Wealth of interviews

Wealth of interviews

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Wealth of interviews
Lunch With The FT Edited by Lionel Barber Penguin 336pp Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops 595 baht

Interviewing was one of my functions back in the day. Rather than the top I focused on those lower on the totem-pole, accepting the common belief that everybody has a story to tell. The column appeared weekly. We didn't meet over a drink or during a meal. (I had no expense account.)

A table in a bar was usual. An interview lasted two to four hours, trying to drag something out of the interviewee that could have been made to seem interesting. I learned from experience that far from having a story to tell, they were dull. I felt that I could build a mountain out of a molehill, but I can't build a molehill out of nothing.

Aware that the interviews would be read and not wanting to be seen as the nonentities they were, more than a few reinvented themselves before my eyes. "Don't say that. Say this." The bullied boy became the feared neighbourhood gang leader. The shy girl a much dated co-ed. I went with it.

Whether other interviewers did the same is a moot question. Would they admit it if they did? To give them the benefit of the doubt, they didn't. The UK's Financial Times -- FT -- is celebrating its 125th anniversary. It has come out with a book, Lunch With The FT. The newspaper has long been running a column with that heading.

Focusing on people worldwide at the top of the totem pole, it has featured 800 columns to date in fields as varied as arts, business, fashion and lifestyle, food, politics, thinkers. Of that number 52 (The Best) were selected. Several have vivid artistic impressions of the interviewees.

Either because I'm not as up on the news as I thought I was or many appears to have a Commonwealth leaning, I am familiar with fewer than half the 52. And those I know of don't let slip any secrets. A former US president deplores the employment of torture on POWs.

One of the things I didn't know is that Tojo's granddaughter is defending him as a great Japanese patriot, tried and executed by an American kangaroo court. Cricketer Imran Khan feels that Pakistan is being unfairly castigated by the West, as the majority of the populace are peaceful Muslims.

While the interviewees are to be found in the International Who's Who, Lunch With The FT offers more about them. With 366 pages the paperback isn't cumbersome and should be kept nearby.


 

Team Of Teams By General Stanley McChrystal Penguin 290pp Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops 550 baht

Changing the rules

Higher and lower is a universal practice -- those higher (parents, employers) giving orders, those lower (children, employees) obeying them. At least until the lower get higher. Nowhere is this more so than in the military. There is your way and the Army Way. While in uniform, forget your way.

There's a code of military regulations and rules of combat. Soldiers disobey them at their peril. Court martial, execution in time of warfare the wages of acting without orders. The admiral at Pearl Harbor awaited the order to put the battleships to sea, but his superiors in Washington failed to give it.

Gen Stanley N.C. Chrystal's Team Of Teams questions this fundamental over the centuries and finds that it has an inherit defect. That there's a better way to run a railroad, as it were, than from on-high. It is fine for plans long in the making, but not for problems demanding instant decisions.

Traditionally, yet unaccountably, higher officers don't trust the judgement of their subordinates. Detailed orders are given, from which no deviation can be brooked. Not to be taken into consideration is when changed conditions make those orders unfeasible.

The author notes that the navy was better off in that, until the mid-19th century there was no communication with ships at sea. It was up to their captions to act as they saw fit, responding to immediate emergencies. As Comm Matthew Perry did when he opened Japan in 1852.

In today's world with information flowing in and communication open to all, the intelligence services and the military must progress with the times. Higher officers must not only trust lower ranks, but rely on them. Don't underestimate how astute they are.

Gen McChrystal put together a team -- a Team of Teams -- in the Middle East. It draws on all the military services, all ranks, to seek and destroy the terrorists. Located, they are attacked within minutes, virtually instantly. Results in Iraq have been much more successful than previously.

This book, with 290 pages including diagrams, notes, index, overlooks the Peter Principle -- people promoted to positions beyond their capability.

Presumably, the military sorts them out. This reviewer wonders whether Napoleon would have fared better if a sergeant had his ear.

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