Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "mick-jagger"

Potential students of the London School of Economics ought perhaps to rethink their choice of university, particularly if they plan to study international relations. After all, Muammar Qaddafi had to kill thousands of his own people before the LSE’s distinguished academics realized he might be something of a dictator.

However, if your plan is to study how to be a hypocritical, corrupt bastard, then the LSE is for you. There’s money in it, you see.

The LSE, which claims to educate many of tomorrow’s leaders, agreed to take $2.4 million from Qaddafi’s son, Seif el-Islam. For its Global Governance program, of all things. By the time the current murderous civil war engulfed Libya, the LSE had received 300,000 pounds. It now says it’ll divert that donation, presumably to a charity.

Meanwhile, Seif el-Islam Qaddafi received a PhD from the LSE. An inquest may be undertaken, it seems, into accusations of plagiarism by “Dr. Qaddafi.”

I’d have little to say about all this if the LSE had come out and said, “Look, we’ve had government cutbacks. We needed the money. We decided, let’s sell a doctorate to the son of the Libyan flake and use the cash for educating others who’ll go on to great careers like other LSE alumni such as Mick Jagger and Sir Veeraswamy Ringadoo, the first president of Mauritius.”

Like Tennesse Williams, I try to look mildly on the peccadilloes of human beings. And like Ernest Hemingway I believe one should take the money and run.

Hypocrisy and self-righteousness, however, disturb my calm, to put it mildly. Particularly when it’s the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of well-heeled academics who think they can get away with allowing someone else to get away with murder so long as nobody notices.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

In the Royal Navy, there’s only one kind of facial hair allowed. British Tars are either clean shaven or they sport a beard, known in the service as a “full set.” The antipathy to the mustache is no doubt because of its predominance among the rival landlubber officer class (although it could’ve later been its association with a different kind of “sailor.”)

Book authors now fall into similar categories. There are those who do nothing online and those for whom each book must be accompanied by the full set.

Those who do nothing are usually writers who were already well-known before the web became so important. They don’t need to be online, so they aren’t. Or they’re too old to get into a new kind of writing. Me, I have the internet full set. Here’s what I’ve got going on already for my new book, which is out in two weeks in the UK:

First there’s the updated website, www.mattrees.net. The website is, of course, the equivalent of facial stubble. Everyone’s doing it, even those who don’t get around to growing a full set. Some of them are pretty rotten and look like they’d itch… You can tell that the writer only sports the stubble because he thinks he has to – a fashion necessity. He’d get rid of it in a moment if the fashion changed.

I’m very involved in the design of my site. I put lots of Extra Features in it. You can hear much of the music from MOZART’S LAST ARIA, my new book. (It’s a historical thriller in which Mozart’s sister tries to uncover the secrets of the great composer’s death.) I have a couple of brief essays about how I came to write the book; how I researched it; how I structured it to mirror my favorite Mozart piano sonata. A photo tour of all the real locations featured in the novel, and images of many of the real characters from the book.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.