From Chapter 20 of [amazon_link id=”019953764X” target=”_blank” ]An Autobiography[/amazon_link] by Anthony Trollope:
[amazon_image id=”019953764X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]An Autobiography (Oxford World’s Classics)[/amazon_image]
“Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write [amazon_link id=”1853262552″ target=”_blank” ]The Way We Live Now[/amazon_link]. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;–on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.”
[amazon_image id=”0199537798″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Way We Live Now (Oxford World’s Classics)[/amazon_image]
The sheen is at last coming off the splendour of our own Melmotte-ian episode.
“Dear The BBC*,
I think it’s about time you re-showed the 2001 adaptation of “The Way We Live Now”, don’t you? It seems some people didn’t get it the first time round.
David Suchet is brilliant in it and I have a big thing for Shirley Henderson as a bratty rich girl (or a ghost or a baby gruffalo, come to that).
Preferably in HD, but BBC Four will suffice if not.
Yours,
R.”
*you’ll do as a proxy, Diane 🙂
If only I were in charge…. If impatient, there’s the DVD:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Way-Live-Now-DVD/dp/B000HA46QC/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1340962508&sr=1-1
🙂
For the Melmotte and his class read “Russian oligarchs in twenty-first century London…” Alternatively, “Barclays executives” perhaps.
On the latter, I had an interesting chat with a parent yesterday: he’s in insurance and we were talking Barclays. Given Barclays have been fined for manipluating LIBOR rates three things struck us.
Every move of interest rates makes winners and losers – so surely in advantaging one group more than another there are grounds for legal redress. So should Barclays savers or borrowers be launching civil actions against the companyits executives?
Two, given the size of the LIBOR market is it really believable that ONE bank could manipulate rates? I suspect that there must have been some form of collusion, if only tacit.
Three, given where this originated to what extent were senior board members aware of what was going on? Or are we going to get another News International-style, ‘I was unaware, not my responsibility’ type responses? Either way it implies some pretty undesirable things about corporate culture in the bank…
Which sort of brings us back to some of the materialist issues that you started the week with….