Jonathan Stubbs's Blog

The Tributary...

“With the frantic urgings of his parents he packed his belongings and left for Cadiz in the hope of fleeing Spain for a new life abroad. Upon arriving he found the town under nationalist control, with opportunities to leave extremely limited. Determined not to become embroiled in the conflict, he took a number manual labour jobs, kept his head down, and avoided attracting any kind of attention to himself. Within a year he had met my mother, and after the war he opened a tapas bar serving the finest cured chorizo in the city, in which people from across the political and social spectrum, covertly or not, came from far and wide to sample. The bar became a vibrant melting pot that buzzed with hope and optimism for the future on those balmy summer evenings; its small, secluded garden terrace becoming a regular haunt of prominent writers and correspondents from the international brigade, before persecution forced them underground and led to them leaving the country in droves. The bar also became a place of reconciliation, and for this my father was immensely proud, where people recognised their similarities and shared culture, rather than their differences, through their love of good food and sweet sherry.” – Jonathan Stubbs, The Tributary

The Tributary...

“Watching in stunned disbelief, Maria gasped as it froze in midair, mid-flight – its bizarre, tiny, yet strangely endearing, humanoid-like fingers twitching as it struggled to comprehend its newly found captive status – the thin membrane between its large, fully extended wings as it hung in the air, glowing in the light like some ghoulish, satanic effigy – a trophy to some despicable act.” Jonathan Stubbs, The Tributary

The Tributary...

“During gaming interludes, Abe spoke of ranching. He spoke of working the land. He talked of how nurturing, cultivating and managing the land had shaped and bequeathed an honest living in return. He spoke of how toiling in the wind and the rain and the heat made you feel alive and at one with the land; about how it made you feel integral and proud, fulfilled and begot. To ranch, you were sun-coloured, weathered and beat, nuanced and whole, working in true natural partnership. Impressed, Maria had sipped from her straw. She had known exactly what he meant.” – Jonathan Stubbs, The Tributary

Robert Capa, Berlin & Art through Adversity

“Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa” by Jane Rogoyska.

This looks fascinating. I know of no other war or conflict that acted as more of an inspiration to so many writers, artists and intellects as the Spanish civil war. Waterloo? The Crimean? Perhaps. But it seems the natural heir to Paris in its heyday. Berlin? Now Berlin’s intriguing. How’s this for a plot? Two lovers separated by a wall, reunited decades later after its fall. Been done before? Too doe-eyed? Maybe not. There’s nothing like a fresh perspective.

The perils of fictionalised history & Pre-school education

Just read a great semi-autobiographical passage in Les Misérables: Part Three, Marius. In it Hugo’s character, Marius Pontmercy, discovers that his father, a kind and humble man, who has just died and whom he had never been allowed to know or acknowledge due to the cruel actions of his prejudiced, ultra-royalist, aristocratic grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand, was in fact a great man and a hero of the Republic and the Revolution. Upon discovering this, Marius, in his despair, revises everything he had ever believed about the history of the nation from ’93 onwards. Where once he saw chaos and darkness and the death of the monarchy and the ancien régime, he now saw liberty and light and the birth of a nation. In Napoléon, where he once saw a tyrant, a usurper and the Ogre of Corsica, he now saw the architect of a new French order shining light and liberty over the rest of darkened Europe. Hugo then proceeds to counter his new-found discovery by revealing the mistakes of his blind idolatry. In seeing the divine he fails to recognise the brutality, the murderous intent and the indiscriminate force and violence that twinned his genius. He saw the glorious depictions and not The Third of May, 1808. A cautionary tale, perhaps, for all writers and readers of historical fiction. Also, great exponent of Hugo’s lifelong cause to improve education. In the UK we have a huge disparity in the vocabulary of children from different backgrounds at the age of 5. My experience and strong belief is that children should be learning to read from 3 onwards. This results in children starting school with confidence and a desire to read and learn. My own experience – our daughter is 5 and has a reading age of 7 – is that this massively increases understanding and the ability to absorb and learn. This doesn’t impinge on childhood. Childhood is a magical and sacred time. This is not about pushy parents, it’s about laying the foundations for our children to maximise their educational journeys instead of struggling, not enjoying learning, falling behind, losing interest, and ultimately being lost to education. Education is not just about getting a job; it is not just about teaching; it is about parenting and parental understanding of why education is so important to their child’s development. Education is a lifelong force that fires the imagination and sparks and enriches creativity. You’ll never be the same person you could have been without it. Pre-school teaching is the key. I’m not saying it’s a magic wand, but I’m convinced that most of our social and economic woes would be solved by its implementation. I believed in this and I implemented it, and our 5-year-old hoovers up knowledge. She still plays and enjoys her childhood and does everything a 5-year-old should do; only she does it with an inherent love of reading and writing. I realise that this is difficult for a lot of parents, but that’s why the government should step in and invest in our children and the nation’s long-term future for once, instead of the usual short-term gain. As I said, education is not just about getting a job, and those who say it should be are wrong. Those who say we should accept lower standards of education because there are fewer skilled jobs and that our children will only go on to work in factories anyway are gravely mistaken. We shouldn’t pull the plug on education because there are less skilled, professional jobs. We should do the opposite. We should continue to improve education so we can build a new economy with new jobs, new creative industries and new professions. I think this could be another lifelong cause!