Diary clue to sudden death

Whose body parts are distributed between three major museums in Australia and New Zealand: the heart in the National Museum of Australia, the skin in Melbourne Museum, and the skeleton in New Zealand’s National Museum?

Phar Lap, a name which means ‘lightning’ in Thai, was a most extraordinary horse, perhaps the most famous and revered in the Australasian continent. Foaled in Timaru, New Zealand, in 1926, he was transported to Australia where he then dominated the racing scene for several years, winning more than two-thirds of all his races, including the Melbourne Cup. In 1932, he was shipped to a racecourse near Tijuana in Mexico for the Agua Caliente Handicap - where he won the largest purse ever raced for in North America - and then to a private ranch in California. But he died there suddenly and under suspicious circumstances, on 5 April. A necropsy revealed that his stomach and intestines were inflamed, and this gave rise to a strong suspicion of poisoning. American gangsters were considered to be likely suspects, since it was thought they were deeply concerned about Phar Lap’s potentially negative impact on their illegal bookmaking activities.

Over 70 years later in 2006, Australian scientists used a newly constructed synchrotron (a kind of huge and expensive electron gun or particle accelerator) to analyse hairs from Phar Lap. They concluded, according to ABC News, that the horse had been poisoned from a single large dose of arsenic. However, in another ABC News story the same day, a racing expert claimed that arsenic was often included in tonics given to horses at the time, and that 90% of horses then had arsenic in their system.

Now, a couple of years later, a new source of information has come to light - a diary kept by Phar Lap’s trainer, Harry Telford. It was bought at auction on 23 April by Museum Victoria with Australian government money. According to a ministerial press release, the diary details 30 recipes used by Phar Lap’s trainers to prepare him for races, and many ingredients in these recipes included poisonous substances such as arsenic and strychnine. All of which gives credence to the idea that he was poisoned - but not deliberately, and not by American gangsters.

To show how much Phar Lap was, and is, loved in Australia here’s a paragraph from a short memoir written by Doreen Borrow, who was born on the same day as Phar Lap. The memoir is entitled My Ride On An Ozzie Icon and is published in Illawarra Unity, the journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: ‘His name still conjures up all that is good and brave in people. To have a heart as big as Phar Lap, carry more weight than Phar Lap, or to go like Phar Lap remain among the highest accolades heaped upon the most supreme champions by the older generation of Australians who remember what a great galloper he was. I recall my mate Mike using one of these expressions during a family dinner. My future son-in-law, being of Italian descent asked, ‘Who’s Phar Lap?’ There was a stunned silence from all present and utter disbelief that an eighteen-year-old, born in Australia, had never heard of the great Phar Lap! It was almost enough to make us cancel the wedding!’

The secrets of military coups

Notable Turkish diarists are few and far between. Indeed, The Diary Junction, with over 500 diarists listed from over 30 countries, does not have any on its lists. Nevertheless, a Turkish diary has been in the news recently - for no less than highlighting the ever-present possibility of a coup!

Last year, the Turkish newsweekly Nokta (which subsequently closed down) published excerpts from a diary allegedly written by a former navy commander, Özden Örnek. The excerpts gave details of how Turkey narrowly escaped two military coups in 2004. Örnek himself was one of the coup plotters. He denied having written the diary entries and claimed they had been libelously attributed to him. During the course of a legal case against Nokta’s editor-in-chief, Alper Görmü, it was proven by a group of experts that the diaries did originate from Örnek’s computer. Görmü has just been acquitted of all charges.

The English-language newspaper, Today’s Zaman, draws strong conclusions from the case: ‘This acquittal implicitly verified the claims that top-ranking commanders of the army had been involved in attempts to stage coups. However, not even a single investigation has so far been launched against the coup plotters. This incident clearly indicates that even those who attempt stage coups are very well protected. To this day, none of those who have made these attempts have been investigated, despite very clear and open evidence, let alone tried.’

Just before the end of the trial the independant policy insititute, European Stability Initiative, had come to a similar conclusion: ‘The outcome of the Nokta affair is that it is the journalists, not the potential coup plotters, who are under investigation’.

Also few and far between are military coup diarists of any nationality (but any future ones should keep their writing under close guard until ready to reveal all). There is, though, an interesting set of diaries by Petr Vologodskii, a prominent Siberian lawyer and a member of the anti-Bolshevik government, set up in Omsk, during the Russian civil war. The Hoover Institution has published them in English in two volumes - The Diaries of Petr Vasil'evich Vologodskii, 1918-1925. They give rich details of the coup that led to the formation of the opposing government. Although the books themselves are not available online, the Hoover Institution has made available an extensive (but apparently anonymous) article about them.

Politkovskaya's Russian Diary

‘[This book] should be dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read.’ So wrote Jon Snow in his introduction to A Russian Diary, by Anna Politkovskaya. First published in 2007 by Random House, just a year after her death, A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, has now been issued in paperback by Vintage. Politkovskaya was a crusading Russian journalist, most well known perhaps for her reporting from Chechnya and her strident criticisms of the Russian regime’s role in that conflict. She was also a severe critic of Putin’s presidency. In 2006, at the age of 48, she was shot dead in her apartment block lift. Russian state security officer Alexander Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering the assassination. Putin argued publicly that, in his opinion, murdering such a person would do much greater damage to the authorities than her publications ever had. Litvinenko, though, himself was murdered in London two weeks after making his accusation against Putin.

A Russian Diary is not a diary in the normal sense, but pieces of Politkovskaya’s writing put together and attached to specific dates. The book had been prepared by Politkovskaya herself and was in the process of being translated, by Arch Tait, when Politkovskaya was murdered. Wikipedia carries a detailed biography of the journalist and includes part of Jon Snow’s introduction: ‘Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact. Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished reading A Russian Diary feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read.’

Thanks are due to the New York Times which has substantial extracts from the book, and an excellent review, by Andrew Meier. He is not enamoured of the translation or the editing but is much taken with Politkovskaya herself. He concludes: ‘Her writing made her more than a reporter; when she died, she was a crisis mediator and Russia’s most prominent human rights advocate. Stacks of letters — pleas for help — came daily. Politkovskaya fought for the victims — of the state, of terror and of that Russian catchall, fate. Then she joined them.’

Politkovskaya was born in the US to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both UN diplomats, but grew up in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow State University Department of Journalism in 1980 with a thesis on the writer and poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who also led a troubled life, much affected by the Revolution. Tsvetaeva died, by committing suicide, at the age of 49, just a year older than Politkovskaya. Curiously, she was also a pseudo diarist: her book called The Demesne of the Swans is a series of political poems but written in the form of a diary.

The Diary Junction - Data and links for over 500 historical and literary diarists

Prokofiev's literary gifts

The murder of Rasputin, by coincidence, is one of many and varied incidents written about by the composer Serge Prokofiev in his diaries, the second volume of which (1915-1922) has just been published in Britain. The diaries, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips, are getting a reasonable press. The Times calls them ‘compelling reading, and not only for musical historians’; and Phillips’ translation is described as ‘masterly’. However, the New Statesman ‘can't help but wish in places that [Phillips had] adopted a rather harsher editorial approach’ because ‘in the later diaries, the composer's lapidary prose fails to enliven interminable descriptions of parties, romantic indecisiveness and suchlike’.

The publisher, Faber&Faber, says: ‘Taken as a whole, the Diaries represent an inexhaustibly rich portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in the whole of Western art, peopled by virtually every musician and artist of note. They constitute both an indispensable and an entertaining source of reference for all scholars and lovers of Prokofiev’s music.’ Generously, the publisher’s website makes available the full text of Phillips’ introduction.

The diaries were published in Russia some time ago - see the excellent Sergey Prokofiev Foundation website. Available on this website are extensive extracts, in English, from the third volume (1923-1933, yet to be published in English) along with many photographs. There is also the text of an interview with Phillips, and comments by literary and academic figures. For example, Natalia Savkina, an associate professor of history at the Moscow Conservatory, comments on the diaries as follows: ‘I am convinced that Prokofiev's literary gift was equal to his talent as a musician. As a result, we obtain a book in which Prokofiev the writer is challenging Prokofiev the musician.’

When the first volume of Prokofiev's diaries (1907-194) were published in English in 2006 it sparked a mini-debate about whether a composer's autobiographical material was really relevant to his/her music. Oliver Kamm gave the subject a good airing, focusing on the fallacy of assuming that the works and the composer's intentions for the works were equivalent.

Rasputin's diary?

The Diary of Grigory Rasputin has just been published in Russia, according to Russia InfoCentre. Rasputin, sometimes dubbed the Mad Monk, rose to great heights in Tsarist Russia, over a hundred years ago. Little is known about his childhood, his life was controversial to say the least, and his murder in 1916 remains the subject of speculation today. According to InfoCentre, it took experts several years to decipher the text of the 102 page diary, and to recognise that it was not actually written by Rasputin himself, but on his behalf. This person, InfoCentre says, ‘tells about [Rasputin’s] calling and healing power, writes tenderly about Mama, the Empress, and scornfully about Papa, the Emperor: “Take his crown off, and you won’t distinguish him amid a dozen of people”.’

For an alternative view of this diary, see Edvard Radzinsky’s book, The Rasputin File published in 2001 by Random House. Radzinsky calls the diary a ‘ crude ideological forgery’.