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Primo Levi was an Italian graduate chemist who joined the anti-Mussolini partisans in 1943, was arrested and, as a Jew, was deported to Auschwitz. His book, If This Is a Man, is a memoir of his time there. As he says in the introduction, he had the ‘good fortune’ to be sent there in February 1944, after the German Government had decided—due to a shortage of labour—to ‘extend the working life of prisoners before elimination’, and to improve somewhat their conditions. It is not, therefore, a litany of SS brutality and summary executions; in many ways, it is worse. There have been many accounts of the awful conditions in the camps, but the seeming mundaneness of the day-to-day, week-to-week grinding torture of the routine, lends authenticity to Levi’s account. It is horrifying but compelling reading. I’m tempted to say that older schoolchildren ought to be obliged to read the book so they may understand what racial and cultural intolerance can lead to.
I was once acquainted with an Italian survivor of the camps. I have mentioned in these posts events from my time playing with an English rock band in Rome in the summer of 1965. For us it was a time of wonder, but we encountered not a little name-calling from the Italians since three of us, me included, had regulation Rolling Stones type long hair—regarded by the locals as outrageous. The staff at The Piper, the famous night club where we played from 10:30 pm to 3:30 am seven days a week were, on the whole, very friendly. They of course had seen many bands come and go, and were familiar with the more flamboyant and bohemian set in Rome who frequented the club; long hair was no big deal to them. I struck up an acquaintance with the bouncer, Franco. He was a solid man of about 40. Not tall, or broad, or imposing, but with a definite air of controlled strength; a man you would want on your side. At the time I could not speak more than a few words of Italian and he had no English, so we conversed in the time-honoured fashion using mainly sign language. One day, he called me over and invited me to look at a 20 Lira coin he had removed from his pocket. He pointed to the ‘heads’ side—an anonymous female profile—took a pin from his jacket and wiggled his finger in his ear to indicate that the pin should be placed in the ear on the coin. Doing this, since the ear happened to be at the exact centre of the coin, he could balance it and spin it round. Such were the sundry ways we amused ourselves. There was some more joshing around, and then without warning he rolled up the shirtsleeve on his left arm and showed me a number tattooed there. I recognised it immediately and realised that he had been in the camps during the war. However, I did not know until today that even though there were many concentration camps in Germany, Poland, and even Italy, it was only at Auschwitz-Birkenau that the prisoners were tattooed with numbers. Franco had been sent to Auschwitz. He must have experienced the same horrors as Levi—they might even have known each other. At the time I was upset by the revelation, but the real significance escaped me. From Levi’s book, I now know, and cannot stop thinking about it.
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An exceedingly pleasant afternoon yesterday, spent in the company of very old friends Roy and Jacquie. Roy and I used to play in the band together—several previous posts have described aspects of our adventures. And although for several years back then we practically lived in each other’s pockets, we have barely met a dozen times in the intervening six decades. When we do meet, within seconds the years have fallen away, and we take great and relaxed pleasure in each other’s company.
A few years ago, we spent several days in Rome visiting old haunts. On one day, indifferent weather forced us into a fairly pedestrian department store where we were obliged to spend some hours sheltering from the rain, even eating in its decidedly unexciting café. But the time was as relaxed and enjoyable as our visits had been to the Trevi Fountain and Colosseum. This, it seems to me, is the mark of true friendship. Roy, or it might have been Jacquie reminded us of a very amusing incident. They had invited us and two other couples over for a carry-out Chinese supper and quiz night. The teams were boys vs girls. One of the ladies, I won’t reveal her name—she knows who she is—was getting frustrated with the rate that us chaps were getting correct answers. I dare say that the alcohol intake may have contributed to the loosening of her inhibitions, notwithstanding that she was a mature lady not normally given to gay abandon. She picked the next question and announced to the company that if the men got this question correct, she would immediately lie down on the table and invite her husband to ravish her in front of everyone—or words to that effect. The question was something like: “Name the late 19th century German philosopher who said that God is dead.” While I have been trying to understand something of philosophy for a long time with very little success, what I have managed to achieve is knowledge of many of the philosophers' names and what they are best known for. I announced in a loud clear voice: “It was Friederich Nietzsche!” She went ashen; it was clear that the answer was correct, as I knew that it was, and after a split second everyone broke into barely controlled hysterics. It was a famous moment, and one that I had quite forgotten until reminded of it. This is a very bad day for the BBC. It is an organization that I have grown up with and has informed my cultural and intellectual development ever since my earliest years with Listen with Mother, until just a few minutes ago listening to Melvyn Bragg on In our Time on BBC Sounds, a peerless masterclass of information on the arts and sciences. Perhaps the most infuriating thing I heard today was the quite breathtaking hypocrisy of Charles Moore, sometime editor of the Daily Telegraph, a so-called news-paper, lecturing the BBC on impartiality…
The doctoring of Trump’s speech was unforgiveable. Those responsible should have been immediately dismissed, and an unflinching and entirely uncompromising apology offered. After all, Trump’s utterings and actions are so outrageous that no editing is necessary. It doesn’t matter that the BBC’s detractors use lies, innuendo, bias, and half-truths to attack it. It must always remain balanced, even to a sometimes absurd degree. By doing what was done in a serious current affairs programme, the BBC provided its detractors and enemies a golden opportunity to destroy it. It is clear to me that the deafening silence from the BBC board as I write this—11:15 am, 10 November—signifies chaos. Whatever the reason, and there are rumours of a conspiracy which I do not intend to pass on, the BBC is very troubled. It could not have come at a worse time on the run up to the negotiation on the charter. My experience of BBC programmes over a period of seventy-five years, both on radio and television, is that they absolutely do succeed in their objective to inform, educate, and entertain to a very high standard. Clearly, reform is needed and it seems to be the top that needs it most. But we must be very careful that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our main public service broadcaster must be protected at all costs from the free-market jackals that wish its demise. Note added 4:00 pm, 10 November. I read—on the BBC website—that Trump is threatening to sue them for a billion dollars, and has given them until Friday to respond. And the ghastly truth is, that he is entirely justified in doing so! I don't know how we get out of this one. It is the most frustrating thing when you're in serious trouble, and you know that the only person responsible is yourself. I am actually quite close to despair. I include here a story told by my father and written up by him. It is quite charming and self-explanatory, and explains his, and my, attachment to South Kensington and its museums—and also the Albert Hall. It relates a time when some people with vision forced through vast and expensive public works for the common good.
My great grandfather, Frank Maggs—my father's grandfather in the tale—was born on Salisbury Plain; his father William Maggs was a shepherd, and his mother, Rhoda Kyte was the daughter of a shepherd. My great grandmother, his wife, was Harriet Elizabeth Chilman, one of six daughters of James Chilman and Jane Brookson, born in Merton in what is now South West London. The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens—opposite the Albert Hall—stands pretty much in the centre of where the original Crystal Palace containing the Great Exhibition of 1851 stood for that six months of wonder and optimism. All Because of Crystal Palace When I was a boy in the thirties, growing up in a London suburb, there was a man living up on the hill above us who had a large telescope on his house. Well behaved children could visit him and look through it. Older ones went there on clear dark evenings and saw the moon and planets. In the daytime, especially during the summer holidays, the telescope was pointed at things on earth. One fine morning when I went up there the man said I was in particular good luck. I would see the sun’s rays reflected in prismatic colours on Crystal Palace, which stood on a high point right over the other side of London. The effect was unique, he said; no artist had ever been able to capture it. I was fascinated to have seen a palace of crystal that actually existed and must contain wonderful things. I went round to see my grandfather about it. He was something on the Council to do with getting Works done so he would know about anything special that had been built, how it had been done. Grandfather could be funny, serious or stern. He used to fight the canary to amuse me, putting his finger up at it, threatening to have it cooked for his dinner. The canary just spread its wings and put its tongue out at him which made him shake with laughter and his head go red all over because he had no hair on top. When I went round after looking through the big telescope, grandfather was sitting at one end of the table and granny at the other. “Did you ever go up to Crystal Palace?” I asked him. To my surprise he began to shake as he did when fighting the canary. Eventually he stopped and, grinning, said: “I went up there many years ago but I wasn’t looking at that old palace; my idea was to get my arm round my beloved here!” Granny feigned embarrassment and said: “What a wicked man he is to tell a child such a thing!” But grandfather was unabashed. “All the same,” he declared, “it so happens that because of that old Crystal Palace, I am here, your father is here and, by consequence, you are here!” Then he became reflective as he began to relate the reason why. “My mother that was to be,” he said in measured tones, “was born in a village of Salisbury Plain way back in the 1820s. Now Salisbury Plain be not flat but a mighty expanse of rolling downs where the sky meets the horizon on every side so that people living there think they can see away to the edge of the world.” Grandfather paused, then added: “Some of them get the idea they’d like to fly over and see what is on the other side!” He grinned again. “My mother that was to be was such a one,” he announced. “When she grew up she gave out that village people ought to see London and like places to broaden their minds!” Grandfather gave a serious chuckle. “But those old village people were like a lot of people everywhere,” he went on. “On one account, they’d like to fly away, while on the other hand - ‘better the devil you know’ - they prefer to stay put.” He allowed the point to be taken. “However,” he then said, leaning forward in a characteristic manner of his: “That old Prince Consort, who married our Queen Victoria, got to thinking, according to his idea, that if the different people of the world got to know each other, they might get on better. He reckoned that a Great Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of all Nations, to be held in London, would do the trick. People didn’t like the notion of all those foreigners taking over London, but the old Prince had his way, and there was the question of putting up a building in Hyde Park to house the Exhibition. They did not want an affair of bricks and mortar, so in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-one they gave the job to a maker of greenhouses! He puts up a mighty greenhouse of iron parts bolted together, paved over with thousands of panes of glass, for which reason it got to be called the ‘Crystal Palace’”. “Now when my mother who was to be heard about that, she announced that, being a young woman of full age, she were going up to see it! Why, they said, she’d be murdered on the way! She was persuaded to take a situation with a lady at Plymouth, but that was a mistake: excursions went from there to Crystal Palace, and my mother who was to be went off and saw the Great Exhibition!” Grandfather paused as he laughed, yet seemed to reflect seriously at the same time. I supposed that having some of his mother’s spirit in him he would have run off himself to see the wonder of the world of that time, while marvelling at the risks his mother had taken. “When she comes back,” grandfather began again, “she were mighty told off for the worry she had caused.” He stopped as if to let the point sink in, children being inclined to view their parents as just strict rather than concerned for their welfare. But then grandfather shook with laughter: “There was only one thing for it,” he declared, “that was for her to be married off! She had her eye on a handsome young master shepherd of the locality and she hauls him away to the altar!” Granny now had to protest. “What a thing to say about his mother,” she observed, “that she carried off his father!” It was the accepted view – I had often heard my mother express it – that men inveigled ladies into marriage and not the other way round. “I hope he has finished his tale,” added granny. “Nope!” said grandfather decisively. “I be now going to relate the siege of Fiddler’s Barn!” Granny sat back with a really embarrassed smile, for this part of grandfather’s tale plainly concerned her. “When that Great Exhibition of 1851 ended,” said grandfather, “they found they had made a good profit of money. They decided to apply it to education for all classes of people, building colleges and museums. Then Crystal Palace itself they made fly away to Sydenham Hill. They took it apart bolt by bolt and rebuilt it bigger still.” “On Salisbury Plain, my mother and father had sons and daughters, but sheep rearing there were out of fashion. When I grew up I had to leave to seek my fortune in the town, and it was when I was working for a council near London that my eye lighted upon a certain damsel! Why, that put me out of sorts!” he said, shaking with laughter as granny tut-tutted. “Says I to her,” went on grandfather, “‘will you come up with me to see the great fireworks at Crystal Palace?’ Well, she agreed, and sitting in the dark gardens there, lit up only by those old coloured rockets bursting over our heads, I broached the notion of matrimony.” He shook with mirth again and added: “she were for it!” Granny just managed to remark: “What a silly old man he is!” as grandfather continued: “I took my beloved away to Salisbury Plain to see my mother.” “Now life on the Plain was natural,” he said, meaning it was near to nature and a challenge. “A man would need a woman and woman a man to get on there, and both of ’em must be fit!” he added as a serious aside in the manner of stating a fact of life. “My mother says to my beloved: ‘Could you walk alone over the Plain to Stonehenge and back?’ Now it’s not all that far and the road is straight, having been made by the slaves of the Romans, but it rises and falls quite steeply in parts, and it could be creepy even in daylight, with not another soul to be seen for miles around. But my young lady agrees to do it, and she got to Stonehenge and, after resting on the grass within the circle, she set out for the return. She was not far off home, however, when a cloud came over, bringing a shower with it. Fearing to be wetted, she looked around for shelter when she sees the wide open door of Fiddler’s Barn. Not wanting to get her finery damp, she hurries straight to it and sits down on a bale of hay.” “Now it so happened that a troop of mounted Hussars in ceremonial uniform, all polished and smart, were out riding on the Plain, probably rehearsing their appearance on some State occasion. The officer, mad at the idea of their uniforms being spoiled, ordered his men to make for Fiddler’s Barn at the charge. They went through the doors uttering lusty oaths, only almost to fall off their horses with embarrassment on finding a damsel sitting there! ‘Why, ma’am,’ cried out the officer, doffing his helmet, ‘I had no idea . . .’ He wanted to send one of his men to order a carriage, but hearing she was contracted to walk, declared that the least he could do would be to escort her once the shower was over. So it was that my beloved here arrived back in the village, escorted by an officer of Hussars with his troop leading their horses. My mother took the view therefore that if she was capable of commandeering a unit of the army she was capable of taking me over.” Grandfather laughed as granny said: “What nonsense!”, then made his point: “So you see that it was all on account of that old Crystal Palace that we are all here!” In 1951, a hundred years after the Great Exhibition, the government mounted the Festival of Britain to mark the centenary. Unlike its predecessor, it made a financial loss of eleven million pounds. One section of it, however, did make a profit, and this was a show in the Victoria and Albert Museum, on the site just below where Crystal Palace had originally stood, of exhibits surviving from the Great Exhibition of 1851. In a case containing small items, I spotted a souvenir lead model of the facade of the 1851 Crystal Palace and I gazed at it with emotion. For a card told me it had been lent by a lady of my own surname, which gave me a sensation of travelling through time. I thought it likely I could guess who had originally bought that souvenir a hundred years ago, when the variety of the world had been brought together in Hyde Park for that six months of wonder and optimism. Norman Maggs, 1994 It’s a good question, and one that seems to become more relevant the older one gets. I was brought up a Catholic—I may have mentioned that before. Not a strict upbringing, but any deficiency from my parents was more than compensated for by various forms of mental and physical abuse meted out at the Catholic schools that I attended.
Catholicism I shrugged off as soon as I left school. It is, after all man-made, and since there are so many religions—more than you can count affirming various flavours of just Christianity—the chances are not great that the Catholic Church is the actual true one, even if such a thing exists. Freed from the chains of Catholic belief, I found myself starting to think the unthinkable: was it possible that the God of the Catholic church did not, actually, exist? And if He was a myth, was it possible—since we had had it drummed into us at school time out of number that the Catholic God was the only true one—that no god existed at all? Minds many times greater than mine have considered this problem over the ages, nevertheless it is a subject that I have continued to ponder. C S Lewis was a notable writer and academic who famously converted to Christianity from atheism. His book, Surprised by Joy, is supposed to describe this conversion. A further work, The Problem of Pain, explains how and why pain exists in a world created, allegedly, by a loving God. In these two works there must, I felt, be some answers… Both were a great disappointment. I must have misunderstood the point of Surprised by Joy—a limited autobiography of Lewis’s early life. ‘Joy’, which I assume he saw as equivalent to spiritual revelation, he tried to explain—in terms of a toy garden made by his brother and Squirrel Nutkin (yes really)—as a sort of supercharged nostalgia. As for his conversion to Christianity, which seems to have taken place on a bus, the best I could make of it was that those of his colleagues at his Oxford college whom he most admired were all Christians. The second book, The Problem of Pain, seeks to counter a common assertion used by atheists to attack the idea of a loving god. Stephen Fry makes a good argument here. Why on earth would a loving god create a parasite that bores into the eyes of children making them blind? Lewis’s thesis appears to revolve around the concept of free will. Individuals’ free wills impinge on each other and thus cause conflict and pain, although this hardly counters Fry’s point, nor does it address the acute pain in diseases like cancer. Instead, Lewis presents a series of carefully constructed philosophical arguments—bordering on sophistry—to support his case. This is all interspersed with plenty of devotional mumbo jumbo. All in all, a very disappointing effort. And so, I am no further forward. Even Bertrand Russell is no great help. He was a towering intellect, a philosopher and mathematician and a notable atheist. And yet with all of his analytical ability, he was an ardent supporter of CND. He failed to grasp the burningly obvious point that once invented, nuclear weapons could not be un-invented. Thus to give them up, is potentially to surrender to those who still have them, pace Ukraine… On balance I don’t believe in God by quite some margin, and the fact that certain devotional music regularly reduces me to tears, I write off as sentimentality and stupidity in old age. I have been reading Professor Ian Kershaw’s magnificent history of Europe between 1914 and 1949, To Hell and Back. The book details the two devastating wars that between them killed around 100 million people in Europe and throughout the world. The reality of the slaughter and destruction is almost unimaginable to us today, until we look at our TV screens and see what is going on in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere…
There is terrifying déjà vu in the account of how Britain and France allowed Hitler to carve up Czechoslovakia by annexing the Sudetenland—with its ethnic Germans—and his promise that that would satisfy him. Within months he had invaded the whole country, and not many months after that most of Europe was at war. The parallels with Putin and his so-called ‘ethnic Russians’ in Eastern Ukraine, and the suggestion of giving up land for peace are all too terrifyingly obvious. And there are plenty of ethnic Russians in several other NATO countries... Now, as then, we—the so-called Western European democracies—do not want war, we have far, far too much to lose. World War Three is, in any case, unthinkable; we must believe that Putin and Trump et al are not stupid enough to think that it could ever be winnable. But limited war, as is happening in Ukraine, would be enormously expensive and damaging not to mention the lives lost. I am reminded of Orwell’s 1984. It describes a state of permanent war between two of three great powers, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia—rotating between the three—as a method for those in control to stay in power. I suspect that it is only the mythical threat of ‘The West’ against Russia, that keeps Putin and his cronies in The Kremlin. His invasion of Ukraine to remove the ‘Nazi’ regime is necessary to validate the on-going ‘threat’ against Russia and his valiant defence of the fatherland. If he is successful in Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states will be next on his list. The fact that Ukraine is armed and assisted by the Western Democracies, serves to confirm the analysis Putin wishes to portray to his public that The West has military ambitions towards Russia. Sadly, there is very little that can be done other than to counter the threat by spending whatever is necessary to defend the NATO borders, and continuing to support Ukraine. This is money that could far better be spent on the NHS, social care, and public services in general. And if Trump, Vance, and the Tommy Robinson crowd think that democracy and free speech in Britain is under threat, they should spend some time in Russia, try articulating their ideas there, and see how far it gets them. To Snape Maltings last week for two seminal concerts overseen by musical superstar Sir Antonio Pappano.
I have watched renowned orchestral conductors like Barenboim, Rattle, von Karajan, Haitink and many others strut their stuff in the concert hall, but no one has seemed to me to get right into the music like Antonio Pappano. His face and body contort and his jaw works constantly as he squeezes the very last drop of emotional musical content from each member of the orchestra. And as if that were not enough, he is also a wonderful pianist. We were fortunate to get tickets for the penultimate and last concerts—Saturday and Sunday—of this year’s Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings. There were pieces by Britten and Boulez—adjudged by me beforehand to be ‘difficult’. They were brilliantly performed and most thought-provoking; Britten’s seven sonnets of Michaelangelo sung by a superb Allan Clayton, and Boulez' Mémororiale. There was Debussy’s Images, a work for piano splendidly orchestrated by Colin Matthews, and Vaughn Williams’ On Wenlock Edge. And as hors d'oeuvre on the Sunday, Berlioz’ overture Le Corsaire; a real barn-stormer. The real treats though, were the final pieces in each concert, Elgar’s piano quintet on Saturday, and Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique on Sunday. The Elgar, a most haunting piece, has haunted me for over fifty years since I first heard it in a shared student house in Wivenhoe when I was a graduate student at Essex University. I became aware of the Red Barn murder at the same time, so the two are forever associated in my mind and the Elgar always evokes mystery and an element of menace. For the performance, the string quartet was drawn from members of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) with Pappano playing the piano. I have heard the piece dozens of times in recordings—once live in a radio broadcast—but this was the first time I had heard it performed live. It was magnificent. The players bent and weaved as the music took them, and Pappano was crouched over the piano with his nose almost touching the keys at times. A truly memorable experience. Symphonie Fantastique was always going to be the explosive finale, and so it proved to be. I have heard it many times and seen it performed live also at Snape, but this performance by the LSO and Pappano moved it into quite new territory for me. The Maltings concert hall seats 830 people and is thus both intimate enough for chamber music like the Elgar, yet sufficiently large for a full orchestra without loss of detail. So the double-basses do not get obliterated by the brass, and the strings are always audible even when the timpani and bass drum start their business. Controlling it all, just using his hands—his body performing contortions—Pappano seemed to positively drag the music out of each player. There are many crescendi in the piece, but as the finale drew to a close, it seemed to me that it just could not get any more intense. It did, and at the end I was an emotional wreck. I could not speak, I could not clap, I had tears in my eyes. Perhaps I am just getting old and stupid, but I have never had a reaction to a piece of music like that before. And then, as if the overload could not get any more extreme, we bumped into Pappano and his wife leaving a reception at the hall, hand in hand, half an hour or so after the performance had ended. There was no-one else around, and I called after him and gabbled my gratitude for the splendid performance. I told him he was my new hero, “That bad, eh?” quipped his wife, who introduced herself as Pam. He shook my hand and my wife’s hand and was so friendly and pleasant and entirely without airs and graces, that it is difficult to believe that he is a knight of the realm and a conductor and musician of international repute. So, look out for Antonio Pappano, a consummate musician and performer, and a thoroughly nice person. A recent post on a Facebook group regarding I K Brunel’s selection of the broad gauge for his Great Western Railway reminded me of some recent correspondence I had on the subject.
Ultimately, the question of ‘standard' gauge, 4’ 8½” or ‘broad' gauge, 7’ ¼”, was decided, like the now defunct duel between Betamax and VHS videotape recorders, by the marketplace. And in both cases, the technologically inferior solution—4’ 8½" and VHS—won out. L T C Rolt’s definitive biography of Brunel, published in 1957, provides some very interesting insights into why the so-called standard gauge was chosen in the first place. On page 107 et seq., he points out that 4’ 8½” was the width of the ‘early coal-wagon ways of Tyneside’. They were mostly pulled by horses, and it was a suitable space between the rails in which a horse could comfortably walk. Rolt continues: ‘It was natural that George Stephenson should have accepted this precedent ... on the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1825)...’ part of which initially used horses to pull the wagons. George Stephenson then went on to become engineer on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830), the first proper commercial railway. Rolt goes on: [that was] the moment for him to have considered whether so narrow a gauge was ... the most desirable for trunk lines of a public railway ... when Robert Stephenson was asked by the Gauge Commissioners whether his father had actually advocated the gauge of 4’ 8½” for the Liverpool and Manchester he replied: “No. It was not proposed by my father. It was the original gauge of the [private] railways around Newcastle-on-Tyne, and therefore he adopted that gauge.” This classic non sequitur betrays the conservative rule-of-thumb method which the conscientious and careful but unimaginative craftsman so often adopts when he ventures into strange fields. And that is the nub of the issue. The 4’ 8½” gauge—as applied to the great commercial railways—came about almost by accident. It has always been assumed that Brunel selected his broad gauge primarily from considerations of stability at high speed, however it is instructive to see what the man himself had to say on the subject. On 15 September 1835, IKB wrote a long letter to the directors of the GWR on the question of gauge.* He said that friction in the axles of the locomotive and carriages was a primary source of resistance—leading to lower speeds or more power being needed—and that the effect of this was reduced as the ratio of the wheel to the axle diameter was increased. Using the Stephensons’ 4’ 8½” gauge with large wheels meant that the locomotive and carriages would need to be excessively high—since the wheels and springs would need to be accommodated below them—and therefore inherently unstable. Using a wide gauge, where the wheels were beside rather than underneath the locomotive and rolling stock would, as well as reducing friction losses, lead to steadier motion and less wear and tear on rails and carriages. Brunel goes on to refute the various objections to a wider gauge—wider embankments, tunnels etc., extra weight, friction on curves, but concedes that incompatibility with the London and Birmingham railway—with which the GWR had originally planned to share a London terminus—was a serious obstacle. In the event, the plan to share a terminus was dropped, apparently for other reasons, so even that objection was considerably reduced. Believers in the conspiracy theory of history might wonder whether Isambard was using smoke and mirrors here. Did he aim to bamboozle the board into accepting a critical aspect of design that would be more expensive to build—and ultimately very costly when eventually the line had to be converted to standard gauge—but one that he was convinced was better? Nevertheless, it is an unavoidable fact that however good the lubrication of the wheels was, an average train would have had dozens of axles in the locomotive and carriages, all contributing friction. It is also true that the broad gauge allowed the main driving wheels on the early locomotives to be enormous, and this would have given them greater ‘grip’ on the rails during wet or icy weather, although IKB does not mention this in the letter. At the time that the GWR had committed to broad gauge (c 1835) there were very few other railways extant. Brunel insisted on engineering best practice—as he saw it—and this always trumped questions of cost or long-term benefit, to the despair of his directors. As new railways came along, built by others than the Stephensons and using engineers with less insight than I K Brunel, it was natural that they should ‘follow fashion’, although this was not without rationale. When Brunel was building the GWR, Robert Stephenson was constructing the London and Birmingham Railway which commenced in 1833. With the L&BR running north into the heart of industrial England, it was inevitable that the many railways adjoining it would need to be compatible with it. The fact is that the ‘industry’ in the West Country, served by the GWR, was mainly agricultural, and there was not the same drive there to criss-cross the land with railways. One suspects that even had Brunel known what was going to happen, vis a vis the dual gauge and the final and expensive change back to George Stephenson’s coal-wagon gauge in the 1890s, it is unlikely that he would have changed his mind. He would have insisted that 7’ ¼” was the only viable gauge—the quality of the ride and the speeds obtained proved it—and the GWR and Brunel were the ‘only ones in step’. In fact, when it came to decision time there was so much installed track built to the Stephensons’ gauge, that changing just the GWR was an inevitable no-brainer. As a further addendum, Rolt notes that the original colliery gauge was 4’ 8”, and that at the design stage of the Liverpool and Manchester railway 'An extra half inch was added by some person unknown to fame…' Likewise probably, the extra ¼” added to the broad gauge of seven feet… * The letter is reproduced on page 17 of volume 1 of the History of the Great Western Railway, by E T MacDermot. Today I sold the 500th (and 501st) copy of my book, Murder in the Red Barn. The book analyses the circumstances surrounding the notorious murder of Maria Martin by William Corder in 1827. Coincidentally, on Saturday The Times newspaper published a letter from me about the murder. This was on the question of whether two books bound in the murderer’s skin at the Moyses Hall museum in Bury St Edmunds should be kept on show as a historic archive or respectfully cremated as human remains. I inclined to the latter view. Possibly due to my Catholic upbringing, I have a horror of the display of bits of dead people masquerading as ‘relics’, which are to be found in some churches. Respect is due to the dead; the morbid, ghoulish, and macabre public display of body parts belongs to medieval times.
A chance post on a local history Facebook page around eighteen months ago started me on a quest. Iron Bridge in Hanwell carried I K Brunel’s Great Western Railway over the Uxbridge Turnpike. As usual, Isambard was not content with a straightforward structure but built a spectacular three-way crossing. Girder failures and a fire caused an expenditure of three times the initial cost of the original bridge in repairs and eventually it was replaced by a steel structure in the early 20th century. The bridge today is an archaeological novelty in that elements of the seven bridges that have stood there since the late 1830s remain and are visible in plain sight. My new pamphlet charts the history of Iron Bridge, a very familiar landmark close to Ealing where I grew up. Of all of my publishing ventures this is probably the most self-indulgent. I could have submitted it to a magazine but nothing obvious was appropriate. Anyway, I think it makes a good story and although there is nothing previously unknown in the account, it does draw together several threads and further increases my admiration of I K Brunel.  |
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November 2025
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