Re: Dixon vs Jackson


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Posted by Peter Ceresole on December 12, 2006 at 05:29:50 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.

In Reply to: Re: Dixon vs Jackson posted by PeterH on December 11, 2006 at 21:56:31:

If anyone thinks that newspapers are making it all up, they really risk having their head in the sand.

I think that most of it is not made up (except in some papers- the sheer scale of the lies told in the 'Mail' and the 'Sun' startle me, even now). However, every generation has had its horrors to face. To keep it simple and obvious, at the time AR set his stories, all of Europe and Asia was heading into the most cataclysmic set of wars in human history, and TB was a fatal, crippling and highly infectious scourge far more dangerous to the average person- certainly in Europe- than AIDS is now. With very few pauses, war and disease and starvation have been a constant of the human condition. Our problem is that- certainly in the developed world- we are just emerging from one of those pauses. In fact it's not at all sure that the pause is over, but the fear of its ending is real enough.

The fact that AR could write a series of books in which these things didn't feature at all (I'm not counting mumps) and the stories still seem realistic, indicates that people are not cast down by the pressure of history, provided the sky doesn't fall on them in particular. And even then- I remember very well interviewing a woman who had been six years old in 1945, and living in Berlin. I asked what it had been like- and she said wonderful. No school, endless exciting ruins to play in and as she put it 'Children aren't afraid of starvation; they're just hungry'. The adults, of course, had a horrid time. In one case they used her as a shield to approach some Russian soldiers for food, which they provided for a little girl. But the other thing she said was 'That was when I realised that looking helpless was my key to survival'. Much later she married a British soldier and settled in England, became a physiotherapist, ministering to the army in Colchester, and was a woman of great charm and manipulative talents, in every sense.

Humans have great resources. You never know about your own until you need them.



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