Who'd pay £1 million for an unplayable violin?

Why is it that artifacts of enormous historic significance and great works of art that were once thought lost to the nation, always show up in suburban attics? 

This was the case when a rather sad piece of history was auctioned last week for the grand sum of £1.1 million (once the buyer's premium had been added). The item in question being a very tatty looking violin that had certainly seen better days, and was almost certainly unplayable.

Its poor owner, one Wallace Hartley had unfortunately been employed by the British shipping company, White Star Line  to play aboard the maiden voyage of its spanking new passenger liner from Southampton to New York. The year was 1912 and the boat was, of course, the ill-fated Titanic. 

The story of Wallace Hartley's band playing the hymn 'Nearer, My God, To Thee' while the great ship went down has passed into Great British folklore and has come to represent that Great British, unflappable spirit in the face of adversity.

Poor Wallace and the other brave members of his ensemble all drowned along with 1,500 other crew members and passengers.

Quite how the violin survived is something of a mystery. It was believed to have been strapped to his chest in a leather bag, but was not officially accounted for in the inventory of items later recovered. It is more than possible that it was initially stolen or went missing and came to light later that year when Wallace Hartley's fiance, a Miss Maria Robinson sent the following telegram to the Provincial Secretary of Nova Scotia: "I would be most grateful if you could convey my heartfelt thanks to all who have made possible the return of my late fiance's violin."

Touchingly, the violin had in fact been bought by Miss Robinson for her fiance to mark their engagement, and she had gone to the trouble of having it engraved to this effect. What makes this story all the more poignant is the fact that Miss Robinson never did marry, and kept her late fiance's violin in its case until she died in 1939.

It then passed to her sister, Margaret who passed it on to Major Renwick of the Bridlington Salvation Army. Renwick who was fully aware of the instrument's provenance, gave it to one of his members, a violin teacher.

The instrument remained in the Bridlington area until it was finally discovered in the suburban attic seven years ago. A letter with the instrument states: "Major Renwick thought I would be best placed to make use of the violin but I found it virtually unplayable, doubtless due to its eventful life."

It was taken to the government's Forensic Science Service in Chepstow which considered the corrosion deposits "compatible with immersion in sea water." And for the past seven years historians, scientists, forensic experts and Hartley's biographer have all examined it and come to the conclusion that the instrument is authentic "beyond any reasonable doubt." 

The violin was brought to Wallace Hartley's home town of Dewsbury, Yorkshire and auctioned by Andrew Aldridge. Bidding which started at just £50.00 soon became heated and frenetic, and it wasn't long before the price of £350,000 was reached. Thereafter, one could hear a pin drop as the price continued to soar. At £750,000, the battle was between two telephone bidders; the eventual winner being a British collector of Titanic memorabilia.

While it isn't the most expensive violin to be sold at auction (a Stradivarius fetched £8.9 million in 2011), it is undoubtedly the most expensive unplayable violin ever sold, and has set a record price for Titanic memorabilia - the previous record being £220,000 for a 32-foot plan of the Titanic.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Hurrah for the Clangers

Those pink knitted, moon dwelling creatures with long snouts - the kind of woollen creations your granny might have knitted when you were a kid - are to grace our television screens after an absence of more than forty years. The BBC has announced that they plan to relaunch 'The Clangers' at a cost of £5 million. But interestingly, in the age of digital technology, the Beeb has stated categorically that the series will be true to the original, which first appeared in 1969. And to this effect, one of its original creators, Peter Firmin, now 84 is to be executive producer, while Daniel Postgate, the son of its original writer, Oliver Postgate, will oversee the scripts. To retain the charm of the original series, stop-frame animation will be employed rather than CGI, and much like their predecessors, these new Clangers will communicate through primitive swanee whistle sound effects. 

It wasn't so long ago that the BBC were investing £15 million in Anne Woods' and speech therapist, Andy Devenport's very peculiar and highly researched 'Teletubbies'. The series was hailed as a huge success (particularly for its creators and the production company 'Ragdoll Productions') having been exported here, there and everywhere. Much was written about Teletubbies at the time; there was a national debate as to whether Tinky Winky was gay; and strangely, the show written originally for two to four-year-olds found a significant audience among university students (who presumably viewed it while smoking marijuana).  

I, for one, am pleased that those adorable whistling pink socks with eyes will be coming back to our television screens. And I don't suppose for one moment that the BBC has any intention of researching the show. 

I wonder if, in forty years from now, someone in the BBC will have the bright idea of reviving Teletubbies? I somehow doubt it, and for the benefit of future generations of kids, I sincerely hope not. 

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

'Why I hope Hitler was right'

The internet is an amazing thing. It allows you to track down pretty much anyone who writes, entertains or blogs, and peruse their latest offerings, innermost thoughts and real life observations to the world at large. This was the case when I recently trawled the net in search of my old English teacher.

Clive Lawton was (and is) no ordinary teacher. For me, he came to represent the John Keating character played by Robin Williams in 'Dead Poets Society' long before the film hit the big screen. To say he was inspirational is something of an understatement. He had this wonderful gift to get his pupils to challenge and question everything, including our fairly dreary GCSE curriculum, and would turn everything on its head in order to make his point. As a result, we would be asked to mark his essays and take part in impromptu class theatre. The point of all this was to instil into his pupils a love of words and an understanding of the power of language.

Since teaching at my old school, he has unsurprisingly achieved much in his professional life. He was headmaster at King David's School, Liverpool, and then went on to jointly found Limmud, the British charity that promotes Jewish learning to anyone in the world who's interested. He is also Governor of the Metropolitan Police Authority and finds time to write and talk all over the world. The other day I inadvertently heard his dulcet tones on the BBC's World Service while in the car.

So it was with some relish that I discovered some of his talks on youtube. One such talk given to a Limmud gathering in Montreal was provocatively titled: 'Why I hope Hitler was right.' And I suspect that only someone of the Jewish faith would be able to get away with such bare-faced audacity, such chutzpah.

Though he now sports white hair, the strident voice, wit and delivery haven't changed one bit. The talk is riveting and in a relatively short space manages to convey the beliefs of the Nazis and the real feelings of Adolf Hitler as expressed in 'Mein Kampf'.

"Many people," says Lawton, "believe that Nazism and Hitler thought the Jews to be the worst kind of people, but they didn't. The Nazi world view was that the world was stratified into top and bottom human beings. This mock science based on something vaguely Darwinian revolved around the survival of the fittest and the natural order of things."

He goes on to describe the concept of the Master Race and how other lower creeds within the system had their uses. Black people who sat at the bottom of the pile, for instance, were very useful. But Jews were different. They didn't fit into the system, because according to Hitler, they weren't even human. They were some kind of virus or cancer that works on the system in order to stop it working. And by disrupting the system and destabilising it, they would ultimately take it over.

At this point Lawton makes the point that ironically, anyone who's close to the Jewish community anywhere in the world will know that Jews are incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery. He also tells a rather good Jewish Joke along the following lines: Two Jews in Nazi Germany are sitting next to each other reading. One is engrossed in the Yiddish local paper and the other is reading a Nazi propoganda magazine. "Why are you reading that rubbish?" asks the Yiddish newspaper reader. In response his neighbour shrugs: "I'm fed up reading about how miserable, pathetic and hopeless we have all become. I read this and I hear how we're running the factories, the theatres and the newspapers, and I feel a lot better."

"In the Third Reich," continues Lawton, "might is right. The top dogs can do what they like. There is no morality or ethic other than power." Then he says something I hadn't heard before, probably because I haven't read 'Mein Kampf'. He makes the interesting point that Hitler believed conscience to be a Jewish invention. And of course, there could be no room in the Third Reich for such dangerous sentimentality. Jews, gays, gypsies and those of unsound mind or mental capacity had to be disposed of as a matter of course because they didn't fit into the system. But only the Jews were deemed a threat so huge to deserve a 'final solution' of their own. So although others were killed or allowed to die in concentration camps, by and large it was only the Jews who were sent to the death camps and herded into the gas chambers.

As for conscience being a Jewish invention, Lawton looks incredulous. "Wouldn't that be something to be really proud of if that were true? Just imagine a Jewish lad in his bedroom with a poster carrying the headline: 'Conscience is a Jewish invention - Adolf Hitler'".

The silence in the room is almost palpable.

"The only reason I can only say that I hope Hitler was right, is that I'm not convinced that he was. I've seen far too many Jews say racist things about non-Jews; I've heard too much crap said about muslims; experienced too much misogyny; and too much exclusion of the gay community. So it might not be true that Hitler was right. It may be that Hitler believed in the Jews more than the Jews believe in themselves. And that would be a massive tragedy. One only we Jews can resolve ourselves."

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Discovering sediment

When it comes to the noble grape, I'm neither a connoisseur nor an utter philistine. I quite like the odd drop of the stuff and can, I think, tell the difference between a decent, quaffable wine and paint stripper. I have also, over the years, managed to perfect the art of concealing one's feelings when discovering the latter in polite company. My father-in-law, one of the most charming individuals one could wish to encounter in life, has an unfortunate propensity to serve wine that is, how shall I put it, well past its sell-by date. To make matters worse, there is always a preamble to the pouring. This will usually entail a colourful anecdote or two regarding the acquisition of said bottle from a particularly remote chateaux located well off the beaten track. 

Anyway, I digress. The purpose of this post is to draw the reader's attention to a rather good blog that I stumbled upon by chance. Entitled Sediment it has been crafted by two delightful if slightly Edwardian characters who go by the monikers: CJ and PK. The pair wouldn't be out of place in Jerome K Jerome's famous boat. While CJ has a penchant for anything vaguely crimson and is in constant search of that elusive  bargain from the likes of Lidl or Waitrose, PK aspires to far greater things. But the point about this blog isn't the fact that it's informative, which it undoubtedly is, so much as its entertainment value. Indeed, you don't have to be a wine buff to appreciate the musings of this droll double-act.

By way of a taster (no pun intended), here's a line from CJ's recent post: 'So I look at the wine rack in the kitchen the other day, and there is a bottle in it which I have no recollection of purchasing. It's normally pretty easy to see what's in the rack and what's not, because the rack (as a rule) has almost nothing in it on account of me drinking everything before it gets a chance to stop moving, let alone age in a horizontal position.'

And to be even-handed, here's a delicious sample from PK's account of supping wine in the company of His Holiness, the Archbishop of Canterbury: 'You pass through the Palace doorway, and realise you must be in the company of good people, because the cloakroom lacks not only an attendant, but any kind of numbering or security system. Who indeed would steal from the house of an Archbishop? (Apart from a King or two…)'

If, like me, you like a good read and aren't averse to having the funny bone well and truly tickled, immerse yourself in the world of CJ and PK. It could become something of an addictive habit. 

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

In praise of the NHS

We blokes tend to to get a little more focused on our health when we pass our half century. And if it's not us, it's invariably our wives, partners or GPs who do the focusing. Two years ago while having my annual check-up with the local doctor, he brought up the dreaded subject of the prostate. Though it wasn't troubling me, I had to admit that my visits to the bathroom during the night had been creeping in an upwards direction. Since I had private medical insurance through my company, it seemed like a simple matter, or so I thought, to get it checked out. 

My GP pointed me in the direction of "the best man in London." Without wanting to name names, the man selected for the job runs a swish private clinic in one of London's smartest locations well known to the private medical fraternity. There followed a succession of consultations culminating in a thoroughly unpleasant procedure dubbed a cystoscopy. This procedure involves an ingenious microscope being passed through the urethra into the bladder under a local anaesthetic. 'The best man in London' who is a thoroughly likeable sort, if a little gung ho, reassured me that this procedure is akin to a "walk in the park." To cut a long story short, I've had many very pleasant walks in the park; but this most certainly wasn't one of them. The upshot was that my condition required surgery to remove a small obstruction caused by the prostate. 

Following further consultations, the consultant recommended green light laser surgery at the Edward VII hospital, an establishment favoured by the Royal Family, no less. The operation went ahead and I was in hospital for three nights. On coming home my condition, if anything, became worse, and as a result, countless consultations were arranged and further tests undergone. Now, I should mention here that private medical insurance is hopeless when it comes to 'day care'. When you're being seen by 'the best man in London' you'll be paying something in the region of £150 to simply exchange pleasantries. Should you need any tests or examinations, this figure will soon escalate. Bearing in mind that policies will only provide around £1,000 of cover per year for day care, you really are woefully underinsured - as indeed I was. To add insult to injury, the fees for surgery were in my consultant's case so high that my insurance policy with AXA didn't even cover the full amount. So besides being out of sorts, I was also out of pocket.

After a year of getting nowhere very fast, I decided to ask 'the best man in London' for a referral to see someone on the NHS. He pointed me towards a colleague at Barnet General. 

Now this bloke wasn't at all gung ho. In fact, he was fairly brusque and to the point. "Well Mr Pearl", he inferred. "Call me old fashioned, but I won't touch green light surgery. In fact, I don't allow it here. Seen too many patients presenting with your kind of symptoms following laser treatment. Doesn't work I'm afraid."

Instead he suggested a cystoscopy to have a good look. When I turned a shade of green, he was perfectly understanding. "Oh don't worry. I don't blame you in the least. I'll arrange for you to have it under general anaesthetic." Until this moment, I hadn't realised that this was even an option - thinking foolishly that general anaesthetics weren't lavished on walks in parks.

The procedure came and went and I was eventually advised to have a conventional bladder neck incision to alleviate my symptoms.

I have just returned from Chase Farm hospital. It's early days and it remains to be seen if the operation has succeeded. But I have to say that my experience on the NHS, though one I wouldn't want to repeat in a hurry, was outstanding in every respect.The nurses were brilliant and the level of care incredibly attentive.

Now, I'm not saying that my private consultant wasn't up to the job. It's more than likely that he genuinely felt that laser treatment was the right way to go. But I can't help wondering whether going on the NHS from the start might have saved me an awful lot of time, trouble and money - not to mention a thoroughly unnecessary and unpleasant  walk in the park.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

The Railwayman

It was with sadness that I switched on the radio last week to learn of the death of Eric Lomax at the age of 93.

His remarkably powerful book, The Railwayman was excruciatingly hard to read in places, and must have been even more painful for Lomax to have written.

It charts his harrowing experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war in 1942. Captured in Singapore, he was a prisoner at the Kanchaanaburi camp in Thailand. Here guards were to discover Lomax's homemade radio for which he and his cell mates were subjected to the most horrific torture. During these nightmare episodes his English speaking interpreter would repeatedly demand that he confess to espionage. But knowing that if he did he'd be summarily executed, he remained steadfast.

Like so many victims of torture, Lomax's experiences haunted him in later life and eventually contributed to the break-up of his marriage. It was only after remarrying in 1983 that he was to get help from the then newly formed Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. And it was here that he came across a press cutting from the Japan Times that told of an ex-Japanese soldier's quest to help the Allies locate the graves of their dead; a task for which he claimed he had earned their forgiveness. To Lomax's astonishment, the ex-soldier in question was none other than Takashi Nagase, the interpreter who had presided during his torture sessions all those years ago. For the next two years Lomax carried this crumpled piece of paper around with him but did nothing until he eventually acquired a translation of Nagase's memoir in which his former interrogator explained how shame had led him to build a Buddhist shrine beside the infamous 418 mile railway line to Burma built by Allied slave labour. And only then it was Lomax's wife Patti who contacted Nagase. "How", she asked, "can you feel 'forgiven' if this particular Far Eastern prisoner-of-war has not yet forgiven you?" It was enough to bring the two men together after more than half a century. For the remainder of their lives these two men were to forge the closest of friendships.

In 1996, Lomax published his memoir entitled The Railwayman. The film based on the book is due for release next year with Colin Firth in the title role.

Eric Lomax was born on May 30 1919 and died on October 8 2011. He is survived by a son and daughter.
Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds

Time to apologise for this ludicrous apology

It's ironic that the Grünenthal Group, the German company behind the thalidomide tragedy of the 1950s and 60s, should choose to make a half-hearted apology to its surviving victims during the Paralympics 2012 - the world's largest stage for athletes with disabilities.

While the nation has pulled together and come out in huge numbers to admire and support these remarkable athletes, there has been much talk about the positive spin-off of the paralympics in terms of making this country more caring for those with disabilities.

So against this backdrop, this rather disingenuous apology 50 years after the event comes like a kick in the teeth. And it has understandably annoyed the Thalidomide Agency UK, which has campaigned tirelessly for victims of the drug. This morning I woke up to hear thalidomide survivor, Nick Dobrik speak most articulately on Radio 4's Today programme. "An apology", he said, "should be an unreserved apology and not a conditional apology. It is strange when a company gives an apology which is not the truth. We feel that a sincere and genuine apology is one which actually admits wrongdoing. The company has not done that and has really insulted the thalidomiders."

The drug which was supposed to cure morning sickness was never properly put through its drug trials and many at the time were critical. And it wasn't until 1961 when an Australian doctor, William McBride, wrote to the Lancet after noticing an increase in deformed babies being born at his hospital to mothers who had taken thalidomide, that alarm bells started to ring. The drug was removed from the market later that year.

It took another seven years before any compensation was paid out in the UK by the distributer Distillers Biochemicals Limited (now Diageo). And this was only because Harold Evans, then editor of the Sunday Times, had launched a campaign on behalf of the sufferers. This said, the compensation figure finally reached was derisory - just £28 million.

There are no fewer than 458 people in this country suffering with the after-effects of one company's criminal incompetence, and the cost to adapt each and every one of these victim's lives must run into frightening numbers. But more significantly, let us not forget those who didn't survive. It is estimated that for every thalidomide survivor, at least ten babies were killed by the drug before or after birth.

So perhaps now, while the world's eyes are on the paralympians, this would be a good time for Grünenthal chief executive Harald Stock to put his company's money where his mouth is and make a genuine, heartfelt apology.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds