Are women useful as spies? If so, in what capacity? Maxwell Knight, an officer in MI5, Britain’s domestic-counterintelligence agency, sat pondering these questions. Outside his office, World War II had begun, and Europe’s baptism by blitzkrieg was under way. In England—as in the world—the intelligence community was still an all-male domain, and a clubby, upper-crust one at that. But a lady spy could come in handy, as Knight was about to opine.
In a memo “on the subject of Sex, in connection with using women as agents,” Knight ventured that one thing women spies could do was seduce men to extract information. Not just any woman could manage this, he cautioned—only one who was not “markedly oversexed or undersexed.” Like the proverbial porridge, a female agent must be neither too hot nor too cold. If the lady is “undersexed,” she will lack the charisma needed to woo her target. But if she “suffers from an overdose of Sex,” as he put it, her boss will find her “terrifying.”
There are different ways to read the resonant phrase “the invention of tradition,” coined by the great Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm many years ago. One reading is debunking, skeptical, emphasizing the artificiality of all traditions, the extent to which all cultural narratives flatten or caricature the past.
Another reading is more favorable: It treats the element of invention in cultural traditionalism as a necessary way to bridge the gulf of years and keep the past alive. To invent or reinvent a tradition, in this sense, is not to craft a falsehood; it is to add your own bit of labor to a larger inheritance, which your heirs may renew and reinvent in their own turn.
Last year, sales of vinyl records were at a 30-year high. But while the vinyl boom has been a bright spot for physical media lovers and the record industry alike, pressing vinyl poses a more urgent environmental concern than it did in the format’s heyday. At times, the process can seem almost antithetical to green living. Records are made of PVC, which comes from refined oil and can take up to 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill. Traditional pressing machines are powered by steam boilers that require fossil fuels to generate heat and pressure; the water used is treated with anti-corrosive chemicals in order to prevent rusting, thus creating more wastewater. And that’s just the pressing procedure.
Consider, then, vinyl’s packaging and distribution. While leading packaging companies like TC Transcontinental use recycled or sustainably sourced paper and cardboard, there’s no regulation forcing their competitors to take similar steps. The ink that’s used to print cover art and liner notes is traditionally solvent-based, meaning it contains volatile organic compounds that can contribute to the production of ozone. Once the record is encased in a beautiful jacket, it’s then shrink-wrapped in plastic wrap before boarding a gas-burning, carbon-emitting truck to ship. Suddenly the listener’s choice to buy physical music shifts from an action that helps sustain an artist’s career, to one that potentially threatens broader sustainability.
Historical sources are by their nature fragmentary, being made up, as Roz reflects, of “flotsam ... scraps which had by chance survived”. Yet fiction has licence to fill in the gaps and discontinuities. A Model Occupation and Island Song may be read as a diptych, exploring the excruciating dilemmas facing an occupied people. What if the mainland had come under Nazi occupation? What compromises and betrayals might we have made in the struggle to survive?
For anyone who still thinks of Stern as a jokey voyeur, overgrown teenager and smutmeister, he would like you to know how much he’s evolved. He’s become more sensitive. He’s in therapy, to the point where it becomes a constant refrain. He feels his subjects’ pain. Which might be problematic if he weren’t still such a sharp, funny, conversational sparring partner.
I watch my daughter build a fire
not from a match or cigarette lighter
but from the original elements,
two sticks, a length of sinew, friction.