Has anybody heard of, or even seen, ‘Talking to a stranger’, a BBC drama from 1966? Somebody put several long clips up on youtube, and they’re incredible. Seriously; watch them, then rewatch for all the nuances you missed first time round. I can’t remember ever seeing a psychological drama half as good on television, or even on film or in the theatre.

It centres on ‘Terri’, played by Judi Dency with a rushing stream-of-consciousness performance that gives the complete tour of her mind within a few minutes. There’s something of Sally Bowles in her (Dench performed in Cabaret a couple of years later). Both have the same vulnerable extraversion, fuelled by terror that everything will fall apart if they stop moving. For Terri that’s intertwined with anger, despair, religion, paranoia and guilt. All this rushes out in perfectly-drawn conversations with her brother and flatmate. Terri selfishly oblivious to them, condescending of their quiet lives, almost unable to believe in them as real people — but with envy constantly creeping in just below the surface.

Again, I can’t quite believe how good it is. Watch it! And this is just from a few clips. I’d love to see the entire thing, but it only seems to be available as part of a massive, expensive box-set of the complete works of Judi Dench. Here is one review.

1) The Oubliette, a very impressive group of art-squatters. Currently occupying a building in Leicester Square, ffs. Previous squats: the former Mexican Embassy on Mayfair, and a language school on Oxford Street. And they’re

Doing Things

™ in the buildings.

2) Crooked Timber searching in vain for political novels. Even CT’s collective erudition doesn’t turn up much, at least in the Anglophone world. This is odd; surely politics

should

be the perfect backdrop for fiction? Constant conflict of duty, ideology, loyalty, and self-interest. Articulate, self-aware characters continually mythologizing their own lives for public consumption. A prefab Greek chorus of pundits and journalists. Day-to-day politics may be dull, cynical and idea-free, but that doesn’t stop it twisting people in fascinating ways. So, what excellent political novels should I be reading?

Paris-bashing is seeping gradually further into the mainstream:

“It is now well-known that Paris has lost all kind of European leadership to the benefit of towns such as London, Barcelona, Prague and Berlin, to which more and more French professional artists are going into exile,”

Also in Der Spiegel, polling of Turkish Germans:

Turks are the largest ethnic minority in Germany and make up almost 4 percent of the country’s population. Yet only 21 percent of those polled feel happy to call Germany home.

Spiegel yet again, where Tobias “Easyjetset” Rapp has a delightfully cynical article on Rammstein finally getting their latest album (not quite) banned:

For the professional provocateurs it is almost a little offensive that a passé gay joke about homosexuals supposedly inserting hamsters into their bodies riled the censors more than earlier songs about the cannibal of Rotenburg and incest, or their Leni Riefenstahl video.

And he has the cultural situation of Neue Deutsche Härte precisely pinned down:

Rammstein, six East German musicians who played in various underground bands in East Germany, derived a successful business model from their understanding that there are no consequences for cultural rebellion in capitalism. Their recipe is simple: Cram sex and violence into a Dadaist vise (a technique that is probably most successful in “Pussy,” with lines like “Blitzkrieg with the meat gun”), add layers of loud guitar music and synthesizer noise, and gurgle out the words in a deep, throaty voice.

Nobody else seems much cheerier about Ashton than I am.

“

deep embarrassment…permeates the senior ranks of Gordon Brown’s ministerial team this morning…..”Shaming and dreadful” is how one prominent colleague privately put it

”

— Michael White in the [Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/nov/20/von-rompuy-ashton-eu-michael-white)

“

She has little experience and is a bizarre choice. It would be a sign that European diplomacy is downgraded to an economic policy post.

”

— French official quoted in the [Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/6609229/Herman-Van-Rompuy-and-Baroness-Ashton-land-top-EU-jobs.html)

“

On the day of her election, the best that could be said of her was that she is a good listener”. “expectations are so low that Van Rompuy and Ashton can only be a positive surprise

”

—[Spiegel](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,662357,00.html)

More justified grumbling elsewhere:

* [Crooked Timber](http://crookedtimber.org/2009/11/19/whether-or-not-it-is-good-for-europe-it-is-very-bad-for-belgium/#comments)

* [A Fistful of Euros](http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/the-european-union/eu-lisbon-jobs-open-thread/)

* [European Tribune](http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2009/11/19/13254/148)

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