OGS Crawford left a spectacular collection of photographs but little trace of his interior life.
OGS Crawford left a spectacular collection of photographs but little trace of his interior life.
OGS Crawford left a spectacular collection of photographs but little trace of his interior life.
OGS Crawford left a spectacular collection of photographs but little trace of his interior life.

The view from above


  • English
  • Arabic

Contemporary glassware is not ordinarily a subject taken up by archaeologists, but OGS Crawford was not an ordinary archaeologist. "The chief function of a modern capitalist tumbler," he wrote in the late 1930s, "is not to hold liquid but to appear to hold more than it does." Badly designed drinking vessels and poor service in restaurants were among the topics that Crawford covered in an unpublished book called Bloody Old Britain. A pioneering British field archaeologist, Crawford made a sideline of what he called "Marxian anthropology". Enraged by what he saw as the shabby consumerism of interwar Britain, he applied the keen eye he had developed searching out Bronze Age burial mounds to the indignities of everyday life. By cataloguing these slights, he hoped to hasten the inevitable arrival of the next, better stage of history. Taking its title from his manuscript, Kitty Hauser's Bloody Old Britain is an elegant portrait of Crawford that casts his life as an allegory of "vision and blindness".

Born in 1886 to British parents living in India, Crawford was soon shipped back to England to be raised by his aunts and educated at boarding school, where he was so miserable that he later found detention as a prisoner of war to be preferable: at least in a German prison camp, he wrote to his aunts, one had a "chance of quiet reading". Happier memories of school life came from excursions in the ruin-rich countryside nearby, which inspired his love of archaeological fieldwork. At Oxford, he studied geography; no degrees were yet offered in the still young field of non-classical archaeology.

After the First World War, in which he conducted airborne reconnaissance, Crawford took a job at the Ordnance Survey, the British government mapping service, where he remained until retiring three decades later. His main task - updating the archaeological markings on OS maps - was straightforward enough, but the standards and methods he established helped turn archaeology from a recreation for tweedy gentlemen into a professional discipline. From his perch at the OS he also founded and edited a journal called Antiquity. Offering serious scholarship for a broad audience, it gave him even wider influence.

Crawford used Antiquity to popularise aerial photography, whose potential as a tool for archaeological prospecting he first appreciated during his war service. Crawford wasn't the first to imagine that it could be useful in the field, but he was its most effective exponent. Traces of ancient digging or building, it turns out, are often more easily discerned from the air than from the ground. As Crawford put it, the earthbound observer is like a cat on a Persian rug whose pattern is blurred by proximity; only from a distance does the design become clear. With a characteristic urge to document and explain, Crawford even took carefully angled photos to illustrate his hypothetical cat's perspective.

Among other refinements, Crawford classified aerial archaeology's targets into three groups. One was "shadow sites," those features - berms that marked the boundaries of ancient fields, for example - that are revealed when the shadows cast by slanting sunlight pick out small changes in the height of the land. The concept is simple, but the effect is almost magical, as traces too faint to make out from the ground emerge in crisp relief when seen from above.

Such views provide a dizzy whiff of omniscience, as anyone who's gazed down from a plane window can attest. Hauser argues convincingly that the special knowledge afforded by aerial photography informed Crawford's conception of history. In his book Man and His Past, he compared the historian to a traveller who, having "reached... the summit of a lofty pass," surveys "with eager eyes the new landscape opening out before him". Crawford had come to believe in a totalising, deterministic history through which the past would be completely knowable and would provide the key to understanding the future.

Little of this was original to Crawford. Some came from HG Wells, who was a friend of his. (Wells even immortalised him in his novel The Shape of Things to Come in the shape of a reconnaissance aeroplane named Crawford.) And similar ideas about vision and knowledge had been in the air when he was at Oxford, where he had met Patrick Geddes, a Scottish scientist and city planner. In 1892, Geddes had created the "Outlook Tower," a sort of vertical museum of Edinburgh that combined exhibits, a camera obscura and a panoramic viewing platform to situate the city in history and space.

Crawford's confidence in rationality and systemisation made him sympathetic to the USSR, and in 1932 he decided to see it for himself. His trip, which he recorded in a rapturous account called Tour in Bolshevy, provides the moral pivot of Hauser's allegory: for all his powers of observation, while in the USSR "sight failed him, for he had faith; and the will to believe was blinding". So sure was Crawford of what he would find, Hauser notes damningly, that he drafted the opening pages of Tour even before he left. Fortunately for his later reputation, his publisher rejected the manuscript. Hauser builds a devastating case against the stubborn but uncritical belief in science as the "supreme value" that made Crawford deaf to all other considerations. In a 1938 address to the Prehistoric Society, for example, he hopefully raised the possibility that the Germans' "eastward drive" - their occupation of Austria and the Sudetenland, that is - "may be accompanied by archaeological activities".

Still less marketable was the caustic Bloody Old Britain, which Crawford began in the winter of 1938-9. His mission was satirical, but like all the best satire, it was backed by genuine anger: in a letter written around the same time, he described the English as "too stupid to know what horrors they really are". As Hauser observes, Crawford's humour springs from a kind of cranky animism that sees household objects as determined to thwart their users. "The bowls of soup-spoons," Crawford wrote, "have altered their shape and become round and inconveniently wide," despite the fact that they, "from neolithic times down to the twentieth century, have naturally accommodated themselves to the size and shape of the human mouth". (As ever, he took the long view).

Crawford was far from alone in mourning a bygone Britain; there was a widespread sense of national decline, especially among intellectuals, of which Hauser gives a concise but excellent account. But by the time Crawford completed his manuscript, the war was on, and public dissent had become less acceptable. His publisher, understandably, declined it as "unnecessarily bitter," even after Crawford had suggested Bunk of England as an alternative title.

Crawford anatomised the present with photos as well as words. After his return from the Soviet Union, he began taking snapshots of religious institutions around Britain - possibly, Hauser notes, for inclusion as examples of "priest-craft religion" in an exhibit of "human folly throughout the ages". This display would be part of a Museum of Human Evolution that he envisioned as a pillar of post-capitalist society. He also photographed advertisements that he categorised by the base desire to which each appealed ("Militarism", "Beer").

In the end, Hauser's portrait of Crawford feels psychologically muted. This isn't entirely her fault, as Crawford deliberately left few traces of his interior life. Yet too often Hauser, lacking evidence, resorts to supposition - "There was surely a profound sadness" for Crawford when at last he acknowledged the failures of Communism - and the effect is underwhelming. For a story billed as a tale of "faith and its loss", there is too little sense of spiritual struggle. The arc from belief to bitterness about the Soviet project is a familiar one, well chronicled elsewhere, and Crawford's reticence denies us the kind of first-person vividness that would set his apart from similar tales.

In addition, Crawford was, in Hauser's words, "no great intellectual". He loved the small detail and the grand idea, but he lacked the ability to do the work of bridging the two. Hauser adduces a rich array of contexts and connections for Crawford's work, from the poet Cecil Day-Lewis to the German Neue Sachlichkeit movement, but we hardly see Crawford's own mind at work. One suspects that the "equidistant" quality that Hauser detects in his photos, however poetically suggestive, is as much the sign of a failure to distinguish the significant from the trivial, to make critical judgments, as it is the hallmark of a novel conception of history.

Crawford left the Ordnance Survey in 1946 but remained an eminence grise of British archaeology, conspicuous for his green bowler hat and hand-rolled cigarettes. Even in retirement he remained preoccupied with seeing the overall design. In the mid-1950s, only a few years before his death, he wrote, almost plaintively, "What is it all leading up to?" Tim Farrington's writing has appeared in the New York Sun, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

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Key recommendations
  • Fewer criminals put behind bars and more to serve sentences in the community, with short sentences scrapped and many inmates released earlier.
  • Greater use of curfews and exclusion zones to deliver tougher supervision than ever on criminals.
  • Explore wider powers for judges to punish offenders by blocking them from attending football matches, banning them from driving or travelling abroad through an expansion of ‘ancillary orders’.
  • More Intensive Supervision Courts to tackle the root causes of crime such as alcohol and drug abuse – forcing repeat offenders to take part in tough treatment programmes or face prison.
Milestones on the road to union

1970

October 26: Bahrain withdraws from a proposal to create a federation of nine with the seven Trucial States and Qatar. 

December: Ahmed Al Suwaidi visits New York to discuss potential UN membership.

1971

March 1:  Alex Douglas Hume, Conservative foreign secretary confirms that Britain will leave the Gulf and “strongly supports” the creation of a Union of Arab Emirates.

July 12: Historic meeting at which Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid make a binding agreement to create what will become the UAE.

July 18: It is announced that the UAE will be formed from six emirates, with a proposed constitution signed. RAK is not yet part of the agreement.

August 6:  The fifth anniversary of Sheikh Zayed becoming Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with official celebrations deferred until later in the year.

August 15: Bahrain becomes independent.

September 3: Qatar becomes independent.

November 23-25: Meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid and senior British officials to fix December 2 as date of creation of the UAE.

November 29:  At 5.30pm Iranian forces seize the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force.

November 30: Despite  a power sharing agreement, Tehran takes full control of Abu Musa. 

November 31: UK officials visit all six participating Emirates to formally end the Trucial States treaties

December 2: 11am, Dubai. New Supreme Council formally elects Sheikh Zayed as President. Treaty of Friendship signed with the UK. 11.30am. Flag raising ceremony at Union House and Al Manhal Palace in Abu Dhabi witnessed by Sheikh Khalifa, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

December 6: Arab League formally admits the UAE. The first British Ambassador presents his credentials to Sheikh Zayed.

December 9: UAE joins the United Nations.

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Getting%20there%20and%20where%20to%20stay
%3Cp%3EFly%20with%20Etihad%20Airways%20from%20Abu%20Dhabi%20to%20New%20York%E2%80%99s%20JFK.%20There's%2011%20flights%20a%20week%20and%20economy%20fares%20start%20at%20around%20Dh5%2C000.%3Cbr%3EStay%20at%20The%20Mark%20Hotel%20on%20the%20city%E2%80%99s%20Upper%20East%20Side.%20Overnight%20stays%20start%20from%20%241395%20per%20night.%3Cbr%3EVisit%20NYC%20Go%2C%20the%20official%20destination%20resource%20for%20New%20York%20City%20for%20all%20the%20latest%20events%2C%20activites%20and%20openings.%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

  • Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
  • Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
  • Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
  • Travel distance: Limited 
  • Source: Open desert areas with strong winds

Dust storm

  • Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
  • Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
  • Duration: Can linger for days
  • Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
  • Source: Can be carried from distant regions
RESULTS

5pm: Maiden (PA) Dh80,000 1,200m
Winner: Shafaf, Sam Hitchcott (jockey), Ahmed Al Mehairbi (trainer)
5,30pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh70,000 1,200m
Winner: Noof KB, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
6pm: The President’s Cup Listed (TB) Dh380,000 1,400m
Winner: Taamol, Jim Crowley, Ali Rashid Al Raihe
6.30pm: The President’s Cup Group One (PA) Dh2,500,000 2,200m
Winner: Rmmas, Tadhg O’Shea, Jean de Roualle
7pm: Arabian Triple Crown Listed (PA) Dh230,000 1,600m
Winner: Ihtesham, Szczepan Mazur, Ibrahim Al Hadhrami
7.30pm: Handicap (PA) Dh80,000 1,400m
Winner: AF Mekhbat, Antonio Fresu, Ernst Oertel

Super 30

Produced: Sajid Nadiadwala and Phantom Productions
Directed: Vikas Bahl
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Pankaj Tripathi, Aditya Srivastav, Mrinal Thakur
Rating: 3.5 /5

Results

6.30pm Madjani Stakes Rated Conditions (PA) I Dh160,000 1,900m I Winner: Mawahib, Tadhg O’Shea (jockey), Eric Lemartinel (trainer)

7.05pm Maiden Dh150,000 1,400m I Winner One Season, Antonio Fresu, Satish Seemar

7.40pm: Maiden Dh150,000 2,000m I Winner Street Of Dreams, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson

8.15pm Dubai Creek Listed Dh250,000 1,600m I Winner Heavy Metal, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer

8.50pm The Entisar Listed Dh250,000 2,000m I Winner Etijaah, Dane O’Neill, Doug Watson

9.25pm The Garhoud Listed Dh250,000 1,200m Winner Muarrab, Dane O’Neill, Ali Rashid Al Raihe

10pm Handicap Dh160,000 1,600m Winner Sea Skimmer, Patrick Cosgrave, Helal Al Alawi

Safety 'top priority' for rival hyperloop company

The chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Andres de Leon, said his company's hyperloop technology is “ready” and safe.

He said the company prioritised safety throughout its development and, last year, Munich Re, one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, announced it was ready to insure their technology.

“Our levitation, propulsion, and vacuum technology have all been developed [...] over several decades and have been deployed and tested at full scale,” he said in a statement to The National.

“Only once the system has been certified and approved will it move people,” he said.

HyperloopTT has begun designing and engineering processes for its Abu Dhabi projects and hopes to break ground soon. 

With no delivery date yet announced, Mr de Leon said timelines had to be considered carefully, as government approval, permits, and regulations could create necessary delays.

COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Champion%20v%20Champion%20(PFL%20v%20Bellator)
%3Cp%3EHeavyweight%3A%20Renan%20Ferreira%20v%20Ryan%20Bader%20%3Cbr%3EMiddleweight%3A%20Impa%20Kasanganay%20v%20Johnny%20Eblen%3Cbr%3EFeatherweight%3A%20Jesus%20Pinedo%20v%20Patricio%20Pitbull%3Cbr%3ECatchweight%3A%20Ray%20Cooper%20III%20v%20Jason%20Jackson%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EShowcase%20Bouts%3C%2Fstrong%3E%3Cbr%3EHeavyweight%3A%20Bruno%20Cappelozza%20(former%20PFL%20World%20champ)%20v%20Vadim%20Nemkov%20(former%20Bellator%20champ)%3Cbr%3ELight%20Heavyweight%3A%20Thiago%20Santos%20(PFL%20title%20contender)%20v%20Yoel%20Romero%20(Bellator%20title%20contender)%3Cbr%3ELightweight%3A%20Clay%20Collard%20(PFL%20title%20contender)%20v%20AJ%20McKee%20(former%20Bellator%20champ)%3Cbr%3EFeatherweight%3A%20Gabriel%20Braga%20(PFL%20title%20contender)%20v%20Aaron%20Pico%20(Bellator%20title%20contender)%3Cbr%3ELightweight%3A%20Biaggio%20Ali%20Walsh%20(pro%20debut)%20v%20Emmanuel%20Palacios%20(pro%20debut)%3Cbr%3EWomen%E2%80%99s%20Lightweight%3A%20Claressa%20Shields%20v%20Kelsey%20DeSantis%3Cbr%3EFeatherweight%3A%20Abdullah%20Al%20Qahtani%20v%20Edukondal%20Rao%3Cbr%3EAmateur%20Flyweight%3A%20Malik%20Basahel%20v%20Vinicius%20Pereira%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Visit Abu Dhabi culinary team's top Emirati restaurants in Abu Dhabi

Yadoo’s House Restaurant & Cafe

For the karak and Yoodo's house platter with includes eggs, balaleet, khamir and chebab bread.

Golden Dallah

For the cappuccino, luqaimat and aseeda.

Al Mrzab Restaurant

For the shrimp murabian and Kuwaiti options including Kuwaiti machboos with kebab and spicy sauce.

Al Derwaza

For the fish hubul, regag bread, biryani and special seafood soup. 

Like a Fading Shadow

Antonio Muñoz Molina

Translated from the Spanish by Camilo A. Ramirez

Tuskar Rock Press (pp. 310)

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets

Review: Tomb Raider
Dir: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Daniel Wu, Walter Goggins
​​​​​​​two stars

Company%20profile%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EYodawy%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Egypt%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EKarim%20Khashaba%2C%20Sherief%20El-Feky%20and%20Yasser%20AbdelGawad%3Cstrong%3E%3Cbr%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EHealthTech%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ETotal%20funding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2424.5%20million%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAlgebra%20Ventures%2C%20Global%20Ventures%2C%20MEVP%20and%20Delivery%20Hero%20Ventures%2C%20among%20others%3Cstrong%3E%3Cbr%3ENumber%20of%20employees%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20500%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Stormy seas

Weather warnings show that Storm Eunice is soon to make landfall. The videographer and I are scrambling to return to the other side of the Channel before it does. As we race to the port of Calais, I see miles of wire fencing topped with barbed wire all around it, a silent ‘Keep Out’ sign for those who, unlike us, aren’t lucky enough to have the right to move freely and safely across borders.

We set sail on a giant ferry whose length dwarfs the dinghies migrants use by nearly a 100 times. Despite the windy rain lashing at the portholes, we arrive safely in Dover; grateful but acutely aware of the miserable conditions the people we’ve left behind are in and of the privilege of choice. 

The specs
  • Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
  • Power: 640hp
  • Torque: 760nm
  • On sale: 2026
  • Price: Not announced yet
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
  • Priority access to new homes from participating developers
  • Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
  • Flexible payment plans from developers
  • Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
  • DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Jawan
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAtlee%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Shah%20Rukh%20Khan%2C%20Nayanthara%2C%20Vijay%20Sethupathi%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E4%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The specs

Engine: Four electric motors, one at each wheel

Power: 579hp

Torque: 859Nm

Transmission: Single-speed automatic

Price: From Dh825,900

On sale: Now

Ferrari 12Cilindri specs

Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12

Power: 819hp

Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm

Price: From Dh1,700,000

Available: Now

Key facilities
  • Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
  • Premier League-standard football pitch
  • 400m Olympic running track
  • NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
  • 600-seat auditorium
  • Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
  • An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
  • Specialist robotics and science laboratories
  • AR and VR-enabled learning centres
  • Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The Settlers

Director: Louis Theroux

Starring: Daniella Weiss, Ari Abramowitz

Rating: 5/5

ESSENTIALS

The flights

Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.

The hotels

Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.

The tours

A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages. 

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ARGYLLE
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Thanksgiving meals to try

World Cut Steakhouse, Habtoor Palace Hotel, Dubai. On Thursday evening, head chef Diego Solis will be serving a high-end sounding four-course meal that features chestnut veloute with smoked duck breast, turkey roulade accompanied by winter vegetables and foie gras and pecan pie, cranberry compote and popcorn ice cream.

Jones the Grocer, various locations across the UAE. Jones’s take-home holiday menu delivers on the favourites: whole roast turkeys, an array of accompaniments (duck fat roast potatoes, sausages wrapped in beef bacon, honey-glazed parsnips and carrots) and more, as  well as festive food platters, canapes and both apple and pumpkin pies.

Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, The Address Hotel, Dubai. This New Orleans-style restaurant is keen to take the stress out of entertaining, so until December 25 you can order a full seasonal meal from its Takeaway Turkey Feast menu, which features turkey, homemade gravy and a selection of sides – think green beans with almond flakes, roasted Brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole and bread stuffing – to pick up and eat at home.

The Mattar Farm Kitchen, Dubai. From now until Christmas, Hattem Mattar and his team will be producing game- changing smoked turkeys that you can enjoy at home over the festive period.

Nolu’s, The Galleria Mall, Maryah Island Abu Dhabi. With much of the menu focused on a California inspired “farm to table” approach (with Afghani influence), it only seems right that Nolu’s will be serving their take on the Thanksgiving spread, with a brunch at the Downtown location from 12pm to 4pm on Friday.