the Preventing Violent Extremism initiative warns that law-abiding Muslims worry about being demonised by the way violent extremism is routinely associated with Islam in the media and by those in authority.
The report, by Waterhouse Consulting Group, based on interviews with individuals and organisations, praises most of the council-run projects aimed at discouraging young people from drifting into terrorist activity, but adds that extreme tensions are not far beneath the surface.
“Central government and local authorities must understand the extent of the deep anger and concern among Muslims at grassroots level over the linkage of violent extremism with Islam.
“This has helped to demonise and vilify Muslims in a climate where Islamophbia is already heightened.”
Even the name given by the government to the £525,000 year-long programme provoked anger among the Islamic community.
The Waterhouse report suggests abandoning the Preventing Violent Extremism title for “more acceptable phraseology”. How about Preventing  Jihad and Dawa?
Almost 400 young Muslims benefitted directly from the first phase of PVE.
The analysis fully supports plans for 12 more projects in Birmingham, at a cost of £2.4 million and calls for more to be done to tackle the radicalisation of mosques, bring Islamic schools into the “mainstream” and to empower Muslim women.
The next round of PVE funding should be broadened to cover the “critical area” of all aspects facing the life of Muslim women in Birmingham, the report recommends.
So the Muslims of Brum say give us the money, the lovely, lovely, lolly, just don’t dare suggest that our community is in any way different with a potential for violence.

From The Birmingham Post
History lovers have spoken out against the decision to change the name of historic Birmingham inn The Saracen's Head - accusing it of being “politically correct”.
The home of the Saracen’s Head, in Kings Norton, will become known as Saint Nicolas Place said its owners, at the nearby St Nicolas Church.
People responding to the news said the church had no right to “wipe away 300 years of history” for fear of offending Muslims.
The 18th-century former inn was originally built as a rich wool merchant’s house in the 1400s and was given to the church in 1930. In 2004 it won £500,000 to help bring it back to its former glory in the BBC programme Restoration.
In 2004 it was reported the Very Rev (Canon Rob) Morris said the name was “offensive” to Muslims. But he said the reason behind the name-change was to stop people from mistaking the building - now a community centre and church office - for a pub. It was also to recognise the role of the church and its more than a million pounds’ worth of investment.
Keith Carton, from Kings Norton, said: “When was the last time anyone can recall coach loads of lager louts turning up for a heavy session?”
Rod Murphy, from Northfield, said: “This barmy decision has nothing at all to do with people thinking the building is still a pub. The only people who use the building are locals and they know full well it is not a pub.”
Mr Murphy was among many who felt the new name was prompted by a fear of offending Muslims. He said: “This is the real reason that the name is being changed. How the misguided, deluded do-gooder Canon Rob Morris can be allowed to wipe away 300 years of history is beyond belief.”
Mr Morris denied the charge adding the site would be home to the Saracen’s Head Cafe. He said: “If we felt that we wouldn’t have kept the name at all. I’m surprised at the number of people who have complained.” 
Why? He should be in touch with the views of his flock. And the name of a café within a building is ephemeral and more easily changed than that of a historic local landmark.
Meanwhile I am pleased to note that Saracen’s Head Hotel in Chelmsford is thriving.

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA47508

Note the last sentence, about the need to prevent the jerking up and down of oil prices, which discourages investment in other forms of energy. With prices continuing to fall to one-third of what they were a year ago,  this can be done only through taxation. There's a way, if there's a will.

Lionel Bart wrote that about the changing East End in 1960, when I was a child and the world seemed immutable.
The teenager had expressed a desire to see where my parents came from so we took advantage of a school inset day to visit Shoreditch, Hoxton and Bethnal Green earlier this week.
My parents met on Christmas Eve 1941 in a pub called the Horns on the corner of Hackney Road and Kingsland Road. Dad asked Mum out and they agreed a day after Christmas. Mum stood Dad up. The war raged for another year, Dad in the AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service) and Mum making munitions boxes. Christmas 1942 Dad walks into the Horns and Mum is in there again. This time she didn’t stand him up and they married in 1945.
The Horns changed its name in about 1983 to Browns, when there was a fashion in the pub world for possessive names with a hip sound to them, but it remained a pub. Not my favourite pub but handy for the hospital opposite and Dad’s work.
My favourite pub was the tiny Conqueror down Austin Street. I also always liked the look of the Flying Scud further down Hackney Road but for some reason we never went in there. The scud is a small boat not a missile, by the way. During the first Gulf War the Mirror sent a reporter in to interview the regulars about how they felt about their name being hijacked.
The Flying Scud is closed, boarded up and derelict. The Conqueror is closed, boarded up and being worked on. The owners made several applications for demolition so that a new block of “executive” flats could be built; the last application was to renovate the existing flat above the bar and convert the bar into a second flat. The workmen wouldn’t answer when I asked what it was going to be.
Browns is still operating, behind closed doors and blacked out windows as a “striptease and private dance venue”. The next pub up from the Flying Scud is an old gin palace called Ye Old Axe. This is now Brown’s rival in the striptease business midweek, with a rockabilly night at weekends.
There is an obvious joke to be made in the two places still open, and operating for that particular clientele, being the Axe (or chopper) and the pub-formerly-known-as-the-Horns.
The cheering bit was the development within the site that was the factory where Dad worked for many years. The Victorian buildings have been cleaned and modernised and are studios, design workshops, publishing offices and the like. The site provides a living for over 400 people, which is about as many as in its factory days. When it was a grimy factory I never realised how attractive the proportions of the buildings were.

This is the rather grim looking Browns. There was a pub called the Horns on the site in the 19^th century but the front is definitely 20^th century; whether 30s or 50s I don’t know.

BBC Newsnight (h/t Alan) has an exclusive interview with Dmitri Nabokov, son of .... oh, I can't remember. I'm not sure if this video will work or if the programme is accessible outside the UK. (Update - can't post the video, follow the link if you can.):

In an exclusive interview, the son of novelist Vladimir Nabokov tells Newsnight why he is defying his father's wishes to posthumously publish the controversial writer's final novel.

After the death of the notorious libertine Lord Bryon, who was mad, bad and dangerous to know, his memoirs were thrown into the fire at the offices of his publishers John Murray in Edinburgh, in 1824.

The poet's literary executors decided to destroy Byron's journals in order to protect his reputation.

Bryon's short but eventful life had taken him to Switzerland, among other places, and his Prisoner of Chillon was inspired by the brooding medieval castle of the same name on Lake Geneva.

A hundred and fifty years or so after Byron's death, another writer associated with sexual controversy passed away on the banks of the lake, posing a conundrum to his own executors.

He was Vladimir Nabokov, author of the brilliant but scandalous Lolita (1955), a blackly comic account of middle-aged Humbert Humbert's infatuation with a 12-year-old girl.

At the time of his death in 1977, Nabokov was working on another novel, said to deal with some of the same challenging if uncomfortable themes.

Last wish

The novelist Kingsley Amis, reviewing Lolita, had written mischievously, "Where's all the sex, then?"

My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy. Dmitri Nabokov

It was rumoured that "all the sex" was in this last book.

Nabokov made his wife Vera promise him on his deathbed that the manuscript would go the same way as Bryon's diaries.

The book never appeared, and the world was entitled to think that it had read the entire corpus of the dazzling stylist.

But Vera Nabokov never fulfilled her husband's last wish. She agonised about what to do with the incomplete novel, while it gathered dust in the vaults of a Swiss bank.

She could not bring herself to commit the manuscript to the flames. On her own death, the burden passed to the Nabokovs' only child, Dmitri.

A man who has combined the careers of opera singer and racing driver, Dmitri was also a respected and assiduous translator and editor of his father's works.

But it seems he could no more resolve the dilemma of Nabokov's last book than could his mother.

Subject of speculation

Over the years, and particularly since the advent of the internet, the fate of the novel has been much debated by Nabokov readers and academics.

With something of his father's talent for creating a stir, Dmitri has given the impression that he was prepared to see the book disappear for good, only to leave others with a strong sense that publication was in the offing.

Vladimir Nabokov's final, incomplete novel is to be published in 2009.

The affair of Nabokov's last book has become a kind of literary striptease, with tantalising glimpses of this sensation flitting into public view. Its title was said to be The Original of Laura.

A scholarly journal devoted to Nabokov studies ran a competition inviting readers to submit prose in the style of the author.

Of the five entries published by the magazine, two were said to be by Nabokov himself, unpublished fragments of Laura.

Its plot apparently concerns a portly academic called Philip Wild, and Flora, his much slimmer, "wildly promiscuous" wife.

Flora catches Wild's eye because of her resemblance to a young woman he had once been in love with. Wild is preoccupied by his own mortality, and resolves to obliterate himself from the toes upward, through the power of meditation.

Death, be it ever so unlikely, is a theme of the book, as it is in so much of Nabokov.

All the principal characters in Lolita are dead by the time Humbert tells his tale, Humbert included.

Some biographers have traced this fascination to the hapless end of Nabokov's own father, a Russian noblemen and politician, killed by a bullet meant for someone else with whom he happened to be sharing a platform at the time.

Finally, at the age of 73, Dmitri Nabokov has said that his father's last book will be spared the bonfire. Indeed, it will be published next year in what is likely to be the literary event of 2009.

Dmitri Nabokov pictured with his father, Vladimir, in 1961.

Newsnight went to meet Dmitri at his house in Montreux, where he talked for the first time in a television interview about what led him at last to his decision.

"My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy."

Of his father's last wish, Dmitri said: "He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he didn't see death staring him in the face. He certainly would not have wanted it destroyed. He would have finished it."

Dividing opinions

It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it. Tom Stoppard

With all due ceremony, a white-gloved attendant shimmered into Dmitri's sitting room, bearing the book from the vaults. It consisted of a grey wallet containing dozens of hand-written index cards.

It was Nabokov's practice, having conceived of a novel in his head, to plot it out on cards in longhand, before producing finished pages.

Because of Dmitri's unsleeping filial protectiveness, not to mention the terms of his publishing deal, we were not allowed to read the masterpiece through, let alone film it to anything like its full extent.

The book will be published unfinished, just as the master left it.

The literary world is in two minds about it.

John Banville, winner of the Booker prize, worries that it might compare unfavourably to Nabokov's greatest achievements. But he told us it is as fascinating and compelling as unpublished work by Joyce or Beckett would be.

Tom Stoppard says: "It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it."

Scholars note that Nabokov had form in this area, once wishing to see a match applied to a novella of his called The Enchanter, ironically a kind of prequel to Lolita.

Perhaps it is true that his final work is even more scandalising than the earlier book, that it has "all the sex" in it.

The last of the veils hasn't quite slipped from Laura yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfAPqctbnFQ