These days Tony Blair cuts a tragicomic figure who embodies the oxymoron. He’s charged with bringing about Middle East peace when his actions fueled fires in those deserts. He’s pulled out of public events due to “threats of protest” from a gaggle of anti-war activists yet was cloth-eared to the millions shouting against an Iraq invasion before a single shock had been awed.

The demonstrations in Dublin set a precedent but would you have expected anything less? Hundreds of thousands of war dead may have been wiped off this earth but the violence that brought those deaths have scarred the skin of our humanity. The world was screaming “stop” but the men who held the guns still shot. We’ll never forgive Blair or Bush for that.

By publishing his book, he’s exercised his right to speak. He’s sated his ego by ensuring he won’t be forgotten. The people who planned to demonstrate at Waterstones and at Tate would’ve been exercising their right to protest. Both are freedoms of expression we should fight to protect. Both are freedoms the dead do not have.
Blair is having a crisis of conscience. He’s not having second thoughts about causing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and upsetting the balance of the Middle East for generations. Ever the considerate host, he feared a thousand people with placards calling him a war criminal would “hassle” his guests. Perhaps canceling his events is muzzling him. But it’s not censorship that stopped him. It’s cowardice.
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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 09 September 2010.

I came out with a certificate that says I know what a camera does and that computers are not just for Googling prospective boyfriends.

And the little film below. It’s W.H. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You” as read out by a friend I shanghai-ed into the job.

Many thanks to Anthony Wood, Simon Ruben, Vaughn Smith, and Alec S Loth.

Still images courtesy Westminster City Archives (who gave me some darling white gloves to handle photographs with. I felt like Michael Jackson rifling through high school yearbooks).

Miserable young lad who wrote a bit and coughed to death.

Keats House has been restored to its original 19th century decor and will house various artifacts such as the engagement ring he gave Fanny Brawne (the aforementioned girl next door with whom he had a less than amicable split). It will also house Keats’ life mask, prints, drawings and other poetic tat English Literature teachers can hum and haw to in deference.

Having lived in the Regency villa yards from Hampstead Heath between 1818-1820, he then set off for Rome, had his portrait done staring pensively askance with his chin on his hand, and died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

The City of London has been responsible for the house since 1997. The restoration project involved the City’s London Metropolitan Archives team and a £424,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Michael Welbank, chairman of the City’s Hampstead Heath management committee, said: “The house and garden have been been beautifully restored to a living environment that John Keats would have recognised almost 200 years ago.”

Sure. Until you GoogleEarth the fucker. Or try to explain to him what electricity and a Dyson hand dryer is. Still, Welbank is confident that the house will be a “relevant and powerful landmark” and looks forward to “welcoming even more people from around the world”. Great. More Americans.

The house, which Keats shared with his friend Charles Armitage Brown, was last renovated in 1976.

I’m expecting deferential crowds rubbernecking over cordons. Not the “insight into Keats’ life and loves” the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Wesley Kerr is hoping for. After all, where’s the negative capability in that?

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Republished on the Who’s Jack Magazine Blog. All rights reserved.