"Innovation" by Peter Ackroyd

For England and Britain, it was a century that began with Victoria on the throne – the second longest reigning monarch – and ended with Elizabeth, now the longest reigning monarch. In between were two world wars, the rise of the Labour Party, the Great Depression, the decline of the old, landed aristocracy, the vote for women, the first woman prime minister, and social change on a scale previously unimaginable. Telling the story of England in the 20^th century is British author Peter Ackroyd, finishing his grand historical series with Innovation: The History of England Volume VI. 

The sheer breadth of this series is rather astonishing. Like he’s done with its predecessors, Innovation is written in a lively, comprehensive style, focusing on the political history of England while paying at least some attention to social and cultural. In other words, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones get sufficient attention, but don’t expect much detail. (Ackroyd also emphasizes that this is a history of England, not Britain; he includes information on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland / Ireland only when they might be important to English history.)

 

Ackroyd’s England is familiar and yet it’s not. He fills in well-known stories with unexpected details, even as he paints with a broad brush. Winston Churchill is portrayed, failures and all (and he had his share of failures). He provides an account of each parliamentary election and keeps the story fast-paced enough so that it doesn’t become repetitious. Margaret Thatcher is treated with more balance that I expected; she was never popular with the literary and artistic elites in Britain and remains an object of ire. But Ackroyd gives her what she’s due; she revolutionized Britain and many have never forgiven her. 

 

Peter Ackroyd

The highlights of the work are the events leading up to World War II; how an entire generation became disillusioned after the first world war; how the music of the 1960s developed and became known worldwide; and how Thatcher faced down Argentina’s military junta in the Falklands.

 

The author is one of Britain’s most prolific popular historians. In addition to his history of England series, he’s also written biographies of Charles Dickens and the artist J.M.W. Turner, among several others; a history of London (and a history of London beneath the streets); and many other works. 

 

Innovation and the first five volumes in the series are what historians would call “popular history,” but they provide a solid overview of the history of England from prehistoric to contemporary times. His broad grasp of so much history is rather astonishing, and he shares it all. (And I keep wondering what his office must have looked like to accommodate all of the research.)

 

Related:

 

My review of Dominion by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Revolution by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Rebellion by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Peter Ackroyd’s Tudors.

My review of Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation.

 

Reading Peter Ackroyd.

 

A Revolt over a Prayer Book.

Failure is an Option

One of the most intense movies I’ve ever watched is Apollo 13, the story of the space mission that was to land on the moon but went awry. Based on the true story of the ill-fated mission, it was a gripping tale starring Tom Hanks, Ed Harris, Kevin Bacon, and Gary Sinise.

At one point, Ed Harris, playing Gene Kranz at Mission Control in Houston, tells his colleagues that they have no choice but to figure out how to save the astronauts’ lives. “Failure is not an option,” he says – in the movie.

The real Gene Kranz said something like that during the actual crisis, but it took Hollywood to turn what he said into a line both memorable and enshrined in the American cultural lexicon.

In the case of Apollo 13, failure was indeed an option – and three lives hung in the balance. In fact, in anything worth doing, be it space missions, writing a novel, implementing a new program at work, or anything else, failure is always a possibility, and it is always an option. We can experience failure through unforeseen circumstances, and we can choose to fail by the actions we take and the decisions we make.

The question is, is the possibility of failure sufficient to stop us from trying in the first place?

Over the years, I’ve worked for several large organizations, mostly in the corporate and educational fields. Organizations become large for many reasons – marketplace success and natural monopolies (like school districts or county governments) are two of them. One thing all large organizations have in common is the desire to minimize risk.

It’s a natural phenomenon. You become successful, and the desire to remain successful leads you to minimize risk and seek control over things that can upset your success, or challenge your natural monopoly. The problem is that that the desire to control or reduce risk comes with a cost – the stifling of creativity and innovation. Over a long period of time, creativity and innovation can become anti-cultural, which may explain what happens to so many Fortune 500 companies that have disappeared forever.

This desire to avoid risk isn’t limited to large organizations. It also applies to individuals. “It’s our survival instincts that help us judge when to take a risk of failure and when to retreat,” writes Matt Appling in Life After Art. “But we’ve reprogrammed our instincts with the assumption that failure is not an option. So we stay home and protect ourselves from failure and deprive the world of our gifts.”

If we believe in what we’re doing, or what we want to do, we have to accept the reality that failure is an option. Creativity is dangerous. It upends the status quo. It challenges vested interests. It challenges the whole notion of “this is how we do things here.” If we are being creative, we should expect opposition, or worse, indifference.

Failure is always an option. The fear of failure is always present.

We can play it safe. Or we can choose to create, knowing we may fall flat on our faces.

We’re discussing Life After Art over at The High Calling. To see the discussion, please visit the site.

Photograph: The damaged Apollo 13 Service Module, seen after separation from the Command and Lunar module; via Wikipedia.