MEDITATION 111

I am sitting here by my candle as always and gathering my thoughts. Or rather my memories. Memories of Hollywood. I never worked there of course. I do not think I would have been a good film director except maybe as a ‘dialogue coach’ on individual scenes. However, I imagine I might have been a good character actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood, as it is termed, when the big studios reigned. I could see myself working in a major studio in a variety of roles in a plethora of movies. As a youth, I would have liked to pursue a career as a character actor. I had no ambitions to be a leading man.

I could see myself as a screenwriter too, knocking out scenes for whatever assignment a studio handed me. Writing for school was like that, when I was a Drama teacher. I would knock out a scene or two quickly ready for the next rehearsal. I have been writing a script for school again recently or rather re-writing it (in a more gentle manner than mentioned in the last sentence!). It is my play ‘Will and Juliet’ (first performed in 2017). It is about the boy apprentices who were in Shakespeare’s acting company. It is also an attempt to answer the question ‘Who was the first boy to play Juliet in ‘Romeo and Juliet?’ I have re-written the script for younger students and I am directing the play myself. Rehearsals have just begun and it is interesting working with students whom I do not know at all.

Those memories of Hollywood that are flickering in my thoughts like an old movie are of the three times I visited there, while staying in LA. They have resurfaced because of an exhibition on the film star Marilyn Monroe which is currently showing in London. The visit was a birthday present for a friend. It was quite an unusual experience as the tickets included both the entry to the exhibition and a cabaret with actor Suzy Kennedy playing Marilyn and it took place on a Saturday evening.

Miss Kennedy gave a vibrant impersonation, not only singing the songs from Marilyn’s films but also injecting anecdotes and biographical details about the star into her patter. It was a hugely entertaining 90 minute cabaret (I imagined it would be much shorter) and very upbeat (as all Marilyn’s songs were).

There was no mention of Marilyn’s tragic death from a presumed overdose at the age of 36 in 1962. But why should there be? It would cast a pall over the lively show. Besides, Marilyn lives on in her movies. And she is still drawing the crowds, I thought to myself, as I scanned the enthusiastic audience (of around 200 people) around me. She has not been on the screen for over 60 years and it will be her centenary next year. Yet her image is still everywhere, fixed in time as, because of her untimely death, she has never grown old.

She has become iconic. This is thanks partly to Andy Warhol’s famous picture of her. Images of her images are still as ubiquitous as when she was in her heyday as a star.

As might be expected, displayed in the exhibition were photos, film clips, newsreel extracts, magazine and news articles, original posters and costumes from her films. But of the 250 items on display there were also many of her personal effects, some of which were rather poignant. For example, some of her books (she was an avid reader), school books and sketch books as she loved drawing when she was a teenager, especially making sketches of the latest fashions. There were personal clothes and shoes. Some were from when she was a child and teenager too, which were also quite poignant and of course many items from her adult wardrobe. Her short life was displayed through the clothes she wore. There were numerous letters, postcards, film scripts and even some of her household bills, not to mention a bottle of unopened expensive champagne!

The exhibition comprised the personal collection of Ted Stamfer, and came from Marilyn Monroe’s private estate. When she died in 1962, her private effects were bequeathed to Lee Strasberg her acting coach and mentor, which he passed on to his daughter Paula. They languished in storage until they were finally auctioned in the late 90’s. Some of the auction catalogues were also on display. I remember seeing some of her personal effects in the Hollywood Museum in LA , including her fridge and a sofa and some of her famous sweaters, which made me realise that she wasn’t as tall as she appeared on film. In fact she was 5’4”. I think the museum collection may have been donated by other private collectors.

I have had an interest in old movies from quite an early age and have developed a keen interest in film history as a result. So exhibitions of film memorabilia have always attracted me. I’ve always been fascinated by costumes, props, furniture, scripts and film equipment that have survived down the years. So I was impressed by the exhibits on show at the Marilyn exhibition.

However, as I wandered around the exhibits I began asking myself why I was as fascinated by her private personal effects as everyone else there. They are a kind of biography of their own I suppose, coupled with explanatory panels beside the display cases. They are a sort of social history too. But most of all a glimpse, a tantalising glimpse, into what Marilyn may have been like as a person off screen. What it might have been like to be a guest at a dinner party at her modest Hollywood home for example. In some strange way the exhibits created an opportunity to get a little up close and personal to Marilyn. Something which the numerous biographies, documentaries and movies about her cannot provide.

I must admit that I would have liked to have met Marilyn. I think she would have been good company at dinner or fun at a party. I said so to my friend after we left the exhibition. I have a feeling she was far more intelligent than those around her understood. It was just that she had little formal education. I think she may have been eager to discuss those books she read but few people wanted to listen to her. And she was talented: as an actress (especially in comedy) and singer and dancer. Perhaps her greatest tragedy was that she had so little confidence in her own talents.

Before we sat down for the cabaret my friend and I had time to look around the exhibits a little. We looked mainly at the room which was adjacent to the cabaret space. This was the room that focused on her home and displayed photos of her modest bungalow and all sorts of household things, even examples of kitchen ware and that unopened bottle of champagne I mentioned earlier.

It was also the final room in the exhibition and included photos, newsreel extracts and newspaper coverage of Marilyn’s untimely death and of her funeral. On the three occasions I have visited Hollywood, there has always been a moment when I have experienced a sadness like a chill breeze. And just for a moment what came to my mind each time was all the unhappiness in that town, past and present. Going through that one exhibition room, that sadness, that chill breeze returned. Just for a moment. But it was there.

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Golden Age of Hollywood

Los Angeles

Marilyn Monroe London Exhibition

Film history

Lee Strasberg

Ted Stamfer

Suzy Kennedy

Hollywood Museum, L.A.

Meditation 95

As I sit here beside my candle I have found that my thoughts have slipped back into Drama teacher mode. Please understand I have not been walking around my lounge as if I was back in my Drama studio at school, teaching an imaginary lesson to imaginary students. I am not living in the past, just yet! Although in an imaginary lesson the students are at least attentive, being invisible! However, in my teaching days, I would sometimes practice a lesson at home, especially if the text or topic was new.
My thinking this evening has gone into Drama mode because I have been considering different styles of acting, having recently returned to acting myself. An ex student who is now a film director asked me if I would like to take on a role in one of his projects. The film was going to be shot on location in South London, not in a major film studio like Shepperton down the road, sadly! He asked if I would play a nasty, racist pensioner. Not a very glamorous role for my professional film debut either! It was a professional engagement, as I was being paid a fee. It was also an important project: a short training film, sponsored by Southwark Council, about how to deal with racism.
A good friend of mine helped me develop a South London accent which is different from the quasi -Eastenders one I had been adopting when rehearsing at home. So I did engage in some research! Apparently, South Londoners have a tendency to play down ends of words (unless they are angry). This is the exact opposite of my vocal training, of course, which I passed onto my students. I was always telling them to make ends of words clear. This is very important on stage so as to be heard by the audience. So a slight mental adjustment on my part was needed. It was all about getting into role, after all.
So, there I was, a week later, standing on a landing in a block of council flats in Peckham, surrounded by the film crew, while verbally abusing a ‘Nigerian cleaner’ on the landing below. The cleaner, played by an actor called Glen, had no lines in the scene in response to my abuse. The crew had filmed him cleaning the floor first and were now filming his facial reactions while I repeated my abusive line off camera so that he could react to it. I also had to pretend to spit on the floor, shouting to him to clean it up. Yes: I was not a very nice character!
Then it was time for the crew to film me. My character was leaving his flat to go shopping so I had a couple of empty carrier bags under my arm. I had to pretend to close the door of the flat to my left, see the cleaner on the landing underneath, deliver my abusive lines, spit on the floor and then walk to the lift to the right and press the button to go down.

We rehearsed it a few times and then we were ready for a ‘take’. Alex shouted ‘Action’. I moved my hand on the door handle of of the flat as if I had just locked it. I was about to turn and see Glen below me, when the door of the flat suddenly flew open and a lady in a pink dressing gown stood in the doorway.
‘Here – what’s going on?’, she said to me (or words to that effect), ruining the scene. She thought I was a burglar trying the door. I can’t understand why she hadn’t heard Alex shouting instructions earlier, or me shouting my abusive line down the stairwell for that matter. Alex had to explain that we were filming. She then became demure, apologised and retreated back into her flat. Apparently, no-one from Southwark Council had informed the residents that filming was taking place!
Despite this unexpected interruption we were finished in an hour. I found it was quite a relaxing experience even though I had to focus and stay in the zone repeating my performance for the crew. I did not have to continually project my voice as on stage. Also, it was a very short scene, of course, and a long way from playing a major role such as Prospero from Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ which I played several years ago.
I was experiencing what I used to tell my students in my classes: that film acting is more low key than stage acting and can therefore take less effort. I remember several actors talking about this in TV interviews.
However, film acting does demand acute concentration as I have just mentioned. You may have to wait around for a length of time too and yet be ready to go into your scene, to ‘be on’ as they say. The phrase comes from the Theatre and being ‘on’ stage, adapted to being ‘on’ camera. I had no waiting around at all.
Also, while you are performing, the crew is all around you and you have to forget they are there. It was quite cramped on the landing where we were filming. As well as Alex, the director, there were the cameraman, the sound man with a microphone, the lighting man and two ladies from Southwark Council in close proximity. It made me realise how more difficult it must be for an actor working on a major film in a large studio (or on location, even, as I was) with an army of technicians around them, and yet be in role, focused, ‘on’. I thought this while I was standing there waiting for the crew to change positions from filming Glen to filming myself.
I was reminded of this again a few weeks later when I attended a special screening of the new film ‘Maestro’ which is about the American classical conductor, composer, pianist and educator, Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1991. He is perhaps best remembered for composing the score for the musical ‘West Side Story’.
The screening took place in the IMAX cinema near Waterloo station in London and it was a special event because it was being introduced by the film’s stars Bradley Cooper

(who plays Bernstein and also directs the film) and Carey Mulligan (who plays his wife, Felicia). The film charts their marriage through the years with the conductor/composer’s phenomenal, high octane career as a backdrop. It is a remarkable film and both actors are remarkable in it, especially Bradley Cooper who not only gives a highly detailed performance as Bernstein (he is Lennie to the life!) but also directs the film. Mr Cooper had obviously done his research: but then there is so much archive footage of Leonard Bernstein as he was a media personality for most of his career, giving interviews, making his own TV programmes and documentaries, and there is endless footage of him in rehearsal and in concert too. Both actors also consulted Bernstein’s three children, to whom the film in dedicated.
There was nothing of the ‘star’ about Mr Cooper and Miss Mulligan, when they were interviewed before the screening. They were both very natural and down to earth, indeed, Mr Copper came across as being quite humble. It was such a contrast seeing them in person immediately before seeing the film, where they were towering over us on the huge IMAX screen. I remember Mr Cooper commenting on this himself, wondering what this intimate portrait of a marriage would look like on a larger than normal screen. His worries were unfounded: the intimacy seemed even more evident as if we were in the room with them. And the music on the IMAX sound system was something else! Watching the film reminded me of the big close-ups so prevalent in movies of the golden age of Hollywood, which we see so little of now in movies.
I do recommend the film: it is screened on the smaller screen on Netflix soon.
Well now that I have made my professional film debut I wonder where it will lead me? Will I end up emblazoned on a big IMAX screen? I doubt it. ‘Eastenders’? No thank you. However I would like to do some more filming in a modest way. It was a very relaxing and enjoyable experience and it enervated me, because I was acting again.
Yes it would be lovely to act again. Too late for panto now! And it’s too late to get a job playing Santa in his grotto too! Let’s see what the New Year brings.
Meanwhile, dear reader, wishing you a very Happy Christmas and here’s to peace on earth in the New Year. We need peace.
Ave atque Vale Neilus Aurelius
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Meditation 74

As I sit here beside my candle I am meditating on the Movies. I suppose I should be watching one instead! I have always had an interest in films and have loved going to the cinema since being a child. I am sure most of us are the same. Although, perhaps we go to the cinema less often now and watch films on TV or stream them. Entertainment has become rather complicated, hasn’t it? Or rather choosing how to watch a film has. Personally, I still think the best way to concentrate on a film and to hopefully become immersed in it, is to see it in a cinema.

I also have a keen interest in cinema history, which also developed in my childhood. At that time, the BBC seemed to be showing the back catalogue of movies made by the Paramount and RKO studios. Many were from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. I relished them all and would eagerly wait for the cast list at the end of each film to see who was playing who. I would remember their names and watch out for them in other movies.

In those days, closing credits were much shorter than the seemingly endless ones of today. The end credits were limited to a cast list. Only the stars and ‘featured players’ received a credit. Those in minor roles or ‘bit parts’ often did not appear in the list at all. Some studios (like 20th Century Fox) often placed the cast list at the opening of the film along with the technical credits. Not all the technicians who contributed to the film’s production were included either in the film’s opening credits. Only the major ones did: the director, screenwriters, music composer, director of photography, set designer, costume, hairstyle and makeup for example. The others, though equally important, were invisible studio employees.

I used to collect film actors the way other boys of my age collected football players. (Dear me, that sounds rather indelicate!) Eventually I came to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of film actors from that era and not just the stars but also the character actors too. I am sure I began to learn my acting craft by watching those movies. I never wanted to be a star but would have loved to be a character actor in Hollywood’s golden era. I still would.

When I was a child, my ambition was to be in a Disney movie at their Hollywood studios. At that time Disney produced a string of ‘live-action’ films as well as their animation ones. I remember entering a competition run by the Disney magazine and first prize was a trip to the studios in Hollywood. I was sure I would win and that when I was on the studio tour I would be talent spotted, which would lead to my Disney film career. Such are the dreams of childhood! I did win something: a signed photo of Hayley Mills their top teenage star at the time. But it was no consolation to me!

It must be wonderful to win an Oscar, BAFTA or other major award. I can’t help myself watching those ceremonies on TV and finding out the nominees in advance and hoping that my choices will win, especially if it is a film or performance I have very much appreciated. It must be so exciting and rewarding to have your craft acknowledged in this way or even just to be nominated, which is an acknowledgement in itself. Either way, I understand it makes you more ‘bankable’ for the future. Needless to say, I have my basic acceptance speech ready so that I can adapt it when the times comes. At this time in my life, it won’t be the award for Most Promising Newcomer but for Most Promising Senior!

Coming back to my celluloid youth, ITV showed quite a lot of British films then including those made by Alexander Korda at London Films in the 30’s and early 40’s. He established London Films at Denham in Buckinghamshire. His aim was to rival Hollywood in high standards, quality and opulence and he often succeeded. I very much enjoyed his films especially those starring Charles Laughton, one of my favourite actors. I find it strange that Korda was a Hungarian and that eventually Hungary would figure so prominently in my life. There is now a major film studio named after him (as it should be) outside Budapest where a lot of Netflix movies are made. Two of my ex-students, Archie Renaux and Tommy Rodger, have been filming a Netflix series there: Shadow and Bone.’ It is wonderful to think that their first appearance as actors in Hungary was in one of our school productions on tour there, and now they are back in Hungary filming a Netflix series. Life comes full circle: very quickly for them.

When I was a teenager, on one of our annual holidays to London, I bought a book called ‘Immortals of the Screen.’ It was a large book with potted biographies of film stars, going back to the silent days. All of the stars had passed way (hence ‘immortal’ in the title) before 1966, when the book was printed. Each little biography was accompanied by a portrait and stills from some of the films they appeared in. I imagine it must have been published in the U.S.A. and reprinted in Europe. It was one of those big books that Paul Hamlyn used to publish, usually printed in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps you remember them. Of course the book fired up my enthusiasm even further and I would watch out for the films mentioned if they came on TV or on a chance re-run at the cinema. Those were the days before VHS, DVD, Blue Ray and streaming!

Most of the silent stars would not be featured on TV of course. Thanks to Kevin Brownlow’s wonderful TV series, ‘Hollywood’ and his restoration of some of the classic silent films with superb scores by composer Carl Davis, which appeared on Channel 4, I was finally able to see some of those stars who featured in the book I bought years earlier. Eventually I became and still am a member of the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank where I can see these silent classics as they should be seen – on the big screen. I have also been fortunate to see some with a live orchestra next door at the Festival Hall. But perhaps my passion for silent movies should be the subject of another blog.

Being a fan of the Oscars ceremony, inevitably I watched the morning news on TV a few weeks ago to find out the winners. There on the news I saw the regrettable incident of the actor Will Smith stepping up to the stage and slapping the Master of Ceremonies Chris Rock. This was provoked by a joke made by Mr Rock about Mr Smith’s wife who was sitting beside him. The joke was interpreted by the Smiths as a nasty comment on her hair loss as she is an alopecia sufferer. Initially Mr Smith laughed – did he hear properly? – but it seems that his wife’s discomfort with the remark led him to walk up to the stage and hit Mr. Rock. Mr Smith seemed very emotional at his Best Actor acceptance speech with tears in his eyes. Perhaps this was part of the problem. His emotions must have been running high while he was waiting in the audience for the Best Actor category to be announced onstage. A few weeks earlier, he had won ‘Best Actor’ at the BAFTA awards in London so would he make it a double at the Oscars?

I am sure that the emotions of all nominees run high while waiting for the big moment. Moreover they probably do not really have any interest in the stand-up repartee of the MC. They are nervous and not a little uptight, which may have contributed towards Mr Smith quietly blowing a fuse, walking onto the stage and slapping Mr Rock, then returning to his seat and shouting at Mr Rock before he sat down.

In other circumstances, he would have been removed by security guards no doubt. Had he not been sitting on an aisle and fairly close to the stage, perhaps the incident may never have happened. Although he may still have stood up and shouted at Mr Rock from wherever he was seated.

It was ‘unacceptable and harmful behaviour’ on Mr Smith’s part in the words of the Academy’s official review published today and the Academy have banned him from the Oscar gala and other Academy events for 10 years. Mr Smith had earlier already apologised for his behaviour and voluntarily resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who awarded him his Oscar) and hopefully will regain his personal dignity in time.

In a way Oscars Night has ceased to be a ceremony but over the years has become a circus (certainly a media circus) with its fashion parade on the red carpet, the big production numbers on stage, endless interviews and wild after show parties. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1929 and was at a private dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel: very different from the world wide television event it has become.

Much attention has understandably been given to Will Smith as the aggressor. But surely we must also take into account his provoker, the compère for the evening, Chris Rock, when considering this regrettable incident. The comedian and actor Ricky Gervais has very recently referred to Mr Rock’s joke as ‘feeble’. It probably was compared to his own roasting of nominees when he has been Master of Ceremonies at awards evenings. Rather than physically attack Mr Gervais, presumably the objects of his comments suffered in silence.

He has also objected to Mr Rock’s joke at Jada Pinckett Smith’s expense being labelled as a joke against a disability. Whether alopecia can be defined as a disability I do not know, so he may have a point here. Nevertheless it is an ongoing medical condition which sufferers may feel understandably sensitive about as it involves their looks, especially if you are an actor and consort of a major movie star attending the Oscars, where your personal appearance is so high profile. She was diagnosed in 2018, it appears, and has only gone public about her condition on Instagram last December. It seems that Mr Rock was unaware of this. Perhaps it may have taken her some courage to attend the ceremony, we do not know.

It also appears that Mr Rock’s joke was unscripted, off the cuff, a sudden brainwave. He had said the wrong thing at the wrong time without thinking and hurt someone’s feelings as a result. We have all been guilty of that at times. I certainly have. But not in a high profile ceremony with a world-wide audience. It is easier to come out with a witty comment than to stop and think about who you are speaking to, especially when you are performing your act to a large audience on the stage of the Oscars. However, it is indicative of a wider trend in stand-up comedy of using humour to deliberately denigrate and demean others at their expense, to the extent that humour becomes vitriolic and tasteless. But then, Social media is riddled with unkind humour and comments and sometimes with tragic results, especially among young people. It is a sad sign of our times.

Perhaps, along with banning Mr Smith, the Academy ought to also review the role of the MC at the ceremony.

The singer and actress, Lady Gaga’s behaviour at the ceremony contrasts with Mr Smith’s and not in his favour. Later on the evening she was announcing the award for Best Picture with another famous actress and singer, Liza Minnelli, who was making a rare appearance. Miss Minnelli, an Oscar winner herself (for ‘Cabaret in 1973) appeared on stage in a wheelchair and had been in hospital only a few weeks earlier. She was understandably rather nervous and tongue-tied. Perhaps being back at the Oscars was rather overwhelming for her too and this was the last award of the evening to be announced so she had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for a long while. Putting aside her own feelings at losing the Best Actress award (the previous one to be announced) Lady Gaga gently and graciously assisted Miss Minnelli with the announcement. It was a loving gesture and showed respect for the star that Liza Minnelli is.

Sadly this beautiful moment, though widely publicised, has been overshadowed by the earlier dramatic incident.

Incidentally there is a film called ‘He who Gets Slapped’! It is a silent film released in 1924 and was M-G-M’s first ever production, starring Lon Chaney. The film is ironically set in a circus! Perhaps we are ready for a remake, only set at the Oscars.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 68

As I sit here gazing at the candle before me, one of my favourite actors has come to mind: Alec Guinness. There is a connection with Marcus Aurelius as he played the philosopher emperor in the epic movie, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ in 1965.

I remember seeing the film on of my annual visits to London as a child in the large Astoria Cinema in Tottenham Court Road. In those days, of course, there were no multiplex cinemas with screens of various sizes so the large single screen of this grand cinema fitted the epic sweep of the movie itself. Perhaps the cinema seemed larger and more palatial than it really was as I was only 11 or 12 years old then. There were many Greek and Roman epics in cinemas when I was a child and biblical ones too. My mental image of Classical times came from the movies rather than school history books or the children’s magazine ‘Look and Learn’. When I was studying Latin at grammar school, these images from the movies would flood back into my imagination. In my mind’s eye I would be swanning around in a toga as I learnt to conjugate Latin verbs by rote. But I digress.

I have been thinking about Alec Guinness for two reasons. One is that I paid a visit to him with my friend Simon in the summer. More accurately we paid a visit to his grave in the cemetery at Petersfield on our way to Chichester. We had been talking about him and thanks to Wikipedia (which has replaced the great library of Alexandria of classical times), we discovered that he was buried only an hour’s drive or so from my home. So on our way to the theatre at Chichester (where he appeared several times) we paid our respects on a glorious summer morning.

I imagined that the cemetery at Petersfield would be a small village graveyard. In reality it is an expansive undulating field. But we found his resting place quite easily (thanks to the eerie website ‘Find a Grave’) and it was not far from the entrance. His wife, Merula, is buried next to him. She only survived him for a few months or so after his death in August 2000. I had forgotten that he died over twenty years ago. This is probably because he is still very much present through his many films, which are regularly shown on the TV, not least in his role as Obi -Wan Kenobi in the first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, the character which most people would associate him with.

His film career was more extensive of course, in which he he played a gallery of detailed portrayals, too many to mention here. My favourites are his Fagin in David Lean’s ‘Oliver Twist’; the Ealing comedies ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ (where he plays six different characters) and the black comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ in which he plays a sinister crook; as King Charles I in ‘Cromwell’ and as Dorrit in the little known 1987 adaptation of Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit.’

These and many other portrayals revolved in my thoughts as I gazed at his gravestone. I also had the good fortune to see him several times on stage. As with his film performances, he had great presence on stage but he was not a ‘showy’ actor being reserved, dignified and capable of infinite stillness, even in comedy (which he excelled at). He could make the raising of an eyebrow dramatic or comic even to plebs like me up in the theatre’s balcony seats. Somehow he drew you into the story and the character which is what great acting is all about. His strong vocal presence helped in this, as he had impeccable diction of course. I remember moments from his theatre performances vividly even though I saw them over forty years ago as a young man. These flooded in as I looked at his simple gravestone with its quote from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ at the bottom: ‘The ripeness is all.’

I said to Simon as he stood beside me that it seemed so odd that this big star who is still so famous and in a way still alive to us, through his films, should be here at rest in this grave in this quiet countryside cemetery. A tinge of resurrection perhaps.

My second reason for mentioning Alec Guinness is that I have been watching two BBC Drama series which he appeared in. My visit to the cemetery led me to look them up. He played the role of George Smiley in excellent adaptations of novels by John Le Carre: ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’. They were filmed in the late 70’s and early 80’s and were immersed in the murky world of Cold War espionage before the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The first one ‘Tinker, Tailor’ had a labyrinthine plot which I found hard to follow at times but the sequel, ‘Smiley’s People’ was more straightforward. I hadn’t seen them in a long time, in fact I am not sure if I had seen all the episodes of ‘Smiley’.

Spy thrillers are not my thing really but Guinness’s performance as Smiley, the semi-retired world-weary member of the British Intelligence Service was magnetic. His reactions to persons and events were subtle, indeed, immaculate, as was his ability to register nothing with his face or his eyes if appropriate, as I suppose a spy must do in certain circumstances. It is very difficult to play inscrutable or ambiguous as an actor but he achieved it, while maintaining his strong presence in the scene. He had this amazing ability to make everything interesting, engrossing: even searching someone’s room or climbing a staircase or getting into a cab.

My own performances can be rather overblown at times, which comes from having to demonstrate in drama lessons. Perhaps now that I am away from school, I could return to the amateur stage and emulate my idol, Alec Guinness in restraint and stillness. Who knows?

Smiley inhabits a different world to us: a world of letters and notes; microfiche and rolls of film, elaborate hidden cameras and microphones and tapped phone calls on landlines.It is far away from emails, mobile phones (with cameras), CCTV and zoom meetings and hacking into computer systems. We are in a world of digital surveillance now and the Internet is rapidly diminishing the possibility of secrecy. But still individuals have to be tracked down physically and ‘safe houses’ set up, I imagine.

I don’t think I would be very good at playing a spy let alone being one: I am no good at trying to lie or being duplicitous. I was once rather close to espionage however. No: I wasn’t recruited while a student at Oxford for MI5 or the other side. Although someone who was at my college at the same time as me did end up spying for the Russians and was caught.

I was in a train either going to or from Leeds. The carriage wasn’t very busy. A man behind me was making numerous business calls on his mobile in a far from discreet voice. One involved the details of an upcoming business deal. I heard every word clearly. Had I been from a rival firm I could have written every detail down and passed it on. It would have been an act of industrial espionage but my rather indiscreet fellow passenger deserved it. I wonder if it has happened sometime or somewhere.

That was quite a few years ago now and today everyone is constantly doing business on their phones in public places or on public transport. I hear it all the time and it may have increased now that everyone is wearing earpieces with their phones. I often see individuals talking way into their phone as they walk in the street. I find it amusing sometimes as it looks as if they are talking to themselves. It is even more amusing when you see two or three people walking along and talking to themselves in the same street. They are oblivious to their surroundings just as the businessman was in my carriage ages ago.

It can be very annoying too. A few Fridays ago, I was visiting friends in South London and on a fairly packed commuter train from Waterloo East. Most of the passengers were going home from work and were probably tired. A young woman was on her phone presumably to a friend and loudly arranging her weekend social life, The call went on for over 15 minutes so she must have had a busy weekend ahead of her. But it was quiet annoying for the rest of us sitting or standing near her.

Similarly I heard a girl on a bus once splitting up with her boy friend and egged on by another friend and another one giving the results of her pregnancy test to her mother. They were different buses I hasten to add!

It is not the device that is the problem, but the way that it is used. People have little sense of privacy anymore or awareness of others for that matter. The device encases them in their own world, their own bubble. So they become oblivious to the fact that strangers might be listening in. We might as well be spies with headsets listening in to their private conversation as if we were leaning against the wall of the next room.

Some words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus (c 50 – 135 CE), who greatly influenced Marcus Aurelius’ own thinking, might be appropriate to the use of mobile devices, indeed to our lives in general:

‘We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak’

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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Neilus Aurelius