What a Difference a Voice Makes: Andy Burnham and Paul Cartledge's Pericles

 

A few weeks into his premiership, and Andy Burnham is already pleasing some and annoying others. But as someone with acoustic hyper-phonosensitivity, I must say that the medium—in addition to the content—of what he says has me turning on the radio in the morning with far more enthusiasm that during Keir Starmer’s leadership.

Starmer, who I believe to be a good and principled man, unfortunately sounds like a terminally depressed dalek (so does Rachel Reeves, as it happens, which may explain their close bond). Ed Miliband, another principled and highly intelligent Labour politician, failed as leader of the Labour Party, as I suggested in a blog in 2012 and remain convinced, mainly on the ground of his laboured, anxious, adenoidal locution. Any theatre professional could have trained this out of him in a week.

Burnham, on the other hand, sounds genial, warmly baritone, authentic and sunny. And he has that resonant northwest-English accent that makes words sing. I checked out recordings of every previous premier since audio-recording began, and, with the exception of the Scotsman Gordon Brown, none has had a regional accent. I hoped for a Welsh accent from David Lloyd George, but it is scarcely perceptible. My husband suggested Harold Wilson, but his vowels were cut-glass Received Pronunciation.

Burnham  is not the first statesman in history whose vocal delivery has been a winning card. Paul Cartledge’s excellent new book Pericles: Statesman, Demagogue, Eccentric, on the Athenian aristocrat committed to democracy who was re-elected annually in most years for more than three decades, does full justice to his skills and impact as an orator. This highly accessible account also humanises Pericles, making it the go-to introduction to the great man (and to the Athenian democracy at its height) that I will henceforth be recommending to my students.

Pericles was said by contemporaries to leave all other speakers standing at the metaphorical starting line of the race. His speaking was crafted but sounded natural, and had grandeur and seriousness. His voice could impact you like Zeus’ thunder and lightning, so he was nicknamed ‘the Olympian’ (Zeus was also a Cosmic King of the North, because Mount Olympus is in northern mainland Greece). Pericles was so persuasive that he won over even his enemies.

I’m not sure even Burnham would want to stay around the top echelons of government for three decades. He likes football, Indie music and the poetry of Tony Harrison too much. I know about the last because he spoke—movingly and resonantly—about the socialist poet of radical classicism at the memorial event that Tony's partner Sian Thomas and I also addressed on 26 April. I have no idea whether there are real grounds for the hope that Burnham is encouraging us to embrace. But at least my ears don’t hurt any more when I listen to our leader on the news.

My New Book, Medea: A Life

 

Today marks the publication of my new book, Medea: A Life. When Heather Gold at Yale University Press first invited me to write a biography of Medea, I was sceptical. Medea is a character of myth. But as I pondered the possibility, I was reminded that no less a serious intellectual than Strabo, a first-century CE geographer who, like Medea, came from the Black Sea, had argued that the story of Greeks like the Argonauts visiting her homeland was entirely plausible and that ‘she is a historical figure’.

So I set to work, consulting every single ancient Greek and Latin source in which she is mentioned, and every artefact in which she is depicted, to extract a consistent narrative line. But I found that I couldn’t write it as academic prose; the material sprang to life in my mind like a story with rich dialogue—who can put Euripides’ tragedy out of their mind?  So my book is a word of docufiction.

I’ve been fascinated by Medea since I was a teenager, and saw the brilliant Mary Margaret McCabe, now a distinguished philosopher, take the role in the Cambridge Greek play. She was under the direction of my later mentor, Pat Easterling (on whom see my last blog). I’ve researched forensic psychology to illuminate why a mother might ever be driven to such a heinous crime as filicide, and found that Euripides’ profile is startlingly close to the typical pattern.

These miserable mothers are frequently well-educated immigrants abandoned by husbands who are local and have found another partner.  They are isolated from adults who care about them and their own natal family. The deed is done very soon after the abandonment, and the perpetrators have often been subjected to racist or sexist abuse. They also—always—have ‘form’—a previous display of temper, violence or psychological disturbance.

I had my own dreadful experience of post-partum depression after I gave birth the second time. It was the sole occasion in my entire life when I was delusional. I was convinced that a group of child-abductors were attempting to kidnap our two infant daughters, and started taking extreme measures to protect them. I tried to roll heavy sofas up against the room in which they were sleeping and put heavy padlocks on windows.

My husband and an excellent GP came to my rescue—neither of whom the most talked about current filicidal mother, Lindsay Clancy, seems to have had available. But it is time that the exceptional psychological turmoil and hormonal extremes of new maternity get some proper understanding.

The signal difference between Medea and Lindsay Clancy is that Euripides’ Medea is neither delusional nor psychotic when she kills her children. She states clearly that she knows what she is about to do is wrong, but her rage has overridden her capacity to deliberate. 

This raises all sorts of ancient philosophical and modern legal issues about freewill, responsibility, lack of premeditation and provocation, which I discuss in an essay appended to the main narrative. There’s also an overview of why Medea, despite her villainy, has continued to inspire women for centuries. Now I’ve got a taste for docufiction, I’m moving on to the youngest generation of the Atridae. Watch this space.

Remembering my Friend Pat Easterling

 

Yesterday Pat Easterling, the professional mother figure to many scholars of ancient Greek, died at the age of 92. She was not my PhD supervisor, but, with Paul Cartledge, she rescued me way back in 1987 when I was unable to obtain a satisfactory reference from anyone at Oxford University, where I had done my degrees. Pat and Paul were at London and Cambridge Universities respectively, but warmly agreed to write me the references that got me my first postdoctoral position, at what was then New Hall, Cambridge. Paul always called her his 'fairy godmother'.

I had always admired her, because she was a long-time supporter of the qualifications in Classical Civilisation that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to make the ancient world accessible in state schools and sixth-form colleges, but which were bizarrely looked down on by many snobbish Classics dons. She was one of the small handful of academics who were enlightened enough to see that equal opportunities and the future lay in such courses; I first met her in 1984 at an event where we were both speaking at a deprived London comprehensive school. She was psychologically astute, and ensured that Fiona Macintosh, who was to become my very close friend and collaborator, and I were brought together to teach on a Classical Civilisation summer school soon after that.

Once Pat had offered to write me references, she became, in my mind, my adoptive mother. She invited me to contribute a chapter to her wonderful Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy when I was still a very junior lecturer. She supported me unconditionally. I was amazed when she agreed to co-edit a book with me on ancient actors, and ensured we secured a contract with Cambridge University Press.  

I cannot overstate how much I learned from her in the course of editing that volume. Every Sunday afternoon for three or four years, while I was also pregnant and dealing with tiny children, we had long phone calls. In the course of these, she taught me most of what I know about theatre-related inscriptions and papyri, textual variants in ancient playscripts that are probably the result of actors’ changes in their speeches, how to use incomprehensibly complex Prussian editions of fragments and obscure Patristic authors, how to unblock sinks, roast potatoes, and make parsnip soup.

She showed me how to edit problematic drafts of chapters written by proud or volatile contributors by posting them gentle, tactful, handwritten notes combining praise with constructive suggestions. Her quiet humour shone through all these conversations, especially when we compared our husbands’ quirks. I learned to read her cues. Her response to papers or suggestions she did not think much of was simply, ‘How fascinating!’, a foible I have often found myself imitating.

Pat was a brilliant scholar and a perfect friend, but she was also a moral exemplar. She was constitutionally incapable of being bitchy (the harshest word I ever heard from her was when she called a man whose sexism we were discussing a ‘pig’). She had one extraordinary quality, which was to make everyone in a room with her—even the most contumacious and rivalrous of phallocrats--behave exceptionally well. I seem to have the opposite effect on people, and envy this virtue enormously.

                        With Arlene Holmes-Henderson just after Christmas 2021

From 2016 our Cambridgeshire home was only a short drive from hers, and for years I would go to visit her for lunch every month. She always served quiche and asparagus and rounded it off with a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. I treasured those  meetings. Sometimes she came to us. I shall miss her sorely.

Ancient Ideas and Modern Life Skills in UK Prisons

Around 100,000 individuals in the UK are serving prison sentences. Some have access to training in skills to help them find employment on release, but far too few are helped to ask the big questions about their purpose in life, to which ancient Greek thought has rich answers. 

What would the best version of myself look like? What would I regret not doing on my deathbed? Will I be happier if I try to be a good person? What is true friendship and how best can choose whom to love? How do I make decisions? How do I become an expert communicator? 

Over the last 18 months, with the help of my colleague Prof. Arlene Holmes-Henderson and other allies, and in collaboration with NOVUS Education, I have achieved a long-held ambition to bring ancient ethics, rhetoric and art, mostly via Aristotle, to incarcerated students. The results have been profound and moving, as documented in the Guardian. 

The feedback has been extraordinary. Students tell us that the ‘potential’ session has helped them thoroughly reevaluate what they could achieve in life; performing a Greek tragedy with improvised props and discussing the moral and emotional issues it raises have helped them see how they have been misled or provoked; when we bestow the trophy for best actor (decided by classroom vote) there are tears and palpable pride; rhetorical insights have already helped them deescalate conflict on the wing. 

I have found these sessions to be the most fulfilling experience of pedagogy in my entire working life. Neglected men and women whose brains have had no stimulation bar daytime television are so thirsty for knowledge and philosophy that it is painful to leave at the end of each course. 

That is why, in January, Arlene and I trained eleven prison educators to deliver the course so it can reach far more students. But we want to continue delivering it ourselves and the funding Durham University generously gave us to set up the initiative has run out. 

We teach for free, of course, but do need to stay in Travelodges and take trains. I have just donated £4000 myself to kickstart our new fundraiser, aiming to get to the £20,000 we need to reach eight or more prisons over the next two years. Please help if you can here. 

An important note on the donation website. When you get to the payment page that looks like this you can remove the tip JustGiving wants by clicking ENTER CUSTOM AMOUNT and changing it to 0.00. 

We are also developing three further courses: an advanced Ethics course, by popular demand, which will think more about intentions, dilemmas, apologies, death, bereavement and suicide; a content-based course on Classical Civilisation and Ancient History for those unlikely to be released; and a course on literacy using ancient linguistic stems to help with spelling and syntax. 

I’ll continue to update progress via this blog. Please, please help us enhance the life chances of some of the most marginalised members of the community.