Jeudredi roundup 16/12/22

Tram lines

Reading for your sleigh ride

London was almost motorway-boxed. Peter Walker recounts in a fascinating long read in the Guardian. A capital city losing public spaces to ill-considered plans that prioritise King Car, quite relevant for 1000 Brussels.

The post-imperial hubris of America. Adam Tooze on the deformation impérialiste that warped French and British politics over the last sixty or seventy years, and is now doing the same to the US.

1000 Brussels is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

99 cruellest months later. A long read at the Poetry Foundation on the history and influences of The Waste Land, published 100 years ago the year.

Radio-Télévision Brussels

Listening and viewing

🎧 Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland have been celebrating the World Cup with a series of daily podcasts on an historical event from each participating country. Their episode on Morocco went into the details of the Rif War in the 1920s, about which I was shamefully uninformed. Franco, Primo de Rivera, Pétain - it sometimes feels like a prequel to the 1930s. Well worth a listen.

📺 Unfortunately only for Belgian viewers (or those with a VPN 🤫), this RTBF documentary on the life of Paul-Henri Spaak was very interesting. Lots of archive footage and speeches from the man himself, comparatively little narration. A Belgian who should be more famous than he is. [🇧🇪-🇫🇷]

🎧 A different double act was on Cas Mudde’s Radikaal podcast this week. Rob Ford and Maria Sobolewska are the “political science power couple” behind the book Brexitland, and they talked through where Brexit came from, and where it might be going. If you’ve ever felt the urge to call Leave voters names, you should definitely have a listen.

Vijfhoek

In and around the city

The greatest film of all time (if you follow the industry experts polled by Sight and Sound) was filmed just down the road from Yser/IJzer metro, as the plaque on the outside of the building shows. If you want to see Chantal Ackerman’s masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, you can see a restored print at Cinéma Galeries, between 17 December and 2 January, versions with both English and Dutch subtitles are being shown on different days.

The asylum crisis in Brussels cannot be ignored, even though I want to keep politics out of jeudredi. As temperatures get down to -8°, hundreds of people are still rough sleeping. The federal government is dropping balls left right and centre - though I think they are genuinely trying to solve the problem, unlike some other European governments. A couple of inadequate bright spots in the gloom are the 100 people now being sheltered at the King Baudouin stadium, and the barbecue that local residents ran for rough sleepers along the canal.

Words and music and merde. I’m off to La Monnaie / De Munt next week to see Philippe Boesmans’ last opera, On Purge Bébé, based on Georges Feydeau’s toilet-humour farce. If you ever wondered who is responsible for the translations and surtitles at the opera house, and what the job entails, the man in question is called Jo Heyvaert and there is an interview with him in Lyrik. [🇫🇷]

1000 Brussels is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.