On stress and burnout. A personal perspective

Woman, Library, Books, Study, Read — Stress

In Monday’s FT, Elizabeth Uviebinene has had an excellent piece describing burnout, and suggesting how to thrive in the office, published. She defines it as overwhelming exhaustion, accompanied by feelings of cynicism and detachment and a sense of lack of accomplishment. “A prolonged response to chronic stress that can lead to…depression”. I can tick all of those boxes, and all for the last eight or nine years of my career. Perversely, as defined by title and salary, they were most successful period I enjoyed, with one rather tricky interruption, that I think was catalysed by my burnout. Her article brought a number of things flooding back to me.

I have thought long and hard about this. Not about writing it. It is quite cathartic. I am sure I suffered burnout, and I tried hard to think about my team’s individual risks of burnout, when I had managerial roles. What I thought long and hard about, was pushing the ‘publish’ and the ‘send’ buttons that make my experiences more public than I have ever thought they might or ought to be. Things, however, seem to be aligning for me.

In my Birkbeck degree course in Business Psychology, I am about to study a module on mental health in the workplace. It covers everything from stress to work-life balance to neurodiversity. My continuing learning with both the British Psychotherapy Foundation and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, is making me more sensitive to the foundations of mental anxiety. And, I am now some months into my own analysis, which is making me a little more comfortable with sharing experiences, and trying to understand myself.

In my City career, I had a number of demanding roles and I liked to put myself under pressure. In 2002, I topped a poll for being the best in my field in equity sector research marketing, thanks to working with a brilliant analyst, and being prepared to travel everywhere, and frequently, to ensure our clients had the best and most personal service. Only now do I realise how manic that period was, and how much pressure it put on my family life.

At other times, I have had the privilege, but also the pressure of handling substantial financial capital (I was a proprietary trader from 2004 through the start of the Global Financial Crisis into 2008) and handling human and intellectual capital (I headed sales teams at three different investment banks and had responsibility for staff in London, Paris, Dusseldorf and Madrid, at different times).

For the first thirty years of my career I was confident that I could handle any stress that I might have been subject to, and that, by contrast, I thrived on it. It appealed to the competitor in me, and I knew that I could outperform any rivals because of a capacity for hard work. It was a typically thoughtless, macho approach. I heeded no warning sign when the in-house doctor at the US bank employing me, responded to a regular visit from me by sending me to the Priory. I was told that I was not ill, but that I had a far from unusual streak of perfectionism and I was over-working. I was introduced to CBT and after a handful of sessions, I was on my merry way again.

In 2012, my work style and the demands of my role, intruded on my life in a way that fundamentally altered me, my sense of trust and my relationships at home. After a thirty year, near-exemplary career, I made a mistake. I was at my desk at 5.56am (yes, I know; absurd), having left the office some time after ten pm the previous evening, with the memo that I had prepared about a corporate client’s major announcement. As Head of Sales, I was ‘over the wall’ with privileged information. I sent an e-mail. I sent another at 6.15am. The announcement was embargoed until a 7am ‘go public’ time. Trouble. Even when someone said to me about 6.30am, ‘did you mean to send that?’, I did not smell the trouble. Cognition break down. Probably stress.

Even today, I have no sense of why I pressed ‘send’ and what, if anything, was in my mind. But I was culpable. The upshot was that I was fired. Worse still, I was fired with the taint of ‘gross misconduct’. I have little doubt that the accumulation of stress contributed to my aberration. Perhaps, in today’s less stigmatised environment, I might have been treated differently and given a sabbatical and help. Instead I had a new world of financial devastation. (I still had a mortgage, my two youngest children in boarding school and no income, but also the ‘gross misconduct’ label meant that my years of accumulated worth of shares was wiped out. It cost me hundreds of thousands.) Financial devastation was joined by social humiliation and by emotional destruction.

I strongly suspect that the episode contributed to the subsequent break up of my marriage and to my divorce. When I read the FT article I found myself wishing I was back at my desk, but that I had decided that I had done enough preparation on the prior evening, and I would walk in at 7am. I might still be working for that same US bank – after all it was only my second employer in over thirty years. The City, though, is a remarkable place, and years of hard won respect can yield great benefits. A former colleague, now ensconced in a managerial role with a large French bank got in touch. Despite a CV that I thought would now exclude me from working again in banking, he interviewed me for a role in his sales team. I got back on the horse, albeit a little unsteadily.

The new bank had a style that did not suit me. It was hierarchical. When I had my exit interview, I accused it of harbouring a culture of ‘institutional bullying’. I am sure it would dispute my perspective, but that was what I felt. Hindsight has taught me that I took out my anger at my previous employer’s actions on my new employer, which had rescued me from the scrapheap and may have wondered why it had bothered. Certainly, I tested the judgement of the man who offered me the job, in his peers’ eyes. I regret that. Generally, I behaved stroppily, and complained about all the iniquities, as I saw them.

I did, however, try its in-house ‘Stress helpline’. It gave me a second introduction to CBT and a remarkable therapist who helped me understand my striving, and my compulsions and how destructive they could be. That helpline structure is confidential and kept from one’s managers. It is a brilliant resource. My managers could see I had demanding standards, but also that I was undermining what they had in place. They needed to think about how to utilise me. Thoughts about my mental health and welfare would not have come into it.

The solution, after I had suggested that they simply decide that I had failed my six-month probation, was to promote me. I was back in charge of a sales team. I continued to chafe against the prevailing culture and was encouraged to consider a move to Asia, to set up an equities business in Singapore. As that played out I was being headhunted by a London based bank. Its office sat directly opposite the employer who had destroyed my wealth and reputation (as I saw it). Asia was of no interest now – this was my chance to show what had been missed by treating me unreasonably.

My new employer was very bureaucratic (and still is, I am assured), and it had an inner cabal of decision makers. Management was remarkably narrow for such a large business. Promotions were in the gift of those who liked to promote people in their own image. Groupthink was rife, and contrary opinions were sometimes humoured, but rarely welcomed. Despite my extraordinary good fortune in being back in such an exciting, well-remunerated and responsible role, I believed that I had been employed as an ‘agent of change’ and started to try to improve where I could. I relished not being a ‘yes man’. Basically, ego getting in the way.

In Elizabeth Uviebinene’s article are a number of recommendations for dealing with burnout. Sensitive to my past, I had promised myself that no job was going to prevent me putting my health first. When I joined the French, I made sure that I gave myself regular gym visits in my schedule. My self-discipline is poor, so the only way to ensure that is to commit to having a personal trainer. Then, you feel that you cannot let someone else down, and ensure you turn up on time. Post-gym I was always more enthused and dynamic. I felt the benefit, physically and mentally.

My old industry suffers with a curse of presenteeism. Worse, when people are sat at a sales desk from pre-7am to 5.30pm or later, they are often unproductive for most of those hours. I wanted my team out of the office, seeing clients and freshening up their views. We started exploring the capacity for creating personalised sales packs to have on portable tablets, and working increasingly remotely. Above all, I wanted to give some staff, especially those exhausted by child care and longish commutes, the chance to work from home one day a week. They had to commit to read a couple of lengthy research pieces and to distil them for the purposes of their colleagues. Clients read little research, but read more than the people selling to them, who drown in daily output and who often restrict themselves to a summary from the front page, and a couple of salient points and charts to highlight.

I wanted the ‘best informed about its own product’ team, and I wanted staff who would be invigorated by breaking their routines, and inspired by sharing their work with their colleagues – competing for how best to sell an idea, and to show some unheard of creativity. My seniors gave me plenty of rope. I was told that any sort of working from home was anathema, but that I could go ahead with the plan provided I never claimed I had authority for it, and if I could handle any of the likely negative consequences to come.

I was encouraged to redesign the sales roles and to consider new specialisations working more closely with the other asset classes, with derivatives, and trying to drive greater consideration of ESG investing. My contention was it was a space that any bank could dominate given it had been badly covered until then, and I was convinced the ‘G’ bit – Governance – was where we could establish our eminence. It became clear that for all the pretence of looking for fresh ideas, thinking and strategy, really what was wanted was conformity and as little impact on the status quo as possible. Cognitive dissonance kicked in. Stressful. Equities was a small business in a group context, and should be seen but little heard. It was not a petri dish for culture change.

I was also keen on the marriage of physical health and mental health. I encouraged gym visits (the bank had one on the site) and let it be known that I had regular yoga classes (not just because I found it beneficial, even though I do, but to make a statement). It did not take long before desk absences and gym visits became the negative topic highlighted in senior management’s ‘Town Halls’. References were made to ‘holiday camps’. This is the sort of cultural challenge that helping employees deal with chronic stress and anxiety, struggles to overcome. My petulant response was to keep trying to be a little different.

That manifested itself in resisting the creation of KPIs for the team. These are acute stressors. In a contracting industry, staff know that a redundancy round is never far away. The madness of KPIs is like ‘teaching to the test’. Creativity, which sales teams need, is smashed, and staff learn how to ‘game the system’ to protect their seat. Encouraging teamwork; it does not. It is another example of an obsession with scoring systems and of treating employees like engine cogs. It is back to Taylorism.

My argument, which fell on stony ground, was that the regulatory change that Mifid II presented the industry made most of the things that we thought we should be recording, redundant. Encouraging gym visits and ‘working from home’ could be just about tolerated as the mad thoughts of a delusional head of sales, but woe betide a man who does not love a KPI or several. A battle was underway and I lost it. Happily.

Now I am eighteen months distant from my City career and I can think about what I learned and what I might have done differently. The thing that is most striking since my first day in 1982, is the changes in the length of the days and the disappearance of lunches. I am not convinced that the sandwich at the desk trend, is better for a business and its employees, than the often boozy lunch hours I grew up enjoying. I tried to encourage my sales team members to join me at a wine bar for short lunches rather than have interminable and frequent internal meetings fuelled by bad coffee.

According to Michael Leiter, an Australian academic studying burnout, its prime cause is “a mismatch of how people want to work and the actual conditions of work.” See above for presenteeism. As Elizabeth Uviebinene highlights, we are victims of an apparent desire to ‘optimise’ our lives (see above re KPIs), and quotes BuzzFeed writer Anne Helen Petersen, who wrote “we’re deeply in debt, working more hours for less pay and security, struggling to achieve the same living standards as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness”.

I am proud of my City career, but wish I had been more sensitive to the mental demands it was making on me, and how that affected my relationships outside of work. If anyone thinks I can help them through their own feelings of stress, burnout, anxiety, I should be delighted to hear from them. Selfishly, it may help me with my university module, but my primary motivation is because I would not want anyone to lose a career (and some of their financial security) for the sin of being at the desk at 5.56am and sending an untimely e-mail.

Facing fear(s)

I was asked at the weekend if I liked horror. This was in the context of movies. Ordinarily, I would answer ‘no’, and think nothing more of it. This time, because I have decided my Second Innings is going to be about trying to say ‘yes’ to more things, more frequently, I hesitated. Then, because I was being asked by a woman whose company I very much enjoy, and who is very beautiful, I said that I might be interested. Beautiful women, therefore, moderate my fear, I conclude. I doubt I am alone in that. Which man cannot deny he would face a fear to impress a lady?

“Fear is stupid. So are regrets” – Marilyn Monroe

Only then did I ask myself why I didn’t like ‘horror’. Fear is not innate. We are not born fearful. We learn fear. In many cases it is passed on to us in a benign way, designed to arm us from harms. In other cases we learn, and have, irrational fears passed on to us. The more ignorant we are of danger, the less we feel fear. Knowledge imparts fear. We teach it to our children so they appreciate the real threats of open water, of fire, of sharp objects, and often of strangers. I realised that I probably had never actually watched a ‘horror movie’ and so I had no idea what frightened me about the prospect. The film we saw was ‘Us’, directed by Jordan Peele. Of which, more below.

What is fear? It is defined in my Chambers dictionary as a ‘painful emotion excited by danger’. It is the apprehension of danger or pain. Reactions are biochemical (common) and emotional (particular), sometimes together, sometimes separate. The chemical reactions in the brain are similar to many pleasurable stimuli, hence the presence amongst us of ‘thrill-seekers’, and ‘adrenaline junkies’. It motivates horror film fans in the way that it had repelled me. To be fear-less is to be daring and brave. Freud, in his General Theory of Neuroses, divided fear into ‘real fear’ and ‘neurotic fear’.

“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.” – Marcus Aurelius

A real fear is a reaction to the perception of external danger. It is the trigger for the flight instinct. We know that if fear is overwhelming it can paralyse and therefore inhabit the flight instinct. It can suffocate us. Fear comes in degrees. Freud noted that “most nervous people complain of and describe fear as their greatest source of suffering”. For me, when I was younger, fears tended to be physical fears. Fear of being hurt tackling at rugby, or being hit by a fast bowler when I was batting. These are real fears, but not something I think of in the context of anguish and suffering.

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.” – Judy Blume

Interestingly, although we are not born with fear, it is very common in children. Freud believed that fear started at birth and the fundamental fear is separation from the mother. It is, in his words, “the ego’s reaction to danger”. It is certainly true that children build up their confidence and self esteem by developing layer upon layer of familiarity with objects and concepts, which leads to a tendency to fear the unfamiliar. The contradiction, though, is that children are often overwhelmed by curiosity and innocence. It draws them to the unfamiliar.

“The fearful are caught as often as the bold” – Helen Keller

As I thought more about my apparent fear of horror movies, I started to think more about specific fears. Probably the greatest common fear is death. My experience, though, is people generally fear death less than how they will die. This may be related to the weaker hold religion has upon modern society than in the past. When I was growing up I realised there were no good ways to die, but for some reason the prospect of drowning held the greatest fear for me. I think I still feel that way. As much as I love living by the river, and crossing Tower Bridge almost daily, I prefer to walk closer the the road when I am on the pavement. I am frightened of being drawn to the water and being compelled to jump. Weird, no?

“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear” – Nelson Mandela

The journal Science published a study conducted by researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) using mice that showed how the brain actually has to re-experience a fear in order to extinguish it. The rodents were initially put into a small box and give a mild shock. Over a long period, the researchers returned the mice to the box but didn’t administer shocks. Initially, the mice froze but with repeated exposure to the box, and no additional shocks, they eventually relaxed. For humans, therapy is about confronting a fear in a secure environment and slowly managing down one’s anxiety levels. How that works when I experience fear watching Gloucester be blinded in a performance of ‘King Lear’, I don’t know, but loss of sight is one of my fears.

“Men are not afraid of things, but of how they view them.” – Epictetus

Of those with whom I have discussed fear, the word that recurs most often, is shame, closely followed by embarrassment. There is a deep rooted common horror of being exposed for having done something shameful and having it revealed very publicly. It seems to be less about the deed itself, and all about the public revelation. It made me think about Winnicott’s true self and false self again. Our true self may be compelled to pursue potentially shameful behaviours, but we present ourselves as quite different, and so, the fear is only related to discovery. Some people, however, become so uncomfortable with their true drives and desires, that they behave recklessly. It might be observed that they are crying for help and relief, and crying from their unconscious.

“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do” – Henry Ford

So, perhaps it is what Freud thought of as ‘neurotic fear’ that is the significant issue. I wondered why I use to fear the reactions of some senior management when I was working. I certainly did not want to be feared when I was managing others. If ‘real fear’ is the catalyst for the ‘flight reaction’, it is probable that we can conclude it is of more benefit to us than a hindrance. If fear is “the greatest source of suffering”, it must be the neurotic kind. In this narrower definition fears are the manifestation of emotions that were attached to ideas that were suppressed and buried in individuals’ unconscious. The ‘fear of the unknown’ is an oft used phrase and plainly, if we repress, suppress and bury something, especially something traumatic, then we cannot know what it would be to face it and handle it. Managing fears is highly personalised, but I like the phrase ‘treat your anxiety as a storehouse of wisdom’.

“Knowing what must be done, does away with fear” – Rosa Parks

Back to the film. I shall try not to provide spoilers. To my pleasure, it did not scare me. I did not want to be scared, although I understand that is why many horror fans watch, and I did not want to reveal my fears to my companion. ‘Us’ is about an America where everyone has a ‘double’ living a subterranean life. These doubles are inarticulate. That apart, the only distinguishing difference between those above and those below ground is that the higher beings have a soul. Those below are known as the ‘tethered’. Initially created as a government programme to control the people above ground, the programme has failed. The tethered are coming to exact their revenge. You can guess much of the rest.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood” – Marie Curie

Since typing this I have become aware that there is quite a debate about what the director intended, and what is the meaning of the film. Critics seem split. As a riff on the world of the conscious and unconscious parts of each of us, it works really well, especially the sense that we are all controlled and motivated by our unconscious. The unconscious must stay hidden as it harbours the dark side of our true self. The ending of the film is confusing, or intriguing, depending on your perspective, but what has absolute clarity is that the plot hinges on a childhood trauma. Freudians will like that it is founded on separation from the mother. And the film rests on the audience’s reaction to confronting monsters. Monsters that represent the worst of ourselves.

“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?” – Confucius

For me, it was a very small triumph. I conquered a ‘fear’ of horror movies, albeit that this may not be near the peak of the highest mountains of horrific content. Or perhaps that is the point. I watched it and realised it was nothing that I really needed to fear. My fear has been faced and has acquired a new, much smaller perspective. I am now thinking with a great deal more clarity about my other fears and how to face them, and to what they might really be attributed. I am looking back at my past with bemusement at all the things that once seemed so important. My Second Innings will see me say ‘yes’ more often, and it will allow me to explore the ‘unknown’ more enthusiastically.

Heroes and Hero worship

We can be heroes, just for one day – Bowie

As I left my gym on Friday, perspiring, reminded once again of my diminishing strength, suppleness and aerobic capacity, I passed Felipe Anderson. I had a double-take, confirmed it was him, and disappeared into the shower area smiling. He is one of my footballing heroes. He has exceptional technique, he glides gracefully with or without the ball, and is a pleasure to watch. As a long standing, and an often long suffering, Hammers fan, I thought of how few players I have seen play with his excellence in claret and blue. I have seen great servants of the club, all of whom I admired, like Billy Bonds, Frank Lampard Snr., and Alvin Martin, but of those I have seen play, in the flesh, only Brooking, Moore and Payet have been in the very top pantheon. Ferdinand had yet to achieve world class status when I saw him play. Leaving the gym I found myself thinking about heroes and hero worship.

I spent that evening in a Clerkenwell pub, listening to Tony Walsh, sometimes better known as ‘Longfella’, performing a number of his wonderful poems. To me, he is something of a hero. He shared wit, skill, humility and unpretentious delivery, some hard, rough poetic technique and a few jokes, in two forty-five minute sets. Heroes are not confined to athletic fields. It was listening to Longfella that made me start considering why we admire certain individuals, and why to us they become a sort of hero. It is hardly a new topic for reflection. Thomas Carlyle’s 1840 lectures ‘On Heroes, hero-worship, and the Heroic in History’ said much that needed to be said, but this blog is about my personal reflections on things that I find important. It is my way of making sense of the world around me. One psychology paper I read referred to heroes and hero narratives fulfilling important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. That makes sense to me.

Thomas Carlyle Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements ... — Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle told his audience he was talking about “gods, prophets, priests, kings, poets, teachers”. That is not to claim that his heroes were different to any common man. Indeed, he was a meritocrat ascribing regal, ‘kingly’, status to his heroes. One, a poet and a common man, was Robert Burns. There was no “chancellor, king, senator” in England, so momentous as Burns, thought Carlyle. Obviously that appealed to me! Carlyle believed that the artist hero combined the politician, thinker, legislator and philosopher.

It brings me to Walsh, and to Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh read Carlyle and makes references to the lectures in diaries and letters. The lectures were published in book form as a “beautiful little book” that he recommends to his brother Theo. Van Gogh is uppermost in my mind because I saw the wonderful ‘Van Gogh and Britain’ exhibition at the Tate, this weekend. Artistically, he became a hero to many. He changed perspectives on colour and on technique. Gaugin thought his canvasses were more like sculptures. One of the pleasures of this exhibition is the last couple of rooms, which show the Van Gogh influence amongst more modern painters, as they adapted his style and the compositions he had created. Francis Bacon’s canvas made the biggest impression on me. Even geniuses have heroes, though. For Van Gogh it included Charles Dickens. He wrote that “my whole life is aimed at making things from everyday life that Dickens describes”. I found that idea comforting. Even the greatest admire, or hero-worship others.

Tony Walsh is a poet, a profound thinker, and he addresses political issues. He may not be a legislator, but he is quite a philosopher. Tragedy shot him into public consciousness after the killing of more than twenty Ariana Grande fans in a terrorist atrocity in Manchester two years ago. At the subsequent public memorial, Walsh read his poem, ‘This is the Place’, which is incredibly moving. It sounded like it was written to help Manchester heal but he had, in fact, written it some time before. It is incredibly apt, though. It found its way on to twitter and was re-tweeted by Michelle Obama amongst others. It trended fourth, globally, for some time.

Walsh’s life has been re-made, but his focus remains socially relevant, angry but witty poems. (I strongly recommend a you tube visit to watch him perform ‘Arts and Minds’). He has worked in schools, prisons and housing associations and is proud of his working class background. As a wordsmith, he is a hero to me. I am about to turn 55 years old, but on Friday night I was like a little boy watching admiringly and thinking ‘I wish I could have written that’ and ‘I wish I could perform publicly like this.’ He visibly moved his audience with poems praising his wife and his marriage, and a couple on the impact of parenthood. I had my eldest for company, and it was especially affecting.

So, I wondered, what makes a hero? Why do we need to worship heroes? Does everyone have heroes? Where does hero worship start? Do heroes reflect our better selves? Are we able to tolerate flaws in our heroes? What do we mean by an unsung hero? And, is there a difference between behaving heroically and being a hero? Lastly, which people do I regard as heroes, and why are they important to me? I think heroes are connected with idealisation. The Medical Dictionary suggests that idealisation is a conscious or unconscious mental mechanism (obviously psychoanalysis was going to come in to this piece before long) in which the subject overestimates an admired aspect or attribute of another person. It dwells on advantages and ignores deficiencies. I think this is important because it allows us to nominate flawed individuals as heroes. It may explain why Churchill tops polls as modern Britain’s greatest hero, despite, or perhaps because of, his personal weaknesses and flaws. I count myself as a Churchill admirer.

If we all idealise, and it is possible that that is true, then we all have heroes. If that is true; why? I think it is because we all aspire to be our best selves. In our heroes we see elements of someone that we would like to have better developed within ourselves. It is certainly true comparing my footballing skills when at Witham Town, with Felipe Anderson’s for West Ham. It is true of my rhythm and rhyming skills with words, compared with Walsh. It is emphatically true of my skills with a paint brush, compared with any of the artists whose work I admired on Sunday morning. So, I think a hero, is a representation of an admirable part of our self, that we would like to feel is bigger, and more representative of the individual we see when we reflect on our own image and personality.

When do we start hero-worship? This may differ for most people but I suspect that a majority would answer that a parent was their first hero/heroine, insofar as the primary caregiver became someone to become. Not to replace, in that Oedipal sense, but to acquire the maturity and skills and competence and social status of this first hero/heroine. Mine was certainly my father. I can recall a weekend when we were sharing the bathroom at our home in Chelmsford and asking about his shaving routine, and when I would be able to and need to shave. Facial hair represented manliness and some sort of accomplishment, and it was something that I wanted. I recall asking my mother what attracted her to him, and being surprised to learn that it was his voice. I noted the number of adults of both sexes who described him as “good” or “fine” or simply, “a nice man”. If I could be like that, I thought that things would turn out fine. Trevor Brooking and Ken McEwan appeared before long, but in no way displaced my first ‘hero’.

Why do we need to worship heroes? I think this is interesting in the context of some heroes not being real people but fictional, imaginary heroes. The success of the Marvel comics franchise characters on the cinema screen these days bemuses me but it clearly touches something needy in a wider audience. Superheroes demonstrate prosocial behaviours, they are often depicted handling an ethical dilemma and always demonstrate leadership. The ability to identify with these traits, many of which we believe we lack, is a comfort as well as an aspiration.

When I was growing up Sherlock Holmes was a hero to me, and he was as real as any favourite footballer or cricketer I was admiring. His unwillingness to accept the conventional approach, his intellectual and observational superiority, and the independence of the London dwelling bachelor. There was so much of Holmes that I wanted to absorb and to have. Even then, I understood he was an ambivalent, ambiguous character with contempt for the law and a love of deceit. Perhaps that was the attraction. Perhaps we actually need our heroes to be flawed, so that what they represent does not seem utterly unattainable. So, I think heroes do represent our better selves, and yes, I think we can tolerate flaws in our heroes.

The idea of the unsung hero is attractive. Heroism is bestowed by circumstance, one cannot set out to be a hero, although one can aspire to behave heroically. In early June, 2017, I was walking back from the Globe Theatre through Borough Market. I turned into the market to be greeted with people running at me and a great deal of consternation and commotion. Within moments a gunshot filled the air and I was being ushered away to Southwark tube. When I got there, I saw legions of armed police running from the stairwells of the tube out on to the streets. I learned that eight people had lost their lives. Whilst I was retreating I watched these young men and women running toward whatever was unfolding. Trained, they may have been, but that is heroic.

Their very anonymity means they remain unsung. But I gave thanks that night when I opened my front door, and I am still deep in admiration. These people I cannot identify are very much in my collection of heroes. Unsung. They behaved heroically, but individually we cannot identify them as heroes, so my answer to the question that I posed is that being a hero and behaving heroically are separate. I see it in the work of the senior volunteers at Crisis. When I was helping at Christmas and proudly telling someone new to it all, that I had previous experience, I was suddenly aware of how much the evening’s leader had given. It was his 27th year. A kind of unsung heroism. Similarly, I find myself thinking of lifeboatmen. When my father in law was alive, he lived his retirement in Aldeburgh. Two constants when I visited him, were a pint in one of the many fine pubs selling Adnams ales, and a walk past, or visit to, the lifeboat station there. Those volunteers are real heroes.

Lastly, my heroes. I grew up in a household where sporting admiration held sway over much else. In my early teens I was a sprinter. When I was sixteen, Britain suddenly had the Olympic Champion over 100m. The US boycott of the Games meant nothing to me. My event, as I saw it, was was the domain of a determined Scotsman called Allan Wells. He was little covered by the media because the Thatcher government had put him under pressure not to compete. He gave no media interviews, even to those sympathetic to his views. So, oddly, he is somewhat unsung, given he is an Olympic champion. He missed gold in the 200m by 0.02 sec as well. His bloody mindedness – he is the oldest winner over the distance and the last white runner to win, struck me as heroic. I did not really have pop star and musician heroes, albeit that has changed a great deal. I loved theatre, though, and was one of the earliest supporters and fans of Kenneth Branagh. All Shakespearian actors get to represent heroism on stage, and I think I enjoyed what came out of his performances.

At the time, I think, I felt little need for heroes. The yuppie era was very ‘can do’ and about inspiring oneself, and taking opportunities. Mandela was yet to be revered, and I knew, I am ashamed to admit, little about Martin Luther King or Gandhi, or any other C20 claimant to heroic and iconic status. Even Muhammad Ali was someone I little understood outside of a boxing ring context. Perhaps, Cruyff on the football field, but it was more often a time of anti-heroes. The TV news was filled with violence, despair and deprivation in Northern Ireland’s Troubles. There was strife on the mainland too. The social dislocation of the government’s stifling of law breaking by the unions, with the consequences of the desperate miseries inflicted in industrial and mining communities led to lawlessness and riots. The humanity of a Tutu, doing ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ was yet to be apparent, as was the remarkable forgiveness of Mandela, because it and him were still interned on Robben Island. I think we wanted heroes at the time, which may have been reflected in the response to the Falklands War.

Now, though, I think heroes are important, for all of us. Bowie’s amazing song has a good deal of ambiguity. It is about what it takes to be a hero. It is clear to me that everyone has the capacity to be a hero and having heroes probably does have emotional and cognitive benefits. Last week I saw two remarkable short plays about young women. They are playing at the Bunker theatre and have been nominated for awards. One is called ‘Box Clever’ and the other ‘Killymuck’. In both cases, the heroine is a young woman who has suffered more than mere ‘sling and arrows of outrageous fortune’, they are trapped by circumstance – violent lovers, alcoholic fathers and are attempting to navigate their environment to survive. The benefits system and care homes, council housing and women’s refuges all become unsatisfactory binds. Home, such as it is, is hellish, but escaping it seems impossible. Dealing with that takes a special kind of heroism and I think of all the heroes in what we often patronisingly describe as the ‘underclass’. A visit to the Bunker Theatre is worth it to see heroic modern characters.

Authenticity, Viola at the RA, with a dash of Van Gogh and some psychoanalysis

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. – Rilke

It all began at the end of last week. One of my oldest and finest friends, and a some time Cambridge philosopher himself, asked me if I had listened to Radio 4’s “In Our Time” episode on ‘Authenticity’. Hosted, as ever, by Melvyn Bragg, it was a run through of ‘authenticity’ as seen by some of philosophy’s giants. Authenticity blends with ideas of the self, and my friend said the broadcast had made him think of me, and especially of the psychoanalysis work I had begun. By the end of the weekend, which had seen me take in two excellent RA exhibitions, one brooding film and a re-run of the Radio 4 podcast, plus some reading for my Psychoanalysis lecture on Monday, I had filled my head with a number of ideas. I felt, Rilke-like, commanded to write.

This above all; to thine own self be true – Polonius (Hamlet, Act 1, Sc. 3)

Polonius’s line in Hamlet is my favourite Shakespearian quote. I have never really thought much about why it feels so important to me. It may have something to do with the psychoanalytic need to know myself. I thought about it over this weekend. First, Bragg and his ‘In Our Time’ trio of experts. The show begins with the question whether we are born with authenticity, or whether authenticity is a construct we create for ourselves. It led to, if we can be truly true to our self, as Polonius recommends, at what point does authenticity end, and narcissism start? Barely ten minutes in, and Aristotle, Plato and Augustine had been mentioned, considered and parked. It is not just doing or saying the right thing, but knowing why you do or say them.

I wondered about how desirable authenticity truly is. This is a trite example, but, when I was managing sales teams in the City, I am quite sure that many members of those teams withheld their true opinion of my managerial skills and style. Inauthentic maybe, but I am sure that generally I welcomed the fact that I did not always know what they truly felt. Perhaps, especially in the professional and commercial worlds, there is merely a place for authenticity, rather than a need for its omnipresence. Augustine wanted to know if people were afraid of sinning, or afraid of burning. Motives can be defined by potential consequences, rather than a pure sense of doing the right thing. Altruism sometimes is motivated by how good it makes the altruistic man or woman feel about themselves. I wonder about my motives each year when I am working for Crisis in the Christmas period.

The first lecture I attended at the Institute of Psychoanalysis was given by Irma Brenman-Pick on ‘Authenticity in the psychoanalytic encounter’. I had not thought about it for a while, not least because she had been quite difficult to hear (she is in her eighties) and because the paper that accompanied it had been quite dense; at times impenetrable to me. But the Radio 4 podcast pushed it back to the forefront of my mind. It is excellent on the nature of transference and counter-transference. She is concerned with how an analyst gains the trust of the analysand. This is the nature of authenticity, or otherwise. She wrote “this raises a question for the analyst, connected with keeping our own emotions out. If we do so, in pursuit of so-called analytic neutrality, are we in danger of keeping out the love that mitigates the hatred, thus allowing the so-called pursuit of truth to be governed by hatred? What appears dispassionate may contain the murder of love and concern”

This is all a bit deep. I feel pretentious and self-indulgent, as I think and write about it. However, this is at the core of Second Innings. I think that the First Innings, at least for me, has been about doing the right thing with respect to my family ties. It has been an attempt to be a good son, a good brother, a good spouse and a good father. But, when each of us plays these roles, or mothers mothering, or sisters sistering, do we withhold what we truly feel? Do we value inauthenticity? By unselfishly accommodating others, is one being inauthentic? When we are parenting, we often choose to reveal limited versions of truths. We persuade ourselves this is for a child’s benefit. But are we really introducing deceit? And are we deceiving ourselves as much as our children? Is a Second Innings, an invitation to live more authentically? By now, the podcast had swept on through centuries of philosophical thought and paused for Kierkegaard on individualism and taken on input from Goethe, Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre and Iris Murdoch.

Most people become quite afraid when each is expected to be a separate individual. Thus the matter turns and revolves upon itself. One moment a man is supposed to be arrogant, setting forth this view of the individual, and the next, when the individual is about to carry it out in practice, the idea is found to be much too big, too overwhelming for him. – Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard is good, albeit a little too focused on the the individual prioritising a relationship with God. Not really my bag. But I like this, “it still impresses people as prideful and overweening arrogance to speak of the separate individual, whereas this precisely is truly human: each and every one is an individual.” Sartre is useful for the concept of ‘owning one’s life’; of the responsibility to take control of one’s life, which is how I am now coming to see Second Innings. The podcast segues to psychoanalysis, with a brief mention of Freud, and more specifically to Winnicott, on his view of the true and the false self. I loved it all and thanked my friend for the recommendation. I pondered the new worlds I am discovering, including a true examination of my self.

I was not thinking about all of this when I entered the Royal Academy on Saturday to see Viola/Michelangelo, Birth Death Rebirth. One reviewer had said it was (in Michelangelo’s sketches case) “500 year old visions of eternal truths”. It was the exploration of self in the face of adversity and death. According to the walls at the RA, Viola’s work reflects ‘deep preoccupations with the nature of the human soul’. Here we go again, I thought, as I wandered in. The exhibition closed last weekend, so there is no point me recommending it, but it was amazing. I thought the sketches would be the highlight, and they are exquisite, but to my surprise it was the video installations of Viola’s work that really affected me.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Risen Christ — Michelangelo

Most affecting is the ‘Nantes Triptych’ – three screens alongside one another covering the journey from birth to death. The first shows a woman giving birth, and the last was film of the artist’s mother dying in a hospital bed. She is attached, umbilical-cord like, to hospital apparatus providing oxygen. These are shown opposite Michelangelo’s sculpture Taddei Tondo, which is said to represent the moment of the Madonna’s realisation of her infant’s mortality. Viola’s piece is over a quarter of a century old. Nonetheless it felt very contemporary, and not just because it was displayed to be ‘in dialogue’ with Michelangelo. Contemplating birth, mortality, psychoanalysis’s ‘death drive’ and how these pieces made me feel, I noted that before entering the display room one is greeted by a warning. That warning is about the nature of the content that is on display. What does it mean when the way we come into the world, and the inevitability of us leaving it, is something that we feel we need to be warned about seeing? Are we offended by the most natural things that happen to us? The nature of offence, and being offended, is strange.

The main backgrounds to Viola’s work are fire and water. Core elements. One installation is called ‘The Reflecting Pool’. It seems as though little is happening but one can see from the ripples that the surface has been periodically disturbed. Viola uses time like a painter would use a colour on a palette. The Reflecting Pool and the number of pieces that he has with naked figures submerged or emerging from water, (The Messenger is another) made me think a good deal about the realm of the Unconscious. His work provokes questions about form and representation. About reality. And again, back to conscious and unconscious communication. He suggests, as Freud believed, that the relationship between the two is iceberg like, with the biggest of the two being the unrevealed. This is attractive to me, perhaps because I like the justification for studying what I am now pleased to be learning.

Viola’s work is the first time that the RA has displayed video content. Brilliant, innovative, thought-provoking. I was turning lots over in my mind and was once again thinking about self and authenticity. In ‘Man Searching for Immortality, Woman Searching for Eternity’, he has two naked figures examine their bodies with a small torchlight. This is said to represent humanity’s engagement with self-analysis. Obviously that is definitely uppermost in my mind these days. Before I left the RA, I went to see its other major exhibition of the moment – the Renaissance Nude. It too is very impressive. To be feet away from da Vinci sketches of the body, specifically neck and shoulders, just moments after contemplating Michelangelo, is to have a greater sense of human potential, imagination and individualism. However, it made much less of an impression on me than the rooms I had just left. By contrast the patrons were much more impressed by the Renaissance Nude, if a c. 7:1 ratio of visitors to each exhibition is evidence.

Julian Schnabel painted Willem Dafoe portrait for Van Gogh ...

I walked back east and ended up at the Curzon Aldgate, where I watched ‘At Eternity’s Gate’. After a couple of days of contemplating self, authenticity, life and death and individualism, I found myself preoccupied with van Gogh’s creativity and highly individual means of expression. As the film portrays it, and Willem Dafoe is quite brilliant, this is a man driven to realise what is in himself. To give that vision to the people around him. He shows huge courage and integrity in valuing his ‘self’, but it is much the hardest path for him to follow. To me, and I was now preoccupied with the theme, he is at all times wrestling with portraying the authentic. It is about the way he sees the world.

The film is quite slow, and not helped by the ominous piano chords and overtones. However, Dafoe is hugely compelling. The viewer ‘knows’ about the way Van Gogh sees the world. Near the start is van Gogh’s arrival in Arles. There is a great scene, as he pulls off and then decides to paint an image of his battered boots. He tramps the local area and we are given the opportunity to see the landscape that we know will become now famous images, through the artist’s eyes. Eventually, the deranged and impoverished van Gogh is written to by the artist he most admires, Gaugin, who expresses that he now understand’s his friend’s inspiration and vision. By now, van Gogh accepts he may be mad. Severing an ear is hardly the action of the sane, but I wonder if he was not truly insane, but just very different. In the time he lived, being different, non-conformist, was easy to construe as a form of madness. Perhaps, his sense of colour and perspective was just something that seemed unreal to his peers, and he was persecuted for his authenticity. Perhaps he could communicate better with his unconscious than they could?

I left feeling sensitive to alternative perspectives, and to the mental anguish that comes from not being appreciated for trying to convey what one truly feels. I was also staggered by van Gogh’s productivity – he was just 37 when he died of gunshot wounds in 1890. I have written about ‘otherness’ before, and I thought about the way perspective is affected by a sense of ‘otherness’ (race, faith, Brexit, sexual minorities – these all seem important recurring themes currently). Psychoanalysis is about making conscious one’s unconscious thoughts. It is about releasing repressed thoughts and emotions. About finding a true self. It is about understanding the ego and the mechanisms of defence that lead us to maladaptive perspectives of the world around us. It is a body of mind and culture as well as a research activity and a treatment.

I am very drawn to mind and culture, and this weekend was a huge injection of important influences to me. Freud said “the poets and philosophers preceded me” and praised Shakespeare and Goethe, and Dostoevsky wrote about “the interiority of the mind”. So, I am back with Polonius, and understanding why his advice is so important to me. I do want to be true to mine own self. We all need to understand ourselves, in order to understand the world and the people around us. Truly knowing oneself requires authenticity. And being authentic is challenging. Eventually, whoever we are, and however we behave, we have to confront mortality, as Michelangelo was doing when he produced the sketches that I admired. We can only be our best self consciously. Unconsciously is for those who want to explore the underside of the iceberg, and not everyone does. For me, iron filings to a magnet, I am drawn. It is my Second Innings.

On sports, leadership and ‘otherness’

This weekend’s Sunday Times carried an article that caught my eye. Written by Martin Hemming it headlined ‘putting thought into sport’. Deeper investigation revealed that it was a kind of promotion piece for the University of Buckingham’s Institute of Sports Humanities. It is there that a new Masters is to be launched, an MA Leadership in Sport. Anyone intrigued by the notion of ‘thought and sport’ should be aware that if they have anything less impressive than a 2:1 degree already, they are deemed not to have done enough thinking to qualify for studying it. That is unless you are a former sportsman with enough ‘experiential learning’ to compensate.

The syllabus was written over the past year by England cricket selection head, Ed Smith, a Cambridge graduate, short-lived Test match batsman, and journalist of some talent. Teachers will include Mike Brearley, perhaps the very personification of thought in sport. Brearley is a psychoanalyst. He is one of my heroes. I have often regarded cricket as ‘chess on legs’ and his manipulation of his pieces in 1981 to wrest control of the Ashes from Australian grasp is the stuff of legend. He seemed constantly to be moves ahead of the opponent.

I have had the good fortune to meet Brearley a few times. He kindly invited me into his home and gave me advice to consider the challenges of changing careers and some of the attractions of Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and writing. He introduced me to the Institute of Psychoanalysis. His reputation is still dominated by the England cricket captaincy period, but his other professional roles have been as distinguished. In his book “On Form” he writes about the elusive nature of ‘form’. He references his life as a sportsman, but the most interesting pieces are when he taps into his knowledge as a philosopher (he was a lecturer in Philosophy at Newcastle University), and as a psychoanalyst. For someone like me, his presence is a great advert for the University.

The other headline figures whose presence is likely to attract students are Wall Street trader, Howard Marks and former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. Now, it gets more interesting to me. A fusion of my interests in finance, sport and people. Many of my former City colleagues will, like me, have attended inspirational ‘workshops’ on motivation and leadership led by former sportsmen. They are usually advertised, breathlessly and mysteriously, as having a soon-to-be-announced Olympian as speaker. When one arrives, the Olympian will be someone of great distinction, but the audience is disappointed because they learn that the bank or fund has decided that affording Sir Steve Redgrave or Sir Matthew Pinsent or Dame Kelly Holmes or rugby’s finest like Martin Johnson or Johnny Wilkinson was just too much for the budget. After several years the ‘what sports can teach business’ pitch, starts to lose its sense of value

This is not meant to demean the efforts of one discipline to learn from another. I am one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s greatest admirers, and I took a good deal from his paternalistic style and decisive decision making, as a base for my managerial career. I was not very surprised when academia drew him in and utilised him for his post-Old Trafford life. I suspect, though, that sports has done too little to learn from other disciplines and that Smith, with such an impressive roster of teachers is on to something. Given my attraction to the worlds of finance, behavioural economics, and sport, I am persuaded that this will help leaders in the sports industries, become more effective. In the Sunday Times article, I was reminded that Warren Gatland was a school teacher before becoming the giant in rugby coaching that he now is.

Smith is very good on the need for fresh perspectives. He is fascinated by how what was once consensus thinking is now upended. He cites the effectiveness of spin bowling in short form 20/20 cricket, and how football left physical power behind to embrace the technical mastery of small midfield players like Iniesta, Xavi and Silva. I like Smith’s point about the multiplicity of options a midfielder has to embrace and then discard when he is given possession in a tight space on the pitch. How these options need to be refined to one good outcome in a remarkably short space of time. A Grand Prix driver will be going through similar processes when deciding when and where to overtake. Former table tennis international, Matthew Syed is now a journalist, motivational speaker and broadcaster, and he has long advocated using learning from beyond sport to excel within sport. He is among the finest writers at expressing how what goes on in the mind defines sporting outcomes. He is very honest about times when his mental apparatus inhibited his playing ability.

Much of this will cause a wry expression on the face of my one-time professional sport playing brother. He knows Smith and Brearley, and he shares many of their views. Indeed, he may have got there sometime earlier. In the past fifteen years, since he left the game, he has been developing a second innings as a coach and mentor. He was always interested in what made the very best players different from the merely excellent. Playing with Steve Waugh, the nuggety Australian captain, who seemed to get more from his base of natural talent and from his players than anyone else in the modern era, may have started this thought process. What he discovered, though, was often the critical ingredient is openness to fresh ideas. He has worked with many cricketers and footballers, some golfers too. He talks about creating ‘leaders in life’. Focus, and near obsession, is frequently a feature for successful sportsmen, but those at the summit seem to be broader of mind.

Mervyn King’s teaching is designed to bring the appreciation of big decision taking and risk assessment from the world off the sports field. I think there is a good deal to be said for this approach and I wonder if John Major was asked too. He understood decision making, he held three of our four great offices of state, and is an unabashed sports fan. What struck me too was the ‘otherness’ of people who transformed sport. Michael Johnson transformed running, but was once decried for ‘running like a duck’. Subsequent biomechanical studies revealed that what came naturally to him, (he called it the piston style) was the most efficient way to deploy the body. Perhaps the best example is Dick Fosbury, who transformed high jumping for ever. In cricket, it would have to be Muttiah Muralitharan, whose remarkable physical gifts allowed him to impart ‘unnatural’ spin. He still had to learn to control what the gods had given him, but he changed bowling and became the greatest Test match wicket taker.

I hope ‘otherness’ extends to what is learned off the pitch too, by this next generation of leaders. After the abhorrent racist behaviour of the Motenegro ‘fans’ this week, I was hugely impressed by the conduct of England players Raheem Sterling and Callum Hudson-Odoi. Sterling has gone from maligned, often reviled, back page figure to a poster child of sporting grace. After he displayed remarkable calm and magnanimity dealing with a racist fan in a match against Chelsea, he seemed to grow in confidence and to woo the public with dignified twitter comments and TV appearances. He is a force for good and I very much hope his team wins the Champions League because that would make him irresistible as the choice for this season’s Player of the Year. In my opinion, he is already, but I know a few Liverpool fans think it should be Virgil van Dijk.

Sport is affected by society, it can be a mirror to it and it can lead society. I have been thinking about the impact that sportsmen have had on our societal perspective. I think about Cassius Clay changing faith and risking his career for a principle. I think about the way the Aryan master race ideal was undermined so gloriously by Jesse Owens. Perhaps too, of the decision of prisoner of war Bert Trautmann not to be repatriated, but to settle in Lancashire and become a footballing hero at Manchester City. I think he may have softened post war views of what Germans were truly like. At the time (arguably the peak) of the Cold War, the world was charmed by the gymnast Olga Korbut, and then subsequently by the perfection achieved by Nadia Comaneci. Their joyful humanity made it harder to despise Eastern Europeans. More recently, as the great faiths demonise each other through the madnesses of extremist followers, we were lit up by the footballing excellence of Mohammad Salah. Fans on the Kop could be heard singing “if he scores another few, then I’ll be Moslem too”. That is sport leading society.

In conclusion, what I am trying to convey is that sport truly is a place for thinking and thinkers. Smith responded to the criticism that sportspeople, notably footballers, are regarded as a bit thick. He responded, “English culture, for historical reasons, has tended to pigeonhole sport into something that’s anti-intellectual. I just don’t think it’s appropriate.” I am really impressed by what this Masters could offer and whilst I think we have some really distinguished leaders in sport currently, step forward Gatland, Southgate, Sangakkara, and Smith himself, I think the next generation may be still more impressive and truly, what my brother calls ‘leaders in life’. If I over-think it, I can at least return to a child like state of spectating and hero-worship.

On Failure

I never lose. I either win or learn – Nelson Mandela

In an apposite article in Saturday’s Weekend FT, Janan Ganesh wrote about failure after watching Can You Ever Forgive Me? The film is based on the life of Lee Israel, who has seen a promising writing career dry up. She resorts to literary forgeries to enable her to make her rent payments. Failure, writes Ganesh, “is the natural order of life”. It left me wondering. First, is that true? Second, if it is, why are we so driven by the need to succeed?

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure – Enoch Powell

Perhaps Powell did not need the qualifying word ‘political’. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines failure as ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding’. So, it is the inverse of success. Is success important? Ganesh writes about marital failures, business failures, about books and films. I thought first about businesses. Take the example of a local retail business that runs out of cash flow. It closes. It has ‘failed’.

However, that same business has provided services and pleasure to its customers, possibly for many years. Were the efforts of its owners and employees really failures? In the years when its cash flows exceeded its cash costs, it was commercially successful, and it was a successful contributor to a community. After closure, would its former customers regard it as a failure, or nostalgically, as a success albeit for a limited duration?

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better – Samuel Beckett

Ganesh references marriages. I am fairly recently divorced. I think a good deal about whether my marriage was a failure. In my mind it has become rationalised as a successful 25 year union. It is a shame that it is not going to be a successful 30 or 50 year union, but it had ceased to make either me or my ex-wife happy. We thought it appropriate to end it. It produced three wonderful children and a series of delightful shared experiences, before no longer satisfying each of us. It did not mean it was a failure. At least, that is what I think. Despite Beckett I doubt I will try it again, though.

There is also the elusive time element of success and failure. There are many examples of artists whose success came late, in some cases after they had died. The image of the writer starving in some inhospitable garret comes to mind. My mind is drawn to the image of Chatterton, poet, forger and suicide, by Henry Wallis Stock. Does the longevity of a writer or poet’s work mean that they were successful, merely unrecognised in their lifetime, or does a squalid living existence mean they were failures? An alternative thought: Is every life a failure, punctuated by successes? Churchill, who endured many failures, may have thought so.

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm – W S Churchill

A few years ago a long forgotten novel, Stoner, by John Williams, first published in 1965, suddenly became a bestseller after a recommendation by Ian McEwan in a radio programme. Its initial publication had sold fewer than 2000 copies. Failure? Julian Barnes loved it and wrote an article in The Guardian in 2013 describing it as ‘the must read novel’ of the year. It became Waterstones book of that year and is now (rightly, I think) regarded as one of the finest novels in the C20 US literary canon. It covers work, marriage and passions, and all of them are profoundly disappointing to the protagonist, William Stoner. It is achingly sad and I defy any reader not to be affected by it. In a way, it is a long hymn to the effect of failure(s) on a man’s life. At times the sadnesses mean it is a painful read, but a remarkable one. Now though, it is a publishing success.

In the film which Ganesh so enjoyed it catalysed the need to write his FT article, the supporting actor is brilliantly played by Richard E Grant. He is probably still best known for his role in the film, Withnail and I, even though he won an Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? Withnail and I is about two unemployed actors. It reeks failure. The film itself did poorly after its 1987 launch, but subsequently acquired a cult following. In the past decade it has regularly featured in surveys of ‘Best Ever British Films’. Was it a success? It would be regarded as one now, I think. A success dwelling on failure, in keeping with Williams’s novel.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail – Confucius

So, failure remains an elusive thing, although most people will tell you they want to avoid it. We worship success, but in many cases cannot identify what it is, either. Not every person measures things alike. Is not being successful, which requires a whole new set of definitions, automatically a failure? When I was going through the county schools cricket system, I played for Essex’s U15 team alongside the precociously talented Paul Prichard, who was a calendar year younger than the rest of our team. He single handedly won us a game at Middlesex with an outstanding unbeaten century. He turned professional in his mid-teens, and went on to captain the Essex first XI after a few more years. Paul never won a Test cap, though. In his teens, it was expected that he would scale the game’s heights. Was he a success? He was certainly a fine player.

If failure is the inverse of success, does the magnitude of failure reflect how close one is to being a success? In Mike Brearley’s excellent book ‘On Form’ he discusses the sporting phenomenon of ‘choking’. He writes elegantly about Jean van de Velde’s meltdown on the 72nd hole of an Open Championship he had all but won. Choking is contagious and seems to affect teams more than individuals, and Brearley writes about the remarkable inability of the South African cricket team to win the World Cup from positions of great strength in critical matches. Being an eminent psychoanalyst allows him to bring it into the personal sphere of non-sportsmen and he references the destructive way it can impact the most intimate of relationships. People seem to be predisposed to sabotage their own happiness, their prospective success. He, himself, is almost a perfect study. He is revered as England’s finest ever captain, but regarded by many as a batsman whose batsmanship did not merit a place in the team because he was not considered Test class.

In the same edition of the Weekend FT that offered Ganesh’s thought-provoking words, was an article by Murad Ahmed about footballing genius, Zinedine Zidane. The piece had the words “An Obsessive Winner” in the title. Zidane has just accepted the offer to return as head coach to Real Madrid. After enjoying unparalleled success in leading the club to three successive UCL titles, he left. The need and inability to replicate his success has cost two men their job in a matter of months. Now he is back. His success as a coach was to deliver something unprecedented. He is also one of the most decorated players of all time. Not only was he successful, he played with balletic poise and a remarkable vision that set him apart from the other twenty one on the pitch whenever he played. Or so it seemed. So if Real do not recover next season to reach another UCL final, or deny great rivals FC Barcelona another La Liga title in Spain, will he be deemed to have failed?

If the definition of success, especially sustained success, is so impossibly demanding, should we really aspire to be successful? Top performers demonstrate obsessive will. Federer’s tennis, Woods’s golf at his peak, top team coaches like Warren Gatland and dance’s prima ballerinas, the great opera voices, the outstanding jazz virtuosi. Yet there is a remarkable correlation between these elite performers, athletic and artistic (and also large business CEOs) and psychopathy. Is that what we want in our lives? Zidane and peers often demonstrate the power of being an outsider. He is Kabyle, a Berber ethnic group and classifies his identity as Kabyle first, Algerian second and French third. Do we desire the solitariness that frequently accompanies not being a failure? He reminds me of Martina Navratilova, who had national and sexual ‘outsider’ identity to both handle, but to use as a motivator. Generally society prizes sociability and networking skills. In the Big 5 personality traits we appreciate agreeableness. There is no use for or appreciation of, ‘single mindedness’. Perhaps what society prizes is incompatible with success. Perhaps we are unconsciously promoting failure?

Studies have shown that achievement is a relatively straightforward composition of ability, environmental factors and effort. Yet we compare people’s achievements as though all have equal opportunity. We do not celebrate someone of apparently lower ability, but who may have been constrained by environmental factors like quality of teaching and/or facilities. We make a false comparison. It may be why there is so much strain on the university selection procedures, especially for elite universities. As the US is now embarrassingly proving, even when the environmental factors are good, the need to be seen to succeed and then benefit from the leverage a best in class education can offer, leads to cheating and larceny on a grand scale. Perhaps the only way we can truly decide on success and failure is to measure effort. All other qualities are too loaded with immeasurable advantages.

The musician known as Plan B gave a wonderful interview last year to journalist James O’ Brien for his podcast series ‘Unfiltered’. In it, he described the challenges of his educational environment and introduced me to the term PRUs. A Pupil Referral Unit is a sort of crowd control exercise for kids who are too inattentive and disruptive in a traditional school. He and his cohort would definitely have been tagged ‘failures’, or at least as ‘failing’. He has gone on to make a huge success of his career, but has continued to devote time and money to PRUs, mainly through supporting the provision of music teaching. That, to me, is real success. Music is a great release for those who find themselves inarticulate in a traditional school environment. I am a big admirer of Plan B, and he is definitely someone who merits the tag, success, but clearly that was not always the case, and highly unlikely at one time in his life. My point is that failure does not endure, just as success is fleeting. I regard myself as a ‘half-empty’ man much of the time, but this is a message of optimism.

I have come to think of ‘failure’ as an opportunity to consider what it is about ourselves that may have contributed to not being a success. Not getting that job. Did you really want it? Not winning that tennis match. Do you really want to invest time on practising that backhand? Not speaking up in a room of debaters at work. Do you really care enough about the company’s policies? In my early career I managed to bring one phase, when I was a trader, to a swift halt by using an expletive to describe my boss, when I was attending a social event. Unfortunately, he was in earshot. Or was it unfortunate? I had little respect for him and I was frustrated that he had a cohort of favourites and sycophants. My career took a fresh turn, which subsequently earned me promotions that I doubt he would have ever awarded. Later, I seemed adept at driving over career pot holes and undermining my own progress with a little too much attitude, but I earned an income, and achieved a level of responsibility, that exceeded my early ambition. It allowed me to realise my ambitions for my family. I had a few failures, but I think my City career was a success.

What do I think of failure now? I think it is less frightening than I would have imagined when I started work in the City in my teens. In those early 1980’s days I was very anxious not to fail, and to try to be a success. Thatcherism and yuppiedom were celebrators of individualism and success. I was going to be a success. Now I am an unperformed playwright and a trainee psychotherapist, but I do not feel like a failure. Change is normal in our lives and success is fleeting. Failure may be more about sins of omission. Failure to take good advice. (Guilty). And failure to grow by being complacent, and operating in a comfort zone. My children are of an age where they have fine, mature minds. They also have a little of my stubbornness. They may not feel they need much advice, but if I were giving some, and believing that it was being listened to, I would highlight Mandela’s view of learning, and Churchill’s retention of enthusiasm. They will have many rich experiences ahead, some which will be uncomfortable. But all will be well. In other Churchillian words, “keep buggering on”.

On Status and Lucy Kellaway

Lucy Kellaway was one of my favourite FT journalists. I miss her wry bemusement at the madnesses of corporates culture(s). She left the journalism profession to start teaching. I am sure she could express it much more impressively and elegantly, but she seems to represent to me, someone playing through her own ‘Second Innings’, very much as I hope to do with my life.

In an article in the Financial Times she revisits her First Innings performance and gives some wonderful copy about career change, but with particular reference to how it impacts social status. She reminds the FT readership that “in most of the world (teachers) are seen as only a little ahead of police officers and far behind doctors and engineers”. She repeats the “sneery old saying” that these who can, do; those who can’t, teach. After that the article becomes altogether more positive.

First, there is a walk through ‘status’ and a Cambridge dictionary definition about it being the amount of respect, admiration and importance given to a person. Now, I know I am not alone in respecting and admiring the nursing profession, so I think the issue of ‘social status’ is something unsubtly different to ‘status’. She does note that the level of interest in what she amusingly describes as a ‘post-status’ career, is significantly higher and has had similar reports back from former civil servants, doctors, consultants, lawyers and investment bankers.

In fact, only one of her 120 sample of trainee teachers reported feeling a drop in ‘social worth’. That was from a political journalist. Perhaps that is less to do with the career change and merely a reflection that politics is so fascinating and increasingly absurd, that to be a major member of the commentariat feels like one of the most compelling careers of today.

I know my own experience is not so much that my new career plans confer lots of social status, but they do excite more attention and interest than when I could discuss managing equity sales teams. I very much doubt I will ever earn a penny from my playwriting, but many of my old friends and former colleagues want to know about my plots and especially the characters that I am writing. Many more of them are intrigued by the worlds of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and some even airily say things like, “I would be interested in doing something like that”. Others want to know if studying Business Psychology is going to be a career door-opener, and if they should be attending evenings at Birkbeck. (They should, just for the sheer hell and pleasure of it).

Lucy Kellaway’s most interesting point is that social status may be more affected by age and life experience than by career. She concedes that having had a “certain amount of success” doing something else may have gone some way to satiating one’s need(s), and the definition of success changes. One of her examples, formerly in Marketing, highlighted Maslow’s hierarchy and targeting self-actualisation. He refers to a life well spent, or not, and choosing something, in this case teaching, that confers a status that appeals to those pursuing second or third careers. A former documentary worker is quoted talking about how one learns that status comes from within, and is not truly conferred by others. Sounds like the wisdom of age.

A couple of weeks ago a former colleague of mine posted something on Linked-In about the challenge of leaving jobs in which one was unhappy. He asked “how many people are stuck in jobs or careers they are not happy in?”. He too, like me, had reached Managing Director status at more than one investment bank and is also now exploring fresh opportunities. His post stimulated a great deal of activity, and he thought it signified some underlying concerns about the level of mental health deterioration in City workers, and the appropriate levels of support.

All of which makes me optimistic for my future in analysis and therapy. I think, though, it said a little more about personal values. Banking has been described as ‘socially useless’ and I think for many people, once they have met their financial obligations, and perhaps even their financial aspirations, it is time to “put a bit back” and think about something that may be perceived as having more value to society. Does therapy count?

His post generated over 50 responses and his subsequent follow up post a week later got similar levels of engagement and response. What struck me was the need people felt to respond. I was one of them. Many of the comments were more about status and structure than financial reward. When I worked in banking, especially once I began to manage people, I was very aware of the number of people that said they wanted to leave “but I have not worked out what I want to do”.

I think many of them meant that they have a hunch about what they want to do, but do not trust themselves to take on so much personal upheaval, and of course, there is the need to accommodate the needs and wishes of spouses and offspring, so sitting tight is the default position and puts off difficult decisions.

It is why redundancy is so often the catalyst. Talented people know that they were living a career life that was unsatisfying. They have been a little dishonest with themselves for some time and they know they cannot be dishonest in a fresh round of interviews. Selling oneself to rejoin a profession that has long felt unsatisfying is heroically demanding. This may be the curse of the post Big Bang era structural shift in remuneration and compensation.

In the early ’80’s it was still possible to join as a keen, hungry A Level school leaver, but now the City is stuffed with the highest levels of academic achievement, but not necessarily people drawn to the industry itself, merely to its potential rewards. Of course, aspiring to a comfortable or even a luxurious lifestyle is no bad thing in itself, but it does manifest itself in strange work motivations and behaviours.

Does social status matter? Self actualisation and Maslow aside, what is it? Social psychologists would highlight the work of Henri Tajfel in the 1970’s, whose theory was about intergroup relations and group processes. I am not sure that covers it. More modern interpretations (Hogg, 2016) consider “the role of self-conceptions and associated cognitive processes”. I think that is better. This is something that comes from within, as the fifty year old in the Kellaway teaching sample have suggested. Social status is more often way we perceive, than the way others perceive us, although I accept that some professions are routinely disparaged and others exalted.

Some of this is about the security of the ego, and some of it is related to Bowlby’s theories of attachment from the 1950’s, (I think those unfortunate to be insecurely attached probably correlate with those most focused on ‘social status’), but it is true that our career preferences can dictate other people’s perceptions of us.

In the brilliant film ‘Green Book’ Tony Vallelonga says anybody can play Beethoven but “what you do…” . He proceeds to make Don Shirley realise that he is exceptional. Shirley reflects on Tony’s clumsy compliment and notes the perceptions of his record company, which told him that a black man could be accepted as the most gifted of entertainers, but would not be accepted as a classical music performer. He wistfully tells Tony, picking his preferred composer, that actually “not everybody can play Chopin…not like I can”. Of course, the film is set in 1962, and Shirley’s genius and career did not help his social status – he was exempted from dining with the very people he was entertaining, and from sharing a bathroom.

Whatever we do, we need to keep learning, to keep our minds open to the world. It is the essence of being alive – fresh experiences and a ‘Second Innings’. I have taken guard and think I can defend the best deliveries coming my way. I think Lucy Kellaway and her fellow teachers have done something wonderful and whether or not the ‘social status’ of teachers changes, she certainly has my respect and admiration and I regard her as important.

Breaking free, or as Jung might say, “free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do”.

Perhaps it was seeing ‘Pirates of Penzance’ at Wilton’s that started my thoughts on this. After all, the operetta is about Frederick’s release from being indentured to the pirates, and their king, and to the attachment of Ruth. It is uproariously funny, but the point is that the audience wants Frederick to abandon his life of duty and to enjoy his freedom and find love. My experience is ‘Pirates’ is always great, but this one is exceptional. Run to Wilton’s! However, what really ticked my mind over was watching Michael Cohen giving testimony before Congress and incriminating Trumps senior and junior. He amused the audience when referring to the secrecy around Trump’s college scores and SAT score from a POTUS who identifies himself as “brilliant”. And he made many, more significant accusations. So, Cohen sings like the proverbial canary and gets lambasted for being a liar, attempting to be credible, when attempting to be truthful. I doubt many think he lies when he refers to a “racist, a conman and a cheat”. The world, though, is told it is merely to reduce his sentence. The paradox is that he is having his freedom withdrawn, but it has meant he has found himself free of obligations to an abusive employer and is demonstrating the power of new-found liberty. He has broken free, notwithstanding a visit to jail to come. Truly paradoxical.

It interested me on a number of levels. We have just got used to a very slight reordering of the political landscape in the UK, with the formation of the Independent Group of MPs. Again, freed from the constraints of loyalty to a larger institution or organisation or party, the individuals concerned have demonstrated the joy of breaking free. Anna Soubry’s dark references to “Theresa” and that she may have “a problem with immigration”, was a wonderful example of being able to say what until last week would have been unsayable. Luciana Berger’s candour about her experiences in keeping the rabid anti-Semites at bay was another good illustration of how breaking free can change someone. Of the seven who initially resigned from the Labour Party, it was Mike Gapes, who most impressed me, and whose passion demonstrated the impact of having had to repress truths for too long, as a misguided demonstration of loyalty. I was reminded of Mandela’s comment, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others”

Indeed, the whole theme of breaking free and feeling liberated and able to behave without constraint is pervasive. It is what Brexit has come to represent to many people. Full disclosure – I voted Remain, and I am still a Remainer. This is something from which I do not feel the need to break free, but two of my best friends (and yes, we remain on talking terms!) are avid Brexiteers. I am not sure quite why they feel the need to break free, and why they cannot feel English, as I do, and European, but these are issues that have been debated by many people, far more eloquently and constructively than perhaps we do; as well as completely inarticulately, ineloquently and destructively by legions more. But the desirability not to be bound up by something bigger is clearly one of the many frustrations Brexiteers feel they need to remove.

Few people can talk politics without it giving some offence and few people who write on it succeed in persuading the readership to consider more than one perspective. It is tribal and has become more, not less so, in the modern era of effective social media data mining and marketing. So, I thought I would leave Brexit and politics right there and mention something about which few people have opinions: Football! I am an enthusiastic fan and a bit of a student of the game; at least I like to think so. What has struck me recently has been the recovery of a group of talented individuals at Manchester United into a team that is unrecognisable from its pre-Christmas shape, style and industry. It has come about following the replacement of Jose Mourinho, who never struck me as a ‘United man’ with former player Ole Gunnar Solskjear, to lead the team. It is not obvious to me that he has dome much other than to free the talents of his most mercurial, but offensively threatening players, in Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford. It seems to me that they exhibit the same joy in their work now as the Independent Group of MPs. Michael Cohen may not be exhibiting joy, but he is certainly relishing settling scores and being portrayed as one of the good guys.

I think too, of Leicester City. The tragedy of the death of the club owner in a helicopter crash would be more than enough for a club and his supporters to bear in one season, but they seem weighed down by the approach of the recently appointed head coach, Claude Puel. Star players, much as had been the case with the likes of Pogba and Rashford, such as Vardy and Schmeichel, were some way off their peak performances and seemed to find their jobs to be unusually joyless. I will be remarkably unsurprised if the appointment of Brendan Rodgers to replace Puel, this week, does not allow players like Vardy to break free and to utilise his strengths, much as United now make better use of Rashford’s pace. Then, I think about how England coach Gareth Southgate freed up players with pace and expression for the national side before and during last year’s World Cup. One of the most recent is the exciting talent Jadon Sancho, but he needed to break free from Manchester City, where he was unlikely to play, to develop his talents in Germany, with Borussia Dortmund. What will Chelsea do with Rueben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi? They certainly seem to have little freedom playing in the Sarri structure.

This need to break free is not restricted to worlds like politics and sports. I thought about artists, specifically musicians. I am sure there are plenty of examples of solo careers that did not hit expected heights, but surely John Lennon, Sting, Robbie Williams, George Michael, Jools Holland, Michael Jackson, Richard Ashcroft and heaven knows how many more, would be judged to have produced their best work once they had left initial band structures behind them. Sometimes, breaking free is not just about leaving the team or the band but exploring new platforms, industries or geographies.

I may or may not be a typical podcast listener and twitter reader, but my experience of both is that most of the best users of these formats are people used to being in group structures, but relishing the chance to redefine who they are and being able to market themselves individually. Sometimes it is not breaking free from teams, or families like Jackson, but from convention. The writing of Truman Capote is an example as he introduced us to the ‘non-fiction novel’ when producing “In Cold Blood”. Visual art convention breakers include Picasso, Dali, Rothko and Pollock. In their day, it would have been impressionism and pointillism exponents. I recall the wonderful Shaffer play ‘Amadeus’ and revelling in the display of Mozart disturbing convention, and disturbing Salieri’s mental stability as a consequence. Generally, and it is a huge generalisation, breaking free seems to be a good thing, and often has a progressive impact on other people. Jung was clear about the profundity of freedom. He wrote that “without freedom there can be no morality”

Returning to podcasts and twitter, as modern freedoms of expression, and I think of David Lammy from politics, who seems to be able to be a member of his party but liberated from the dead hand of its leadership by his tweeting. Also of Gary Lineker, who has gone from sportsman, to broadcaster, to a man both his fans and critics seem to regard as a new voice of ‘liberal England’. I think about how Lineker has broken free from being the face of one or more of his former employers, to selling himself, even if it seems to antagonise another sporting broadcaster like Jonathan Agnew. I note how the podcast structure and format freed up and transformed the careers of each of Andrew Flintoff, Robbie Savage and Matthew Syed, who turned a highly amusing bloke chat podcast into springboards for new careers, book ideas, motivational speaking content, acting and modelling. It has given a whole new set of career opportunities and public appreciation to the ‘Brexitcast’ quartet (Laura Kuenssberg, Katya Adler, Chris Mason and Adam Fleming) from the BBC, and it has allowed a former footballer, John Barnes to demonstrate his articulacy (he speaks as elegantly and impressively as he used to tease defenders on the pitch) and become an outstanding panelist on ‘Question Time’.

A talented golfer who was little known to me was Eddie Peperell. Now I look out for his scores because he is such an amusing deliverer of tweets. Check out his response to criticisms of the tour going to Saudi Arabia for an example. That seems to be his way of breaking free of tour monotony, and the pressure of knowing every swing and every putt has a dollar value that he needs to support his family. Away from the UK, former State employees can use the media to break free from the constraints of their former office(s). In the past fortnight that has been apparent in commentary from both Janet Yellen and Madeleine Albright, who both feel able to comment on Trump and his Administration. Yellen was definitely unconstrained when suggesting that Trump did not understand the Fed’s role. And is the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs Ivanka Trump twitter spat, partly about freedoms, especially the barbed references to early working experiences? An example from the worlds of the Arts: Annie Lennox no longer seems to be a wonderful songstress, but the driver of ‘Global Feminism’. I saw her talk recently in Westminster and she relished the opportunity to demonstrate how she had broken free from the demands and expectations of the music industry to become a highly visible, politicised, spokeswoman.

Is all this a little frivolous? Perhaps I should be giving consideration to those that cannot break free. Years ago I remember being very affected by the Steve Biko film ‘Cry Freedom’, and a week or two ago I was struck again by the impact of freedoms withheld, when watching the film “If Beale Street Could Talk”. There are other things too, from which it is all but impossible to break free. For example, those with debilitating and chronic physical conditions. Or those brilliant and brave servicemen, who are now trapped by the traumas they suffered in our service, and whose futures are forever affected by what PTSD can do to a person. Perhaps too, the severely depressed for whom it is so overwhelming that suicide becomes a ‘freedom’. Or those that cannot break free, but find fresh ways of overcoming constraints. In that particular case I am thinking about Stephen Hawking.

And so it goes on. For me, it seems to resonate particularly powerfully because of what I call my Second Innings, and the basis of this blogging activity. I have certainly broken free of the oppression of the early morning alarm call and I am not missing standing at my desk at HSBC at 6.10am every morning as I was doing 15 months ago. I have been pursuing my own kinds of freedom in the past nine months, once I decided that the City might not want to value my workplace skills as generously as it had done in the past, and because the equity advisory field I left behind feels like a sunset industry. I did attend an interview this week, though, for a related field in finance, and it made me think about the pull of the role and the challenge, but also about the freedoms I would now be giving up. I have traded income for time, and exchanging time for income now, requires quite a reappraisal. (How would I fit in my yoga? !!!) I am convinced that City firms need to use their workforces much more flexibly, and to accommodate older workers in a way that has been something of anathema to them until now. Mindsets are institutionally stuck and being free of that is invigorating.

My Second Innings is about my personal as well as professional life. Divorce brings freedoms. Some are welcome. Some, less so. I understand that finding love, and sharing life with a true soul mate is also a freedom, and a freedom from loneliness and misunderstanding. However, for me, my divorce represents breaking free from something that we had found restrictive and unenjoyable, and which had, therefore, become unsatisfying. A marriage, for good or ill, defines the company one keeps and the interests one pursues. My social world has broadened, perhaps immeasurably in the past couple of years, and that has been very satisfying. Like the resigning MPs I found some joy. In my case it was in tripping around Europe with a rail ticket and a backpack, and in paragliding in Cyprus, and when I attended my playwriting course. These are freedoms that I doubt would have presented themselves to me had I remained married and employed.

As a trainee psychotherapist I am now experiencing the freedom of being in analysis, and of free associating whilst I lie on a couch. The core of it is, of course, to be and feel liberated. The freedom that comes with truly knowing oneself. It is time to leave the ego behind. I hope to feel comfortable and to be able to explore my unconscious. I need to feel unconstrained psychically. That said, I am aware of Freud’s view that “most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” His vision was to create increased “freedom of association” through the method of “free association”. He invented a relationship to facilitate this. He broke with convention. Empathy, appropriate silence, and mindfully refraining from judgment and direction would become central to the Analytic Attitude needed to maintain this relationship.

So, to finish: The Personal. The youngest members of my family are now exploring freedoms. They are either post-school or post-uni. I tell them to embrace their freedoms and resist their inhibitions. In a sporting context I would say “Free your arms”. As a cricket lover I would draw attention to yesterday’s remarkable batting by Jos Buttler and Chris Gayle. These two outstanding players have demonstrated their capacity to play at the highest level and make Test hundreds, but in batting for ODIs, they have changed convention and expectation. Theme is now altered. They have done it by liberating themselves from the techniques they were coached to use, at which they were proficient. Hitting a dozen sixes in an innings and making 150 in a limited overs contest, especially when not opening, as was the case for Buttler, is changing the game. Since the 400 mark has been breached for a ODI total, four of the five successes have been by England, and usually thanks to Buttler’s impact. So, I hope my children truly break free and discover the joy that doing so can bring

Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wings

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with fearful trill

of the things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

Don McCullin at the Tate

South Vietnam 1968, printed 2013 Don McCullin born 1935 ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Purchased with the assistance of the ARTIST ROOMS Endowment, supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and Tate Members 2014 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/AR01197

Saturday at the Tate. An exhibition to which I have looked forward for some time. Eldest in tow, as she is, a) great company and, b) the best photographer in the family and, c) a graduate in the History of Art. I went expecting to learn, to enjoy and to marvel. I had read a piece that suggested war images were inappropriate as ‘art’ and therefore not what one should be exhibiting, so I went with my senses heightened and ready to challenge my own impressions. I am enjoying a Philosophy module at university currently, so all things ethical have my full attention right now. I had further prompts from reading the excellent interview with McCullin on the Tate’s web page, where he is described as an “energetic and compassionate chronicler of our world”. That seems to me to be an apt description, and this exhibition gave me the chance to understand the chronicler, and the wisdom of over sixty years of experience (he is 83 years old). He also defends the charge by saying “nobody should sanitise the truth”.

By a timely coincidence I saw the Marie Colvin film ‘A Private War’, when it opened on Friday evening. I am sure I have plenty of competition, but I would say I am in the top tier of Rosamund Pike fans, and this sees her act with such brilliant conviction and verisimilitude, that it may be her finest role. Her acting is so fine, it partially obscures an extraordinary performance from Jamie Dornan as Paul Conroy, to say nothing of exquisite cameos from Tom Hollander and Stanley Tucci. Scenes describing dreams and nightmares are particularly good, especially when Pike/Colvin denies she has nightmares after spending her first night with Tucci. McCullin describes nightmares in his interview, and rather hopefully notes that the very worst nightmares – that were of oblivion and being shot at point blank range – seem to have faded or gone away.

What links these two great artists, one with image, the other with words, is their humanitarianism. Sometimes today, one is tempted to think that is in short supply. I do not really believe that, but it is a comfort that these two demonstrations of the importance of celebrating humanity, and giving the flash of publicity to the faceless and voiceless, are so visible right now. They both achieved wide recognition because of employment at The Sunday Times, although they missed overlapping one another by one year. The other commonalities are based on answering the questions why. Why did they feel the need to be in these places? Why did they know that the messages they wanted to send were best expressed by forcing out the micro and not the macro? Why could they not feel satisfied after putting their lives in danger more than once, and after garnering awards and peer group admiration? Why were they sometimes oblivious to the self? Why did they want to provoke? Why were they so alive to telling other people’s stories? To hide their own?

Colvin was the daughter of a marine. She was an anthropology graduate. New York born, before she was 30 she was established at The Sunday Times, having arrived via Paris. Her many ‘firsts’ probably began in 1986 with her Gaddafi interview. She famously lost the sight of one eye whilst reporting in Sri Lanka in 2001, and was later hospitalised for PTSD, but her biography and the film both make it clear her war zone addiction and the war inside her own psyche, had established themselves long before the RPG incident that cost her the eye. She married one man twice and divorced him twice. A second husband committed suicide. Colvin’s grief and trauma were not confined to war zones. Colvin wrote about lives in extremis and describing humans who were dealing with the unendurable. It was a mirror to her own life.

In the McCullin interview he talks candidly about the shame of where he came from: A small basement flat in Finsbury Park. He talks about dealing with, and his relationship with poverty. When asked about tonality in his images and the predominance of the dark, he recalls the separation of his sister and himself in a wartime evacuation to Somerset. She was taken in by a wealthy family, but he was housed in a council property. Close to one another, and yet very remote. Back in London, as he hit his teens, his father died, and by 15 he had left school. Life was clearly both tough and highly uncertain. His work largely captures that bleakness, without much of a sense of a better tomorrow. Sadly, he says “I certainly understood poverty and violence.” He also references keeping his father’s name alive. Plainly his grieving has never really brought him any relief. It is unfinished, and many of his images reflect ‘unfinished business’ and a transitory state. Remarkably he ends his interview by concluding he has been “bloody lucky”. Perhaps Colvin would have said the same, however twisted it might seem to those of us who would not have wanted to share as little as three per cent of her experiences.

So, to the photographs: Many are iconic. For me the war images get darker – there is almost an energy and lightness to his images of Greeks and Turks battling in Cyprus (his first conflict) that may have reflected his naivety, thrill-seeking and excitement. That soon changes and what becomes more and more apparent with each year that passes and each conflict observed (including the social conflicts represented in his East End of London, and his Bradford, Consett and Liverpool images) is the disconcerting gaze of his many subjects. Whether its Jean in Whitechapel, or the shell-shocked US soldier, they all look through his camera, and their disconcerting gaze pierces our defences and feels like it burns to the back of our heads, where our images form, and ask “what are you thinking?” And “why?”

I have an attachment to the London pictures, especially those of the East End. I live there now, and I previously lived in Islington, so the sheep being driven to the slaughterhouse at Caledonian Road, and the horses delivering beer in Cable Street, Shadwell, made as much of an impression on me as Vietnam, Iraq, Bangladesh, the DRC or Cyprus. Some are from 1970 and others from 1980. It is so disconcerting to see the images of Aldgate, Spitalfields and Whitechapel and think they might have been taken at the end of the second World War and to discover they were shot in 1980. I am not sure if I was pleased or disconcerted that we had arrived at the Tate after spending a wonderful lunch, in a brilliant Indian restaurant (Gunpowder) in Spitalfields, and jumped on the tube at Aldgate East, which is now such a hive of development and gentrification. Other scenes of poverty in the UK, especially Bradford, Consett and Liverpool make one hear the words ‘another country’ over and over again. I recall rioting and civic disorder when I was in my teens, but I cannot recall noticing how grim life was for some of my countrymen. Shame on me. I am a good example of someone who sees what he wants to see. Certainly I avoid what I don’t want to see.

Outside of the UK, for which he remains most famous, I think, I found the images from Biafra the most disturbing. These images of starving mothers with gaunt faces and shrunken breasts are amongst the best examples of what he says is “seeing what others cannot bear to see” and forcing us to confront the world around us as it often really is. Indeed, one black middle-aged woman in front of me was noticeably affected. She had to turn away from what she was seeing in order to stifle a sob and compose herself. Her face was etched with pain. Earlier, I mentioned that his pictures from Cyprus had a little more lightness and energy. Interestingly, these are the images from a time he describes as having left him “with the beginnings of self knowledge”. But that knowledge was clearly troubling. Similarly, Colvin could not process what was happening to her. Each new experience gave her more levels of anguish to manage, but she felt the compulsion to seek out yet more exposure, and likewise, so McCullin kept being drawn back.

He concludes that he was dealing with guilt much of the time. Certainly, the Colvin film does a marvellous job in highlighting the guilt she felt. In one brilliant scene towards the end of the film, she is distressed as she tries to unlock her bicycle, which is chained outside a Shad Thames restaurant, and she lists for her bemused editor (Hollander) the people she has lost and why they were significant and how he (and therefore, we) can never truly understand. We may never understand the brilliance, drive and core humanity of a McCullin or a Colvin, but we have to be very grateful that they exist. When the world, through conflict, is dehumanising, these are the people that we need. They suffer hugely to give us something absolutely vital. I, for one, am enormously grateful and deeply touched after having had time to consider it all this weekend. The juxtaposition of exhibition and film is very timely and very special. Our minds and emotions need to be disturbed for us to feel truly alive, and my McCullin/Colvin combo has certainly made me feel alive.

The passing of the great Gordon Banks – what it means to me

I have been impressed with the tributes to Gordon Banks, which have bounced up in front of my eyes thanks to social media. I have been impressed because I love seeing sporting heroes of yesteryear, and of today, (Pele and Raheem Sterling may have given my favourite comments), share a platform and speak with one voice, but convey the unsaid: Sport lends itself to great friendships. Humour too. I so hope the story about THAT save is true, but even if it is not, I like it. It is that Bobby Moore’s reaction was to say “you’re getting old Banksy, you used to hold on to them”.

Gordon Banks was clearly one of the greatest. My father’s generation are better placed than mine to say he was the greatest. Sadly, I was just eight years old, a month before his last international match, and a few months before the tragic car accident that cost him the sight of one eye and the extension of his career. I can recall seeing him play in televised highlights of the time, but I am fairly sure I never saw him in the flesh. I did know that however great Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence were for England as I grew up, they were always considered lesser keepers (and probably lesser men) by men of my father’s generation.

That year, 1972, was the one in which Banks won the only club honour of note in his time between the sticks. He should have probably had an FA Cup Final appearance, but in two successive years Stoke were beaten by Arsenal in replayed semi-finals. In the second Arsenal triumphed thanks to a penalty and an offside goal. Even the undemonstrative and gentlemanly Banks referred to having been cheated. But it was the year that Stoke City won the League Cup.

I wanted them to win the final. As a small boy I was thrilled that their ‘experienced/veteran’ players were able to win a major trophy. In that team were Peter Dobing and George Eastham, as well as Banks. I wanted it even though they had broken my small football-loving heart only a few weeks previously. Banks, in particular. The/my Hammers led 2-1 after the first leg, which included a Geoff Hurst penalty. In the second leg another Hurst penalty should have made that match 1-1 and allowed the Hammers to get to a final against Chelsea. Instead Banks saved a ball that was crashed goalwards at vicious velocity.

It took the end of second replay, when Bobby Moore had had to go in goal to replace the injured Bobby Ferguson, and had then saved a penalty (the rebound was converted) before Stoke triumphed. I have had many disappointments with the Hammers but I think that may have been the only time I cried (both the Hurst penalty miss, and the outcome of the second replay). I think I was a bit upset too when Paul Allen was denied a goal in the 1980 FA Cup Final by Willie Young’s foul too.

It made me think about the passing of great players, and about sporting friendships and about how very good Sir Alf Ramsey’s England teams were. It also made me think about passing greats. This week has seen Albert Finney’s death too. I am never sure which of theatre and sport I love most, mainly because I regard sport as theatre anyway. Finney was feted by the establishment despite being inherently anti-establishment. What he was, was a master of his craft. Banks was too, and seems to have had an even greater dose of humility. I wonder of he would have turned down the awards that Finney did. Probably. Whether it is sport or the arts I am drawn to performance and I think that is far from unusual. We admire dancers, across, musicians, athletes and the like because they express something that is the extreme of what we have in ourselves. I can act, but badly. I can sing, but terribly. I can swing a golf club, but ineffectively. Seeing he great proponents of these arts and skills is to reflect on the finest of talent but also to be introduced to or own humility – which we need.

Sport and humility. Sport and friendship. Sport as a source of life lessons. Sport has been incredibly important to me and my family. Having a professional sportsman in the family was a source of enormous pride to me, as I know it was to my father. Better still, though was to allow the sports I played to teach me many of the most important lessons I learned about life, and to allow me to pass them on to my children. Towards the end of my career I worked with an exceptional international amateur golfer. He had also been an army officer in a previous life, and was the outstanding member of the sales team I led. I should never have been hired; they should have given him the role, but all the greatest sportsmen are uncompromising and competitive, and institutions would rather promote sycophants than true leaders. I leaned more from him, than he from me. Some of the lessons may have come from the Army, but I think his best lessons were learned on the golf course.

Perhaps it is no great coincidence then, that as sports lovers mourn, this week we have seen the exceptional response of the England cricket captain to an outburst of homophobia. I am not especially God-fearing, or notably religious, but sometimes I think something mysterious happens in the heavens that is ordained and important. Something about the ending of the life of the ‘magical’ Banks, as Pele described him, seemed to need a balancing act to make us remember why we love sports and the finest sportsmen. I thought Joe Root’s coming of age as England captain, when he pushed Shannon Gabriel’s insults back at him, and gave them the scorn and context that they deserved was somehow linked. Maybe not, but certainly it felt linked in my mind.

I need to express what sport really means to me and my family. Another blog post will be needed. But my father’s admiration of Denis Compton, and my brother’s successful cricket career, and our family- shared golfing love and incompetence, in equal measures, has given structure and value to our family view and appreciation of sport. All three of us have been able to meet our heroes because of sport, from Jimmy Greaves to Compton, and Billy Bonds. My father has spent time with Richie Benaud and Garry Sobers and Barry Richards. We can learn from them all. The Burns males certainly do. I will dwell on it in future, and probably many times. I also want to talk about the importance to us of being Hammers fans. If nothing else, supporting a team that is only (very) sporadically successful is a great introduction to philosophy, which I have (inflicted on)/introduced to my son.

This blog post has no direction and intent. I just felt that Finney, Banks and Root somehow came together, and reminded me of several of the things I, and my family, most value. Thank you, Gordon Banks, for being one of England’s 1966 heroes, but especially for handling your tragic accident with such humility, and for being someone the world’s greatest footballer defined by the quality of your friendship. Perhaps Shannon Gabriel will one day reflect on his ‘batty boy’ comment, and thank Joe Root for uniting them in a particular moment, and for initiating a long friendship founded on intense competition but mutual respect. To my son and daughters, and to anyone else reading – be a winner; but best of all be a lover of your sport, and admire your opponents and enjoy your friendship in sport.