WRITING IS A WAY OF LIFE. The following interview was made with Alain Elkann by Letture.org following the publication of Anita by Bompiani in 2019.

Alain Elkann, your latest novel, published by Bompiani, is called Anita. Death is the “stone guest” throughout the entire novel, and we could say it is the true protagonist of the story, a powerful presence that is silent if unsettling, inspiring Milan/Misha to reflect on the afterlife. Could we say that Anita is an existentialist novel?

In one sense, yes. In rereading it, I realized that it is a novel that, in a bit of a philosophical way, makes death a protagonist. Not death as a tragedy or illness but death meant as a human condition. We all know that we are born and we die, but we don’t know what happens after death, and that is one of the debates in this book. We can all imagine the afterlife in any way we want. There are many examples, from the ancient Egyptians to what Dante imagined in the Divina Commedia: the afterlife as a big novel. There are those who have faith and believe in specific rules and those who believe there is nothing after death. So there is no great proof of what happens after death, and we all have the free will to decide what will become of us, meaning our bodies. If we want to be cremated or buried or to donate our organs to the hospitals, and so on.

This book is a strange debate between two people, during their romantic relationship, between a man and a woman, Misha and Anita, who have different plans for themselves: Anita wants to be cremated though she believes in reincarnation while Misha wants to be buried even if he doesn’t believe in, or is sceptical of life after death. The book is built around this topic which, I think, is ironic, even comical at times, but it is not a sad book about sad death. Death is treated as a part of life and therefore, each person can decide just as he decides to buy a house or go to a certain place, he can decide what to do with himself. During this decision-making process, you can have doubts or change your mind. Actually, Misha thinks about this a lot. On one hand, he thinks it would be better to be buried but then he starts thinking about cremation, and so on. As I said, all of this is taken on in a light-hearted way, as a part of life and not as a tragedy.

Alain Elkann. Portrait by Joshua Deveaux.

“Life is serious, frivolous, superficial, tragic, sad, terrible, amazing, but it ends for everyone.” How strong is the “sentiment of fragility” in Alain Elkann?

I often think that the human condition is strange, very fragile. All it takes is an accident or an illness to lead us to our deaths. At the same time, man is able to construct so much. I mean, constructing civilization, art, science, inventing things, changing human life itself over the centuries, how we live and therefore human life is something suspended, and I think we need to continue on, do what you feel like doing, but we can’t decide when it will end. For a writer, which is my profession, it is inevitable that my body of literary works will be incomplete. At a certain point, you die and that finishes your body of work. Human destiny means you can’t decide your own life. You can decide what to do during your life, but you don’t know in what conditions. Often, in someone’s life, there will be an accident and perhaps one’s life flashes before his eyes but he survives, but it is clear that the human condition is very fragile.

Is love the antidote to death?

Love is a very important feeling that helps us live, makes us happy, makes us suffer, changes the course of our lives. It is a very important feeling, love is, and it is even more important now, in my opinion, today where it seems like the world is ever more uniform and ecological. What awaits us is a world made up of robots and artificial intelligence, but I believe the feeling of love can’t change. One of the ways for expressing art and poetry has always been love, and I don’t think this will ever end. It is perhaps the most important thing in life. 

“My children and grandchildren are the backbone of my life, and I have tried to never betray them. They will be the ones to judge me:” how much of what we read in your books is autobiographical?

What I say about my children and grandchildren is certainly true, and it is part of the discussion about love that we began before. One loves his children and grandchildren so they are a very, very big part of his life. At times, they make you extraordinarily proud, other times they make you worry. So they become the backbone of one’s life, individually and as a family.  I also believe that family is something very important in making a life for yourself. My novels are autobiographical, and I don’t want to say something absolutely banal, but as Flaubert says, “I am Madame Bovary.” Obviously all of the characters in the novel come from me. While a novel is clearly a transformation of reality, something invented, a story, the story inevitably comes from your own experience, your own feelings, your own obsessions, and so it is inevitably autobiographical. A person writes about what he feels in that moment, what inspires him. I believe that novels are not our own stories, they aren’t the stories of us, but they feed on the life experiences of the writer or the feelings that strike him in that moment. 

When did your love for books and literature begin?

I think it is something that is sparked when we are children. From the time I was very little, I loved when my grandmother read classic children’s books to me. I remember she would come to see me when I was feeling poorly, and she would read me children’s books, books by Giulio Verne, books that were read to children at that time. So, yes, I’ve read since I was a child, and I think that reading is a way of life for those who get in the habit of reading. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a trip in my life without having at least one book in my suitcase. I don’t think there has been a day of my life, for a long time now, that I haven’t read. There is something almost chemical about reading. It is an integral part of my life. And books are curious. On one hand, there are the classics, the books that have already been published, and, on the other hand, there are the books being written that will be published soon. One can try to go see and to read what is newly published or to reread books that have become classics. There are two ways we read: there are things we read for fun, as a distraction, for the pleasure of it and other times we read books for our work or research. Books and libraries have always been an integral part of my life and they still are today.

At times in my life, I have often had the overwhelming desire to buy a book, an absolute desire to go buy a book and read it. I don’t think there is anything I like more than to immerse myself in a book so much so that I’m bothered if someone disturbs me, and I can’t wait to return to the book. Then, little by little, when the book has hold of you and is nearing the end, you try to stretch it out because you don’t want it to end… reading is a licit secret: one reads in silence and then what we’ve read stays with us, something that returns unexpectedly at times. And even, in real life, we remember or compare things to something that we’ve read. So it is like a common thread, a system that has certainly been very important in my life.

Which comes first: the passion for literature or the passion for writing?

In my case, the passion for literature came first because I didn’t think about writing as a child. The real desire to write came around the age of eighteen or twenty when I’d already read quite a few books. They are quite different things. You can learn how to write from books or from teachers. They are two different things that, at a certain point, become complementary.

A collection of interviews that you have done from the nineteen-eighties up through today has just come out, published by Bompiani as well. “Doing interviews is like a continuation of university because each one is like a private lesson held by an exceptional person on a different topic,” you have said. Is there one that has had a greater impact on you than the others?

Doing interviews is a complementary experience to writing stories or books because when you are doing an interview, you aren’t writing an essay, you don’t express your opinions on a specific topic. In the end, when you do an interview, you try to tell a story in a brief space – unless we are talking about a book – that has the person you are interviewing as the protagonist instead of an imaginary character. I tend to, even in a brief interview, make it like a story with a beginning and an end and, therefore, this journalistic genre does not interfere with the creative desire to write a novel.  When I said it was like at university, it is because I have chosen to do eclectic, meaning not specialized, interviews – I don’t interview athletes or writers – with a wide variety of people who are all very different. Therefore, I feel like, even now that I do a weekly interview for the La Stampa newspaper or my blog alainelkanninterviews.com, every week, I feel like I learn something new about the most wide-ranging topics. I may interview someone who heads up a fashion house or a politician speaking about political matters or an architect, an artist, a scientist, or a biographer writing a biography of someone and therefore speaking about that person. I certainly acquire new knowledge every week. Doing interviews forces you, even if you don’t cover news, to follow current events, to read the newspapers, and to try to understand what is happening in various areas of life and, little by little, choosing people that seem interesting to interview at that moment.
My favourite interview? It is hard to say because I’ve done so many. It isn’t because I don’t want to say one name and exclude others, but I just don’t have a favourite interview. Overall, they have all been very interesting. Some were adventurous, some were hard to do, others more fun, others more exciting, but there are so many that it is difficult to choose one.

HOTEL LOCARNO

JOHN STAR

L’ intervista 1989-2009

According to Istat data, more than 60% of Italians don’t read. What do you believe the reasons for this are and what are some possible solutions?

Each country has its different characteristics. I would say that literature and books are not the main characteristic of the Italian personality in that Italians are more apt to be artisans, interested in figurative arts, sculpture, perhaps even music. Take, for example, our cousins in France. The French are traditionally great readers because literature, books have a more important place in French life and French culture. So they have this foundation and, then, it is apparent that, in today’s society, where we are constantly distracted by a telephone with information, blogs, tweets, news agencies, Instagram and the like invading our lives much more than before, obviously, there is less time for reading. As I said at the beginning of this interview, in my case, reading has become a way of life because I started as a child, so I think that schools and families can create this desire for reading. If a child grows up in a family that reads, that talks about books, or has teachers and then professors that inspire reading, if someone has this habit from the time he is young, then it will be there for life. However, I am convinced that, in every country, that has so-called avid readers, that there aren’t really that many. I mean those who read a book per week. It is certainly a shame that reading is going by the wayside. Another thing that has really changed our habits is Google. Now we have a system whereby we push a button and, in thirty seconds, we have an answer to anything that comes to mind. So, for example, this means people frequent libraries less.  There are some wonderful libraries in Italy, in many Italian cities, and I don’t know how popular they are or if frequenting the libraries has diminished. The bestseller phenomenon, of the book of the moment that everyone buys, and sometimes they buy and don’t read, that’s something that has always existed, even in the past.  

However, I am pleased to see that books in paper form seem to be holding up better than newspapers.  All of these flashes of information that we receive on our telephones have bombarded us and informed us to the point that young people are less likely to read newspapers, but the book seems to still be in existence. Of course, knowing that 60% of the population doesn’t read is not very encouraging because it is mainly via reading – not just novels but poetry, essays, history books, philosophy books, and art-history books as well – that we gain knowledge and culture. It is very important to fight to not lose the habit of reading and, therefore, the human sciences because, if we lose these, we lose a fundamental element of being human, meaning the poetic, inventive, curious, and imaginative sides…it would be a shame to lose this! We need to do anything we can, but I don’t say this because I am a writer and want to sell my books. I say this as a general educational phenomenon. Anything we can do, anything the schools can do, anything the families can do to educate, train, and inspire kids to read. It is a fundamental thing because those who aren’t ignorant are less racist…racism comes from fear and ignorance, and reading is a great antidote to the scourge of ignorance. It would be a shame for the country with the most masterpieces in museums and in history to abandon reading.  

What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?

Writer is a big word. In the end, writing is a job like being an architect. Many people would like to or have written a book in their lives, an autobiographical book…being a writer is something else. It is something that you need to feel inside. The writer, even through fiction, bears witness to the world we live in. For example, to understand the Russian mentality, who Russians are, the best way is perhaps not reading history books as much as reading the great Russian novels from the nineteenth century, the great writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Pushkin, and Chekhov. This is the job of a writer, to bear witness, in the end, to his own era. The style the writer uses to express himself can vary. It can be a simple, parsimonious style, for example, the style of Italy’s Alberto Moravia, or a more elaborate and complex style like that of Carlo Emilio Gadda. These are two different ways to express oneself, but, in the end, the role of a writer is to bear witness, to look around and know how to transfer what inspires him, what is around him to the book and the story. This is all something that one needs to feel inside, to have this need – a true writer wouldn’t know how to get through life without being able to write – because, actually, a writer takes on a story and then develops it, writes it in his own style, and there are different ways to do this. There are schools of writing. In the United States, and in Argentina, they are very developed, even in other Anglo-Saxon countries. That is something additional. There are those who feel this need to learn a way of writing, to belong to a genre, to a school. For example, writer Raymond Carver created – and was a teacher – of a school of minimalist writing and many American writers who began writing in the nineteen-seventies and –eighties, had Carver as a teacher and source of inspiration.

In my opinion, there are no absolute rules, people talk about the “sacred fire”…you need to feel these needs inside, this desire and perhaps, with time, as things develop, writing improves and one learns to write. Destiny is strange. There are great writers who wrote books very young and then died young. Then there are others who started writing late in life, others who wrote only one or two books, others who have written vast works. I don’t think that we can come up with rules. In short, what I would advise is for those who want to be a writer is to write and then see…then see if it is a “sacred fire” or if it is a calling or a way of life.  

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Translation by Michelle M. Schoenung

‘TO BE BORN MALE IS AN INCURABLE DISEASE.’

The writer Edoardo Albinati was born in Rome in 1956 where he still lives and teaches literature at the city’s Rebibbia prison. Albinati won Italy’s most prestigious literary award, the Premio Strega. His work The Catholic School has been translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar and is published in England by Picador.

This interview with Edoardo Albinati was made in London on 27^th August, 2019, when the writer presented the English edition of his 1,263 page book at the Italian Cultural Institute London in conversation with Fiammetta Rocco, Culture Editor of The Economist and 1843 magazine.

This interview is also available as a podcast.

Edoardo Albinati, did you really write ‘The Catholic School’ longhand?

Partly by hand. The last the last two or three hundred pages I wrote by hand.

How long did it take you to write over one thousand two hundred pages?

It took nine years. I started in 2006 and I finished in 2015, but in the middle of this period I had three or four years in which I was completely stuck and I thought that I was over. The book was not over, but I was exhausted and I couldn’t find a way to finish it. Then in 2012 the people who work in the narrative fiction section of the publisher Rizzoli New York asked me if I had a book to publish with them. I told them that possibly there was something that I had been working on for years but I was not able to finish. They encouraged, helped, supported and pushed me; everything that a publisher can do for an author to finish his work, and so I put all my energies into finishing it. The first version was 1500 pages, then I cut some. Rizzoli were quite scared when they received it, and, after having called me and phoned me and mailed me for weeks, they disappeared. There was a blackout during which they were reading the book – or trying to read it. And then they called me with the good news that it was physically possible – from a technical point of view – to publish a book of that length. So I just had to cut what was not good, not to make it shorter but to edit out the useless part of it.

Did the people at Rizzoli edit it or did you edit it yourself?

I was helped by two people. One is my daughter, and the other an editor of Rizzoli. I cross-checked their suggestions, and when both suggested cutting some pages or rewriting some passages I did. When it was just my daughter, I believed my daughter. When it was just the professional reader, I didn’t.

Did you always know it would be a very long book?

No, not when it started. I thought it would be a long book, 400 or 500 pages, but not like this.

How does a writer handle a book of this size? How can you remember what you wrote on page 10 when you are at page 972?

That’s why I got lost after a few years. But then I used the example of the director Matteo Garrone, with whom I wrote a film ‘The Tale of Tales’. To write his films and then to edit them Garrone used a very large wall panel with transparent pockets in which he put pieces of different colored cardboard to follow the different storylines of the film. And so I did the same. I had both my daughters helping me to build this, with 200 of these transparent plastic pockets. I had four main themes in the book, and I started to write these on pieces of paper and see if there were some sort of co-events in the stories.

Edoardo Albinati, some critics say that this book is a masterpiece, that you are great writer and it’s a great novel. Others say it’s not a novel, it’s not an essay, it’s not a masterpiece. Others say why did he make such a long book. It is much discussed. Is it an historical novel?

It is an historical novel, because something that happened 40 years ago is history.

You mean the infamous case of rape, torture and murder known as the Circeo massacre, a true crime story when three young men attacked two girls aged 17 and 19 years and killed one of them?

Yes. It was in 1975, forty four years ago. You don’t have to go back to the Middle Ages or to the Renaissance to write a historical novel. Life and society in Rome has changed so rapidly that after 20 years, after one generation, the entire world you are talking about no longer exists. The way people live has changed. Family life in the Italy of the ‘60s and ‘70s is something that is closer to the 18th century than to our contemporary life.

Why did you write about this as a novel?

The beauty of a novel is that you are always describing, talking about, sometimes inventing, times that maybe once existed but now don’t exist anymore. It is a novel simply because, since the beginning of this literary genre, the novel is a hybrid. It is not pure, it is not lyric, it is not theater, it is not philosophy; it is something that joins all these things together. The first novelists did that from the beginning, so I feel authorized to do the same thing and building on the contribution of the novelists of the 20th century like Proust.

‘War and Peace’ is about Napoleon and the war, but it is also the story of a family and a society where all sorts of things are happening, also because of history.  The story of ‘The Catholic School’ is the story of a real school that you went to, and boys who were in school with you were part of the murder in Circeo in 1975. Is it the story of a generation and based on an historical fact?

Yes, but let’s drop the comparison with ‘War and Peace’, which is a masterpiece! We should not compare ourselves with Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dante. We writers can try to deal with others as colleagues, but Tolstoy is not a colleague, he is a genius.

How would you describe your book?

There are many stories in the book and there is one voice that is the narrator. It is not autobiographically me, and I was partially inspired by other people like me who did these things. The fun in writing is that you are free to use your own life, and the life of others, and the life of fantasy, as pure fictional material. One of the main characters of the book is the genius schoolmate Arbus. In fact the character of Arbus is inspired by a real schoolmate I had when I was in school. I didn’t see this guy again for 40 years and I never knew anything about him, but then he read the book and he wrote to me. Everything I wrote about him after he left school is completely invented. Arbus goes through a series of experiences, some of them close to madness – because he’s a pyromaniac, he is someone who is arrested because of touching ladies’ bottoms in buses, things like this. I thought he could have been ashamed or scandalized or angry with me when he read the book, but he liked it, and that’s why I think I’m right in saying that he’s a genius – because he’s open, completely open.

And then you have real murderers among your characters?

The only thing I didn’t change at all was the murder. There were three murderers: Angelo Izzo, Gianni Guido, Andrea Ghira. This is the reason why I started to write the book, because in 2005 Angelo Izzo was out of prison. In the book he is called just Angelo, but the other two I changed the names of because I couldn’t stand to write them. I call Gianni Guido “The Subdued” or “The Subjugated”, because during the first trial his lawyers tried to demonstrate that he was subjugated by the other two strong personalities. The third one, Andrea Ghira, I call “Il Legionario” because he died as a soldier of the Spanish Foreign Legion in Morocco and is buried in the Spanish North African city of Melilla under another name, but it is established that the body that is in that grave is his. Everything I write about them and about their victims really happened. I took the facts from the trials, from the recordings of the police, from the transcriptions. It is something I didn’t dare to change or to novelize.

Have you seen Angelo Izzo since the murder?

No, not at all. I’m not Truman Capote. I didn’t follow that path of getting information, meeting, talking, interviewing.

Edoardo Albinati, they say ‘The Catholic School’ is a very masculine book. There are no women here, and yet you have said that you have read many books on feminism?

I want to recreate the climate of this period. In the ‘70s feminism was probably the most relevant political thinking, but not only then, it is the political movement of the 20th century. While all the others failed, feminism remains, and is still completely alive and actual in all the countries of the world.

What does feminism have to do with the story of the book?

The feminist movement was the first in history in which people started to think about gender as distinct from the human being as such. After feminism, after women wrote about being a woman, in the ‘80s they started to think that you had to do the same thing with males. So there is not just man as the individual or human being or the subject of philosophy, but there is the male. What are the characteristics of a boy? What are the real feelings, not the feelings that we suppose that he feels to be a man, to be a boy and then to become a man? What is the intimate nature of a boy? You can discover it, think about it and narrate it if you, like me, go inside an all-male school like ‘The Catholic School’.

Is what happens in the book a consequence of Catholic education?

No, it is not a consequence. Nothing happens for one reason in life. There is never one and only reason. There are many reasons. There is a sort of carpet that is knitted with at least ten different threads with different colors.

What was the name of your school?

My school was San Leone Magno, a Catholic school. Paying schools in Italy were only Catholic, so it’s a sort of synonym for a private school. Among the issues of this school the first and most important is that it was an all-male school. The second one was that as a paying school it was just for well-off families, or at least families who could afford to pay for the education of their children.

This is not the Pasolini underclass type of world. This is a bourgeois crime in a bourgeois neighborhood?

This crime showed for the first time that things like rape and murder are not confined to the slums but are something that can happen everywhere and can be done by everybody. So there are no safe areas of society. The neighborhood in which this school was built, and almost all the students of the school came from the same area, was considered for many reasons as a safe place, where nothing serious, nothing dramatic, nothing criminal could happen.

Why did you take so many pages to tell this story?

The book covers many different issues and stories and had a lot of characters that I felt obliged to go through in my research and I like asking the reader to follow me in the same research of what it means first to be male, second to be bourgeois, third to be a Roman Catholic living in the ’70s and looking for truth, sex, religion, violence. Around page 600 to page 900 I tried to go through especially sexual violence, as one of the main features of a human being in general, of male identity. Male identity has been built for centuries on this idea of having to use force and violence, to compensate for what I think is the fragility of the male nature. Men started and go on using violence to overcome their own impotence, their own trauma.

Do you have the feeling that in this book you really went deep into your soul?

I cannot go deeper than this, because if I go deeper than this I am going underground.

Edoardo Albinati won the Premio Strega literary prize, Italy’s equivalent of the Booker.

Angelo Izzo, known as the ‘Monster of Circeo’, is an Italian criminal who was at school with Edoardo Albinati. Born in Rome in 1955, he is best known for being one of the three authors (together with Gianni Guido and Andrea Ghira ) of the so-called “Circeo massacre”.

Angelo Izzo in later life.

Edoardo Albinati, do you consider yourself a Catholic writer?

First you have to believe in God, and I don’t know I’m a believer. I don’t think that He doesn’t exist, I don’t think that He exists. I describe in the book the fact of not having faith. I never had it, even though I followed the rules and I tried hard to believe.

By writing you didn’t find faith?

Let me quote Dostoyevsky. There is that wonderful line in ‘Demons’ in which somebody asks someone else: “Do you believe in God?” And the answer is: “I will believe.”

Will you believe in literature?

You know the song of John Lennon, I don’t believe in this, I don’t believe in that. I am quite of that school. I don’t believe in literature, I like literature. Here I want to make a difference between liking and believing. I don’t think that literature is going to change things, to free people, to make people better, but I like it. I can say I like literature in all its aspects, I love literature, but I don’t believe in literature. I am a narrator.

What is the difference between a novelist and a narrator?

A novel is a large book with a plot and with characters that do something at the beginning and by the end they are different. A narrator is somebody who follows stories and it’s the narration of your own discovery.

How do you feel about being an Italian writer?

I write in Italian, and to be an Italian writer probably means to be almost oppressed and burned by the enormous treasure of our own language, of our own tradition, of the fact that our literature was great from the outset. Nobody will ever compare with Dante and Petrarch, but Italy is a very interesting place to write about because it’s a place in which you can have all kind of experiments, in life, in love, and in politics. It’s a lively place, even if it’s not the center of the world.

At the end of the day is ‘The Catholic School’ pessimistic or optimistic?

The last line of the book says: “One song after the other, the Christmas mass at San Leone Magno was drawing to its close. And my heart finally overflowed with joy.”

Portrait of Edoardo Albinati by kind permission and © Marco Delogu.

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PRODUCTIONS FOR PRISONERS. Wasfi Kani OBE is the founder and CEO of Grange Park Opera and Pimlico Opera, through which she enriches the lives of British prisoners and primary school children by exposure to music. Pimlico Opera has presented co-productions with prisons since 1987 and has taken more than 60,000 members of the public into prison. Each week, its Primary Robins project gives a singing class to 2,000 children in schools in deprived areas.

Founded by Wasfi Kani in 1998, Grange Park Opera has become of the major summer opera festivals in Europe. In 2017 it was relocated to a purpose built five-storey opera house modelled on La Scala, Milan, seating 700.

Ths interview is also available as a podcast.

Wasfi Kani, how did your love of music develop?

When I was 16 I loved playing violin and the piano. I got into the Royal Academy of Music but then I was told that if you go to the Royal Academy your only option is to become a player, but if you go to Oxford University many options will open themselves up to you. Oxford does actually change your life. Suddenly you see a much bigger world and meet people doing many different subjects.

What is your family background? 

My parents, Indian Muslim refugees, lost everything when India was partitioned and Pakistan was created and came to the UK. I became a Catholic when I was at Oxford partly because the church played a massive part in the development of Western music.

What did you do after Oxford?

My family didn’t have any money and I became a computer programmer. Programming computers is like doing a puzzle. If it’s wrong you have to find the mistake, and as soon as one puzzle is correct you go on to the next.

How did you return to music?

When I was 30 I had this Damascene moment that when I was 80 and looked back I would regret not having done more with my music.

What did you do?

I had conducting lessons and started conducting. I was lodging with some very kind people (Dick & Janice Taverne …. he is now Lord Taverne ) in Pimlico and in 1987 I created this tiny opera company. I created an orchestra and put on a little production of ‘Figaro’ in St Luke’s Church on Sydney Street.

Then you became well known?

I did operas for the National Trust in a garden or in a tent. People enjoyed it and then I thought people in prison might enjoy opera.

Why?

I’d been to a grammar school in London located behind Wormwood Scrubs prison so it was very familiar to me. I wrote the governor a letter, saying I wanted to come and do an opera in the prison for the prisoners.

What did he say?

He said yes. In 1990 I did ‘Figaro’ and all the prisoners were there. Many people in prison can’t even read, let alone understand Italian, but they could tell that something good was going on. At the end they leapt to their feet and, because at this time there had been a recent riot going on at Strangeways prison in Manchester, all the guards thought this was going to be another riot and got very agitated. But then the prisoners just sat down and filed out.

Wasfi Kani wrote to the governor of Wormwood Scrubs prison (shown here) saying she wanted to come and do an opera in the prison for the prisoners.

What was your next step?

To try and do a production with the prisoners in it. The prisoners liked it when we performed to them, so then we put on a show where they were the main performers. We had to teach them everything. They talk to their families about it, and I said their families could come to the production.

Why did you want the prisoners to be performers?

Because you work with them for a long period of rehearsals, which they do consistently over weeks.

What kind of prisoners did you first work with?

What they call ‘lifers’. These people don’t necessarily spend their life in prison, but if you kill someone you get a life sentence.

How did you feel working with killers?

Ultimately we are all the same. If my life had gone a different way I probably could’ve killed someone. There are 85,000 people in prison in Britain today and about 5,500 of them are serving life for murder. Of those only 70 will never come out of prison.

Why did you choose to work with them?

I didn’t. The governor said he wanted us to do this project with the lifers because they have to deal with the idea of being in prison for 10 years or more and might benefit the most from it.

How do you choose the performers?

We don’t audition them, we just walk around the prison and say we’re doing a play and there’s singing in it and if you want to be in it, put your name down. You get this bunch of people together and they all find their own level.

Is it only men or only women or is it a mix?

In Britain there are, as I said, 85,000 people in prison. There are no joint prisons and there are only 13 prisons for women. The women’s prison population is very small, only about 5,000.

Do you have both men and women in the productions?

Yes. If I do it in a men’s prison I have professional women. When I’m in a women’s prison, which is where I am now at HMP Bronzefield, we employ professional men.

Are these professionals at ease working with killers?

Most of the people in prison in Britain today who are serving life sentences have killed someone they know. Very few just go around killing random people, and they get  a “whole life sentence”: the whole rest of their life has to be away from society. Generally when you’re serving a life sentence you get to a stage when you are assessed for release. The central part in your assessment is that you have shown remorse and have considered in depth the implications of what you did.

Why are there many more men than women in prison?

Society doesn’t want to put women into prison is because their children get put into care and through no fault of their own end up without any family support. And there are more men who kill than women. They’ve got too much testosterone. Lots of men seem to have intended just to have a fight. Each story is a waste of the person who died and a waste of the person who did the killing.

Can they recover? 

A prison is meant to be making a person into a useful member of society. In order for that to happen they need education. Half the prison population has a reading age of less than an 11 year old. There is a huge problem of literacy. How many jobs are out there if you can’t read? The most important thing is that they receive an education.

Do they teach them how to read?

Yes, and often another prisoner teaches them how to read. They usually have a few prisoners who will help the new prisoners who just arrive. If you stood where you saw new prisoners come in you would cry. I’ve known hundreds of prisoners and every time I go into prison I always learn something. Each prisoner has a different sort of tragic story to tell.

Are the prisons clean?

The prisons are cleaned by the prisoners. The prisoners are the cleaners so they want to live in clean circumstances.

What about the food?

They have kitchens where the prisoners work. They’re cooking for their own people so there is a real motive to be serving good food.

What about drugs?

There’s a lot of drug dealing but it’s not all from the prisoners. A lot of drugs come into prison through the staff. If you come in addicted to heroin you’ll be given whatever drug is used to get you off your heroin and you’ll be monitored. At some point the prisoner says okay I’m going to come off that drug and I’ll have to do cold turkey but I’ll do it. And quite often during our project we have prisoners who say they’re going to do cold turkey and come off all drugs. They no doubt feel terrible for a number of weeks, but because they’re doing our project it gets them through that bad time.

When they leave prison do some of them become professional singers? 

One guy who was an exceptional talent has been in quite a lot of West End shows, but my purpose in doing this is better expressed by the one who sent me this text message: “Just to say thank you. I am out now. I took part in Les Miserables as the leader of the revolution as a lifer. You gave me hope and acceptance. Thank you.”

The 2019 production of Don Carlo was first presented in Grange Park Opera’s former home in Hampshire in 2016.

Wasfi Kani’s Pimlico Opera stages musical theatre in prisons.

An aerial view of Bronzefield prison, one of only 13 women’s prisons in the UK, where Pimlico Opera’s production of ‘Hairspray’ will be performed in early March 2020.

When do people come in from outside to see the performances?

We first perform for the prisoners and then have the general public in. They don’t mix the public and the prisoners. Often there are 300 people in the auditorium and a handful of them will be related to somebody in the show. Security wise the most tricky moment is making sure no prisoners leave the prison with the public at the end of the performance.

When do you do the prison work?

In January, February and March.

What about your very stylish and sophisticated Grange Park Opera?

It has recently relocated from Hampshire to Surrey. In eleven months in 2016 and 2017 I built a massive five story opera house, modelled on the design of La Scala in Milan, where I put on some very big operas. 15,000 people come in a season that lasts about six or seven weeks.

Why only six to seven weeks?

In May the weather’s really bad and many people go away for the whole of August. In June and July the weather is quite good, so that’s our window. The whole idea of opera in the country, which was invented by Glyndebourne, is that you enjoy the gardens.

You also work with children?

We do a lot of work in primary schools with children up to the age of 11. Many schools in Britain don’t have any music classes. We give them a teacher who will give a half hour singing class every week of the year. Suddenly you create music in a school that had no music. They learn songs and then they give a concert.

Are you unique in your profession?

There are many charities working in prisons but I don’t think anyone else works in prisons quite like we do with this huge project which is very disruptive to the prison. But then the staff of the prison realise that these projects are good and allow other charities to come in and do other work. Our work is often a catalyst for other projects.

Are the prison staff motivated?

Many are really motivated and believe they could get the prisoners to turn their lives around. They are very caring and nurturing, but they also have to follow the rules and make sure the guy does what he’s meant to do. I’ve seen some astonishingly brilliant people working in prisons.

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 ALAIN ELKANN INTERVIEWS THANKS LAURENCE GRAFF OBE AND GRAFF Diamonds FOR GENEROUSLY SPONSORING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THIS INTERVIEW.

For more information please contact info@grangeparkopera.co.uk

‘Hairspray’ is at Bronzefield Prison, Woodthorpe Rd, Ashford, Surrey TW15 3JZ

Performances: Sat 7, Sun 8, Wed 11, Thu 12, Sat 14, Sun 15 March 2020

HMP Bronzefield, Surrey is one of only 13 women’s prisons in the UK. The project, costing around £200,000, receives no public subsidy. Five weeks of intensive rehearsal – all day, every weekday – produce a show of the highest quality. The gym is transformed into a theatre with a full lighting rig and orchestra. All parties are changed: public, prisoners, staff.

Grange Park Opera, West Horsley Place, Epsom Rd, West Horsley, Leatherhead, Surrey KT24 6AN

2020 summer season  from 4 June to 19 July.

The new opera house is located in a magical woodland on the estate of the 14th century house. There are magnificent formal gardens and a restaurant inside the historic house. The audience arrive from 4pm and, champagne in hand, walk on the very stone flags trod by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

The season combines the traditional and the unexpected. In 2020 is a world première, The Life & Death of Alexander Litvinenko, promising to be one of the most discussed events of the summer. Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, one of the grandest of all Italian grand operas, presents an array of vocal powerhouses including Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja. Then there is perennial favourite La Bohème, rip-roaring Meet Me in St Louis, and, on the very last night gorgeously costumed guest artists from the Royal Ballet show off technical brilliance, versatility and humour.

A SUNDAY DISCUSSION WITH A DIVA ABOUT HER LOVES AND SUCCESSES. Gina Lollobrigida: “I turned Sinatra down. To make it up to him, I gave him two Dali paintings.”

This 2001 interview with Gina Lollobrigida from our archive is newly published here because we feel that the “art of the interview” can provide fascinating and timeless insights.

Pietrasanta is a town that has always been frequented by the most important artists of every era, where they honed their craft, be it sculpture or architecture. Now Gina Lollobrigida works on her mysterious sculptures in this magical city. She works in a very large space where she keeps her bronzes and marbles covered with black cloths, carefully protected from dust and the prying lenses of photographers. 

She says: “I would have liked to have held my first exhibition in March, thanks to an invitation from the city of Paris. Unfortunately, due to delays with the foundry, this exhibition could not take place. Currently, I’m considering other offers: New York, Tokyo, Berlin. Until then, my work will remain an absolute secret.”

When did you decide to live in Pietrasanta? And why?

About a year ago. It is the perfect place for my work. More than ten years ago, I began to dedicate myself to my old loves—sculpture and painting, which I had abandoned as a young girl when I attended the Fine Arts Academy in Rome.

Gina Lollobrigida with her sculpture in 2003.

Gina Lollobrigida, why didn’t you become a sculptor or a painter when you were young?

Fate took me in a different direction. I had two directors stop me twice outside of my school and ask if I wanted to be in movies. Curiosity led me to make appearances in two or three films. Then when I was offered the lead role in Love of a Clown, I absolutely refused, though I was training as a lyric soprano, and the film was in line with that. But they didn’t give up, and they came back, going to my mother to try to convince me. My final strategy for getting them to leave me alone was to ask to be paid one million, which was a lot compared to the ₤1,000 I earned daily for secondary roles. I thought this would be enough to discourage anyone. To my great surprise, they accepted, and this is how I began my cinema career.

What year was that?

It was 1949 or 1950. Then I met De Sica in the film Bread, Love, and Dreams. He was the one who really believed in me and convinced me that, if I worked hard, I would have a brilliant film career.

Did fame come immediately?

Not exactly. I had my first international success with Fanfan la Tulipe, which was shot in France with Gérard Philipe, then things began to build to a crescendo: I worked with René Clair, Carol Reed, John Huston in the United States, France, and England, working “live” in the three languages. Italian, French, and English.

What is it like to be a big diva?

I never got used to the success. Success embarrasses me, and it bothers me to be looked at. I never sought out publicity. I’ve had too much exposure. I have had 7,000 covers, and I’ve never paid for an article. Quite a good record. I never even had a publicist. The Americans couldn’t believe it.

What were your most famous films?

With Gérard Philipe, aside from Fanfan la Tulipe, which is a classic, I did Les Belles de Nuit, and then Beat the Devil with Bogart, The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Anthony Quinn, Never so Few with Sinatra, Come September with Rock Hudson, and Imperial Venus.

Was Gérard Philipe as charming as they say?

He was a dear: cheerful, a wonderful theatre actor. He is the one who taught me French. To learn English, I placed an ad in the newspaper in the UK to find an English-speaking girl who would spend a year at my house in Rome. I received a million responses. After a year, the girl spoke perfect Italian. I also made a lot of progress, but John Huston forbade me from going any further so that I wouldn’t lose that Italian accent he found so delightful.

Gina Lollobrigida, what other important films did you do?

There were so many, more than sixty. Trapeze with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, Woman of Straw with Sean Connery, Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, Mad Sea with Belmondo, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, and King, Queen, Knave with David Niven. Howard Hughes invited me to Hollywood, and I signed a contract with him. I have to say that he was more interested in me as a woman than as an actress. He was possessive and did everything to keep me for himself. I was already married when I went to Hollywood, and I stayed for two-and-a-half months. I saw Howard Hughes every day. Alida Valli had a contract with him for seven years and saw him only once.

Did you have a relationship with him?

He was my most perseverant suitor. He wooed me for a good thirteen years.

What kind of relationship did you have with Frank Sinatra?

I couldn’t return to Hollywood without Howard Hughes filing a lawsuit. He said I was his property. When I finally returned to America to do a film with Sinatra, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had to pay $75,000 to Howard Hughes, in addition to my contract, just to placate him. Sinatra was so kind to me. He pursued me assiduously. He came to pick me up at the airport, waiting at the bottom of the stairs of the plane. He held a concert in my honor in Las Vegas. I was embarrassed by all of the attention, and I also felt a bit guilty. So I gave him two Dali watercolors.

Were you quite wealthy at the time?

The Hollywood contracts I had were truly a dream. They gave me everything I wanted. I had approval of the cast, the director, the producer, and I got quite a significant percentage of overall earnings. When I went to do a film, I’d take my husband, my son, my nanny, my seamstress, my hairdresser, and my “lady-in-waiting”, a French countess who helped me perfect languages. And they would send my Rolls by plane as well. Though they provided a driver. So, I showed up as a star, and my films brought in record-breaking sums. I never accepted a film just because. Quality was always important.

Did you also work in Italy?

I received offers from Fellini, Visconti, and other big directors, but I had to refuse because I couldn’t work in Rome and Hollywood at the same time. It was the golden era of Italian cinema.

When did you stop acting?

I never stopped. But I began taking photographs because I wanted to do fewer films. I began working with Time Life. I did a book on Italy, and I came to realize how creative photography is, and this is how I fell in love with it. I took photographs for thirty years. Observing is more interesting than being observed. You learn about yourself by seeking out others.

Gina Lollobrigida, when did you decide to take up sculpture?

After five photography books, including “Filippine” and “Italia Mia”, I did a book about children and animals called “Magica Innocenza”. It took me fifteen years to complete it. After that book, I returned to drawings and portraits. I also did a portrait of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Henry Kissinger in the United States. I returned to sculpture ten years ago. In 1992, I was invited to the Expo in Seville, and I made a child flying happily on an eagle. French President Mitterrand really admired this statue, and, shortly thereafter, he awarded me with the Légion d’honneur, which was an immense pleasure for me. I’m not only interested in form. I want there to be feeling and spirituality in my work as well. With my sculptures, I wanted to interpret the golden age of 1950s cinema that I had experienced, so joyous and full of imagination. I did this by bringing that feeling back in my portraits of some of the most famous personalities.

What kind of relationship do you have with your grandson?

Dimitri calls me “Gi”, and he’s such a sweetheart. He is like me, and is more extroverted. My son is introverted, a bit like his father who was Slavic.

Are you happy now?

Yes, very. I have just finished two large, five-metre sculptures that took me a long time. Finally, I’m doing what I have wanted to do from the time I was a child.

Is it difficult being Gina Lollobrigida?

Oh goodness. As a sculptor, I need to apologize for being Gina Lollobrigida. For my first sculpture, a critic had negative things to say about it without having seen my work. And when he did see it, he was even more irritated because he found it to be beautiful. The same thing happened to me with photography. Gina Lollobrigida is allowed to have success as an actress, but as photographer, or—even worse—a sculptor, then this is unacceptable.

Are you done with cinema?

No. It all depends on if I receive an interesting script. Unfortunately, only men continue to find age-appropriate roles. Actually, now some of them do their best films, like Clint Eastwood.

This interview was published in La Stampa on 15th July, 2001.

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REFLECTIONS ON CORONA AND QUARANTINE. Sandro Veronesi is an Italian writer. After earning a degree in architecture at the University of Florence, he started a career that includes novels, essays, interviews, screenplays and television programs.

Sandro Veronesi, how and where are you spending these days of mandatory quarantine?

I’m in Rome, at home with my Roman family – my wife and two children who are 10.5 and 7.

What about your other children?

My 20-year-old son is in isolation in Prato with his girlfriend. I also have a 28-year-old son in London in his little house, trying to go out as little as possible in anticipation of what is about to hit there. Then I have a 26-year-old son trapped in Australia, and we are trying to get him back to Italy.

How is this experience for you?

I am living the domestic life, certainly not the life of a writer. I don’t read or write. I no longer have time. There is so much to do in a home with no help at all. We have to stay with the children, make them study, go do the shopping.  So, I’m keeping up with the family and not working.

SANDRO VERONESI.

Photograph © Marco Delogu.

Sandro Veronesi, do you think this time will serve you in your writing?

I recently read a tweet by Stephen King. He says that writers who set their stories in the present need to stop and think about what the present is. The present we knew and the past. I keep a journal, and I write at night when I’m absolutely exhausted.

What do you think about all of this?

Last night, in my journal, I reflected on something I said a few days ago in English during a Dutch television programme. In actuality, we are the virus. Corona is an antibody. If we look at this from nature’s point of view, in a Leopardian sense, the dangerous organism is man who behaves like a virus, attempting to mould everything to his tastes and pleasures. I ask myself, what is the point of man on this planet? We’ve seen that nature, sooner or later, gets rid of the species it doesn’t need. I don’t think this is a divine punishment. It is a naturalistic/scientific reaction. Many books have been written on the plague by names like Manzoni, Céline, Giono, Camus….

Do you think literature is necessary at times like these?

It would be if there were a shared sense of cultural heritage because our minds would be prepared. Many things have already been predicted. The dramatic composition of these dystopias is very similar to today’s reality. This history that has already been lived could teach us to not make certain communications mistakes, for example. But it is all pointless because literature is not shared cultural heritage. It is something for the elite. Those that give the nightly updates with the numbers of dead or ill haven’t read Saramago or Camus. Otherwise, they would communicate in a different way. The way they communicate doesn’t work. And, anyway, people aren’t staying home. I’m staying home because I’m part of that elite that is well-read, and for whom literature serves a purpose.

Do you think people are reading your book Il Colibrì, which is up for the Premio Strega this year?

This is certainly not something that has crossed my mind. I’m closed up in my house, and I can’t go to the bookshop to see if anyone is, by chance, holding or buying my books. The book sold well before the bookshops closed. And maybe people are at home reading it.

Are you shocked to see the bookshops, schools, and universities all closed?

I am shocked to see that public services are still open. I’m shocked to see the buses going around town. The last social thing I did was spend an hour and fifteen minutes at the Libreria Feltrinelli in Largo di Torre Argentina in Rome, before the city shut down.

What did you do there?

I bought some letters by Beckett and essays by Saul Bellow (There is Simply Too Much to Think About) published by Big Sur. There is a phrase on the back cover that I couldn’t have written better myself, but it’s something I’ve always thought as a writer: “The only thing that really matters is caring, believing, and loving. If we don’t care, don’t immediately care, then perish books both old and new, and novelists and governments too. If we do care, if we believe in the existence of others, then what we write is necessary,” Saul Bellow. I read this the last day before things were shut down.

Aside from daily survival with your family, which you are dealing with along with many others, do you think that writers have an obligation to make sure their voices are heard?

Certainly but they have to have one to begin with. We have to think about what Stephen King said about what the world will be like after. I can’t say that the voice I had before will be the same after. There are writers like Michel Houellebecq that use literature to offer a look at imaginary worlds to come that aren’t necessarily so imaginary.

Do you think literature is prophetic, that it can predict what is coming?

My books have been prophetic about my personal life. And that certainly counts for something. My book that did worse, actually it was truly a disaster, was Venite Venite B-52, and it was ahead of the curve on the fact that a “telecracy” was on the way, with the rise of Berlusconi. But the message was not received, and, today, it is obsolete.

What strikes you or scares you about what is happening?  

From a pragmatic point of view, all of the people dying in Lombardy. The numbers in Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona are out of the norm. This tells me that there is something that has escaped us. Seeing those coffins is so tragic and horrible. Seeing people die without the comfort of a priest. This has really struck me. In a certain sense, the rest of Italy is in line with other countries, but more are dying in that area than in the rest of the world. Job wrote, “Man plans, God laughs.” I share this idea, with Job from the bible and Roth’s Job, which is a very illuminating read.

Are you fearful or anxious?

People are scared, and probably rightfully so. I’m in the habit of using fear to work up my courage.

How do you work up courage?

Fear gives me energy, energy for my own good.

In your opinion, how are Italy, Europe, and other democratic nations taking on this pandemic?  

I feel like I’m seeing many mistakes, and I’m inclined to be very critical of my government and other governments. But I wake up every day thanking God that I’m not one of the people who have to take these decisions.

Sandro Veronesi, are you a man of faith?

I am not a man of faith but I trust in those who have faith. Faith helps. People who have faith will make fewer mistakes. With my evangelical writings, a theatre monologue (Non Dirlo) that I wrote a long time ago, I wouldn’t say that I was converted, but I gained a better understanding of what faith means for those who have it, and I trust them more. I’m not talking about extremists of course. I’m talking about people who have a dialogue with God.

What do your children say?

The three eldest have a Jewish mother, and they were raised nonreligious. My 10-year-old daughter wants to have a communion, do catechism. Just like I did.

Do you think she is praying?

I think so. One thing that strikes me is that when I prayed, I gave God the “Lei” [formal form]. At the time, you gave everyone the formal form. Now, everyone is informal even with God. This is a good thing. When I think about the Jesus I studied, he did away with formality.

Do you feel something changing inside of you in these days?

Yes, I’ve never kept a journal before. Reflecting on this virus, I made a list of things I like and things I don’t like. I like to travel, eat fish and meat, go by car – all of these things are toxic and there are seven billion of us. Economies are going to crash, and it will be an opportunity to re-evaluate everything. They may tell me that I can no longer go by plane so I won’t do it anymore.

If people weren’t actually dying, would this be a sort of spiritual exercise?

Giving in to a bigger idea is something that connects us to nature.

What is your mood right now?

I am certainly not enjoying myself. I think about Marco Carrera, the protagonist of my book Il Colibri. He is a small man but he knows how to become a bigger person in situations that require it. If I were sure I’d be able to take on what comes next, to make myself a bigger person, then I would be quite calm. My fear is that I’m not sure that myself and others are up to the task of what comes afterward.

Portraits of Sandro Veronesi courtesy of Marco Delogu

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THE CHANGING FACE OF EUROPE. Anand Menon is Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King’s College London and Director of the “UK in a Changing Europe” initiative.

This interview is also available to listen to as a podcast.

Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, wants to change the trade rules with Northern Ireland with an internal market bill that is considered illegal.  Anand Menon, what is your opinion about that?

It is fundamentally counter-productive. The Brexit negotiations centred around the European Union saying we need legal guarantees as to your future behaviour in order to sign a trade deal. The British government was replying, you don’t need those legal guarantees because you can trust us not to lower our standards. The impact of this internal market bill is to further erode trust in the British on the European side. Therefore, it’s liable to ramp up the EU’s desire for precisely those legal guarantees that the British don’t want to give.

Is this going to break the deal with the EU?

The EU has said that unless the British side shift this will have very negative implications on the negotiations, and the EU will stop them and seek redress for what it sees as a flagrant breach of international law. This would have disastrous consequences, but on the EU side the assumption is that a no deal outcome will have a bigger economic impact on the UK than on the EU. A greater proportion of the UK’s trade is with the EU than the proportion of the EU’s trade with the UK.

Polity Books 2017

Anand Menon, what are the consequences of Brexit for the UK and for Europe?

For Europe, Britain leaving makes the EU weaker. It’s lost a large member state with a significant economy and important foreign and defense policy assets. But the EU isn’t going to fall apart. People have watched how difficult Brexit has been, and taken note. Most EU members are members of the Eurozone, and if Brexit was difficult, leaving the European Union whilst changing your currency would be far, far messier. Amongst the 27 member states, some elements of European political integration become easier without the UK. But there are three massive ongoing structural problems confronting the European Union. 1) There is a need to reform the Eurozone 2) There is the problem of dealing with migration and the question of burden sharing between member states, and 3) there is the struggle between an illiberal Eastern and Central Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary, and liberal Western Europe. For all of these Britain was never the problem, and was never a veto player preventing a solution. The structural problems confronting the EU are no different without Britain around the table.

For Britain, European integration was an economic project for economic objectives. Brexit will certainly have a negative economic impact on the United Kingdom in the short to medium term, and the severity of that will depend on the kind of Brexit that is agreed. Equally, Brexit leaves the United Kingdom free to govern itself as it sees fit. For instance, there is real potential for redefining agricultural policy, perhaps making it more environmentally friendly. Ultimately, for people in favour of Brexit, this was about politics, about the ability of a democratically elected national government to make its own laws. One of the implications is that the UK government will be responsible for outcomes in a far more unambiguous and direct way than when negative outcomes could be blamed on the European Union. Brexit changes the nature of UK politics and political accountability quite fundamentally.

Will Britain become a less influential country?

The UK is a medium sized power in global terms, and can forge a niche and a role that is distinctive. One of the big missing elements of the Brexit negotiations is any discussion over future foreign policy cooperation. This will come back to haunt us, because we benefited a lot from that. We don’t know what the government means by the idea of ‘Global Britain’. Does it mean Britain working with traditional Commonwealth partners like Australia and Canada, or working closely with the United States? The big unknown with the United States, of course, is who’s going to be the president come January and how keen they are going to be on working with the UK. This could be a United Kingdom that asserts its independence by leaving the European Union but then creates newer, closer ties with some of the member states, working with them bilaterally but still as closely as before. The UK is still part of the E3 that deals with Iran. All the indications are that the Foreign Secretary values that kind of cooperation, but we don’t know yet how closely the government intends to work with European partners in foreign policy matters going forward.

If Donald Trump is re-elected, will he weaken the EU and NATO?  

Donald Trump does not like the European Union and the integration project per se. He doesn’t like what he sees as European protectionism. He doesn’t like what he perceives as Europe’s failure to pay its way within NATO, but that’s slightly different from completely disliking NATO itself. In a second Trump term, I don’t see any chance of his position on the European Union shifting. This might convince Europeans that they need to work together more closely, as President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has just said in her State of the Union speech, and think about moving towards majority voting in foreign policy. A world where America can’t be trusted is a world where Europe has to act more decisively. 

What continuity is there between a Trump and a Biden presidency?

US attitudes towards China have changed fundamentally. The United States now sees China unequivocally as an adversary, whoever is in the White House. Within the UK’s governing Conservative Party there has also been a significant hardening of tone when it comes to China. The UK’s ability to work with the Europeans on this is open to doubt, not least because Germany has such close commercial ties with China. That issue potentially divides the UK from Germany, if Germany shapes the position from the European Union as well. There will be a key difference over policies towards China, because most countries of Europe, maybe France a little less, are very dependent on the Germans.

Does this mean that continental Europe may have a completely different political relationship with China than the UK or USA?

Because of those commercial ties it is absolutely possible that the UK and the United States end up in a different place to the European Union when it comes to how we deal with China.

Anand Menon, with the possible exception of France, the two countries that dominate Middle East politics are Russia and America. Israel, the UAE and Bahrain just signed an agreement at the White House, but neither the UK nor Europe has said anything. Is the silence interesting or frightening?

It’s interesting and a little bit depressing, because Europe has interests in what happens in that nearby region, and to see its politics increasingly dominated by Russia and the United States, with Europe unable to muster even a declaratory position, is sad and self-defeating. If Europe wants to protect its interests, it needs clearly defined and effective policies towards its neighbours. That part of the world is part of Europe’s neighbourhood. Apart from it being important to solve the problems of that region itself, if we’re going to solve the problems of migration from North Africa to the European Union we have to have policies towards the region that help bring security and stability. To date, Europe has failed on this. There’s no other way of putting it.

We talk about Europe, but isn’t Europe still an abstract concept?

It’s an abstract concept, and still largely an elite concept. Europeanness hasn’t transmitted itself to voters as a whole, whose primary loyalty remains to their nation states. For all the rhetoric around ‘Global Britain’, Brexit has made the UK rather insular since the referendum. Further, you could argue that since the key vote on Syria in 2013 that David Cameron lost, the United Kingdom hasn’t had a foreign policy worthy of the name. The English nationalism behind the Brexit vote was a complaint about the United Kingdom domestically as much as it was about the European Union.

Where do you see Europe going?  

Two fundamental changes have occurred to the European Union in the period when I’ve been writing and reading about it. The Maastricht Treaty changed the European Union from being a market project to something far broader, far more political, far more intrusive into highly salient political issues at the national level; and the adoption of the Euro reinforced that trend. The European Union is still digesting those changes. A sense of European identity and a far deeper sense of community become absolutely fundamental when you’re talking about common immigration and asylum policies, common foreign policy, common currency. Europe as a political presence is trying to catch up with Europe as a treaty reality. Europe has not caught up with that as yet.

Is the pandemic reinforcing that or slowing it down?

There were signs that reluctance to intervene and to help Italy in the early stages would have a negative impact on European solidarity, but it’s too soon to say what the impact of the pandemic will be. People haven’t yet drawn their conclusions about the relative public health performance of individual member states, and the contribution, if any, that the EU has made to making those responses better. The real economic and unemployment crisis hasn’t yet hit. Individual member states are hit to different degrees, and the budget just agreed goes some way towards helping those most badly hit, but doesn’t go far enough in terms of the scale of the economic impact. The success of member states, and the European Union itself, in mitigating the worst economic fallout in those member states worst affected, will be fundamental in defining how this crisis plays out in the longer term future of Europe.

The Corona virus crisis is inevitably going to cause major damage?

It’s obviously had a significant public health impact. It might be partly positive for Europe, whose public health provision we have learned works better than in the United States, but we don’t yet know how long the economic phase is going to last. Good, speedy, effective, well-thought-out government action can help make the recovery more V shape than U shaped. We don’t know whether that action will be forthcoming, whether governments will get it right. One of the things Europe needs to watch out for are differential rates of recovery across the block. This might stoke the sorts of resentment that we saw during the financial crisis, with some countries doing better than others and the perception that those doing well were not doing enough to help those that weren’t doing so well.

But isn’t the difference between North and South just part of the way Europe is?

It is, but pro-EU Europeans have been slow to grasp the fact that if you allow economic crisis to take hold in some member states and not others, and if that leads to resentment in those states, you end up with populist governments whose impact is to slow down the workings of the European Union as a whole. Populist victories in the next Italian elections for instance wouldn’t just impact on Italy, but on the working of the European Union, because it’s in the interests of those parties to show that they are punching their weight in the Council of Europe.

Oxford University Press 2012

Anand Menon, what do you think about the distinction in our societies between the cosmopolitan people and the people who are very rooted in one place?

Openness correlates very strongly with your level of education. Perhaps we have overvalued academic and university achievements over other forms of learning and other skills to our detriment. That has led to an undervaluing of people who might not be academically bright but have other contributions to make. Some of this at least is rooted in socio-economic inequality. The map of the Brexit vote shows that the poorer parts of the country voted to leave. You hear stories from the day of the referendum about council estates, where people don’t usually vote, where there were massive queues of people waiting to cast their votes; as much against the economic status quo as anything else. The ability of our societies to be cohesive going forward is going to hinge on our ability to address those socio-economic inequalities.

Is it the same for Europe?

Yes, it is the same, and it varies. For instance, one of the things you don’t see in Germany are the same levels of regional inequalities and the same frustration with the centre that you see in both France and the UK. Germany is a decentralized country with very strong regional cities, whereas France and the United Kingdom are both heavily centralized; and so dissatisfaction focuses on the metropolitan centre, as we saw with the votes on Brexit. The levels of regional economic inequality are higher in the United Kingdom than in any other member state of the European Union.

At the end of the day, what is your vision?

I’ve always been slightly suspicious of visions. I would like a politics that is informed by evidence, rather than solely informed by emotion. The UK government seems to be better at campaigning than at governing, not always thinking through and having honest debates about the implications of proposed decisions. I’d also like to see more evidence based politics at work in terms of my vision for Europe, which I suspect will continue to do what it has done for the last decade or so, which is to muddle through without any great transformative leaps. There is no appetite for the European Union not to continue to work, amongst even the most difficult of its member states.

FASHION IS CULTURE. Ines de la Fressange started modelling at the age of 17 and quickly made a name for herself. She became nicknamed by many as “the talking mannequin”, due to her tendency to talk with fashion journalists and express her opinions on her profession and on fashion. In 2013, she re-established her own brand Ines de la Fressange Paris, effortlessly embodying a modern sense of “Parisian chic”. Today, she remains an enduring style icon and beloved muse for high fashion houses. 

Ines de la Fressange, your early youth was formed by an aristocratic eccentric father, your beautiful Argentinian mother, and your grandmother who was a Jewish heiress with an extraordinary personality. Since the age of 17, you have spent your life in fashion. How come?

It’s an accident… Like many people in fashion it wasn’t planned, though I always loved clothes. When I started working as a model I was studying art history and thought it was a small job just to have pocket money. To make a long story short, I learned meanwhile where to put a pocket on a jacket!

At the age of 25 you became the muse of Karl Lagerfeld and signed an exclusive contract with Chanel. What kind of an experience was that?

It was actually the proof that sometimes one shouldn’t listen to others’ advice: most of the people I met at this time told me my decision was not a good idea. Friends who love you are often afraid of changes in your life, but I am convinced great things are risky.

How do you remember Karl Lagerfeld, one of the great fashion icon designers who passed away in February of 2019?

Someone who loved joking even if he stopped smiling in front a photographer, was never satisfied by his work even if he was proud of what he did, worked a lot but didn’t want to show it, wanted to look like a dilettante, had great culture but ignored psychoanalysis. So finally, very paradoxical, like many exceptional people. No? (laughs)

They say that when you accepted to be the French “Marianne”, the woman symbolizing the French Republic, Karl Lagerfeld found your decision too bourgeois and you went your separate ways. Since then you have created your own brand, opening a shop in the mythical Avenue Montaigne, and then what you did was endless…. from Roger Vivier shoes to your book Parisian Chic: A Style Guide, then your perfumes like Blanc Chic. In the midst of all that you also modelled for Jean-Paul Gaultier in 2011. Can you recount for us your fascinating journey in the French fashion world?

No. It’s boring to talk about the past like an old star of Sunset Boulevard! Being too narcissistic leads to madness. (laughs)

Ines de la Fressange, what has changed over the years in the way women should dress?

“Should dress” is not politically correct: it’s “could” dress. Today they can dress the way they want. It’s fun to see one can go everywhere with very casual clothes, even to parties in the evening. The astonishing thing is that finally, despite this freedom, sometimes they go back to the bimbo look of stickers in lorries like pin-ups. But this is their right too…

How do you dress yourself?

Quite badly! I wear very simple clothes, not at all trendy, with sophisticated accessories. Like Roger Vivier’s shoes and bags. They call it “a style”, but I am an imposter with gorgeous shoes! (laughs)

You are considered the Parisienne par excellence. What is your intimate relationship with Paris?

As a child and a teenager when I was living in the country I dreamt of Paris like all the real Parisians. You just have to love the city to be a Parisian. It’s not a nationality, it’s a spirit.

What is Paris for you?

Paris is four cities and 200 villages together: schizophrenic but charming. Fatal.

As well as Paris, another of your fidelities is Provence. Why did you make this choice?

I fell in love with the father of my daughters there, so it made a big confusion in my head and I loved the whole thing. But I could answer you that Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Giono, Picasso or Henry James did love the place before because the light is incredible. Love is only stronger than light.

Was it in Provence that you spent lockdown, and during that time did you conceive new ideas?

During lockdown everybody conceived new ideas because everyone had to think about their own lives. For some it was very positive, like a long meditation; for me personally it was great to focus on essential things.

Just a few months separate us from one of the odder and more uncertain Christmases. What are you plans? How do you live your life?

Indeed. Many people are anxious about this period. It’s not my case because I know I will be with friends who are like a chosen family, in the mountains, in the snow, and with my daughters and companion. So it looks like a very conventional Xmas, next to the fireplace but it’s not that much, just like Canada Dry! (laughs)

The time for fashion magazines with great photographs by outstanding photographers like Helmut Newton, Raymond Depardon and David Bailey seems to have passed because it is out of fashion and too far from the image of today’s world. Is this true?

Talent is never out of fashion. Fashion magazines are sometimes slightly afraid and very concerned by the brands who take advertising… but each decade has its own mood. I am not nostalgic.

Ines de la Fressange, recently you have published in the famous weekly Elle magazine a few editions of Le Journal d’ Ines. Can you tell our readers what the concept is, and how come you decided to become an editor and a blogger?

Yes indeed and it was a huge success!!!  Can’t explain you why, because I am totally incompetent and only did what I liked, shown people I love, met interesting people too and gave addresses and names of things I love with a lot of joy and sincerity. Maybe that’s the clue, doing things with honesty.

Why did you create La Lettre d’ Ines that is now read all over the world?

This also was like a very neophyte project, a kind of letter to a friend where I would talk about a book, a film, even not at all linked to actuality and addresses in Paris – just like during a lunch, not bought by advertising, and it became very popular even though I did not do publicity about it.

Nowadays it looks as if fashion magazines and magazines in general are less read. Instead fashion seems to have moved to Instagram and to online platforms. Is this virtual world in which you cannot even have contact with the cloth or savour the perfume going to completely alter the tastes of fashion?

It’s just a new tool: personally I discovered many brands because of Instagram. One shouldn’t be afraid of what’s going on, evolution and transformation is the sine qua non condition of everything. Fashion is fed by changes.

Do you think that this uncertain pandemia is going to change fashion yet again and the way women want to dress?

Fashion changes anyway! Environment and climate change consciousness. Weather, population on earth, everything participates, and fashion is usually more then a reflection of the period. Fashion feels before other sectors. Actually human beings don’t evolve so much, but fashion always does.

Who are the designers who have inspired you most over the years?

With time you understand what you heard at twenty years old and didn’t understand at that time: Yves Saint Laurent talking about simplicity for instance. But for all designers childhood is always the biggest influence.

Were you a friend of Kenzo, the great Japanese designer who recently died of Covid19?

Indeed, he was the first one to take me for a fashion show. I was looking like Bambi, very shy; he was too. I was very sad, with this news it seemed frivolity, happiness and friendship would disappear in a day. He was a great designer who was creative and however would make very wearable items.

How do you yourself dress nowadays?

I have my own brand: Ines de la Fressange Paris (it’s very convenient!) but in reality I am rather everyday with white jeans, a navy blue sweater and Roger Vivier shoes. Quite boring, but thank God I have these gorgeous accessories made in Italy that save the whole thing! (laughs)

Ines de la Fressange, they say that you are also a family woman and love to be with your two daughters Violette and Nine whose father was your first husband Luigi d’Urso. What kind of a mother are you?

I am a good mother because I know I am not perfect. They had a fantastic father, not for a long time but enough to make incredible human beings. I am so proud of them. One is “normalienne” (did “L’Ecole Normale” which is the most difficult school to get into in France and maybe in the world) and now a comedian. She looks like Audrey Hepburn, this is Nine. The other one is a specialist of middle age, philosophy and history and she looks like Brigitte Bardot, this is Violette. But don’t ask me about my daughters, the interview is gonna be too long! (laughs)

You started in fashion as a teenager and are still there as a woman. What is the advice that you give to women about how to keep yourself confident through the ages?

Maybe don’t ask yourself these kind of questions! (laughs) Take care of the others rather, keep curious and not self-conscious. And avoid Botox… smiling is less expensive and far better!

You always liked to read and be surrounded by intellectuals. Fashion is sometimes perceived as a futile world, but at the same time it is a necessity for every woman alive. How do you manage your two passions of culture and fashion?

• We need futility and frivolity.
• Fashion is culture.
• Beauty, extravagance, creativity, anti-conformism is everywhere in art and literature.

OOhh I’m tired I have never been thinking that long about something! (laughs)

Two words are very often used in fashion: sexy and comfortable. How do they match?

If a woman feels sexy she also feels comfortable. Personally I prefer the words “sensuality” and “casual”.

What makes a woman chic and confident in the world of today where people spend a lot of money for a pair of damaged jeans?

I am not sure the preoccupation is to look chic nowadays… For me a woman (or a man) that I find chic is often someone that looks free. Free of conventions and finally ignoring trends.

For a few years now the world of fashion has divided between on the one side haute couture with almost unacceptable prices and on the other people, including you, designing collections for brands like UNIQLO who make their clothes available to women who cannot afford haute couture. Is this the new trend in the fashion world, either highly expensive bespoke or very good quality and sustainable high street brands?

Do you know what? There are great things and boring things, costs and prices, talent or vulgarity, wealthy people that look awful, hobos with a lot of style, many people who are not at all interested by fashion. But in the end we all keep an old hat from a grandfather, a brooch from a grandmother or a picture of an uncle:  style endures. Who do we remember, Michelangelo or Julius II ?! (laughs)

All images copyright © Rodolphe Bricard

THE KILLING CODE. Washington Post reporter Vincent Bevins is the author of “The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder that Shaped Our World”. His book asks why the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians in 1965, and shows that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington’s final triumph in the Cold War.

You can listen to the podcast here

Vincent Bevins, why did you decide to publish this book about the post-colonial situation of the world?

When I moved to Jakarta in 2017 to cover Southeast Asia for The Washington Post, I realized that wherever I looked, in Indonesia or Southeast Asia, the 1965 massacre of approximately one million innocent civilians was lurking below the surface. It was prohibited to actually tell the story, and, when I decided to do so, my book also ended up being about the ways that the United States exercised its hegemony from 1945 until the present day, when it has been by far the most powerful country on the planet. Now US hegemony is in relative decline and contested, and this became more obvious under the administration of Donald Trump, but even without his antics this would be an important moment to examine what the real nature of US hegemony was.

You describe the creation of the CIA in 1947. Why is your book not only the story of Jakarta and Indonesia but also the story of the influence of the CIA, with its good and bad results, under the different presidents and powers in Washington over the years?

The protagonists in the book are the American foreign policy establishment and the members of the Indonesian left that believe they have a right to participate in the creation of a new world now that formal colonialism and the era of direct European control over much of Africa and Asia had ended. In 1945 the United States emerges from World War Two as by far the most powerful country on the planet, but without a permanent intelligence agency or an active overseas presence working behind the scenes to further American interests, so they threw together the CIA very quickly. The men of the CIA were American “blue bloods” from the best backgrounds, but they were limited in their horizons. Very American, very Protestant, they didn’t know much about Africa and Asia, about countries with religions different to theirs, etc. This became very apparent in the ways that they threw their weight around in many different countries. They were well-funded but quite inexperienced, and were given a remit that had nothing to do with the welfare of the people in the countries where they so aggressively intervened.

Visitors look at an old well where six Indonesian army generals and a junior officer were buried in an abortive coup in 1965 that the military blamed on Indonesia’s Communist Party and led to the anti-communist purge in 1965-1966, at Pancasila Sakti Monument in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 15, 2017. Dita Alangkara/Associated Press

Vincent Bevins, what is the story of Indonesia?

Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim majority country whose capital city is Jakarta. It was a Dutch colony and was invaded by the Japanese during the Second World War. When the Japanese lost the war Sukarno, the “Founding Father” of Indonesia who was very much against the colonial power of the Dutch, declared independence and created the new country with a mixture of three powers: religious Muslim power, military power, and then a party that was small at the beginning and grew bigger and bigger, which was the Communist Party. Sukarno governed the country in equilibrium between these three forces, and would have liked to make a sort of a European Union in Asia with other Asian countries. He was very much helped in his politics by Nehru from India, and they played across the two powers in Cold War at the time, Russia and the United States, and sometimes flirted with China, not yet the power that it is today. In 1965, the US-backed Indonesian military oversaw the intentional execution of approximately one million innocent civilians. And then created the Suharto dictatorship, which became one of the most important allies for Washington in the Cold War.

To support American interests, did the White House and the CIA invent a story that the communists in Indonesia tried to kill military personnel?

The US helped spread that story. But let me take a step backwards. From 1955 to 1964, the United States attempted to slow or crush the growth of the Indonesian left in numerous ways. First, they funnelled money to a right-wing conservative party, hoping that would stop the communists from winning elections. It didn’t work. In 1958, the CIA started bombing the country, as part of an attempt to break Indonesia up into little pieces. That didn’t work. Then in 1965, a group of military officers said they believed that there was a right wing coup being brewed against President Sukarno, and kidnapped six generals, who ended up dead at the bottom of a well. Why the generals ended up dead is very mysterious, and we may never know exactly who planned this operation. But we do know with certainty that in 1964. the United States had shifted its tactics towards Indonesia. They switched out the ambassador who had been friendly with Sukarno, and brought in an ambassador widely seen as an expert in regime change. We know from declassified files that the CIA and British MI6 were covertly agitating for a clash between the very well-armed Indonesian military and the entirely unarmed but popular Indonesian Communist Party. And we know that as soon as those generals were killed, Washington helped Suharto to spread a propaganda story, deliberate lies, that blamed the left and justified the imminent massacre, which the US Embassy cheered, going so far to provide lists of people that should be killed.

Vincent Bevins, why do you say that after the war president after president didn’t care about dictatorships or military coups or revolutions, as long as the leaders were faithful to the American alliance?

Anticommunism became a foundational, guiding principle for US foreign policy after World War Two. By 1950, if you were not one hundred percent committed to the idea that communism must be battled across the world, you were not going to be in the United States government. By 1953, with the arrival of President Eisenhower and the first “successful” CIA operation, to crush Iranian democracy and to bring back the Shah – an autocrat who would make sure that the Iranian economy is porous to international capital and specifically American investment – it was no longer sufficient to be not allied with the socialist world. Failing to form an explicit alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union was enough to get you labelled as an enemy of the United States and a fair target for removal. So, there is Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and then in 1955 they started trying this against Sukarno in Indonesia, but the first two attempts failed. But when you’re the CIA, the covert operations team for the most powerful nation in history, screws up, you don’t really get in trouble. There’s no referee to stop you from trying again. So what ultimately happened in 1965 – this horrible massacre that is the central event of the book – is really the third attempt to crush a left wing movement in South East Asia which they saw as incompatible with the world that they were trying to create.

Does it still operate in the same way today?

No, not exactly the same, but what I call the Jakarta method was one of the most powerful mechanisms employed to shape human life.. And in my book I tried to show that pro-American right wing groups that were active in the 20th century were also part of an international movement, just as much as the communists were an international movement – oftentimes more so. In the Cold War, the United States and its associated overt and covert agencies built up a toolbox of tactics, strategies, and stories that worked in these kinds of operations. They built up institutional capacity to influence the world as effectively as possible, just as the Soviet Union was attempting to do in different ways. The Soviet Union fell apart, but the United States did not fall apart. The CIA changed after the 1975 Church Commission, when the CIA gets hauled before the Senate and is forced to confess some of the most shocking things it has done; but the CIA is still there. And these stories still tell you a lot about the way that the United States maintained its power in the second half of the 20th century, the way that it shaped the world with its power, and the institutions that it used to do so.

But Russia is no longer the Soviet Union, and the new big power is China.

If things continue the way they’re going, China will end up being more powerful than the Soviet Union ever threatened to be. We could be entering – in 20, 40, 60, 80 years – a world of Chinese hegemony, and we must be very careful to avoid the automatic assumption that things always improve. Just because the United States did horrible things in the peak of its power in the late 20th century does not mean that things will get better if the United States loses that power. However, looking at what the United States did in the first Cold War can help us to understand the ways in which the United States and China are likely to interact in the next 5, 10, 50 years, in some kind of contestation of hegemony on a global scale. It will not be the exact same, because the financial systems are much more integrated and many people in the United States have a lot to gain if the Chinese economy does well. Looking at how the first Cold War was fought is fundamental to helping us decide how the West may want to “confront” a rising power with a population that is still far poorer than the average American or Western European. It will help us to foresee the ways that this very different kind of conflict could go.

Is the CIA still just as powerful today?

It operates differently than it did then, but if we combine the Pentagon with all the various overt and covert operations that the United States carries out throughout the world, the United States is still by far the most powerful national security actor on the planet. The United States is still far ahead of China when it comes to military power, and the power to influence politically and economically less powerful countries.

Suspected communists under armed gaurd, Jakarta December 1 1965

Indonesians buried alive by US supported regime

The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

Vincent Bevins, are you very critical of the American actions?  

Well in the book I simply show, using well-documented facts, the ways that the United States fought the Cold War in the Global South. I did not need to make any judgment. Some parts of the story are so clearly bad that I choose to let the events speak for themselves.

Has the United States been successful in their purpose, to go against communism and to keep enclaves of political allies around the world?

Yes, absolutely. It’s really important that we understand the ways in which American victory was total, and very deep as well.

Why was American colonial power very different to the European model? 

The US has a deep-seated ideology that tends to affirm that America is the only real country, and all other countries are going to be like us at some point. Or, if not, it’s because they’re lacking. This deeply problematic ideology informed Modernization Theory, a disastrous force in the 20th century. The US certainly failed to create a prosperous, happy, democratic Indonesia and Brazil and El Salvador. If the goal was to create little Americas, if the goal was actually to export democracy and our way of life, it was failure after failure after failure. But it was a great success if the goal was simply to maintain the United States at the top of a global capitalist order, which it profoundly shaped, which it oversees, and in which it is able to act economically on the vast majority of the planet.

When do you think American hegemony really started to decline?  

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a catastrophic failure, not only from a human rights perspective, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, but, even from a cynical, self-interested perspective, the United States did not in any way increase its power in the Middle East or the world. It was an act of self-harm and of aggression against others. Things have not gone the way that the United States foreign policy establishment would have liked them to in the last 17 years, not at all.

Will America become stronger again with the new Joe Biden administration?  

There will be a difference in foreign policy style. The overall goals of US foreign policy didn’t change very much with Donald Trump; what changed a lot was the style, the way that he would tear up agreements, antagonize allies and parts of his own government.  Joe Biden will try very hard to repair relations with the foreign policy establishment in Washington D.C. and with US allies, but countries around the world, from Germany to Iran, are asking one very important question: Why make a deal with the United States if one of its two parties is likely to tear it up the next time they get back in the White House in four to eight years? It’s very difficult to lead the world if nobody trusts that the deal they’re making is only going to last until the next party gets into power. The US political system now seems to be dysfunctional in the kinds of ways that make the exercise of hegemony in the 20th century style very difficult.

CONTEMPORARY DESIGN : ANCIENT CRAFT. Rooshad Shroff founded Rooshad Shroff Architecture + Design in Mumbai, India, in 2011, after he had studied at Cornell University and Harvard University Graduate School of Design. As well as the realization of interiors and buildings, the practice operates beyond the traditional boundaries of architecture, including furniture, product, fashion, publishing and graphic design.

You can listen to the podcast of this interview here.

Rooshad Shroff, why did you decide to go back to your country ten years ago?  

I always wanted to start my own firm, and India is home and still a very young country in terms of design. When I did go back to India, it wasn’t really planned. I spent close to 10 years in the United States and I enjoyed my time working in London with Zaha Hadid between my undergraduate and graduate studies.  After Harvard, I thought it would be nice to move back to London and I had an interview lined up with Foster, but before that I wanted to spend a month back in India. In that one month opportunities started opening up, luckily quite well, and I thought that this could be the right time to establish myself back home and gave up on the idea of moving to London. Everything happened quite organically. 

Mumbai is one of the great cities in the world. What is your situation in India vis a vis New York and London?  

Mumbai doesn’t really define India at all. It is closer to New York and London than to the rest of India, but in terms of contemporary design and architecture, unfortunately there’s not much of merit. There’s not that appreciation for design or the encouragement of larger institutional or government-run design led projects which happens in the West. We don’t have contemporary art museums or even design galleries, so people are not exposed to the arts from a very young age, but every year in the last 10 years of being here I see a massive shift, whether it’s from the architects and designers, or even from a client’s perspective. People are much more aware and much more travelled, so the appreciation for design has increased.  

Why do you want to recuperate artisanal India with its historical and classical craftsmanship?  

Working with Zaha Hadid, where it’s really all about technology and new fabrication tools, was super seductive to me at first. Then I realised that the design language that was being created globally started looking quite similar, because of the tools that aid that kind of computational design. When things are all getting made by machines, you can’t really geographically pin them down to a particular place of making or the identity of a craftsman. That bothered me.

Rooshad Shroff x Tanya Goel : C-CHAIR

Image: Pankaj Anand Photography

Rooshad Shroff, why did you start working with furniture? 

I started with something super low-tech because it didn’t require much of an infrastructure and it was economical to work with. In the beginning I had always shied away from craft, which my naïve understanding found purely ornamental and decorational, but the more I understood the processes that were involved with a craft, it got way more interesting. I started understanding the potential of what that craft could do. In the last 10 years I looked at a variety of craft – whether it’s embroidery, wood carving or wood joinery, or marble or inlay or marble carving – to tap the potentials of that craft, working with its artisans.  

Have you evolved new designs for these artisans? 

The idea is to really understand the potentials of what these artisans could bring to the table. They’re working with generations of knowhow, typically passed on from generation to generation because there are no actual schools to train them. It’s really interesting to add a layer of sophistication in terms of a design piece, where you can use that knowhow to create something which works within a contemporary design language or aesthetic.  

You work with Hermès and Christian Louboutin and other fashion companies. Were most of your very sophisticated initial clients based in France? 

Yes, the French have that appreciation for the handmade, for beautifully crafted objects. Because of me being trained overseas and having a Western education, my design sensibility lends itself to a little bit more westernized aesthetic as compared to an Indian one. The craft enables me to add an additional layer onto the work, which would be difficult or crazily expensive or even impossible if I had remained in London or New York. I am responsible for the windows of the Hermès shops in India. 

Are your projects primarily in India? 

We have done projects overseas, for instance retail stores in the UAE, and the Louboutin store in Bangkok, and we recently finished a private home in London for a Bollywood actor. Primarily my clients are India based, and I’m happy to work within India because the Indian market itself is huge, an untapped place. There’s so much work to do within the country rather than trying to seek work outside, but we are retailing our furniture internationally in the first half of 2022 and a gallery in Brussels represents us for our embroidered chairs.

Rooshad Shroff, how would you describe your furniture pieces?  

I always look at furniture in terms of a particular craft or technique. I investigate that craft, learn the techniques, and get to know the breaking point of the material that they’re working with and the ways in which we can push that craft to the extreme or give it a new life. Embroidery on wood has been one of our signature pieces, not just a structure and then upholstery done on top, in this case you have the idea of upholstery being an integral part and woven through the structure of the piece. We devised a technique of having a gridded form onto the wood, which are 3mm holes at 4mm spacing, quite close to one another. Each of the holes is hand drilled into the wood, the wood being sometimes almost two or three inches thick. Then using hand embroidery woven through the thickness of the wood, with different techniques and stitch types.  

Are you inspired by Indian furniture masters, or are you looking more at furniture designers like Prouvé or Perriand or Le Corbusier or Italians like Gio Ponti?  

Prouvé and Perriand have always been a great source of inspiration in terms of form and language. In terms of Indian inspiration, it is really how they’ve worked with the craft, not in terms of a formal language but in terms of techniques, in terms of intricacy, in terms of quality, precision. It’s really marrying those two things together.  

Do you also have clients or exposure in China?  

No, none. I’m still very much in touch with some classmates of mine who are based in China, but other than that, at the moment, I don’t have any clients or see potential avenues there.  

In America they’re very inclined to look at Italian, French, Danish or Swedish, or sometimes German designers. How is it in India? 

In India 90 per cent of high end homes will have Italian furniture. We also do a lot of architectural interiors and furniture is one side of the business, but our primary projects are interiors and architecture, and most of the projects that we do use a lot of Italian furniture.  

What is your concept in interior decoration and what kind of style is yours?  

I prefer retail projects because they are always concept driven. It starts with a strong idea, you understand the brand and you create an outlet which is an extension of that brand, a physical manifestation of that idea. In terms of a visual palette we are definitely drawn towards contemporary clean lines, but always infused with some special materials. We love doing bespoke finishes, whether it’s for homes or retail. Irrespective of the scale at which we are working, people come to us because of that tailored bespoke service.

Hermès Window Mumbai. Image: Joshua R Photography

Hermès Window Mumbai. Image: Joshua R Photography

A London interior designed by Rooshad Shroff including bronze sidetables crafted in Italy by Osanna Visconti di Modrone

Rooshad Shroff, what did you do for Christian Louboutin?  

I started as their local architect in their Mumbai store when I helped the design architects 212box – based out of New York – execute the project here. They had seen the embroidered wood that I had done, and together we created a wooden embroidered wall cladding system on an entire wall inside that store. Following that project, Christian offered me to become the design architect for their Bangkok store, so that’s when we created a different look for them. Christian himself loves crafts, he’s enamored with India, he loves handmade, and he loves working with different textures and materials. It was interesting to see how we can take certain kinds of Thai and French influences, but yet all made in India with different crafts and then shipped to Bangkok.  

The architect most famous for store design is Peter Marino.  

Absolutely. I love the way he approaches every single brand and creates a completely new language for them, so it doesn’t become the signature style of an architect. He really is able to step out of his zone and make a different environment for every single brand, which is fantastic.  

What do you do for Hermès? 

We don’t work with the retail store or their products, we work purely on their window displays. Luckily we are in our 9th year now, and it’s such an inspiring brand.  

Both Giorgio Armani and Andy Warhol started their careers by doing windows. What is the art of the window? 

Hermès windows are unique, they create a narrative or a story, an environment that the passerby gets absorbed into and that provokes you to smile. It’s not a hard sell of a product as much as it really invites you into a universe. We create four windows a year, and it’s refreshing to come up with a new concept every three months. It’s fantasy, it’s escapism, whether for us or for a viewer looking at the window. That kind of expression becomes especially interesting when you’re working at the same time on an architectural project, which might take three years, and on an interior project, which takes over a year. It keeps our minds always active in terms of coming up with ideas.  

Is it your ambition that Indians who live abroad will have nostalgia for their own craftsmanship and become your clients? 

When it comes to furniture, it’s a passion project. I create objects or pieces that I really absolutely love, not thinking of an end user or whether it’s practical, functional, comfortable or whether they’re going to be sold. We have luckily managed to get a really good clientele in India who appreciate that. More and more people love the idea of having things bespoke or limited edition, or even the appreciation for craft, the realization that the piece speaks much more than just a piece. It talks about legacy, it talks about history, it talks about lineage.That’s being noticed now.  

Is it your ambition to create Indian contemporary taste in other countries?  

I would hope so, that’s the only way one can sustain craft. Embroidery is a great example, because embroidery has been used by a lot of luxury brands, most of the French brands, and every brand creates a very different identity using the same tools of embroidery. Two brands cannot look the same in terms of the style they work with, and that’s something that needs to happen with the rest of the craft in India as well. It needs a much more contemporary voice, rather than the same product being repeated over generations. For me what becomes important is to add a new voice, to continue the knowhow but not particularly imitate the aesthetic.  

What is your next ambition?  

In the last year and a half we have gone into some building architecture, and I’m excited to see them come alive. Architecture is my number one passion, and I’m looking forward to creating more pieces of architecture throughout the city. That’s also a great legacy, completely different from shop windows that disappear in three months. A building stays on for a while, if not forever. It’s a social responsibility when you are creating a piece of architecture.  

What would you like to build?  

A contemporary arts museum has always been my dream project.  

You want to create the first contemporary art museum in India?  

Regardless of whether it’s first or not, but definitely one for sure.  

Thank you very much.

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PAINTING WITH THE POETS. Born in Donaueschingen, Germany, the artist Anselm Kiefer has lived in France since 1992. He lives in Paris and Barjac, near Avignon, where he has created his foundation. He works in Croissy, outside of Paris, where this interview took place. His show Anselm Kiefer – Pour Paul Celan opened in Paris at the Grand Palais Éphémère on December 17^th and ran until January 11^th. Kiefer is also opening a show Hommage à un poète at the Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Pantin from January 9^th to May 11^th 2022.

Anselm Kiefer, do you need to have big spaces for your work?

Yes, I need it. My paintings are never finished, they all stay with me. I need space for my paintings in waiting.

We are in a room with very large works of yours. Are they in progress?

I leave them here for two or three years to see if they have reached the state where I can exhibit them.

Why are you showing an exhibition dedicated to Paul Celan at the Grand Palais Éphémère?

Paul Celan has been in my mind for 60 years. The first time I encountered him was in high school. It was the poem Death Fugue, quite a traditional poem. This one is helpful for learning in schools, but Celan’s later poems are quite abstract and very difficult to interpret. For the exhibition I tried to be with the poems, to say what I think when I hear them and when I see them.

Celan was a Jewish Romanian from Czernowitz who lived through the war with a lot of difficulty. What is so special about him? 

His ability with language. He knew several languages: Russian, Romanian, Yiddish, Hebrew, German, French, Italian. He even translated from English to German. Czernowitz suffered drastic change of rule—first the Habsburgs, then Hitler, then Stalin.

Are your paintings for these shows completely new?

No, I have painted thinking about Celan for a long time.  There will even be paintings that I started in the 80s, because sometimes I cut paintings in two and put them together differently. So, actually they were made over the course of several years. My way of working is always a process.

You were born in Donaueschingen?

Yes, in March 1945 at the end of the war. Bombs fell on Donaueschingen, on a railway junction by our house. I was born in the basement of the hospital.

You were raised in a destroyed Germany. Was there a feeling of guilt?

In the beginning there was no demonstration of guilt. Not at all. I never heard anything about this. Can you imagine?

Neither from your parents nor their friends?

No. What was negative for me was a very authoritarian atmosphere, but they didn’t speak about this trauma, they didn’t touch the subject. My father was an officer, a captain, and the Wehrmacht was sacrosanct. I know that my father was not involved in the killing. Neither was the majority of soldiers, however today we know that many were involved in these crimes. I had no information. I didn’t know what happened. I didn’t know anything about it. In school we had only two weeks on Nazism, whereas Alexander the Great had three weeks.

Anselm Kiefer at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Pantin. Photo by Charles Duprat

Anselm Kiefer, did you want to be an artist from early on? 

When I was a child I wanted to be pope. At the time, only Italians could be pope. In young adulthood I had considered being a writer, but you cannot do both writing and painting. I was certain that I would be an artist.

Was this accepted by your family?

Yes, there were some artists already. For example, I had a great uncle who made watercolor paintings.

As a young man you studied and lived in Germany, learning from artists like Joseph Beuys. Was this period of your work very different from what you would do later in France?  

No, it was always work connected with history. I see history as a subject for artists—for me it has always been a material like clay is for the sculptor. Objective history doesn’t exist, it is often times written by the victors.

Books and literature are very much part of your work. Did you ever want to be a writer?

Yes, as previously mentioned, at a certain time of my life I was hesitating; did I want to be a writer or a painter? I had some success in writing. I got first prize for a journal I wrote when I was 17 and had the opportunity to travel for seven weeks through the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Later, the German critic Walter Jens—who at the time was the pope of critics—proposed to help publish my future writings. As I had some encouragement I was always a little bit tempted by it.

Were you already painting at that time?

Yes, all the time, but after high school I studied constitutional law at Freiburg University. I thought I didn’t need art school. It was a kind of complex, I worked very much alone.

But after a while you went to art school?

Yes, then I thought, you need art school because you have to show your things to colleagues and have discussions. I thought I could work on my own, by myself, but it didn’t work.

Going back to your love for literature, why are you so interested in the connection between Paul Celan and the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann? 

It is a long and fascinating story. Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann liked each other so much, but they couldn’t live together. They tried in Paris once. You can find rudiments from Celan’s poetry in the poetry of Ingeborg Bachmann and vice-versa. They also wrote poems for each other. 

Why do you reference sentences from their poems in your paintings?

When I’m working in my studio a lot of poems that I learned are in my head. I’m always with the poets in my studio, and I ask them their thoughts on what I make. For example, in my mind I ask Bachmann: “What do you think about this painting?”. When I ask for her critique, most of the time it’s devastating.

This is an imaginary critique?

I wouldn’t say imaginary. For me, it’s real. I am really there with the poets.

How do you work?

Sometimes I work at night, sometimes during the day. It varies. It also depends on the dimensions of the work. I make a lot of small works too, which include books and watercolors.

And then you make paintings of large scale?

Large for you perhaps, but go to the Palazzo Ducale in Venice and look at the Tintoretto! It’s 22 meters wide.

Speaking of, you will have a major exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale next year?  

Yes, I am looking forward to that.

Are you particularly attracted to Venice?

I am attracted to Tintoretto.

How many paintings will you show?

Enough to fill the room.

Anselm Kiefer, and how many will be in the Grand Palais Éphémère?

About 20.

You never show very many paintings, do you?

It depends. I had a show of 40 watercolors, or even more, in New York a few years ago at the Gagosian Gallery.

You said before that sometimes it takes you years to finish a painting?

I have paintings from the 70s that are still in progress.

When is a painting finished?

I don’t think a painting is ever finished. It’s in flux, it’s in movement. Le Chef d’oeuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece) by Honoré de Balzac is a most important book. It shows that a painting is never finished.

How about books?  

I know that Paul Celan changed his work often. He sometimes changed a poem a little bit even during a lecture or poetry reading.

How do you conceive your work? Do you suddenly have an idea?

It depends. Normally there has to be a shock: from a landscape, from a poem, from music also. It makes me restless. It makes me work.

What kind of music has shocked you?

I was shocked by Wagner when I was 14 or 15. I heard Lohengrin on the radio with my mother. In this opera, there’s the mystery of someone appearing from someplace else, and no one must ask him where he is from. When his wife asks him this question, then it’s finished. 

You are also interested in mythology, aren’t you?

Mythology explains the world even better than science, because it is open for all kinds of imagination.

Do you have a lot of imagination?

I wouldn’t say I have imagination. I am permeated by things coming through me, and am subsequently affected by them.

How do you transform something immaterial like music into something material and visual?

I don’t know, because when I hear music and I am working, something happens, but it’s impossible for me to analyze my own auditory processing. I feel it like a transition, a permanent stream of things, and this creates something in me.

Would you say that your work is a clear message in which you denounce what happened in your country?

I want to know who I am first, and then what I would have done in that situation.

Do you question your parents’ generation?

No, I question myself. I never had a discussion with my father about what happened.

In Germany you had been reproached for some of your early work? 

In 1975, the Cologne journal Interfunktionen published photographs of the Besetzungen (Occupations) action that I had done six years earlier. Afterwards some readers misunderstood these photos; I was judged as a neo-fascist and Nazi sympathizer.

How come?

Because I was doing a Nazi salute as a provocation. I met Joseph Beuys in 1971. I showed him my work and he was the first who understood my intention and thought it was fantastic. He immediately liked me and I said to him, “Germans don’t like me. They think I am a Neo-Nazi.” He said, “This is ridiculous! You look more like Charlie Chaplin.” Beuys had been in the war and showed me how the real salute is.

What happened in your career because of that salute?

I made my career in America. In Germany I would never have been known.

Who discovered you?

After the show at the Biennale in 1980 I had exhibitions in New York with Ileana Sonnabend and then with Marian Goodman, both Jewish gallerists. Later in the 80s I was asked to show my work in Jerusalem. The German Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to stop it, as they were afraid that it would be a scandal, a “neo-Nazi” in Jerusalem!

You went to France in 1992 and bought a property near Barjac where you built numerous installations and excavated the earth to create a vast network of underground tunnels. Why were you digging underground?  

To go back to Germany! My idea was tunnels and bridges as conceptual art. The book “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead, which is most impressive, also comes to mind.

In terms of your idea, it could be thought of as similar to how the Italian artist Alberto Burri made “Il Grande Cretto” in Sicily?

I like that, it is wonderful. It’s so good, what he did there with concrete.

What is the meaning of your towers in the Pirelli HangarBicocca Milan?

I did seven towers in reference to Merkabah, Jewish mysticism. It’s the story about men who get invited to go through seven palaces. First the feet burn, then the hands burn, at the end it’s just the spirit that survives.

Anselm Kiefer, Fúr Paul Celan – das Geheimnis der Farne, 2018-2021

Anselm Kiefer, für Paul Celan, 2014-2021

Anselm Kiefer, Im Herz des Bergs, 2021

Anselm Kiefer, does your work change over time, with different periods?

I cannot see this. No. I continue and continue, and I have always the same impetus. I need a shock when I have to do something, and so the conditions are the same.

Are you a new symbolist or a new expressionist, as they say?

No. I hope I am more than just an expressionist, because to be an expressionist is to do something spontaneously, direct, without too much reflection. I reflect all the time. I am impulsive, but this is not visible in the result.

Why do you often paint destroyed landscapes?

I cannot see landscape without war, because for me the landscape is often impregnated by the traces of war and battles.

Battlefields that mean bloodshed and broken flowers?

Flowers denounce that. They are included in this idea that landscapes are battlefields. Battlefields of yesterday, of a thousand years ago and of the future too. 

Yet you belong to a generation that came after the war?

But there was war everywhere. In the 90s, Yugoslavia was torn apart, and before that, there was the Korean War. I was a kid during that war. I remember my mother buying big sacks of sugar and flour because she thought war would begin again.

Can we say that your work is a denunciation of humanity?

I think human beings have something not well constructed. There is definitely something wrong, because our conflicts continue ceaselessly.

Has the pandemic we are going through influenced your work?

I’m informed. I regularly read and watch the news, without this immediately influencing my work. I internalize it in some way. But to say a certain event is the subject of a specific work, I don’t think that’s how it works.

You often combine words and writings that you value and subsequently incorporate them when creating an image?

Yes, but my paintings are never one image, they contain layers of images. Certain areas of the painting are revelatory of the process, much like scientific drilling extracts multiple layers of geological strata compiled over the centuries.

In front of me here I see a landscape with many different layers, materials… How do we look at a painting of yours?  

It’s a combination of different things. What you see in the lower part of the painting is a winter landscape. The little house in the center is the hut of Heidegger. That’s one idea. In the upper part, that which appears to be the sky is actually an inverted desert landscape. It’s a desert painting. Paintings are always in parts.

Sometimes you are not happy and throw them away?

I know disappointment. I do not destroy anything but I rework many paintings.

Is it difficult to begin?

No, the beginning is always nice, because you think you will do something great. All the possibilities are still open.

Do you need maestros in your life? 

I did a copy of a painting by Van Gogh when I was 14 or 15 years old. He was the most important painter for me.

Now you are a maestro?

I don’t see myself like this. I start every day anew.

How is your relationship with your country now? Are they still against you?

The critiques are at times still negative.

Are you wounded by that?

No, this would be nostalgic. I’m no longer in Germany.

Are you pleased that you have these two big exhibitions in Paris?

Not “pleased”. This word doesn’t speak to me. It’s work. I like to show from time to time, because what I did has to be brought outside, so people can see, consider, and criticize it. For this reason, yes, I like to do shows.

When there is a show do you take care of how the paintings are placed?

Yes, it’s very important. You can destroy paintings if you place different artists’ work in a space in the wrong way. One work can destroy another. You have to be careful.

Is exhibiting itself part of your art?

I cannot say that from the moment I exhibit a painting, I no longer care. I continue to follow my paintings. Sometimes after they come back from an exhibition, years later it happens that I continue to work on them.

Are there paintings you don’t want to sell?  

The works and installations in my foundation in Barjac cannot be sold.

Writers have a concentration span of a few hours and not much more. Can you concentrate on your work for many hours?

It depends. I do spend many hours in the studio. It’s true that the work of an artist is different from a writer, who has no material at hand. When you are an artist you always have some material, and if you have no inspiration it helps you to continue. The writer is without any help.

Do you ever regret choosing to be a painter rather than a writer?

If I were to do that, I would do it in the contrary case too. I would be a writer and then I would regret not being a painter. In any case, every day I write a little bit.

So you’re planning to publish a book?

A selection of my journal has already been published, but I was not too pleased—my editor did not reduce it enough. When I have time, I would like to go through my writing and edit it myself!

Which you do on your paintings?

All the time.

Thank you. It was nice to talk to you.  

We were in Anselm Kiefer’s studio outside Paris on 22 November 2021.

Images of Anselm Kiefer’s paintings at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Pantin by kind permission of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac.

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