The Australian reviews my book: Death in the afternoon revisited by a beginner bullfighter

As an Australian citizen (dual-nationality with my British citizenship), I am very pleased to see that their best-selling national newspaper, The Australian has reviewed my book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight in this weekend’s edition (online here: Death in the afternoon revisited by a beginner bullfighter | The …).

I think that the author, Matthew Clayfield, who refers heavily to Ernest Hemingway’s Death In The Afternoon as a strong influence, or rather ancestor, to my book has got it largely right – including in his criticisms.) Especially in his line on my ethical misgivings about bullfighting in the book:

While Fiske-Harrison eventually dismisses his qualms, it is difficult to read his final chapter, “La escotada” – the thrust of the matador’s sword – without getting a sense that his year with the bulls has only deepened their mystery. It certainly hasn’t put an end to his concerns. Or, one suspects, his searching for an answer.

I should add here, just to clarify, that despite press reports to the contrary, my talk at Blackwell’s Bookstore in Oxford has not been ‘threatened’ as such, and neither have I with regards to the talk. This was a miscommunication somewhere in the chain, as was the in-hindsight preposterous idea that the Thames Valley Police were aware of this and had failed to act.

I have myself received “death-threats” on this blog and elsewhere – although I have always found that phrase a little melodramatic, as I am neither dead nor feeling in the least threatened. Which is why I delete them, forget them and sleep easy at night. (Well, not quite: I dream, almost constantly, about bulls. My strangest – and most moving – dream about them opening chapter twenty of Into The Arena.)

Anyway, I will be talking at Blackwell’s at 7pm on Thursday, February 9th.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

The photo of my one and only “bullfight” is enclosed below (Photo: Andy Cooke). A full discussion of the ethics – or lack of – in bullfighting is the next post in this blog.

Bullfighting is not a moral wrong: My talk at the Edinburgh Festival

Following the temporary cancellation of my Oxford talk on my book Into The Arena and vastly exaggerated reports of death threats etc. abounding in the Oxford Times and Oxford Mail, I thought I would repost the talk I gave at the Edinburgh International Book Festival to show quite how virulently propaganda-like my talks tend to be. As my bullfight aficionado friends point out, if it is propaganda, it reads almost as though it is for the other side…

Yesterday evening I immensely enjoyed giving a talk to the sizeable audience at the 300-seat Scottish Power Theatre at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on my book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bulllfight.  It was followed by a discussion with the chair, Al Senter, and the Q&A session with the audience that (along with brief personal chats with about half of those present who came to have their books signed by me in the London Review of Books tent afterwards.) The questions were all well-informed and interesting, not least because, as many of the audience members said to me in person, I’d answered most of their more general questions in my opening talk. So, here is the transcript of what I said:

I was going to read from my book, but it seems that the most important topic in the United Kingdom in the 21st Century - when discussing bullfighting - are the ethical issues surrounding the harm and killing of animals for a public spectacle. So I want to addresses this head on.

As a liberal, it is not my intention, or my place, to tell people whether or not they should approve of or enjoy bullfighting anymore than it is whether they should approve of or enjoy opera. However, when people seek to ban an art form from existing, so that other people may not enjoy it, then certain questions have to be raised.

Whatever the motivations behind the ban on bullfighting on Catalonia  – and there have been accusations of underhand dealings, thumbing of noses at Madrid to gain votes, which has some circumstantial evidence for it as the popular Catalan regional hobby of attaching burning tar balls and fireworks onto bulls’ horns and letting them into the streets is unaffected by the legislation  – anyway, the stated reason is the ethics, or rather lack of ethics, of bullfighting. So, that is what I should like to discuss here.

However, before I can do that, I have to dispel some myths that have long surrounded the bullfight, pieces of propaganda that have been propagated by the anti-bullfight lobby such as CAS International, the League Against Cruel Sports and PETA.

The one I most often hear is the complaint that the matador faces a broken down and destroyed animal. Take a close look at this bull in these photos and tell me how broken down it looks.

Morante de la Puebla performs a 'veronica' (Photo: Author)

Welcome

This blog was begun in October ’08 to keep track of my research into the world of bullfighting following my essay for Prospect magazine on the topic (to read it, see the ‘Page’ tab on the right hand toolbar, alongside pages on the author, the structure of the bullfight and a more scientific piece on the nature of the Spanish fighting bull.)

Since then I have watched 600 bulls toreado (‘fight’ is not the word, there is nothing fair here), run the bulls myself in Pamplona, danced alongside Spain’s flamenco dancers, trained alongside her matadors in the arena with young bulls and killed a single bull myself in a ring in Córdoba and written the entire experience as a book, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight. It is available at all major British bookshops and at Amazon UK at a 50% discount by clicking here or a little less as an eBook by clicking here.

The book was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011, and the reviewers say,

“Complex and ambitious, compelling and lyrical.” Mail on Sunday *****
“An engrossing introduction to Spain’s ‘great feast of art and danger’.” Sunday Times
“A compelling read, unusual for its genre, exalting the bullfight as pure theatre.”Sunday Telegraph
“Thrilling. An engrossing introduction to bullfighting.” Financial Times
“An informed piece of work on a subject about which we are all expected to have a view.”Daily Mail
“An informative and breathtaking volume of gonzo journalism” The Herald
“An entertaining account which seeks a demonstration of the values which distinguish bullfighting from butchery.” The Spectator
“Particularly good. Transposes spectacle into words with great success, conveying the drama with eloquence and precision.” Literary Review

They also say,

“Although Fiske-Harrison develops a taste for the whole gruesome spectacle, what makes the book work is that he never loses his disgust for it.” (Daily Mail), “It’s to Fiske-Harrison’s credit that he never quite gets over his moral qualms about bullfighting.” (FT) and “The question of whether a modern society should endorse animal suffering as entertainment is bound to cross the mind of any casual visitor to a bullfight. Alexander Fiske-Harrison first tussled with the issue in his early twenties and, as a student of both philosophy and biology, has perhaps tussled with it more lengthily and cogently than most of us.”(Literary Review)

Website of the book here for full reviews.

What is on this blog is for those who have read the book and wish to go even further into the world of the bulls, which has now and forever become a part of my life.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

The Courage of their Convictions: Blackwell’s of Oxford hosts my talk on February 9th

I am happy to announce that unlike Salman Rushdie, I will actually be talking at my venue - Blackwell’s of Oxford – regardless of protests. The store has rescheduled it for Thursday, February 9th at 7pm, but at least the talk is still going ahead. Freedom of speech and freedom of association and all that….

(By the way, I have noticed that various animal rights protesters are complaining that I have blocked their comments on this blog. Well, that’s easy enough to answer: I will post any comment that is civil and unthreatening. Sometimes, I will even highlight them into a blog post of their own. Such as this one: ‘The League Of Cruel Sports‘ [sic].)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Wounded matador Juan José Padilla to fight in Olivenza on March 4th

Juan José Padilla warms up (Photo: Nicolás Haro)

My friend, my Spanish brother, the legendary matador Juan José Padilla who forms four chapters of my book Into The Arena, whose terrible goring which cost him an eye is detailed here, is strongly rumoured to be returning to the professional arena in Olivenza, Spain, on the final day of the feria – March 4th –  alongside his old friend, the Divine Cape, Morante de la Puebla and the Hero of Seville, José María Manzanares, facing the bulls of the great Núñez del Cuvillo, whose cattle are known for their reliable ferocity (as I have experienced myself!). Although Juan is currently silent on this, the deal is reported on as being effectively done by the Spanish press (see ABC).

Juan José Padilla with a Miura bull, Pamplona 2011 (Photo: Antalya Nall-Cain)

Free speech, but not at lunchtime…

Today, The Oxford Times has run a nice piece about my book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight and what was supposed to be my forthcoming talk at Blackwell’s flagship store on Broad Street, Oxford, at 1pm on January 26th. The article is available online here.

However, following what was originally described to me as a ‘credible’ threat by a ‘known’ person or persons, although this has now been downgraded to what is best described as  ’correspondence leading to a highlighting of security concerns’, the talk has been postponed.

All of this is despite the fact that my book is far from “pro-bullfighting”, as the national press has pointed out:

“Although Fiske-Harrison develops a taste for the whole gruesome spectacle, what makes the book work is that he never loses his disgust for it.” (Daily Mail), “It’s to Fiske-Harrison’s credit that he never quite gets over his moral qualms about bullfighting.” (Financial Times) and “The question of whether a modern society should endorse animal suffering as entertainment is bound to cross the mind of any casual visitor to a bullfight. Alexander Fiske-Harrison first tussled with the issue in his early twenties and, as a student of both philosophy and biology, has perhaps tussled with it more lengthily and cogently than most of us.” (Literary Review)

This is not the first time such things have happened. When I attended the presentation of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, for which Into The Arena was shortlisted, Waterstones of Piccadilly had to provide security for the first time in the 23 year history of the ‘Bookie Prize’. Here is one of the more civil, though no less misguided, complaints they received. Letter to Waterstones from PETA

For anyone who wants an honest look at the ethics of bullfighting, see the transcript, with photos, of the talk I gave at last year’s Edinburgh Festival here.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

The Author

Juan José Padilla’s return to the ring.

Juan José Padilla, Finito de Córdoba and me at the ranch of Saltillo

The Spanish matador Juan José Padilla, who forms so many chapters of my book Into The Arena, and whose horrific goring was flashed around the world in terrifying images (which I reported on here), returned to the ring with only one eye – and thus no depth perception – with the cattle of Fuente Ymbro*. He is now flying from Jerez to Madrid to meet our mutual friend and fellow torero Adolfo Suárez Illana before going onto Oviedo to see his eye specialist, Dr Fernandez de la Vega, to see how his recuperation has progressed in the hopes that further surgical intervention may restore some vision to the damaged organ. Then he will plan his return to the ring this year, contracts already having been offered for the Feria of Olivenza in the first week in March.

As Adolfo said to me today of the force of nature also known as the Cyclone of Jerez: “The cyclone returns to blow once more… Happy New Year!”

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

* I have fond memories of Fuente Ymbro, where I first enterred the ring to face a vaquilla myself in 2010 as recounted in the book, with Juan on one side of me and Adolfo on the other.

Mad Bulls and Englishmen by Giles Coren in The Times

This article of Giles Coren’s was originally published in The Times magazine on Boxing Day ’09 where it is still available along with Dominic Elliot’s film of our day bullfighting here. All photos are by Nicolás Haro.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, the English bullfighter, takes on a ‘vaquilla’ of the Saltillo breed. Inset: with Giles Coren, attending a bullfight in Seville.

Writers and travellers have long been drawn to the drama and romance of the bullfight. Giles Coren is no exception, so when he was contacted out of the blue by the younger brother of his dead best friend, now training to be a bullfighter in Spain, Giles was intrigued. Here he describes his journey into a unique culture of noblemen, peasants and swindlers, all driven by deadly serious dreams of death and glory

I am in a bullring. Not in the seats, in the ring. On the sand. From the relative safety of a wooden barrier with a small room behind it, built into the stone wall, I have seen four vaquillas, young cows, “caped” by one of Spain’s most famous matadors, the son of the first post-Franco prime minister of Spain, Adolfo Suárez Illana, and by Alexander Fiske-Harrison, the younger brother of my best friend at school, who died in an accident the year we left, three months before his 19th birthday.

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath on Bullfighting

Hughes & Plath

On Tuesday, the poet Ted Hughes was commemorated with a monument in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, among the remains of Chaucer and Wordsworth, Dickens and Hardy (I have not visited myself since my brother’s memorial service there in ’88).

In the summer of 1956 Hughes married the poet Sylvia Plath and for their honeymoon they went to Spain and watched a bullfight. As she wrote in a letter to her mother:

I’d imagined that the matador danced around with the dangerous bull, then killed him instantly. Not so… The killing isn’t even neat, and with all the chances against it, we felt disgusted and sickened by such brutality.

I feel I would have had exactly the same response were it not for the fact that the first corrida I saw was headed by El Fandi, four days before his alternativa, in the Maestranza of Seville. Sheer chance.

Plath wrote a poem about her bullfight experience, in which a picador was injured by the bull.

I didn’t win the Bookie Prize but as the latest Sunday Telegraph says, it’s “pure theatre” anyway…

FINALIST

Sadly, my book did not win the ‘Bookie Prize’ this year. That honour went to Ronald Reng’s A Life Too Short about the tragic suicide of his friend, Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper. Ronald gave a deeply moving impromptu speech, and then he, the champion cyclist David Millar (whose book Racing Through The Dark was also shortlisted) and I went for dinner. I would like to thank William Hill, Waterstones of Piccadilly, and all the other contestants (and my agent, publisher and girlfriend who were all present) for a great day. As I argued in my article in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, I shouldn’t have won anyway. Here is the review their sister newspaper the Sunday Telegraph gave me the following day.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

27.11.11

Books for Christmas

Sport books

Oliver Brown

INTO THE ARENA: The World of the Spanish Bullfight BY ALEXANDER FISKE-HARRISON Profile Books, £15.99

Bullfighting was banned in Catalonia last year and yet has continued to capture both the quintessence of Spain and the extremes of sporting heroism. It exerted a fascination early upon Alexander Fiske-Harrison, who watched his first bullfight as a 23-year-old philosophy student in Seville and embarked soon after on a quest to understand the spectacle in all its cultural complexity. This is no passive work, however: he undertakes months of training with one of the top matadors, Eduardo Dávila Miura, to steel himself for the final act of his own corrida de toros. Uneasy ethical dilemmas abound, not least how much suffering the animals are put through. But this remains a compelling read, unusual for its genre, exalting the bullfight as pure theatre.