You may notice that there are two books on the shelves of your local bookstore (unless your bookseller has good taste in which case there may remain only one) entitled The Third Man. To avoid any confusion as to which you should read I thought I would publish a brief guide here on my blog. In one book the protagonist is a vile, egomaniacal sleaze who will do anything and tread on anyone to serve his own purpose save his own skin, the other protagonist is black marketer Harry Lime.

Yes, Peter Mandelson, the man who revels in the nickname ‘The Prince of Darkness’, has decided to call his memoir The Third Man. Quite what the late, great, Graham Greene – a man we must recall who won the Jerusalem Prize for his commitment to the freedom of the individual in society – would think of a man like Mr. Mandelson appropriating the title of his screenplay and novella is hard to say but I don’t think he’d universally approve of it; perhaps, of course, Greene would realise that Mr. Mandelson’s career so accurately holds a harsh light to the realities and immoralities of modern politics that it will do far more than a roman-a-clef could ever manage.

Greene’s novella was written while writing the screenplay for the film, arguably one of the greatest films of all time, and while Harry Lime may be a murderer and a racketeer he’s far more likeable as a character than the leering prince of darkness presented by  Mr. Mandelson. Greene is a fantastic writer and his style is great to read.

In an ideal world I’d love to see a facebook campaign get the Graham Greene novel to top the bestseller lists instead of the memoir but, logically speaking, while its easy to get people to buy a 79p song to get it to chart it’s somewhat more difficult to do the same with a £7.99 book. Still, this summer I encourage everyone who considers Mandelson’s memoirs to pick up a copy of The Third Man by Graham Greene instead.

It’s been a little quiet on the blog front of late. For this I blame the fact that I’ve been really rather busy editing The Blue Rose of Vitebsk; those who know me will know that editing is probably life’s most painful experience. There are three drafts knocking about these parts that I started but never finished however I can’t find much relevance presently in Orlando Figes, Anti-semitism or the whole death of the novel debate so I suspect they will remain unfinished. Instead I shall break through the silence and leave a picture of a few of the books I’m looking forward to reading, which I picked up recently at The Keel Row Bookstore.  Also on my to-read pile is Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, which promises to be a really good read. (I mean, it didn’t actually promise – my books do not talk to me. That would be somewhat eccentric.)

I was born and raised in South Shields; for the uninitiated it’s an old industrial town on the North East coast of England, at the south of the mouth of the river tyne. (Historically it was the site of the Arbeia roman settlement, garrisoned by Gaulish Auxilleries and Asturian Cavalry. It was Royalist in the Civil War, bombed in the Second World War and it’s from here that John Simpson Kirkpatrick – hero of Galipoli – hails.) The town has changed a lot since I was growing up here and not in good ways. The town centre is a shadow of it’s former self and King Street seems to be becoming worse and worse. Significant unemployment has not been addressed. In short it feels as though the town has been put out to pasture by it’s elected representatives and is left in a state of neglect. It has been failed by it’s politicians on both a national and a local level.

This election is a straight two way choice for the people of South Shields between the Conservatives and Labour; the Liberal Democrat has been notable only by his absence. I don’t want to dwell on the national issues of the past thirteen years, we all know them. I want to look at the town. Why has business declined? Why has retail declined? Why are jobs in education being cut? Why has unemployment not been addressed?

I’ve been paying attention to this campaign and have a pile of campaign literature on the table. The Conservative candidate, Karen Allen, has consistently canvassed on local issues. She has talked about the town centre, talked about jobs, talked about the need for good local representation and talked about change. Karen has been a regular on King Street meeting the public and has spent a lot of time canvassing around the constituency. David Miliband has not mentioned his constituency on his blog recently at all, he doesn’t even mention it in his about me text and he has spent most of this campaign away from the town trying to get plenty of support for his own leadership bid once Gordon Brown steps aside. The constituency has been, as always, largely ignored. The campaign literature from the Labour party has consisted of attack ads, smears and lies. To David Miliband this constituency is not his home, it does not matter, it’s just the place he uses to get elected to seek higher office. Karen Allen was born here, attended Harton Comprehensive; she knows local issues because she is local.

The South Shields constituency has a somewhat dubious claim to fame in being the only constituency in the country never to have returned a Conservtaive MP. People will tell you that it always has to be this way, that no party other than Labour can win here. That is not true. People in this constituency are showing a desire for change. Labour no longer represents the people of this town, it has taken the trust given to it by the electorate and abused it. Failure should not be rewarded. I have asked Mr. Miliband in a comment on his blog why he does not engage on local issues and why he has not put in the effort on a local campaign. This comment has not yet been authorised or answered. (I will update this post accordingly if he answers my questions.)

This May 6th I’ll be voting for Karen Allen, the only candidate that can offer this town the change that it needs. The fact that she is the only candidate to have ran a concentrated campaign on local issues while the man who claims to represent the town is off touring the country speaks volumes of where their respective priorities lie. If you have a vote in this constituency I’d encourage you to make it count for change too and cast it for Karen Allen.

Web links:

Karen Allen’s Blog.
David Miliband’s Blog.

There’s a very interesting piece on the Guardian website about translators being often overlooked. I’ve often wondered this myself, particularly when reading Tolstoy or Pushkin. Can I say I’ve ever really read Tolstoy? I’ve actually read Louise and Aylmer Maude. As a non-Russian speaker (Okay, I can manage “Hello, my name is Peter, how are you?” but then I get terribly lost and end up at “Goodbye” startlingly quickly.) how am I to know what a person’s writing style is like when it was written in another language with different grammatic conventions, nuances and styles. The work of the translator is to bring all those together in a translation that is both accurate to the original text but also faithful to the spirit of the work. I can’t even begin to imagine how such a feat is achieved. It’s impossible to under estimate how much we owe to good translation.

Los Angeles Times | Books | Literary T-shirts

There’s an interesting post on the Los Angeles Times book blog today about literary tee-shirts. My favourites come from Out of Print who do tees of classic book covers. I particularly like Moby Dick and 1984.  They’re $28 each and some of the proceeds from each shirt go towards helping literacy in Africa.