Newsnight Review's Victorian Party

Was Queen Victoria in fact a raunchy, fun-kind-of-Queeny? Apparently the latest film on the nineteenth century matriarch The Young Queen Victoria attempts to argue this. And yet it seems to fail. Queen Vic meets Albert (who doesn't look his age) and, according to Ekow Eshun, "nothing happens", which also means that this film may not be quite as bad as alleged. But: It looks wet, it looks taylor-made for Yanks, and - as Kirsty Wark claims - ushers in the "D'Arcyfication" of Victoria. So I suppose in-keeping with pleasing American audiences: thanks, but no thanks. 

And what is this? Jonathan Littell has added a book to the endlessly repetitive canon of books on the Nazi period. This time it seems to be about a German who is somehow complicit, but this no name author attempts to ask 'difficult questions' about German guilt and compliance and horror. What a novel idea! That's never been done before! I long for the day that authors stop writing hackneyed novels on the Nazi past. Most of them have little historical awareness of the period and repeat, repeat, and once again repeat. No more, please, it's been done to death....

...and sure enough Ekow Eshun and Kate Williams like the book. And lo and behold she praises the central character as "a tourist of the Nazi regime". And apparently he goes to "Auswitsch" (sic). Thanks Kate. All these points offer a good indication to steer well clear. 

And now for some Brown-tongue-licking, a session of good old fashioned man-on-man fellatio. Brown's wankery in front of the house of representatives of that oh-so-great country reached almost Blairite proportions of arse-licking. And it made it onto Newsnight Review! Who really believes the bullshit of Americans and America being exceptionalism?