Richard Davenport-Hines

Reading this book could not have come at a more interesting time - as I write, the British are stunned and appalled by the sustained abuse of 1,400 young children in Rotherham by mostly Asian criminals over an extended period of time.

Although the sexual shenanigans of a Minister of War, a Soviet attache, a naive osteopath, a couple of easy-living women and assorted walk-on rascals may seem a world away, there are grim similarities in the politics of these cases.

Sex is the marker of culture show more and politics is a struggle about identity and meaning as much as it is about resources and interests.

Davenport-Hines, an accomplished historian of British sexuality and culture, takes the Profumo affair as his cue for a more general inquiry into the cultural politics of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The book is in two parts. The first two thirds are an exquisitely argued dissection of the hypocrisies and miseries of the separate sub-cultures that came together in this sad case.

He looks first at Harold Macmillan, the tired and distracted but basically decent Tory Prime Minister, John Profumo, his fly Harrovian Minister of War and the faux-aristocratic world of the Astors at Cliveden.

This is high end of the game - an establishment whose ankles were constantly being bitten at by the middle class opportunists of Labour and who were recovering from what was, economically, a bad war.

Davenport-Hines then looks at the low end of the game - the self-made osteopath Stephen Ward, hapless victim in the story, the 'good-time girls', the Jewish landlords, the reptiles of the media and the security apparat.

In each case, though perhaps he tends occasionally to an edgy polemic, Davenport-Hines show a fairness and sympathy where he can and a coruscating critique where he must.

Although history is supposed to be non-judgmental, this is judgmental history that is good history because the facts dictate our sympathies.

The last third is less accomplished because there is something of an anti-climax in telling the story of the affair itself.

These are diminished, tired, hypocritical and weak people and that is just the political lot. One ends up feeling sympathy for some and disgust for others. Above all, one asks the question - what really is the point of it all.

On the simpatico side, there is, above all, Stephen Ward himself - Davenport-Hines broadly makes the case that this man was the victim of a deliberately arranged show trial based on 'fixed' evidence.

His desperate suicide at the tail end of the trial was nothing more than state-inspired manslaughter by corrupt cops, frightened politicians and a judicial system of consummate evil.

One also feels (this is quite surprising) a degree of sympathy for the better part of the establishment - no worse or better than the incoming hypocrites of Labour, a crew of equally consummate ambition and sheer nastiness.

Brown and Wigg are the worst of a rough bunch of damned near psychopaths, matched by the moral hysteria and viciousness of social conservatives like Hailsham. But what cautious decency there was seems to have been Tory.

The author is even-handed about the Rachman types and the good time girls, pointing out that their bad behaviours were not unconnected to the horrors of the holocaust and (in the case of some of the girls) appalling poverty.

It is not said in the book but an alignment of Jewish and other spivs and the good time girls - some of whom became rich and some dead - may be the mutual comfort of those who have seen the worst and are determined on survival.

But now to the villains - and these are men of what I would call evil, pure evil, ideological manipulation and destructive misuse of high intelligence to destroy others and ensure their own power.

Perhaps Davenport-Hines' angle is too obvious here - he loathes the prurient British media with its ugly intrusions into private life, all in the spurious claim that what the public is interested in is in the public interest.

Well, he is absolutely right and, though the worst excesses of the Beaverbrook and Cudlipp Press are long since passed, not much has changed - it is not just the 'hacking' but the determined propensity to lie and make and break people.

But more evil than the British media at its most narcissitically depraved is the corrupt cop and the political judiciary and we have these to thank for the destruction of Mr. Ward and the wrongful claims about Keeler and Rice-Davies.

On this score, I will not do a spoiler. The last third does have the aspect of whodunnit or rather 'whodidoverothers' about it. There are many unpleasant people but the worst is not Rachman or Keeler or even petty criminals like 'Lucky' Gordon but, ultimately, Alfred Denning, Law Lord.

This is not the conventional view of the noble Lord Denning but Davenport-Hines is persuasive and I leave you to read his account and make your own judgment. I would fear the Noble Lord returning to earth and destroying me as he destroyed the reputation of Ward if I went much further.

So, why is this relevant today? On two separate grounds.

The first is that struggles over sexuality continue to have resonance in the struggle over power at the heart of the State. The second is that, in many ways nothing has changed.

Taking the second first, we can look at this superficially. We have progress in that we have a Cabinet of Old Etonians rather than one of Old Etonians and Wykehamists running the country so perhaps we should be grateful.

We still have a reptilian media creating chaos and limiting opportunities for good governance, destroying lives, failing to investigate wrongs on the evidence and manufacturing outrage.

We still have an ambitious and cynical opposition whose silences and evasions over the Rotherham Abuse leave one with the most unpleasant of tastes in the mouth.

We still have a hidden establishment prepared to use the resources of the State and to create and manage law to preserve their power and cover up for their many incompetencies.

And we still have a political leadership utterly neglectful of the condition of Britain and more interested in cavorting ineffectually on the world's stage as if governance was a boy's own adventure.

Above all, we still have an underclass from which the wide boys and good time girls make their way only to face the hypocritical sexual controls and prejudice of a conservative centre of pseudo-liberals.

The Profumo affair is widely marked as the end of an era of establishment authority but I am not sure that Davenport-Hines is right to take the surface for the reality.

Politics is not only a history of circulating elites but of circulating ideologies and just as the new elite is no more kind and competent than the previous one so the succeeding ideology is no more compassionate.

The Rotherham Abuse scandal has all the signs of exposing one set of elites and an ideology in precisely the way that the Profumo Affair appeared to expose another.

Perhaps there is a cycle and the scandal had to happen to meet its needs but the Rotherham Abuse case is, like the Profumo case, essentially about power, incompetence, sexuality, ambition and national security.

In both cases,there is a rising elite (now national populism, then democratic socialism) waiting in the wings to throw out an establishment (now the liberal bien-pensants, then the propertied).

There are issues of competence - about national security in a class-based apparat (the Right's claim to rule) and the ability of the new managerialism to protect the vulnerable (the Left's claim to rule).

Then, the Minister's lying was the mere trigger for an outpouring of sexual neurosis and conservatism that backfired with the liberal reforms of the following Labour Government under an essentially Liberal Home Secretary.

Now, local council and police incompetence is the trigger for an outpouring of identity neurosis about immigration and wider government failures (regardless of party) which leads we know not where.

We may take the ambition as given.

And what of national security? Then it was about the Cold War and the threat from the boorish Khruschev. Today, it is about Islamism and organised crime and the enemy within.

So, this book is not just old history of antiquarian interest. It is about the dynamics of crisis when the elite starts to split and become nasty and new culturally revolutionary forces start to seep through the gap.

These revolutionary forces in the 1960s were not political but cultural - a decade and a half of half-baked social democracy was succeeded by nearly two decades of rule by the propertied, after all.

What did happen though was the 'sticking' of Roy Jenkins' liberal reforms so that Tories now happily compete for the gay vote and compromise with the diversity and cultural studies ethos of what were left-wing loons only thirty years before.

What is going on in Britain today looks set to be equally revolutionary and in ways we cannot yet predict. We suspect libertarian not liberal and national not internationalist.

It is not just Rotherham just as the change in the 1960s was not just Profumo. It is the Syrian vote in Parliament, UKIP's development as a national populist movement in Labour areas, the sheer scale of child and elderly abuse (we ain't seen nothing yet cumulatively) and the compromises on core identity values.

Davenport-Hines' book won't tell you how things will pan out but it will be a partial guide to the dynamics of what happens when elites become more interested in destroying each other than in building a common weal.

Also worth reading: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/531817770 **** show less

The thing that most impressed me about this book was all the footnotes and sources. The author really did his research; he didn't just rehash what others have said before.

Each chapter focuses on a different group of people: ship owners, ship builders, sailors, crew, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class passengers. (Also, I thought the character who opens and closes the book ~no spoiler~ was an eerie touch.) Each chapter gives the background for a number of different people in each category, not just the show more famous ones, such as Andrews, Ismay, Astor, and the like. The book also follows up with the characters during the sinking and aftermath.

Besides first hand accounts of survivors, the book also sites newspaper articles, letting the reader see how the mainlands were dealing with the disaster. The end of the last chapter, to me was sadder than the sinking of the ship; the most poignant lines being "Survivors asked themselves.. why they had lived when so many others had perished. In many cases, their survival felt despicable. They knew that for them to live, it had been necessary for others to die..."

A must-read for any Titanic history buff. show less

The extent to which one enjoys this book may have to do with how widely one has read about the Titanic disaster. For those who have long been fascinated by this terrible tragedy, there will not be a great deal of new information in Davenport-Hines' book. Those new to the world of maritime history will find it to be full of intriguing, short profiles of various passengers and crew members.

Overall, the feeling of Davenport-Hines book is rushed. It reads as though he took a great deal of time show more with his research but then wrote quickly, anxious to be done with the task. This may be true, as it is apparent the goal was to have the book out to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. There are many times in its pages when the reader wishes the author would just slow down and go into a bit more detail. He hops from one individual to another, often without investing the time to create a background on the page for the person to be presented. Granted, little was known about many of the passengers - particularly those traveling third class - but the feeling remains that Davenport-Hines could have done more, perhaps if he'd only had a bit more time.

The best part of Voyagers of the Titanic is that it is devoted to the people who sailed on the ship, a kind of homage to mobility and dreams. In the past, much has been written about the ship itself, lengthy examinations of the building, the failings, and the ultimate blame. Davenport-Hines concentrates on people and names - rich and poor, survivors and victims, passengers and crew. This brings a very human element to his work and is what makes the book appealing and readable.

Anyone who has ever studied maritime history knows that class and custom played huge roles in determining who lived and who died in the Titanic sinking. Voyagers of the Titanic handles these issues well, and no one will come to the last page without reflecting on money, status, and privilege. Every reader will think about what has changed in the past hundred years and how that situation would play out today. Maritime regulations have changed too, and the Titanic was responsible for many of those changes.

Lastly, this book has come out at an appropriate time, not only to honor the Titanic and those who died one-hundred years ago, but also to make us think about how disasters can still happen and how human error can quickly bring tragedy. The recent (2012) incident with the ship, M/S "Costa Concordia" off the island of Giglio in Italy comes immediately to mind. Somehow, large sleek beautiful ships seem built to be worshipped, and when they - or the human beings behind them - fail, we all find ourselves sinking. How easily we all put our trust into what looks to be perfection and how quickly we are disappointed. show less

This book brings statistics to life by meticulously recounting the personal histories of hundreds who were aboard the Titanic as well as several who were intimately involved in its construction. This is no mean feat. The thousands of people involved, complicated by murky records of many steerage passengers, make this a task not for the faint of heart. Yet, the author Richard Davenport-Hines proved equal to the task: he was able to draw everything together and make sense of the conditions and show more mores of a complicated era.

The detail was fascinating: for example, an intriguing description of how the great boilers were stoked, and the accompanying nightmarish working conditions.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is also one of its weaknesses: there are simply so many individuals that it was difficult to keep everyone straight. I don't know how the author could have done any better, however, with the exception of including a list of passengers, their association or ticket class, and ultimate fate. Had there been such a table I would have referred to it often.

This book fills an important gap in the history -- and mythos -- surrounding the Titanic. To my knowledge, this book is unique, and the most detailed account of the lives of so many of the various passengers of different classes, the crew, and shipbuilders. The book's tone is unemotional and factual, yet absolutely fascinating. Documentation and citing of sources was not stinted upon, further adding to the value of this book.

Thanks to Davenport-Hines, the Titanic's thousands of victims -- whether or not they were actually aboard that horrific night -- live on. ~~~(This review was originally done for Early Reviewers, and published as "MtnSk8tr", my original LT account) show less