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WORK TITLE: A Flag Worth Dying For
WORK NOTES: pub’d in England as Worth Dying For
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1959
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: British
http://www.thewhatandthewhy.com/about/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Marshall_(journalist) * https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-marshall-283b9598/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May 1, 1959.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. LBC, Paris bureau correspondent; Independent Radio News, Paris correspondent; Sky Net, Middle East correspondent, foreign correspondent, diplomatic editor, and foreign affairs editor. Also worked for BBC Radio. Worked variously as a runner, painter, researcher, and decorator.
AWARDS:The New York TV Festival Prize; Royal Television Society Prize, 2004.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to Daily Telegraph, the Times, Independent, Guardian, and Sunday Times. Editor and founder of The What and the Why.
SIDELIGHTS
Tim Marshall has maintained a longstanding career within the broadcast journalism industry. After failing to build an artistic career for himself, he found entry level work at a news station. He has since worked various foreign correspondence positions with Sky News, BBC Radio, and IRN. He has also served as Sky News’s diplomatic editor. His work has garnered several awards, including a New York TV Festival Award and Royal Television Society Award. He now maintains his own independent blogs. One of them, Foreign Matters, landed on the 2010 shortlist for the Orwell Prize. His writing has also been featured in several periodicals, such as the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Additionally, Marshall has published several books.
A Flag Worth Dying For
A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols is also known in England as Worth Dying for: The Power and Politics of Flags. Within the book, Marshall delves into the history of our use of flags to represent organizations and countries throughout the globe. According to Marshall’s findings, the use of flags originated from the rise of the silk industry. Their regular usage, however, comes from history as well as our association of color with specific meanings. Each nation developed their flag according to which symbols best represented their overall goals and histories, which is why certain elements are more common within some parts of the world than others. In his analysis of the meanings behind the symbolic choices used for different national flags, Marshall also unpacks their cultural significance and impact.
One Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “a treasure vault for vexillologists, full of meaning beyond the hue and thread of the world’s banners.” In an issue of Publishers Weekly, a reviewer said: “Marshall presents an informative survey of these highly visible symbols of national or international pride.” Geographical writer Chris Fitch commented that the book’s contents are “deeply layered in meaning, and can stimulate powerful and wildly varying emotions.” A USA Today reviewer wrote: “A Flag Worth Dying For is a fresh explanation of symbols we often take for granted and a keen meditation on what flags mean to those who embrace or recoil from them.”
Prisoners of Geography
In Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics, Marshall seeks to uncover the deep relationship between geography and a nation’s political motives and goals. To help guide readers through his points, Marshall presents maps of each country profiled in every chapter. Marshall uses these visual aids to explain how the shape and border of each country or region came to define their aims as an independent government entity. For instance, certain elements of a country’s geographical landscape present a stark disadvantage, forcing them to turn to outside sources to obtain the resources they want or need. Their location upon the globe determines how they traverse the world and who they are most likely to come into immediate contact with, as well as why certain nations do not get along as well as others.
On the Make Wealth History website, Jeremy Williams stated: “Prisoners of Geography is a useful overview of geopolitics.” He added: “If you haven’t read anything like this before, it will be genuinely enlightening.” Prospect reviewer Chris Tilbury remarked: “Marshall succeeds in making lucid a complex topic and the book is difficult to put down.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor said: “Marshall’s broad survey of events in the light of geographical realities goes a long way to explaining Putin’s concerns—and, for that matter, those of the CIA as well.” Miles Rayner, writing on the Words & Dirt website, commented: “In the final analysis, Prisoners of Geography is an engaging and worthwhile read.” He added: “Marshall doesn’t have the power to settle our geopolitical problems, but he does bring us one step closer to understanding them.”
"Dirty Northern B*st*rds!" and Other Tales from the Terraces
“Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain’s Football Chants deals with cultural history on a smaller scale in comparison to Marshall’s other books. Within “Dirty Northern B*st*ards!”, Marshall addresses the close relationship Britain has with football, otherwise known as soccer in the United States. A large part of the culture surrounding British football is the use of chants, which vary by region and seem to be split between the Southern and Northern parts of the country. Several chants used in British football games even come from nursery songs, but have been repurposed for the sport. Marshall delves into how these chants originated, as well as their status as representing a larger part of British history. He profiles each popular chant individually, discussing where they originally came from and how they came to be used in football games in certain areas of the country.
London Independent contributor Simon Redfern called the book a “light-hearted but well-researched history.” On the London Telegraph website, Jim White remarked: “Marshall’s thesis is nicely researched, well considered and neatly paced.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Geographical, December, 2016, Chris Fitch, review of Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags, p. 64.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2017, review of A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols.
Publishers Weekly, May 8, 2017, review of A Flag Worth Dying For, p. 50.
USA Today, July 3, 2017, “In time for July 4, a salute for A Flag Worth Dying For,” p. 05D.
Washington Post, August 4, 2017, Moises Naim, “Book World: The history and emotion behind our reverence for national flags,” review of A Flag Worth Dying For.
ONLINE
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (September 30, 2015), review of Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics.
London Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ (April 16, 2007), Tim Marshall, “Every newsroom needs a maverick.”
London Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (September 13, 2014), Simon Redfern, review of “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: the Story of Britain’s Football Chants.
London Speaker Bureau Website, https://londonspeakerbureau.com/ (February 13, 2018), author profile.
London Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (August 9, 2014), Jim White, review of “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces.
Make Wealth History, https://makewealthhistory.org/ (August 17, 2016), Jeremy Williams, review of Prisoners of Geography.
Prospect, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ (February 18, 2016), Chris Tilbury, review of Prisoners of Geography.
Speakers Corner, https://www.speakerscorner.co.uk/ (February 13, 2018), author profile.
Washington Post Book World, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ (January 8, 2016), Colin Woodard, review of Prisoners of Geography.
What and the Why, http://www.thewhatandthewhy.com (February 13, 2018), author profile.
Words & Dirt, http://www.words-and-dirt.com/ (April 23, 2016), Miles Raymer, review of Prisoners of Geography.
Tim Marshall was Diplomatic Editor and foreign correspondent for Sky News. After thirty years’ experience in news reporting and presenting, he left full time news journalism to concentrate on writing and analysis.
Originally from Leeds, Tim arrived at broadcasting from the road less traveled. Not a media studies or journalism graduate, in fact not a graduate at all, after a wholly unsuccessful career as a painter and decorator he worked his way through newsroom nightshifts, and unpaid stints as a researcher and runner before eventually securing himself a foothold on the first rung of the broadcasting career ladder.
After three years as IRN’s Paris correspondent and extensive work for BBC radio and TV, Tim joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, Tim became Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem.
Tim also reported in the field from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990’s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade, where he was one of the few western journalists who stayed on to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids. Tim was in Kosovo to greet the NATO troops on the day they advanced into Pristina. In recent years he covered the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.
He has written for many of the national newspapers including the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.
Tim’s first book, Shadowplay: The Overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, was a bestseller in former Yugoslavia and continues to be one of the most highly regarded accounts of that period. A second book, “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain’s Football Chants was published in 2014, to widespread acclaim. His third book is ‘Prisoners of Geography’ and has been published in the UK, USA. Germany, Japan, Turky, and Taiwan. His latest book is ‘Worth Dying For. The Power and Politics of Flags’. The paperback, and a U.S version of this are due out in the spring of this year.
Tim has been shot with bird pellet in Cairo, hit over the head with a plank of wood in London, bruised by the police in Tehran, arrested by Serbian intelligence, detained in Damascus, declared persona non grata in Croatia, bombed by the RAF in Belgrade and tear-gassed all over the world. However, he says none of this compares with the experience of going to see his beloved Leeds United away at Millwall FC in London.
The former Diplomatic Editor and foreign correspondent for Sky News, Tim Marshall brings thirty years’ experience in reporting, presenting and writing about current affairs and international news to the corporate circuit as a keynote speaker and conference facilitator. Through his speech, blogs and books, including New York Times bestseller ‘Prisoners of Geography’, Tim translates his political analyses of world affairs into terms that appeal to all audiences.
Conference FacilitatorsInternational AffairsKeynote SpeakersPolitics & Current AffairsTV Presenters
After thirty years’ experience in broadcasting, Tim Marshall is well-placed to provide a sharp political commentary and analysis of global affairs.
A generalist who is able to join the dots between specialisms in a wide field, the former Diplomatic Editor and foreign correspondent for Sky News has a knack for boiling down big issues, such as geopolitics and international diplomacy, to broad-brush terms that audiences from different worlds can engage with.
An extremely engaging and insightful speaker. His take on current world events was thought-provoking, yet entertaining.
Insurance Insider
As well as operating on the corporate circuit as a keynote speaker and conference facilitator, Tim has published several critically acclaimed books, including the 2015 New York Times best-seller ‘Prisoner of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics’.
His first book, Shadowplay: The Overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, continues to be one of the most highly regarded accounts of that period, while his second, ‘”Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain’s Football Chants’, was published in 2014 to widespread acclaim.
Originally hailing from Leeds, Tim arrived at broadcasting from the road less travelled. Neither a media studies nor journalism graduate, in fact not a graduate at all, he worked his way through newsroom nightshifts, and unpaid stints as a researcher and runner to the news producers. By demonstrating competence, drive, determination and good judgement, he eventually secured himself a foothold on the first rung of the career ladder.
After three years as IRN's Paris correspondent and carrying out extensive work for BBC radio and TV, Tim joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, he became the Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem, and his celebrated six-hour unbroken broadcasting stint as ground attack went in during the Gulf War made news reporting history.
Tim has reported in the field from Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade, where he was one of the few western journalists who stayed on to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids, and he greeted the NATO troops in Kosovo itself on the day that they advanced into Pristina.
He has also been Sky News Europe Correspondent, heading up the Brussels Bureau.
In 2015, Tim launched his website - TheWhatAndTheWhy.Com - to impressive engagement. His blog ‘Foreign Matters’ was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010, and he has received awards from the Royal Television Society and The New York TV Festival. He has also written for numerous national newspapers including the Times, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph.
During his career, Tim has been shot with bird pellet in Cairo, hit over the head with a plank of wood in London, bruised by the police in Tehran, arrested by Serbian intelligence, detained in Damascus, declared persona non grata in Croatia, bombed by the RAF in Belgrade, and tear-gassed all over the world.
He stresses, however, that none of this compares with the experience of going to see his beloved Leeds United away at Millwall FC in London.
His speaking topics include:
- Foreign news and international diplomacy
- Connecting the dots between global events
- Putting the ‘geo’ back into geopolitics
Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than twenty-five years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that worked for the BBC. He has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics and A Flag Worth Dying For. He has written for The Times (London), The Sunday Times (London), The Guardian, The Independent, and Daily Telegraph, and his blog Foreign Matters was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2010. He is founder and editor of the current affairs site TheWhatandtheWhy.com.
Tim Marshall (journalist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tim Marshall
Tim Marshall.JPG
Tim Marshall, 2015
Born Timothy John Marshall
1 May 1959 (age 58)
England
Occupation Journalist, author, broadcaster
Notable credit(s) Sky News, BBC, LBC, IRN
Website www.thewhatandthewhy.com
Tim Marshall is a British journalist, author and broadcaster, known for his analysis of developments in foreign news and international diplomacy.
Marshall (formerly diplomatic editor and also foreign affairs editor for Sky News) is a guest commentator on world events for the BBC,[1] Sky News and a guest presenter on LBC.
He has written four books, including Prisoners of Geography[2] - a New York Times Best Seller[3] & #1 Sunday Times bestseller [4] and 2016 release, Worth Dying For - The Power & Politics Of Flags.[5]
Marshall is founder and editor of news web platform thewhatandthewhy.com, a site for journalists, politicians, foreign affairs analysts and enthusiasts to share their views on world news events.
Contents [hide]
1 Education
2 Career
3 Publications
4 References
5 External links
Education[edit]
Marshall was educated at Prince Henry's Grammar School, a state-funded comprehensive school in the market town of Otley, near Leeds, West Yorkshire.
Career[edit]
Marshall began his journalistic career reporting for LBC and was their Paris Bureau Correspondent for three years. He has also reported for the BBC and has written for a number of national newspapers. He was also the longstanding Foreign Affairs Editor and then Diplomatic Editor for Sky News.
During over twenty-four years at Sky News, Marshall reported from thirty countries and covered the events of twelve wars. He has reported from Europe, the United States, (covering three US Presidential Elections), and Asia, as well as from the field in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade, where he was one of the few western journalists who stayed on to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids. He was in Kosovo on the day NATO troops advanced into Pristina.
Marshall reported from the front line during the invasion of Afghanistan and spent time in Iraq, reporting on the country's transition to democracy. He has reported from Libya, Egypt, Syria and Tunisia during the uprisings across the Arab World. As Sky News Middle East Correspondent, based in Jerusalem, he covered Israel's Gaza disengagement in August 2005. He was also Sky News Europe Correspondent, heading up their Brussels news bureau and also regularly contributed to the channel's former World News Tonight international news bulletin (including as stand-in host).
Marshall's blog, 'Foreign Matters', was short-listed for the Orwell Prize 2010.[6] In 2004 he was a finalist in the Royal Television Society's News Event category for his Iraq War coverage. He won finalist certificates in 2007, for a report on the Mujahideen, and in 2004 for his documentary 'The Desert Kingdom' which featured exclusive access to Crown Prince Abdullah and his palaces.
One of his most notable moments on Sky News involved a six-hour unbroken broadcast during the first Gulf War. He was the last journalist to interview Pakistan's Benazhir Bhutto ahead of her return from exile and subsequent assassination.
Marshall's book, 'Prisoners of Geography'[7] was released in the UK in July 2015 and in the U.S. in October 2015.[8] He continues to broadcast/comment on foreign affairs and is a regular guest on BBC, Sky News and on Monocle 24 Radio's 'Midori House'.[9][10]
Marshall with Robert Elms, BBC London 94.9, August 2014. Interview about Marshall's book 'Dirty Northern B*st*rds'
He is the founder and editor of 'www.thewhatandthewhy.com'.[11] Launched in February 2015, the site analyses world events and has contributions from writers from the world of politics and journalism.
Publications[edit]
Marshall has written four books:
Worth Dying For - The Power & Politics Of Flags [12][13] - is a book which covers the symbolism, culture and history behind the world's flags. Published by Elliott & Thompson (September 2016).
Prisoners of Geography (July 2015) is an international bestseller explaining how a country's geography affects their internal fortunes and international strategy. This book became the No. 1 Sunday Times best seller, a New York Times best seller and during August 2016 was Waterstones 'Non-fiction Book of the Month' [14] & no. 1 best selling paperback. It made the MPs Summer 2015 Reading List[15] and received favourable reviews both internationally and in the UK (including in The Evening Standard[16] and Newsweek).[17]
Dirty Northern B*st*rds – about the history of Britain's football chants (August 2014, Elliott & Thompson). The book was favourably reviewed in The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun and was "Book of the Week" in The Independent's sports section.[18] It was dedicated to the memory of Sky News cameraman Mickey Deane, a longtime colleague and friend of Marshall's, who was shot dead in Cairo in August 2013.[19]
Shadowplay – documenting the downfall of Slobodan Milošević and containing Marshall's account of his experiences during the Yugoslav Wars.
Every newsroom needs a maverick
Sky News' foreign affairs editor got into journalism after leaving school with only a CSE in metalwork
Tim Marshall
Mon 16 Apr ‘07 23.40 BST First published on Mon 16 Apr ‘07 23.40 BST
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It is half past four in the morning. I am on the night bus heading towards Fleet Street accompanied by the night drunks and the immigrants who do the sort of jobs the native population has rejected.
My job? I'm lucky. I'm a budding journalist at LBC radio. I call the rail and tube stations, write down the cancellations and delays, then listen, bursting with pride, as they are read out on the radio. "I wrote that," I think, "and I can write more."
From five to nine I transcribe vital information, such as the fact that the 0750 from Guildford to Waterloo is delayed, pausing only to rush out to Mick's on Fleet Street to get the newsroom coffee and earn myself the title "The Cappuccino Kid". From nine to five I work in News Information researching stories for the "real" journalists. And the best bit? They paid me. I'd have done it for free. In fact on Saturdays and Sundays I did do it for free. It was the only way in for someone who left school at 16 in the early 1980s with just a CSE in metalwork. My time spent as a painter and decorator didn't cut much ice in newsrooms unless they needed a cornice replaced.
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So thank goodness for LBC's "News Inf" head Vivien Rose who gave me an interview and then a chance; a three-day trial that turned into a career.
I'd wanted to be a journalist since hearing the famous BBC radio reports of the D-Day landings. So I dreamed the impossible dream as I painted the toilets at the newly built M6 service station at Sandbach, and snow cemented a factory in Washington near Sunderland. From there to reporting a presidential election in Washington DC was quite a journey, taking in Israel, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.
Today the way in is not via the M6. It is via media studies courses, graduate-entry schemes and work placements. That is positive but not entirely so. Those coming in are usually talented, highly-motivated people but too often they come from similar backgrounds.
A healthy newsroom should reflect the population to which it reports. So as well as the traditional intake of graduates there should always be room for those who somehow along the path of their adventurous lives have fallen into journalism, bringing with them a hint of subversion and humour. I knew one at LBC. He was an IRN news editor in our shared newsroom called Vince McGarry. He once threw a typewriter at me. Well, not so much at me as at the world.
The equivalent nowadays would be to throw your laptop at someone, not something I literally recommend, but the spirit of throwing things should remain and the throwing types should not always be reined in. Such characters can add a can-do spirit to a newsroom.
Sky News attracts some of the cleverest people in television, but we also give less obvious candidates a chance. We have recently taken a vision mixer and made her a weather presenter, a weather presenter is doing an attachment as a science reporter and we are giving a producer a chance at news reporting. In the past one of our script runners ended up as a successful head of foreign news.
To those coming in - work hard and read. Do ask questions but not stupid ones such as a friend was asked recently: "Was the Falklands war in the Pacific?"
To those recruiting: you will take the brightest and best of the media graduates and quite right too, but please find room to look elsewhere, to people desperate to get in, to the self-educated, and to those who will give your newsroom an edge.
Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than twenty-five years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from forty countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics; “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain’s Football Chants; and Shadowplay: The Overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic (a bestseller in former Yugoslavia). He has written for The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph, and his blog Foreign Matters was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2010. He is founder and editor of the current affairs site TheWhatandtheWhy.com.
Tim Marshall – Keynote Speaker
British journalist, writer and broadcaster, best known for his reporting and analysis of developments in foreign news and international diplomacy
Keynote Speaker Category: Future & Technology, Society & Education
Keynote Speaker Topics: Security
Languages: English
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Tim Marshall‘s Biography
Tim Marshall was Diplomatic Editor and Foreign Correspondent for Sky News. After thirty years’ experience in news reporting and presenting, he left full time news journalism to concentrate on writing and analysis.
He has written four books, including Prisoners of Geography – a New York Times Best Seller and #1 Sunday Times bestseller as well as 2016 release, Worth Dying For – The Power & Politics Of Flags.
Marshall began his career in journalism with three years as IRN’s Paris correspondent and extensive work for BBC radio and TV, after which he joined Sky News. Reporting from Europe, the USA and Asia, Tim became Middle East Correspondent based in Jerusalem. His celebrated six-hour unbroken broadcasting stint as ground attack went in during the Gulf War made news reporting history. Marshall also reported in the field from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990’s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade, where he was one of the few western journalists who stayed on to report from one of the main targets of NATO bombing raids. In recent years he covered the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.
Marshall’s first book, Shadowplay: The Overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, was a bestseller in former Yugoslavia and continues to be one of the most highly regarded accounts of that period. A second book, “Dirty Northern B*st*rds!” and Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain’s Football Chants was published in 2014, to widespread acclaim.
Marshall, Tim: A FLAG WORTH DYING FOR
(May 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Marshall, Tim A FLAG WORTH DYING FOR Scribner (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 7, 4 ISBN: 978-1-5011-6833-8
Of flags grand and old, black and blue, marking us and them and giving us all the license we need to kill.Flags, writes British journalist Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World, 2015), are fairly modern expressions of identity; they required the genius of China's silk industry in order to "flourish and spread" and "accompany armies onto battlefields." So they have done from the time of the Silk Road on, each bearing such significance that people have been willing to fight and die in its shadow. The tricolors of Italy and France, for instance, bear red, indicating "the usual blood spilled for independence." The flags of the Scandinavian countries are marked by crosses even though those countries are among the least churchly in the world--and on that note, Marshall points out the apparent irony that the most intensely Christian nations on the planet tend not to have Christian symbols on their flags. Not so the Muslim nations, whose flags bear the symbology of Islam. Bosnians, though predominantly Muslim, could not agree on a flag after the bloody civil war there, so the United Nations imposed one from outside, "devoid of religious or historical symbols." As for the black flags of various groups such as the Islamic State, so reminiscent of the pirates' Jolly Roger, they mean to suggest no good. Conversely, Marshall recounts the history of the LGBT flag, meant, in the view of its creator, the recently deceased Gilbert Baker, to suggest "the diversity of nature" and of people but now absent of its original pink stripe because pink is an unusual color for a flag and thus more expensive to manufacture. Country by country the author considers the great diversity of the world's flags, serving up with offhand affection a lively text full of interesting anecdotes and telling details. A treasure vault for vexillologists, full of meaning beyond the hue and thread of the world's banners.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Marshall, Tim: A FLAG WORTH DYING FOR." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491934279/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d667d926. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491934279
A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols
264.19 (May 8, 2017): p50.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols
Tim Marshall. Scribner, $26 (304p) ISBN 9781-5011-6833-8
In this brisk, entertaining read, Marshall (Prisoners of Geography) successfully answers a puzzling question: how can a simple piece of cloth come to mean so much? Whether the flag flies the Stars and Stripes, the five rings of the Olympics, or the Jolly Roger, Marshall explores its origins and political significance. He attributes the importance of flags partially to the discovery of silk, which allowed them to flutter, not hang. But the meaning of a flag is in the eye of the beholder. The U.S. flag means liberty to American citizens, but oppression to the country's detractors. Marshall pays particular attention to the significance of colors, which transcend borders: red for blood or struggle, white for peace and harmony, blue for the oceans, yellow for gold or wealth. In the Middle East, green stands for Islam. Flags can denote ideology, as in France and China. Modern hate groups appropriate symbols such as the Nazi swastika and the Confederacy's Stars and Bars to make their extreme positions visible. Flags in the developing world, or for transnational organizations such as the UN and NATO, are often aspirational, expressing pride or hope for unification. Marshall presents an informative survey of these highly visible symbols of national or international pride. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols." Publishers Weekly, 8 May 2017, p. 50. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491949114/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d783430b. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491949114
Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags
Chris Fitch
88.12 (Dec. 2016): p64.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Circle Publishing Ltd.
http://www.geographical.co.uk/
WORTH DYING FOR: The Power and Politics of Flags by Tim Marshall; Elliott & Thompson; 16.99 [pounds sterling] (hardback)
This might be the comprehensive flag volume we've all been waiting for--a slick yet detailed and well-researched journey through some of the world's most infamous and interesting flags. Understanding how their different designs came into existence, and the multiple ways in which they are applied, is the driving force through this book.
As you might expect, fairly comprehensive overviews of national histories can be revealed simply by unpicking the symbolism, particularly those with overtly religious or cultural imagery, and Marshall guides us through this myriad of stories admirably. In fact, in many ways it is the complete symbolic irrelevance of some flags to the contemporary identity of their host country which can be most fascinating. This leads to no lack of enthusiasm for the flags in question, which makes you wonder how much design actually matters. Nevertheless, countries across the world that relatively recently wrestled free of their various authoritarian regimes have had to quickly create designs which they feel best tell the story of their nations. This has certainly led to some interesting results (the AK-47 assault rifle on the flag of Mozambique immediately comes to mind).
A concluding chapter reminds us that flags can be symbolically powerful for far more than just nationalities. Everything from the European Union to the so-called Islamic State, the rainbow flag to the Jolly Roger, is deeply layered in meaning, and can stimulate powerful and wildly varying emotions.
----------
Please note: Some tables or figures were omitted from this article.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Fitch, Chris. "Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags." Geographical, Dec. 2016, p. 64. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A476559970/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=466a31d6. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A476559970
In time for July 4, a salute for 'A Flag Worth Dying For'
(July 3, 2017): Lifestyle: p05D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Most Americans know almost from birth the story of the creation of the U.S. flag, how Betsy Ross, a seamstress for the Pennsylvania navy, first designed the Stars and Stripes during the American Revolution.
Or do we?
"That at least is what her grandson told a Historic Society meeting in Philadelphia in 1870," author Tim Marshall writes in his entertaining new book, A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols (Scribner, 272 pp., ***1/2 out of four).
"However, there also exists an invoice submitted to Congress by one Francis Hopkinson, who insisted that in return for designing the flag, Congress owed him 'two casks of ale.' The jury remains out."
So it is with many of the colorful banners that cause chests around the world to swell with pride, often at a military or sporting event.
Marshall, an experienced British journalist and foreign policy analyst, writes with the cool drollery that characterized the work of Christopher Hitchens or Simon Winchester. He tackles a topic that many people take seriously without taking himself seriously, and the result is a book that explains where many of the flags that capture the world's imagination come from and why.
Flags, Marshall writes, are often designed with one idea and then adopted by groups with an entirely different agenda. For example, the Gadsden Flag, the hissing rattlesnake above the words "Don't Tread on Me," was originally a warning "to the British and served to help rouse public opinion against the empire."
In recent years, however, "extremists opposed to the first black president appropriated the flag and gradually, in some minds, it became associated with racism, helped by the fact that Gadsden had been a slave owner."
For this flag as well as the Confederate battle flag, Marshall writes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so sometimes is ugliness."
So it is with the Japanese flag with its simple red dot on a white background. Revered by the Japanese, it's considered "a symbol of darkness" by residents of nations attacked and colonized by Japan.
In Africa, new nations just shucking the yoke of European colonialism veered as far as they could from the colors and symbols associated with their former colonial masters. Many adopted the pan-African colors of green, gold and red for their flags, although the exact origin of these colors as symbols for Africa is unknown. Marshall traces some of this back to the flag of Ethiopia, which once featured a lion striding boldly over horizontal green, gold and red stripes.
Marcus Garvey, leader of the early-20th-century Back to Africa movement, attributed various meanings to the colors, and while his reasoning may have been off, Marshall writes, "the colors became associated with Africa, as did the red, green and yellow or gold on the Ethiopian flag."
A Flag Worth Dying For is a fresh explanation of symbols we often take for granted and a keen meditation on what flags mean to those who embrace or recoil from them.
It's not a book worth dying for, but it's one worth reading.
CAPTION(S):
photo Jolly Thompson
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"In time for July 4, a salute for 'A Flag Worth Dying For'." USA Today, 3 July 2017, p. 05D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A497817633/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ac7cc82a. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A497817633
Book World: The history and emotion behind our reverence for national flags
Moises Naim
(Aug. 4, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Byline: Moises Naim
A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols
By Tim Marshall
Scribner. 290 pp. $26
---
What do America's wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have in common? The most obvious commonality is that the superpower did not do well in these conflicts against seemingly weaker enemies. Another is that in all three wars, U.S. intelligence agencies, war planners and policymakers grossly underestimated the motivating power of nationalism. While Americans went to war to fight communism, terrorism or a murderous dictator who presumably had nuclear weapons, warriors in those countries felt they were defending their homelands from a foreign invader. In their minds, and in the minds of many in their communities, these fighters were first and foremost patriots, not insurgents or terrorists. Misunderstanding and underestimating nationalism as a driver of people's motivation to kill and die for their homeland has been a fatal and recurrent American mistake.
This blind spot of American foreign-policy-makers is as common as it surprising. The obliviousness to the power of nationalism in other societies is surprising because the United States is itself highly nationalistic. American nationalism manifests itself constantly and in myriad ways, from erudite claims about the nation's "exceptionalism" to the reverence its citizens show to the Stars and Stripes, their flag. This reverence is even codified in the Pledge of Allegiance, which schoolchildren, government officials and many Americans often recite at the start of public gatherings. Of course, Americans are not alone in revering a piece of colored cloth. Everywhere, flags serve as a powerful symbol of a nation, its ideals and its people.
That is the premise of "A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols," the amusing but ultimately frustrating book by British journalist Tim Marshall, who is a former diplomatic editor of Sky News and before that worked for the BBC.
Marshall fills his book with myriad factoids and oddities about flags: "The world's tallest unsupported flag pole resides in Saudi Arabia's second city, Jeddah. ... The flag weighs 1,250 pounds, or about the same as five baby elephants." In some observers' eyes, the Bosnian flag "looked like the label on a box of cornflakes." Denmark's was the "most burned flag" in 2006 because "in September 2005 the Jyllands-Posten newspaper had published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad."
The book is essentially a compilation of such facts about flags, and the author is clearly uninterested in exploring the broader significance of the multitude of individual facts with which he packs each of the nine chapters. Marshall writes more as a hobbyist who hoards details about the subject of his fascination rather than as an analyst attempting to explain the role of flags in international affairs or domestic politics.
Occasionally, however, he does share nuggets of historical gold: "Where did these national symbols, to which we are so attached, come from? Flags are a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Standards and symbols painted in cloth predate flags and were used by the ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Romans, but it was the invention of silk by the Chinese that allowed flags as we know them today to flourish and spread. Traditional cloth was too heavy to be held aloft, unfurled and fluttering in the wind, especially if painted; silk was much lighter and meant that banners could, for example, accompany armies onto battlefields. The new fabric and custom spread along the Silk Road. The Arabs were the first to adopt it, and the Europeans followed suit, having come into contact with them during the Crusades."
The observation that technological innovation - the invention of silk - was the decisive factor in the popularization of flags and eventually their transformation into one of the most powerful manifestations of nationalism, one that has survived in the 21st century, is a welcome respite to the list of largely unrelated facts.
In discussing the LGBT rainbow flag, for example, Marshall reports that in 2016, the flag was flown in the headquarters of the British intelligence agency, MI6. He speculates that this was an attempt by "C", the agency's chief, to signal that the organization welcomed recruits from all backgrounds. Marshall closes the section by concluding that "James Bond will not have been shaken but may have been stirred" by this gesture. In a section devoted to car racing, we are reminded that "signaling the finishing line ... is the black-and-white checkered flag." In the section that follows, Marshall proceeds to offer some self-help advice to his readers: "This is the age of the banner. Which is why if you want to get ahead, get a flag - or at least display one to make a statement."
Flags and nationalism go together, and we are living in times of heighted nationalism. We surely need a deeper understanding of the dynamics of nationalism and the powerful appeal of political symbols. Marshall acknowledges as much but ultimately does little to use his vast knowledge of flags and the lessons of history to offer robust insights about the uses and misuses of flags in world affairs.
---
Naim is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author, most recently, of "The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be."
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Naim, Moises. "Book World: The history and emotion behind our reverence for national flags." Washington Post, 4 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499897604/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=34876d2c. Accessed 12 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499897604
How geography shapes international politics
By Colin Woodard January 8, 2016
Colin Woodard is a journalist and the author of five books, including “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” and the forthcoming “American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.”
Study the globe and ask yourself why the countries are shaped the way they are, why some repeatedly seek to change their shapes and why others are riven by fault lines that threaten to shatter their peace or their very existence.
Tim Marshall, a veteran foreign correspondent for Britain’s Sky News, argues that the answers lie in the study of geopolitics — that is, how geographic factors shape international politics. The physical realities of landscape, climate, demographics and resources “are too often disregarded in both writing about history and in contemporary reporting of world affairs,” he writes in his book, “Prisoners of Geography.” “Geography has always been a prison of sorts — one that defines what a nation is or can be, and one from which our world leaders have often struggled to break free.”
To better explain these geopolitical realities, Marshall leads readers on a tour of much of the planet, exposing them to history, geography and current events in a couple dozen countries on five continents. Those who make the journey will probably see their Trivial Pursuit performances improve but will not come away with a fruitful new way of seeing the world. This is because Marshall’s account is all over the map, and case studies suffer from significant oversights.
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We’re told that geographical factors often explain the distribution of and relationships between nation-states: The Himalayas have kept China and India apart, the interlocking rivers of western and central Europe have kept those countries connected, the lack of navigable waterways and the presence of dense jungles have kept sub-Saharan Africans separate from one another and the outside world. Yet we’re also shown that Americans managed to settle, conquer, integrate and defend a nation spanning the Appalachians, the Mississippi River Valley and the Rocky Mountains despite the presence of significant imperial competitors; that Korea, despite cultural, historical and geophysical unity, is starkly divided into hostile states that have been technically at war for seven decades; and that the ethnographic settlement of east-central Europe defied geographical logic, making for a messy map and an even messier 20th-century history. Geography, it seems, is a rather low-security prison.
‘Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World’ by Tim Marshall (Scribner)
A chapter on the United States is organized around the idea that any nation that managed to control the American landscape would be geopolitically destined for superpower greatness, which does little to explain how this actually came to pass. What are we to make of the fact that Americans of the early republic profoundly disagreed on the wisdom of enlarging the nascent federation? New Englanders vehemently opposed the Louisiana Purchase precisely because it would thwart the gradual, orderly spread of their socio-cultural model and enhance the relative power of their slaveholding Southern rivals and the “uncouth” Scots-Irish settlers of the Appalachian uplands. Western expansion happens to have made the United States great, but it very nearly destroyed it by provoking the Civil War, a defining conflict that Marshall manages to leave unmentioned. Why the United States didn’t annex Canada — with which it shares a long, geographically arbitrary border — goes unexplained. There’s a profoundly revealing geopolitical story to be told in North America, but it is not to be found here.
Japan, an island nation short on industrial resources, became a maritime power by necessity, and we’re shown how it used this capability to invade and annex great swaths of East and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. Oddly, imperial Japan’s ambitious geopolitical strategy eastward into the Pacific is entirely ignored, including the nanshin — the “southward advance” toward the tropical South Pacific that had been on the national agenda since the 1880s. To counter European intrusion, Japan declared war on Germany in 1914 so as to annex its extensive possessions across Micronesia, which were then subjected to intensive colonization, development and militarization schemes. These islands — the Marianas, Marshalls and Carolines — were critical to Tokyo’s strategy to win the Pacific War and were captured by U.S. forces only after a staggering loss of life on both sides. The Pacific, the largest geographical feature on Earth, is an unfortunate piece to drop from an analysis of a maritime Pacific nation’s worldview.
Marshall is on much firmer ground when discussing Russia. He provides a convincing analysis of Russian geopolitical thinking, a result of living on a flat plain that, despite its enormous size, lacks unfettered, year-round access to the open ocean. For centuries, Russian leaders have sought to establish buffer zones from invasion — occupying Ukraine, Poland, Siberia and the Far East — and to follow Peter the Great’s advice to “approach as near as possible to Constantinople and India” so as to reach open seas. “It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist,” Marshall writes, “the ports still freeze and the North European plain is still flat.”
“Prisoners of Geography” also makes clear the terrible price the world has had to pay because European officials decided to create nation-states with borders that completely ignored cultural geography. Pashtuns were divided between southern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, guaranteeing that neither state would be cohesive or stable. Iraq artificially bonded together Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shia Arab lands, an invented nation that appears to have already ceased to exist. In Africa, “the giant black hole known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo . . . should never have been put together,” Marshall notes, as it contains more than 200 ethnic groups and hundreds of languages spread over a largely forested region bigger than Germany, France and Spain combined; 6 million have died in a half-century of civil wars there.
He also rightly closes with the Arctic, a region where long-standing territorial disputes are literally unthawing. The United States, he notes, has unilaterally disarmed on both the logistical and diplomatic fronts, allowing its heavy icebreaker fleet to dwindle from six to one since 1960 and failing to ratify the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty, “effectively ceding two hundred thousand square miles of undersea territory.” (Thus, we’ve surrendered both the oil and other resources that may be on the seafloor, and the means to patrol, explore and defend the Arctic territory that remains.) Marshall’s concluding hope is that humans can manage to ditch the prison of geography, “that technology . . . in our newly-globalized world can be used to give us an opportunity in the Arctic . . . and get the Great Game right for the benefit of all.”
PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY
Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World
By Tim Marshall
Scribner. 290 pp. $26
Book review: Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
BY JEREMY WILLIAMS
August 17, 2016
4 Comments on Book review: Prisoners of Geography, by Tim Marshall
prisoners of geographyGeography has always shaped politics, determining where borders fall, where empires expand and where their ambitions stop. Perhaps it was more obvious in the past, and one might think that it is less important in an age of global connections, the internet and drone warfare. But here is journalist and author Tim Marshall to explain why it still matters, with Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that will tell you everything you need to know about global politics.
That’s a bold claim, and of course the book doesn’t tell you everything you need to know to understand global politics. But it does lay some very good foundations. Each chapter begins with a map of a region or key country, and then shows how the geography of that country explains its political preoccupations. Often that starts with a historical perspective, the story of how those nations came to be and why their borders lie where they are. Where are the rivers and mountain ranges that suggest territorial limits? Where are the transport routes and sea lanes? What natural resources are we dealing with? What people groups have occupied this region? If an enemy were to invade, where would they attack? Out of these questions, Marshall then lays out the various international disputes in the area and why nations act the way they do.
Take China, for example. China occupies Tibet because it gives them control of all the territory up to the Himalayas. Liberating Tibet would mean ceding the high ground to the West and leaving it vulnerable. (The Himalayas, while we’re there, are also one of the main reasons why China and India have historically had so little to do with each other – they make trade very difficult between the two.) Rising tensions in the South China Seas have similar roots, says Marshall. If it came to conflict, an enemy could block shipping here, cutting off incoming resources and outgoing exports. The claims and counter-claims around seemingly unimportant islands are all about control and security.
A lot of this is well known and discussed in foreign policy circles, but it doesn’t always filter through to the mainstream media. The actions of someone like President Putin only really make sense when geopolitics are considered.
This is important in understanding the long term fortunes of various regions too. Western Europe is blessed with productive agricultural land, and navigable rivers that connect with each other. Africa’s rivers aren’t navigable and don’t connect, making trade and therefore development much more challenging. Brazil “lacks a coastal plain”, which makes it difficult to connect the country internally. Its poor transport infrastructure means it is expensive to move goods, and Marshall doubts that it will ever be a global power.
As the title suggests, the book reads too much into geography sometimes, as if it really can explain everything. Geography is not destiny, as they say. In tackling the whole of global politics, it inevitably tips over into generalization or over-simplification from time to time. Many parts of the world don’t get a look in.
It’s also beholden to security and military tactics, with other angles overlooked. The environment gets an occasional mention, but climate change isn’t really addressed until the closing pages, and the short chapter on the Arctic. That’s a shame, because climate change is already a major force in the world and it will only get more important in the coming years. But then, geopolitics doesn’t leave much room for non-state actors, whether those are corporations or movements or environmental changes. That doesn’t make it irrelevant, it just means it won’t suffice as the only way to look at the world.
Caveats aside, Prisoners of Geography is a useful overview of geopolitics. It’s very readable and Marshall has decades of reporting behind him. If you haven’t read anything like this before, it will be genuinely enlightening. You can read it through if you’re interested, dip in and out if you prefer, or use it as a reference when regional flashpoints crop up in the news.
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Featured image by Sergey Pesterev
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Book review: Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
by Chris Tilbury / February 18, 2016 / Leave a comment
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Published in March 2016 issue of Prospect Magazine
Elliot and Thompson, £16.99
Prisoners of Geography main cover“The land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the power, politics and social development of the peoples that now inhabit nearly every part of the earth.” This is how former Sky Diplomatic Correspondent Tim Marshall, who has reported from more than 30 countries across 25 years, introduces the idea that we should be more aware of how political decision-making is affected by the natural landscape.
In 10 breakneck chapters, Marshall explains the way in which geography has shaped the actions of Russia in the Ukraine, the complex interplay between African nations and the rest of the world—with stops in the United States, western Europe and India.
He concludes by identifying some impending problems, placing them in their geographical context. He looks at the potential for water wars between Turkey, Iraq and Syria, if the water level of the Murat river were to diminish and Turkey were forced to protect its own source by building dams.
Marshall succeeds in making lucid a complex topic and the book is difficult to put down. But there are obvious omissions. By focusing purely on the lay of the land, he neglects other factors—such as the fact that the US and UK are not the powers they once were, and that they are less capable of persuading leaders such as Vladimir Putin into co-operation. In some cases a leader’s will knows no borders.
PRISONERS OF GEOGRAPHY
Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World
by Tim Marshall
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Is geography destiny? Perhaps not, but Manifest Destiny certainly had a geographical component—and so, writes former Sky News correspondent Marshall ("Dirty Northern B*st*rds!": And Other Tales from the Terraces: The Story of Britain's Football Chants, 2014, etc.), will a future world in which the United States may not be a superpower.
“When Vladimir Putin isn’t thinking about God, and mountains, he’s thinking about pizza,” writes the author. Pizza and, of course, the Ukraine, his next-door neighbor and a ripe plum for any vision of a Russian empire. Geography has a grim matter-of-factness to it: argue that the Mongols came exploding out of Central Asia due to a bumper crop in grass or that the Vikings left Scandinavia because of the horrible monotony of the fjords, and you’re likely to be pegged as a determinist without sufficient regard for free will. Yet, as Marshall argues in this pop excursus, geography does have something to do with how we live. Some of us have endless fields of grain, others water, others oil, and even if technology has freed us from some of the limits of old—allowing us to fly, as he puts it, from Missouri to Mosul to unleash a bomb or two—the facts of the land often trump other considerations. In a sense, Marshall’s arguments are old-fashioned. In another, they’re of an everything-old-is-new-again tenor, since, he suggests, 100 years from now, Beijing and New Delhi will still be fighting over resources and there will still be an imposing mountain wall between them. And that pizza that Putin is thinking about, the wedge of the North European Plain, is eternal: “a century from now,” Marshall writes, “Russia will still be looking anxiously westward across what will remain flatland.”
Compulsive globe-spinners won’t find much new in these pages, but Marshall’s broad survey of events in the light of geographical realities goes a long way to explaining Putin’s concerns—and, for that matter, those of the CIA as well.
Pub Date: Oct. 27th, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2146-3
Page count: 304pp
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30th, 2015
Review: Tim Marshall’s “Prisoners of Geography”
by Miles Raymer
Marshall
Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots are shared by many of my fellow Americans. Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography offers a terrific opportunity to begin filling in the gaps.
Inhabitants of this rapidly-globalizing world often believe that political ideas and economic imperatives are the main drivers of international cooperation and conflict. Not so, says Tim Marshall. Prisoners of Geography is a sober reminder of the powerful influence geography exerts on human communities: “Geography has always been a prison of sorts––one that defines what a nation is or can be, and one from which our world leaders have often struggled to break free” (259).
Marshall has no trouble gathering examples from numerous corners of the globe and historical eras to support this argument, touching on fascinating topics such as the richness or paucity of a region’s natural resources, the destructive legacy of European colonialism, and the new role climate change is playing in 21st-century geopolitics. Marshall’s general outlook is that geography constrains much more than it enables, and that the availability of favorable landscapes makes a huge difference in a country’s ability to thrive in the globalized world.
There is an intriguing connection here with our modern understanding of the relationship between the human imagination and the body/mind. Our imaginations are free to run wild, but our ability to live out our dreams is always constrained by the physical compositions of our bodies and communities. World leaders face the same problem on a larger scale, Marshall claims:
Each Russian leader has been confronted by the same problems. It doesn’t matter if the ideology of those in control is czarist, Communist, or crony capitalist––the ports still freeze, and the North European Plain is still flat. (35)
Russia is hardly the only country whose ambitions have been limited by geographical factors. Marshall deftly shows geography’s remarkable explanatory power when analyzing economic and political decisions:
The physical realities that underpin national and international politics are too often disregarded in both writing about history and in contemporary reporting of world affairs. Geography is clearly a fundamental part of the “why” as well as the “what.” Take, for example, China and India: two massive countries with huge populations that share a very long border but are not politically or culturally aligned. It wouldn’t be surprising if these two giants had fought each other in several wars, but in fact, apart from one monthlong battle in 1962, they never have. Why? Because between them is the highest mountain range in the world. (2)
The mountainous terrain of Iran means that it is difficult to create an interconnected economy, and that it has many minority groups each with keenly defined characteristics…As a result of this diversity, Iran has traditionally centralized power and used force and a fearsome intelligence network to maintain internal stability. Tehran knows that no one is about to invade Iran, but also that hostile powers can use its minorities to try and stir dissent. (158-9)
Africa’s coastline? Great beaches––really, really lovely beaches––but terrible natural harbors. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are worthless for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems that helps explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America. (110)
Prisoners of Geography is brimming with such passages. As someone unaccustomed to thinking that geography can keep two natural enemies from conflict, influence the machinations of intelligence networks, or determine the economic potential of an entire continent, I find these observations novel and enlightening.
This book’s weakness is that it flirts too freely with geopolitical fatalism; the ease and regularity with which Marshall applies geopolitical explanations to complex international phenomena will become a source of discomfort for the observant reader. Take, for example, his assertion that “Mexico is destined to live in the United States’s shadow and as such will always play the subservient role in bilateral relations” (223). That is a very bold statement, and it’s impossible to know if Marshall’s perspective is overly reductionist, or if it’s sound and we’re simply uncomfortable admitting that the US is likely to dominate Mexico not because of the superiority of its people or organizational structures, but because it’s sitting on a better piece of real estate.
Marshall appears to believe that our geographical prisons leave little room for the self-actualization of individuals and communities. He characterizes nations as children squabbling over the final slices of a rapidly disappearing pie, and leans heavily on the idea that geography is destiny. We should be wary of this zero-sum approach, and question it in the same way we’ve come to question the unhelpful notion that biology is destiny. Even if we accept nothing beyond a cause-and-effect interpretation of reality, there are far too many inputs for us to feel comfortable saddling Earth’s landscapes with the blame for the gross shortcomings of human civilization.
Even when Marshall acknowledges the non-geographical factors that influence international affairs, his scope of vision seems unnecessarily narrow: “Of course, geography does not dictate the course of all events. Great ideas and great leaders are part of the push and pull of history” (260). There’s no doubt ideas and leaders can move us one way or another, but what about regular people? What about the countless hours, days, years, and lifetimes spent traversing continents and crossing rivers, hopping borders and staking claims? Must we downplay these dynamics just because they are notoriously difficult to track and quantify? Can we ignore the quotidian failures and victories of common people, watching only the broad strokes and attributing them to storms or droughts or insuperable mountain ranges?
These are questions Marshall did not set out to address, so it would be unfair to hold him accountable for the answers. But those answers––however difficult to uncover, contingent in duration, or romantic in substance––remain relevant to any discussion about where is humanity has been and where we might be headed.
In the final analysis, Prisoners of Geography is an engaging and worthwhile read. Marshall doesn’t have the power to settle our geopolitical problems, but he does bring us one step closer to understanding them.
Rating: 8/10
PUBLISHED: April 23, 2016
FILED UNDER: words
TAGS: climate change : economics : futurism : geography : geopolitics : history : humanities : narrative : nature : nonfiction : politics : reviews : time
Book of the week: ‘Dirty Northern B*st*rds!’: Britain’s Football Chants by Tim Marshall
Famous choruses on the terraces are well-known, but where have they come from?
Simon Redfern Saturday 13 September 2014 17:59 BST0 comments
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‘Dirty Northern B*st*rds!’: Britain’s Football Chants by Tim Marshall Elliott & Lawrence
You might think twice before brandishing the cover on, say, a Manchester tram. However, if challenged, you could swiftly display the back cover, which in the spirit of even-handedness reads “Soft Southern B*st*rds!”
In fact, in this light-hearted but well-researched history of the chants and ditties espoused by football crowds Tim Marshall exposes the North/South divide as a tribal myth when it comes to the hard men of the game. Nobody regarded Chelsea’s Ron “Chopper” Harris as a softie, while “dirty” was a word rarely used to describe the sparkling skills of Merseyside heroes such as Peter Beardsley or John Barnes.
Acknowledging that choruses of “You’re s*** and you know you are” or “The referee’s a w*****” are hardly Wildean shafts of wit, Marshall prefers to highlight the more amusing variations. When the Turkish side Galatasaray visited Stamford Bridge they were greeted with “You’re shish and you know you are”, while as Mark Clattenburg was being treated on the pitch for an injury he was regaled with “You’re not fit to be a referee” from Arsenal fans.
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Foreigners have always been regarded as fair game. The buck-toothed Brazilian Ronaldinho might have been puzzled when told by the Anfield faithful that “Cilla wants her teeth back”, but the increasingly rotund Dane Jan Molby probably understood only too well the injunction to “Get your tits out for the lads” as he warmed up on the touchline.
For the historically minded, Marshall has tracked down the often obscure reasons behind the adoption of songs as anthems, including “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” and “Ten Men Went To Mow” at Anfield, Upton Park and Stamford Bridge respectively. In an age of change, most fans stick stubbornly to their traditions. And that’s worth singing about.
Published in paperback by Elliott & Thompson, £8.99
Dirty Northern B*st*rds and Other Tales from the Terraces: the Story of Britain’s Football Chants by Tim Marshall, review: 'clunking style'
Jim White applauds a tribute to the choruses of the football fan
Song sung blue: Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge
Song sung blue: Chelsea fans at Stamford Bridge Photo: Ben Queenborough/BPI/REX
By Jim White3:00PM BST 09 Aug 2014
It is the most bizarre thing you will hear. At some point during every football game at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground, from the packed stands will come the sound of the old children’s round Ten Men Went To Mow. It hasn’t been updated so that the lyrics laud the club manager Jose Mourinho or ridicule Arsenal. It’s just the old song about a gradually reducing cohort of farm labourers going off to cut a field. And it goes on. And on. And on. And most of those who sing the song have no idea why, or how, it started.
But Tim Marshall knows. According to the man more usually seen patrolling war zones as the Sky News diplomatic editor, the agricultural singalong dates back to 1981. That was when a Chelsea fan called Harry Greenaway was driving a bunch of supporters to an away game and all they had for entertainment was a cassette of children’s songs. They enjoyed singing along to the song so much, they started it up on the terraces. It not only caught on, but became a defining indicator of being a Chelsea fan.
Marshall’s book is full of such tales. How Birmingham fans took up the singing of a mournful Harry Lauder number about his son’s death in the First World War. Or how Edward Elgar tried to get the Wolves crowd to sing a piece he had composed specially for them.
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The fact that “We’ll bang the leather for goal” never caught on at Molineux back in Edwardian times is indicative. The chants that stick are the ones that arrive by happenstance, not choreography. While not romantic enough to suggest this is an example of folk art, Marshall is rightly impressed by the spontaneity, the speed and the observational skill of the communal vocal response of football crowds. Plus the humour.
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Albert Camus: thinker, goalkeeper 06 Jan 2010
When the Ipswich goalkeeper Dean Gerken once let in a goal, he was greeted, Marshall reports, by a chorus of: “Stayed in a burger, you should have stayed in a burger.” At Grimsby, after England’s rugby team had won the World Cup, the locals immediately adapted the egg chasers’ anthem as “swing low, sweet halibut”. Liverpool fans once serenaded the extravagant dental arrangement of the Brazilian Ronaldinho, then playing for Barcelona, with “Cilla wants her teeth back.”
Not that the football chant has always been so funny, or so quotable. In the Seventies, the racist bile that swilled round grounds was not isolated to a few individuals. It was routine, widespread and viewed as entirely acceptable. But as Marshall points out, since the Race Relations Act was passed in 1976, “through a mixture of law and education and growing up as a nation, racism on the terraces has been diluted”. If a crowd has creative energy, it also usually has a moral code.
Marshall cites the example of a handful of Leeds fans that he saw in 2000 trying to start a racist chant relating to an incident in which a couple of their players had been charged with affray following an assault on an Asian student. Their peers were having none of it, shouting them down to ensure the chant withered on the vine.
Mind, there are some – Marshall included – who would contend that if chant-life has grown more civilised, it has also become thinner. The all-seater modern stadium has quieted the guttural urge. These days there is more atmosphere in the Bishop Blaize pub in Stretford, where the poet laureate of chants Pete Boyle conducts a choir of drinkers before Manchester United home games, than there is inside the Old Trafford stadium where 75,000 worshippers gather.
Though communicated in a clunky style, Marshall’s thesis is nicely researched, well considered and neatly paced. This is a man who understands what it is to be a supporter. And he rightly suggests that, whatever the loathsome venality of those engaged at the top of the game, fan culture remains one of football’s most endearing characteristics. Who could fail to raise a chuckle at the chant by supporters of Huddersfield Town. The club won a trio of English titles in the Thirties, but has subsequently bumped down a cul-de-sac of disappointment. The pride in that history and self-deprecation is summed up in the chant, sung to the tune of the Beach Boys Sloop John B: “We won it three times, we won it three times, none of us remember, but we won it three times.”
Jim White is the author of A Matter of Life and Death: a History of Football in 100 Quotations, to be published by Head of Zeus in September
Dirty Northern B*st*rds and Other Tales from the Terraces: the Story of Britain’s Football Chants by Tim Marshall
224pp, Elliott & Thompson, Telegraph offer price: £8.54 (PLUS £1.95 p&p) (RRP £8.99, ebook £5). Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk