Goodwood Revival 2023 | Saturday Day 2

A visual testimony ...

 

"REMAINS OF THE DAY" / Garderobe abandoned building

 

Why Liz Truss gets an honours list, despite only being PM for 49 days

Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth wrote to the Prime Minister calling on him to block Ms Truss’s yet-to-be published resignation honours list.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/national/23795191.unfair-call-mini-budget-tax-cuts-unfunded-truss-claim/

 

( … ) Ahead of the speech, Labour frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth wrote to the Prime Minister calling on him to block Ms Truss’s yet-to-be published resignation honours list.

 

In the letter to Mr Sunak, he said: “Families and business across Britain are still paying (the) price for the Conservative Party crashing the economy and leaving working people worse, with higher taxes, higher mortgages and higher food and energy bills.

 

“Despite this, it has been widely reported that Liz Truss has submitted up to 14 people to receive resignation honours.

 

“This means that those who crashed the economy, who left millions to pay more for their mortgage and who undermined our economic institutions could receive an award.

 

“I urge you to block these honours.”

 

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper mocked Ms Truss.

 

She said: “Liz Truss giving a speech on economic growth is like an arsonist giving a talk on fire safety.”

Boris, the Lord & the Russian Spy | Dispatches | Channel 4 Documentaries

 This article is more than 2 months old

Queen was asked to block Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage, claims documentary

 

Exclusive: Channel 4 film says officials contacted the palace in 2020 owing to concerns about Lord Lebedev’s father’s links to Putin regime

 

Pippa Crerar and Luke Harding

Sun 25 Jun 2023 13.59 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jun/25/queen-was-asked-to-block-evgeny-lebedevs-peerage-claims-documentary

 

Government officials asked whether the late Queen would block Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage because of concerns that he could be a national security risk due to his father’s links to the Putin regime, a documentary has claimed.

 

The aides contacted Buckingham Palace in July 2020 to request that the monarch intervene, which she was constitutionally entitled to do, after Boris Johnson decided to press ahead with the controversial peerage despite warnings from the intelligence agencies, according to the film-makers.

 

The Palace is understood to have refused, fearing that the irregular request would drag the Queen into controversial political matters, and his elevation to the House of Lords as Baron Lebedev of Hampton and Siberia went ahead that December.

 

The Guardian first reported in October 2020 that the UK security services had briefed the House of Lords Appointments Commission (Holac), which scrutinises the nomination of new peers, that Lebedev was viewed as a potential national security risk because of his father, Alexander Lebedev, a billionaire oligarch.

 

Yet although they did not say that Evgeny himself was a risk, they did raise his father’s ongoing relationship with the Kremlin, according to the Channel 4 documentary Boris, the Lords & the Russian Spy: Dispatches.

 

Two intelligence officers were invited into Downing Street to brief Johnson in person about their security concerns in spring 2020, according to the documentary. Officials then took the unusual move of contacting the palace, it claimed.

 

Lord Clark, a Labour peer and member of Holac who vetted Lebedev’s nomination, said Johnson was “quite determined” to “get his own way”, that he “threatened” the usual conventions and “tried to overrule – and did overrule” security advisers and Holac.

 

Speaking publicly for the first time about the nomination, he said that it would have been unprecedented for No 10 to ask for the Queen to intervene. “I’ve never heard of officials seeking a meeting with Her Majesty to discuss these issues,” he said.

 

“We’ve got to remember these people [officials], they are aware of things which you and I, aren’t aware of. Therefore they have knowledge. They were really concerned about this. They thought it was a major, major mistake.”

 

Johnson has run into further trouble over Lords appointments since being forced out from Downing Street last year, with just seven of the names out of an original 16 on his controversial resignation honours list being awarded peerages.

 

Clark said of Lebedev’s peerage: “Every other prime minister by and large followed the conventions. Boris Johnson was quite determined that he was going to get his own way.

 

“And that threatened the whole notion of conventions which make British government work. And it was a real threat. He disregarded the constitution, and that is a very dangerous position.”

 

He added: “He tried to overrule – and did overrule – the security advisers and the House of Lords Appointments Commission. The whole point of [Holac] was actually to try and give the civil population a real say in the safety, their safety, of the country.”

 

A spokesperson for Johnson told the Guardian: “Boris Johnson is fully supportive of Lord Lebedev’s appointment. As the government has previously confirmed, Holac and security advice was not overruled. The proper process was followed. As this programme makes clear, there were no concerns about Lord Lebedev.

 

“Lord Lebedev is a British citizen. He has invested in British journalism and has extensively criticised the Russian regime. It is not right to judge people on the basis of their country of birth or the sound of their surname. This is a tiresome and xenophobic campaign.”

 

However, Lord Bew, the chair of Holac, confirmed last year that MI5 raised security concerns when Lebedev, who owns the Evening Standard and holds a minority stake in the Independent newspapers but derives his wealth from his father, was proposed for a peerage in March 2020.

 

A further update that June then concluded, according to the Sunday Times, that any security risk associated with the newspaper owner would be low, because peers do not routinely see classified government documents.

 

A letter from Lord Bew to Johnson the following month, which has been seen by film-makers, noted: “The security services have highlighted significant potential risks in respect of the nominee’s familial links, and the potential vulnerability of any information obtained by the nominee from his association with UK officials or government.”

 

Dominic Cummings, the former No 10 aide, said in March 2022 that he was in the room when Johnson was told of “serious reservations” that “parts of the deep state” had about his plan to award Lebedev a peerage, and that Johnson had reacted furiously.

 

In a controversial break with precedent, Johnson decided to press ahead with Lebedev’s proposed peerage regardless. He argued that, as there was no evidence linking Lord Lebedev himself to the Putin regime or Russian intelligence, it could go ahead.

 

A spokesperson for Lord Lebedev told the documentary makers: “He is familiar with the security advice and understands no such attempt was made by the security services to persuade the PM to withdraw the nomination.”

 

Lebedev has previously said he is “not a security risk to this country, which I love”, and recently issued a statement through one of the newspapers he owns, the Evening Standard, in which he dismissed the “farcical” speculation as Russophobia.

 

Alexander Lebedev, a KGB spy in London between 1988 and 1992, was sanctioned by Canada in May 2022, together with 13 other Russian oligarchs, for allegedly facilitating Vladimir Putin’s “senseless” full-scale attack of Ukraine.

 

The documentary claims that Canada’s decision to sanction Lebedev was in part based on intelligence which, its makers understand, came from MI6, although the British government had not itself imposed sanctions on the former KGB officer.

 

Dennis Molinaro, a Canadian former national security analyst, told the film-makers that he thought it likely Lebedev “has some type of connection to the Kremlin and to Putin and is worthy of being sanctioned in Canada … It would be unusual for the Canadian government to make a decision about sanctioning someone in the UK without having some information on that individual from the UK.

 

“It’s unclear why at the political level [in the UK], nothing’s been done in terms of sanctioning him. My concern would be based on Alexander’s history in the UK, that he has been engaged in a level of influence operations in the UK.

 

“If you have politicians that can be compromised by foreign states, it can lead to sharing of secrets. It could lead to steering of policy in their interests. It could lead to a fracturing of an alliance that the west has depended on to maintain the current international order and system. If that goes, we don’t have much left.”

 

Alexander Lebedev has been approached for comment. Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

 

 This article was amended on 27 June 2023 to clarify the extent of Evgeny Lebedev’s role in two newspapers; he owns the Evening Standard and holds a minority stake in the Independent.

258 years of the British Museum / What a Scandal at the British Museum Reveals

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

What a Scandal at the British Museum Reveals

Sept. 16, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/16/opinion/museum-artifacts-looting.html

 

Credit...Rozalina Burkova

By Jason Felch

Mr. Felch is a co-author of “Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum.”

 

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The news that roughly 2,000 objects, dating from antiquity to the 19th century, have disappeared over a decade from the vast storerooms of the British Museum — a fact the museum acknowledged a few weeks ago — should be enough to endanger the job security of any museum’s director. Add in the news that the thief is suspected to have been a curator of Greek antiquities at the museum, and that the precious objects were being peddled in the digital marketplace, and you can understand why the museum’s director recently resigned.

 

These revelations have shaken the staid museum world and raised important questions about security, record keeping and funding priorities. But the root problem goes deeper, to the origins of our national museums. And the fix will take more than new security protocols.

 

The British Museum must use this scandal as an opportunity to update the dusty notion of the so-called universal museum — rethinking how these institutions can exist in a 21st-century world where the sharing and blending of cultures has never been more crucial. Rather than resisting calls to repatriate contested objects in their collections, museums should be transparent about their holdings and how they were acquired. They should embark on a campaign of generous, long-term loans that allows objects to circulate freely across borders. And they should embrace digital tools to open their storage facilities to public scrutiny.

 

This is an opportunity to radically reimagine the mission and purpose of the universal museum — places like the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre, the Prado and the British Museum — and what they owe to the world.

 

The dream of a “universal” or “encyclopedic” museum was born centuries ago as a product of the Enlightenment. During the 1700s, in a burst of noblesse oblige, many art collections were moved from private drawing rooms into public spaces, where they theoretically could be appreciated by all. The grand institutions that were built over the next century to house them were established on the notion that access to the world’s art and artifacts would foster an enlightened, democratic culture — and, implicitly or explicitly, on the idea that only institutions in the West could properly preserve, protect and study the world’s great wonders.

 

The Enlightenment led into the age of empire, and these new museums were quickly filled with plunder. Thomas Bruce (a.k.a. Lord Elgin) whisked sculptures from the Parthenon away to London. “The Winged Victory of Samothrace” landed in the Louvre. The “Benin Bronzes” were dispersed around the globe, including to the Met. Egypt’s Nefertiti bust was shipped off to Berlin.

 

At the time, many considered this kind of acquisition to be benign, even necessary, arguing that the museums would be suitable curators and custodians of the objects. That view is still invoked as the rationale to keep vast collections of antiquities in museum storerooms now. In 2002, more than a dozen leading museums, including the Louvre and the Met, signed on to a “Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums,” partly as a retort to Greece’s nagging claims for a return of the Parthenon marbles in London and to the growing criticism that these museums embodied a colonial view of culture that needed correcting.

 

“Over time, objects so acquired — whether by purchase, gift or partage — have become part of the museums that have cared for them, and by extension part of the heritage of the nations which house them,” the statement read. “To narrow the focus of museums whose collections are diverse and multifaceted would therefore be a disservice to all visitors.”

 

But the theft of objects from the bowels of the British Museum put the lie to that threadbare view: If these institutions fail at the fundamental task of physically protecting the treasures they are supposedly preserving, how can they justify keeping things they themselves have taken from other societies?

 

Indeed, the British Museum thefts might have gone unnoticed if not for an antiquities dealer who was browsing eBay and recognized an ancient Roman cameo as one from the museum’s collection. The dealer notified the museum in 2021 that, after tracking and buying many such objects, he had identified the anonymous seller via a PayPal account. The evidence presented by the dealer was doubly disturbing: Not only were the thefts an inside job, but they were allegedly carried out by a curator (who is now facing a police investigation) whose duty was to protect these objects.

 

As an investigative reporter, I spent years uncovering how the J. Paul Getty Museum, along with peer institutions in Boston, New York and elsewhere, had built world-class collections of Classical antiquities in the 1980s and ’90s by doing business with a thriving black market. After the Getty’s curator was criminally charged by the Italian government (a case that was later dropped when a three-judge panel ruled that the statute of limitations had expired), the mounting evidence compelled several museums to return over 100 looted antiquities to Italy, Greece, Turkey and beyond.

 

Several antiquities dealers have likewise been heavily involved in the theft and sale of antiquities from across Asia, selling them to collectors and museums, including some in the United States. Some of the dealers have since faced criminal charges, and federal agents at Homeland Security Investigations, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency usually charged with investigating antiquities trafficking, have worked with federal and state prosecutors to seize and repatriate tens of thousands of looted objects.

 

European museums are facing a similar reckoning about their colonial acquisitions. A report commissioned by France’s president recommended the restitution of major artifacts and any illegally obtained works to African countries on the basis of bilateral agreements. Last year, Germany announced it would return more than 1,000 bronzes from the historical Kingdom of Benin.

 

As the very first of the universal museums, the British Museum built its collection over several hundred years of colonial boondoggles and the result is a treasure house of epic proportions: The collection contains some eight million objects (nobody knows for sure), of which only about 4.5 million have been fully documented online. A mere 1 percent are on display. But the museum is largely prohibited by law from disposing of its holdings, and it has often justified its position by invoking its ability to safeguard the world’s treasures.

 

That position no longer makes sense. The universal museum, a relic of the Enlightenment, was never truly universal: Virtually all universal museums reside in Western cities, far beyond the reach of many of the communities from which their objects were taken. And there is nothing enlightened about hoarding the world’s culture in storage, unseen by many and often, apparently, unsafe.

 

Jason Felch is a former investigative reporter for The Los Angeles Times and a co-author of “Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum.”

 

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

 

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Coco Chanel exhibition reveals fashion designer was part of French resistance

 

Coco Chanel exhibition reveals fashion designer was part of French resistance

 

Previously unseen documents to go on display at V&A alongside evidence of her collusion with Nazis

 

Jess Cartner-Morley

@JessC_M

Sat 9 Sep 2023 06.00 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2023/sep/09/coco-chanel-exhibition-fashion-designer-french-resistance

 

A major retrospective of Coco Chanel has unearthed evidence that the fashion designer was a documented member of the French resistance. The previously unseen documents will go on display, along with contradictory evidence that she operated as a Nazi agent.

 

The documents relating to Chanel’s activities in wartime Paris strike a serious note within what is likely to be the most glamorous exhibition of the year, with more than 50 tweed suits – including a bubblegum pink set belonging to Lauren Bacall – on view at Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto, when it opens at the V&A in London on 16 September.

 

“We couldn’t do a show about Chanel and not address her wartime record,” said the curator, Oriole Cullen, who has expanded a show first created at the Palais Galliera in Paris in 2020 with a new curation that delves more deeply into Chanel’s links with Britain as well as her wartime activities.

 

Previously unseen documents highlight the name “Gabrielle AKA Coco Chanel” on a list of 400,000 people whose part in the resistance is backed up by official records. “We have verification from the French government, including a document from 1957, which confirms her active participation in the resistance,” said Cullen.

 

The museum will also display strong evidence that Chanel collaborated with the Germans in occupied Paris, including transcripts of postwar interrogation of three Nazi officials who all separately name her as a trusted source.

 

“The new evidence doesn’t exonerate her. It only makes the picture more complicated. All we can say is that she was involved with both sides,” said Cullen.

 

In contrast to the museum’s recent Dior show, which told the story of a fashion house that has outlived its founder by 66 years, the Chanel exhibition ends with her death in 1971. The exhibition is personal, and therefore, by dint of Chanel’s controversial life, political.

 

Cullen points to a childhood spent in a French convent after the death of her mother and disappearance of her father as having produced a character whose inclination for self-protection made her instinctively rightwing. She said the designer was “more than anything a survivor, always on the lookout for opportunities to move forward through life”.

 

During the early 1940s, Chanel had a relationship with the Nazi officer Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage, which she leveraged to free her nephew, Andrré Palasse, from a German prisoner-of war-camp.

 

“We did not want to ignore her wartime record – but first and foremost, this is a fashion exhibition,” said Cullen.

 

Fragile evening pieces usually stored under wraps in the museum’s archive will be on display, along with the groundbreaking “evening trousers” with which a young Chanel scandalised French society. One room will tell the story of Chanel’s No 5 perfume, which became a signature scent worn by leading figures from Marilyn Monroe to Andy Warhol.

 

Many of the 100 pieces added to the show since the version shown in Paris delve into her connections with Britain. A portrait in oils of Chanel, painted by Winston Churchill, attests to a close relationship with British society forged through her romance with the Duke of Westminster. The Nazis had given the designer the code name of “Westminster”.

 

The show also highlights her less well-known connection to British manufacturing. On display will be a tomato red evening gown in silk velvet, with matching elbow-length gloves, made for Chanel by the Manchester Velvet company in 1932. During that decade, Coco established a company – British Chanel Ltd – for the manufacture of her designs in British fabrics including Northern Irish linens, and Nottingham lace.

 

“Chanel was highly exacting, so the connection attests to the existence of a high-quality textile industry in Britain, which sadly no longer exists,” said Cullen.