Watching: Official Secrets

It's not been a good month for film: lots of Downton Abbey, lots of Joker, lots of Judy and re-runs of the NT Live Fleabag; tonight's six o'clock showing of Official Secrets was the first time in over a month there's been a film we were interested in seeing at a time that works for us (slightly earlier than ideal, but doable)*.

Official Secrets stars Keira Knightley as Katharine Gun, the GCHQ staffer who leaked a memo exposing US attempts to put pressure on UN security council members to support a second resolution in favour of the Iraq War in 2003, along with Matt Smith as Martin Bright, the Observer journalist who published the memo. Knightley is excellent as Gun, passionately opposed to the war and cynical about Blair's statements and so outraged at the request to provide material that it was clear would be used to blackmail UN delegates that she gives in to the momentary impulse to pass a copy to a friend who is active in the anti-war movement, without considering the possible consequences to herself and her Kurdish refugee husband. (The story of the husband made me rather nostalgic for the Home Office of 15 years ago, because I think that even without a breach of the Official Secrets Act to consider things would go much harder for the couple now.) The Observer journalists' investigation and championing of the story adds a bit of light relief, and Matt Smith is a very likeable supporting character even if his Bright comes across as essentially a swearier version of the Eleventh Doctor. A host of other British acting greats appear in smaller roles (Ralph Fiennes as Ben Emmerson, defending counsel, Tamsin Greig, Kenneth Cranham and many others), and the film manages to build up the tension as it approaches the final courtroom scene. (I have to say, I hadn't actually remembered the outcome of the case anyway.) It's not a great film, but it's an enjoyable one, and it also felt like a worthwhile one as once again have a government prepared to lie to the British people to get its own way. And it certainly didn't make me regret the £10 a month I give to Liberty...

*I am currently feeling a bit disenchanted with the Picturehouse in general, as on top of the recent run of dross it appears that they have decided not to show the new Star Wars film in Oxford, passing it over in favour of Cats. I'm not sure why "both" isn't an option.

Reading: Incalculable Diffusion

After a long hard week, and having just finished a book I was slightly disappointed by, I wanted to spend the weekend reading something comforting that I'd be sure to enjoy. So obviously, I picked Incalculable Diffusion, the third volume of Clorinda Cathcart's Circle, the companion series to the Comfortable Courtesan novels, and it was exactly what I needed.

The title, Incalculable Diffusion, is taken from the wonderful concluding sentence of Middlemarch, describing Dorothea Brooke: 'But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.' In this case, it describes Clorinda's influence on those who are perhaps a little more distant from the centre of her circle than the subjects of earlier volumes. I particularly liked a couple of stories focusing on the lives of some of the domestic servants from the series, as that's not a perspective one often sees in historical fiction, and the two concluding stories, set 10-15 years after the conclusion of the main series and depicting some of the younger characters ("the Raxdell House nursery-set") reaching adulthood.