A tale of two cities (and two journalists)

London – the riverbank from behind my flat

My father is from north London. My mother is from east London. I was born on London’s fringes – shout out to Barnet – but raised in Essex. I moved back into London in the very late 1980’s, just about picking a residential property market peak. I cut my losses and moved out again. Like my parents chose to do, I raised my family at the edges of commuterland. My father moved to Chelmsford, when the electrification of the line made the commute sufficiently timely. A generation on, I moved, way out to the edge of Suffolk, and commuted on an inter-city from Manningtree. It was over twenty years before we moved our almost adult children back to London. Although our accommodation had shrunk and we had some adjustments to make, I noticed how happy it made me. It took a while for it to dawn on me why that was – I am a Londoner – and I was, at last, truly home.

Moving into the city has become much more fashionable than moving out – the decision that both my father and I had taken, believing it to be the best, as well as most affordable option for raising a growing family. My pleasure in my new living arrangements came from the ending of my commuting lifestyle – I was a few DLR or tube stops away from work, but actually a reachable and doable 3m walk. Even more enjoyable was the fact that I was a (decent) walk from my favourite cultural hubs (Globe Theatre, Tate Modern, Young and Old Vics, National Theatre, Barbican, BFI), and using them more. I had started at university, and that too was walkable if truly needed, or served well by a bus to Russell Square. The reasons for more public movement into the city than movement out, though, was the transformation of London into a culinary hub, a revived clubbing scene, with a cafe culture that had once seemed to exist only on the other side of the Channel. It was the best place to enjoy oneself.

Paris – a great city; about to become greater?

A week ago, FT journalist Simon Kuper wrote about how Paris was preparing its development to be the city its citizens might want to enjoy in 2050. He noted that a housing boom has been exacerbated by the fact that it has more Airbnb listings than any city bar London. He compared it with London, and with San Francisco, Berlin and New York but noted that it was the only one of the named cities to be attempting to remake itself as it embraced the challenges of climate, inequality, planning, infrastructure and planning.

I was not aware that it was building a “whole new Paris” with 68 metro stations being built to connect the suburbs. At its heart, it is taking the Peripherique ring road out of its current place as a kind of moated defence to ‘core Paris’. Post-war Paris saw the suburbs grow and sprawl, but with inadequate or no planning. The poor transport options drive suburbanites into cars and exacerbate the pollution in the inner city. Kuper argues that the gilet jaune movement is partly “a crisis of failed urbanism”, quoting the deputy mayor.

Grand Paris Express is a large part of the answer. It is Europe’s largest infrastructure project and will connect the suburbs to central Paris, but also to one another. The metro sites are being developed in conjunction with large scale housing and public amenities. Some will open for Olympic 2024 year, and all 68 are expected to be completed by 2030. Elizabeth Line, I hear you query. Hmm. I confess a little Londoner envy coursed through me as I read this. We have some housing development out at Wembley and some exciting plans for Canada Water, but this feels much more of a ‘vision thing’ than we can or will deliver.

The new metro and a commitment to bike lanes (one on every street by 2024) are anticipated to allow the Peripherique to become a tree-lined urban boulevard as Paris gets serious about the Paris Accord on Climate. Urban forests and rooftop gardens combined with architecture using biomaterials (largely wood, to the unsophisticated like me) will provide cool spots for future heatwaves. This is in a city that already meets its new homes target annually (currently 70,000). What a prospect and competitive challenge for London’s next mayor, whenever he or she gets control of the reins.

Since my schooldays London had been transformed socially and architecturally, and in pretty much all aspects for the better. The more it attracted inflows of people, the more opportunities were thrown up, and the more great services were provided to cater for the growing and affluent population. When I was a boy my grandad drove me around Silvertown and to my nan’s florist in Canning Town, opposite West Ham public baths. I have watched and admired what regeneration is an can be. It was not unique to London – the city has become the place of ambition and regeneration internationally. The suburbs and even more so, the coastal towns, have been much more about resisting decline and decay. Cities have seen average ages of their growing populations fall; outside cities, the mix effect of leavers versus new arrivals has driven average ages up.

The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. – Jane Austen

Could anything, not least our current health crisis, change this? In a great article this weekend, another FT journalist, Janan Ganesh, discussed the prospects for London after seeing a friend move into a Canary Wharf skyscraper. He reminded readers that pre-war London housed almost 9m people before depopulating until the 1980’s. Population trends in cities, especially London, correlate with crime (inversely, as you might expect) and with air quality/pollution. He noted that in the middle of the last century the suburbs were hailed as ‘The Future’. Now, he wonders whether COVID-19 will have an impact on trust, and the desire to be a city dweller. Physical proximity will become anathema. Restaurants and cafes will be places to avoid. Businesses will fail and new entrepreneurs will not like the potential reward relative to the risk to their capital. Gyms and yoga studios may get you healthy, but what if it is only to pass on an invisible foe that makes you fatally vulnerable?

His speculations and analysis had me thinking about the attractions of the city. I have eschewed property ownership here because, love the city as I do, I thought that it was (and still is) insanely priced. Boxes in the air, with no claims on the land upon which they are built, routinely priced in excess of £750k, often upwards of £1m. Really? What happens to that supply, much of which has come on stream in the past half decade, when Ganesh turns out to be right and London starts to depopulate? The state may be buyer of last resort and perhaps the housing can become ‘social’, but capital values will be sliding, materially. If depopulation is the next trend, then businesses do fail, and fewer start up. Support for culture narrows, and the city’s appeal and inherent charms moderate.

It is not all bad, though. In another article, Kuper used this weekend’s paper to talk about the impact the virus is already having and will have on green policy and its impacts. I am sure many people have been struck by the pictures from Venice of the clear(er) waters and the abundance of fish, to say nothing of swans and other marine life. He thinks the events of the past week have given people more confidence in the potential and capacity of remote working. In turn, that should lead to weaker demand for expensive office space. Some could be repurposed for housing. Employees will be spared the mental pressure of the commute and may be able to use the saved time to improve their physical as well as mental health. Business travel will be cut, even without the phenomenon of ‘flight shaming’. He notes some studies that suggest it is possible that latest data from China means that the improved air quality will have saved at least as many lives as COVID-19 has taken. Like Ganesh, he hints that the need to be a city dweller is going to be diminished.

What does it mean to me? A confession. I felt rather smug as I contemplated much lower property values. Then, I told myself off for having such ungenerous thoughts, and not thinking of the pressures/distress that may bring to many property owners. I recall how I felt in my ‘unsellable’ mews house in 1991/2. (Wish I still had it!) Would I not want to live and work in London, if it was to ‘depopulate?’ I think the answer is no. I have lived away from its urban charms and had the pleasures of woodland and fields surrounding my home. For many, who have a more intense relationship with nature, than me, that is what they seek.

But I like urbanity. I like London’s gorgeous buildings, fabulous architecture, it’s extraordinary paths and that it is not grid-like like New York, or planned in the way Paris was. I like its mysteries, its history and above all its access to culture. I love its parks and the river. When we are all able to share public spaces again, I expect theatres, cinemas and art galleries will draw me quickly, as well as the occasional visit to test my equanimity at West Ham’s stadium. I shall want to spend time at Lord’s too.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. – Samuel Johnson

To conclude; there is some good to come from the recalibrations we are all rapidly making and having to make, and I think Kuper’s love for his adopted Paris, does remind London it could do better. Also, I think Ganesh is on to something about how attitudes to the charms of the city, and especially London, may alter after we get beyond the worst this virus can throw at us. But London, as Peter Ackroyd explained when he personalised it in a ‘biography’, is special, and as a Londoner I want to be in it. If much of it gets repurposed from high end residential to social housing communities, or if office space gets transformed to dwellings as Kuper envisages; that may be a good thing. If communities become more communal; if the refuse collectors and shelf stackers that I admired working today, to say nothing of the nurses, feel that this is where they want to be, and it is affordable and welcoming, then it will remain a great city.

The man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. – Oscar Wilde

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”.