THERE are some programmes that you feel duty bound to tune in
to, because they are either important, or timely, or both - even if
the preparatory blurb gives one that heavy sense of worthiness. And
I am afraid The Making of the Modern Arab World (Radio 4,
Tuesday of last week) was one such programme, which lived down to
expectations.
The muddled narrative strategy at the start did not help. In
typical journalistic fashion - start with the particular, and move
to the general - Tarek Osman began his account of modern Arabic
history by launching in at Huda Shaarawi, the nationalist and
feminist who, in the early 20th century, led protests against the
British in Egypt, and later picked fights with her own people over
the question of wearing the veil.
Then we were thrust into the world of the post-Napoleonic Middle
East, and then were whizzed through a century and a half. I coped
by having Wikipedia open on my laptop, as a Tolstoyian list of
dramatis personae, skirmishes, and treaties entered and
exited.
The ambition behind the project is laudable. Focusing on Egypt
and Syria, we were told about the secular liberalism which, albeit
under the watchful eye of British and French governments, was
fostered then, and can still be seen in the literature, films, and
architecture from the early 20th century.
The same polemical rhetoric that one finds in the politics of
1920s Egypt and Syria is being heard now, as the Arab Spring
stumbles and collapses in these two countries. The Islamic scholar
al-Tahtawi who, in the 1820s, travelled to Paris and recorded with
fascination the social and political customs of the West, is - in
the context of these debates - a prophetic figure; not least
because it was within that tradition of Western liberal scholarship
that men such as the founder of Ba'athism, Michel Aflaq, and the
Islamist founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Baan,
identified themselves.
I hope that Osman is given the opportunity to slow down. At this
speed, only those who already know the story are going to manage;
and they are the ones who do not need such programmes in the first
place.
A Cause for Carolling (Radio 4, weekdays) also felt
like one of those series that commissioning editors feel to be a
necessary adornment to a Radio 4 Christmas: you can do tinsel and
Nowells, but only if you throw in something educational, ideally
with lots of dates. Fortunately, Jeremy Summerly's expert
presentation and charmingly self-deprecating style saved this from
the fate of many a carol history of yore, which was overladen with
actors putting on funny accents, and medieval musicians with farty
instruments.
What distinguished Summerly's account was that, in the process
of telling us about medieval carols, he ended up composing some new
ones. Thus, we were party to the creation of a new 15th-century
carol with the refrain "Nunc gaudet Maria"; and indulged
with a soupy harmonisation of a 12th-century song by Godric of
Finchale.
If the spirit of Christmas music could be encapsulated in one
song, it would be that: medievalism refracted through the lens of
late-Victorian and early-20th-century harmony. Mark my words: it
will be in the repertoire at King's College before you can say
"Balulalow".