Entwined Histories by Piotr Wilczek

For anyone living in the Polish-British space, this book is an absolute must-read. A collection of 38 essays written by Poland's former ambassador to Washington (during the first Trump administration) and to London (taking office just as Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began), the book is presented as a 'cultural memory'. It avoids the format of a conventional diplomatic memoire; Prof Wilczek reveals no juicy tittle-tattle. "I shall be taking such secrets to the next world," he said at the book's Warsaw launch. Rather, each essay shows how the histories of Britain and Poland have been interwoven by war, exile, culture, tradition and diplomacy in unexpected ways. 

After a spirited attack on lazy media stereotypes of Poles in an article to The Spectator, Prof Wilczek has become a regular guest on the pages of the magazine, currently edited by Michael Gove. A revised version of the chapter, How London became Poland's second capital, made its way from the book to The Spectator earlier this month.

What makes the book so fascinating is the topics chosen for 38 essays. A few are familiar (such as the stories of spy Krystyna Skarbek or General Maczek); most of them, however, uncover new territory even for readers well-versed in British-Polish relations. These include the story of how the Duke of Kent might have become the King of Poland had he not died in a plane crash in 1942, and the story of Poland’s ambassador to the court of Henry VIII, Jan Dantyszek (Johannes Dantiscus), who arrived in London as envoy of Poland's King Sigismund I in 1522, exactly 500 years before Piotr Wilczek took up the role of Poland’s ambassador to the UK. I also found fascinating the story of Socinianism, a nontrinitarian Protestant movement ('the Polish Brethren'), based in Raków, "a modest town which housed a printing press, a famous academy and some of the sharpest minds of the age." Prof Wilczek writes: "For a brief but incandescent period, Raków was Geneva without the dourness – Reformation thinking at its most open and its least vengeful." The Counter-Reformation got to the Socinians in the end, forcing them into exile. "Socianian thought percolated into the bloodstream of English radicalism. Its fingerprints can be seen in the writings of William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania." A trip to Raków (40km south-east of Kielce) is thus in order.

Another noteworthy chapter, A Polish Eye on England's Harbours – with Joseph Conrad in Mind, considers through visits to Southampton, Portsmouth, Liverpool and Hull how the Polish-born writer understood the British Isles as home to a sea-faring nation. Prof Wilczek quotes from Conrad's description of the Thames Estuary in Heart of Darkness, which remains one of the most atmospherically evocative passages I have ever read in the English language.

London is a top posting for any diplomat, so about a third of the book is focused on it. I found the essays on the Warburg Institute and the diplomat's guide to navigating London's gentlemen's clubs the most interesting, as well as the descriptions of its bookshops – and its Polish restaurants.

One thing I would have like to have seen in Entwined Histories is some comparisons between the training and ethos of the British and Polish diplomatic corps. Diplomacy is very much a field in which one needs phenomenally fine judgment and superb people-skills – and above all, knowing when to stay silent. Dealing with the assorted ogres, narcissists and ne’er-do-wells that all too often rise to positions of highest office requires a suspension of normal instinct-based behaviour. "Diplomacy is a balancing act between urgency and restraint," writes Prof Wilczek; I feel that it is something you have to be born to do; most of us would be too quick to snap back with an undiplomatic riposte that would carry with it real-world consequences. How the diplomatic mindset is nurtured across different cultures is of great interest to the general reader.

Entwined Histories reads well and smoothly; it shall end up on my library shelf next to Speeches for Leaders by the former British Ambassador to Warsaw, Charles Crawford.

Entwined Histories is available from Chronos Books (www.chronosbooks.com) for £12.99/$17.95.

This time last year:
The [2025-brood] kittens on their 12th day

This time last year:
A new path to Krężel

This time two years ago:
Mutineers march on Moscow

This time six years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador

This time eight years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time nine years ago:
Zamość – the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time 15 years ago:
Israeli Boeing 707 visits Warsaw again

This time 16 years ago:
More interesting aircraft overhead...

This time 17 years ago:
Poland is really short on mountains

This time 18 years ago:
The warmth of the sun
[with noctilucent clouds]

This time 19 years ago:
Full rainbow over Jeziorki

Łowicz – history, religion and folklore

Each year on 22 September, Europe celebrates Car-Free Day, and to mark the occasion, Koleje Mazowieckie offers free travel on its entire network. The provincial rail operator ran its normal Sunday service, and the chance to get to Łowicz and back without paying a grosz was appealing. Łowicz is on the Koleje Mazowieckie network but lies outside the province of Mazowsze; the limited-stop RE3 service from Warsaw to Płock makes the 77km journey from W-wa Zachodnia to Łowicz Główny in a mere 42 minutes. And today – for free. The double-deck train was on time in both directions but crammed; passengers had to scramble over piles of bikes in the vestibules to get to the seats.

And so – on to Łowicz. Below: first impressions of the town – the post office building between Łowicz Głowny station and the old town. Good to be here.

Below: the Piarist church of the Merciful Mother of God, Łowicz. A beautiful piece of baroque architecture from the mid-18th century. The Piarists (the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, or Ordo Clericorum Regularium pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum) are a religious order of the Catholic Church dedicated to education, founded in 1617. Photographed in late afternoon as the Equinoxial sun starts creeping around to illuminate the western side of the church.

Below: the gorgeous interior. Music quite splendid too. The gilded angels, the silver clouds, the paintings, the marble, the statues, all designed to impress. 

Baroque architecture was designed to appeals to the senses. This was the Counter-reformation at full blast. Protestantism eschewed decoration and song, its black-frocked pastors read and prayed in the vernacular in their bleak chapels. The Catholic Church, however, knew how to draw the crowds on a Sunday after a week's toil in the fields. An hour or so spent immersed the splendour and mystery of God was an attraction not to be missed. Incense and angelic voices, the architecture and rich visual treats drawing the spirit to a closer communion with the Numinous and Eternal. 

Below: the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas, Łowicz.  A neo-Gothic structure dating back to 1420, standing on the site of an earlier wooden church from 1100. Refurbished in the 17th century in the baroque style, it competes with the Piarists' church in terms of gorgeousness. Stunning in the sunlight.

Below: the interior of the cathedral, looking towards the southern nave. The high altar is around the corner and to the left. Magnificent.

Łowicz was home to the primates of Poland from Gniezno, who resided in the castle (now in ruins) to the north-west of the town centre, the cathedral served as their church. 

Rich as the ecclesiastical history of Łowicz is, the town is probably best known for its folklore. In particular the colourful striped cloth used for costumes. 

Left: a plate from the 1960 Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (a copy of which can still be found in most Polish households today!) illustrating Polish folk costume (stroje ludowe). Those from Łowicz on the right of the middle row. The town's influence on folk culture is out of all proportion to its size. [Incidentally, I'm thinking that Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa would have better been translated into English as the 'Polish Folk Republic'.]

Łowicz has an excellent local museum in the Old Market Square, opposite the cathedral. (Between the two is the Hotel Polonia, where Napoleon stopped to dine before setting of on his ill-fated invasion to Russia.) 

The museum itself focuses on the folk culture and traditions, as well as putting the region into a broader historical context. There's a strong emphasis on the folk costumes themselves; the process of spinning linen into thread,weaving the thread into material and dying the material with vibrant colours.

There are several rooms dedicated to naïve art from the region, with its own characteristic style. Best known are the wycinanki, intricate, colourful cut-outs used to decorate items or as artworks in their own right. Seeing how time-consuming their production is makes a modern person realise just how attached we've become to our devices, how much easier, and less creative, the battle with boredom is these days.

In the gardens stands a skansen – a replica farmstead from the end of the 19th century, showing how rural people would have lived and worked at the time. Below: an 'izba' or room in which families would cook, eat, sleep and spin and weave. Note the decoration: cornflower-blue walls, wycinanki on the walls and beams, and a floral garland hanging from the ceiling.

Below: Polish consumers from whatever part of the country they're from will be familiar with the logo of OSM Łowicz, a dairy-produce company based in the town. The logo refers to the 'paski' or colourful stripes.

Below: two tunes from Łowicz on Volume 1 of the Mazowsze song and dance ensemble (of whom my uncle – my father's older brother – was first violinist). It would be from this LP that was born my earliest recognition of Łowicz as a concept.

Łowicz has not one but two market squares; the Old Market (Stary Rynek) and the New Market (Nowy Rynek), except that the new one is not a square but a triangle, the only triangular square in Poland. Below: fragment of the buildings on the eastern side of the new market.

On the way back to the station to catch the 18:30 train back to Warsaw and then on to Chynów. A final glimpse of the Old Market square. Too many cars – I'm sure this will change before too long.

This time last year:
Car-free day: Góra Kalwaria by train

This time three years ago
Into darkness

This time six years ago:
Summer's end

This time seven years ago:
In which I lose a lot of data from my old laptop

This time eight years ago:
Konin - town of aluminium, electricity and coal

This time 11 years ago:
Car-free day falls on a Sunday

This time 12 years ago:
Vistula at record low level

This time 15 years ago:
Car-free day? Warsaw's roads busier than ever

This time 16 years ago:
The shape of equinox

This time 17 years ago:
Potato harvest time in Jeziorki

Loving Vincent - review

This a remarkable film, on a number of counts, and must be seen.

It is the first animation to be made up of oil paintings - 65,000 frames based on 853 oil-on-canvas paintings, photographed to make the feature-length film, the work of over 100 artists. Each one either took a Van Gogh painting as a starting point, or created a new image based on his style (perspective, brush-strokes, colour work) and made them move. The visual result is amazing. The viewer is transported into a world of Van Gogh's paintings come to life; an other-worldly, a dream-like departure from reality into the painter's point of view.

Loving Vincent explores mental illness and its link with artistic greatness. Truly great artists are rarely neurotypical. Van Gogh suffered from multiple mental disorders, including Asperger's syndrome and schizophrenia. He was an obsessive-compulsive painter, resulting in a prolific output. Like his brother Theo, Vincent was also suffering from syphilis, not surprising given the ubiquity of prostitution in late 19th century France. The ever-changing mental state of the artist is a thread running through the film, commented upon by many of the film's characters, most of whom he had painted in real life.

The film's narrative is presented as a whodunnit, with one of Van Gogh's subjects, Armand Roulin, tracing his final weeks, meeting other people from Van Gogh's life (and other subjects of portraits) to establish the circumstances of his death. This has puzzled historians for decades. The fact that the gun used was never found, nor were his painting materials on the day, and the deathbed confession of a local man who claimed to have taunted Van Gogh (though never shot him), provides a pretext for investigation. The film faithfully shows the different theories surrounding Van Gogh's death, leaving them open to the viewer's interpretation.

Seen through the eyes of the lazy, alcoholic son of the local postman from Arles than Van Gogh befriended (and painted), it is also a story of redemption. Armand Roulin's mission (to deliver a final letter from the dead Vincent to his brother Theo), changes his life for the better as he realises that Van Gogh was far more than a madman. Armand travels to Paris, then on to Auvers-sur-Oise, where the artist spent his last few months. Here he hears differing accounts of Van Gogh's life and death.



Some great insights into human creativity emerge. The character of Dr Gachet, who treated Van Gogh and who understood him well, is portrayed as a failed artist who recognises the genius within his patient, whose frustration at having tried and failed at odds with Van Gogh's natural talent. And Gachet's daughter, who notes that Van Gogh had incredible powers of observation, able to see nature in the smallest detail, and record it. The film, likewise, has great depth and insight.

Another film of recent years springs to mind - Mr Turner, with Timothy Spall in the title role as the great British artist. Again, what makes the film work is the dissection of the artistic drive - and the fact that J.M.W. Turner was not a neurotypical individual.

This Polish-British co-production brings out the best features of both nations; Polish deep work harnessed to British team work. The ability to focus intensively for long periods of time, coupled to the networking abilities of organising cross-disciplinary skills from the worlds of film finance and art. Co-written and co-directed by Hugh Welchman (Oscar for the 2006 animation Peter and the Wolf, made in Łódź) and accomplished animator, Dorota Kobiela.

Loving Vincent represents the best of Europe. A Polish-British film about a Dutch painter who lived and worked in France. The jam-packed cinema in Warsaw suggests this film will do well commercially as well as critically. More than a biopic, it is a work of art in its own right, inspired by a great story of human artistic endeavour, a journey deep into the creative mind.

This time four years ago:
UFO credibility test

This time five years ago:
Junction ready for road to unbuilt sports centre

This time six years ago:
Park nad Książecem - Vistula escarpment, beautiful autumn

This time nine years ago:
Obama wins US presidential election

Cultural differences UK-Poland: Power distance

Whenever you sit down to do a serious analysis of cultural differences between two countries, you invariably come across the postać* of Geert Hofstede, anthropologist. His Cultural Dimensions Theory may be almost half a century old, but it's still the best set of tools to measure those "have you noticed that Poles tend to _____, while Brits are more likely to _____?" differences empirically.

If, dear reader, his name's new to you, and you have an interest in the cultural differences between the UK and Poland (or any other pair of nations), have a read about him and his works, do.

Essentially, Prof Hofstede defines six axes along which these differences can be plotted:

• individualism-collectivism
• uncertainty avoidance
• power distance (strength of social hierarchy) 
• masculinity-femininity (task orientation versus person-orientation)
• long-term vs short-term orientation
• self-indulgence vs self-restraint

I'd like to focus on power distance, which can be boiled down to the steepness of the hierarchical pyramid. A short power-distance culture is one in which the boss is democratic, has an open office door (or even works in the same open-space as everyone else), and takes decisions based on consensus. A long power-distance culture is one in which the boss is autocratic, remote, the trappings of power are made obvious, and the boss's decisions are not up for discussion.

Reading the above paragraph, you can immediately tell that the UK has a shorter power-distance than Poland - and Prof Hofstede's Power Distance Index shows this to be the case. On a scale of 1-120, where 1 = totally democratic and 120 = totally autocratic, the UK scores 35, Poland 68. Bear in mind that the research was carried out decades ago. My guess is that both countries have moved in the direction of a shorter power distance, with Poland maybe moving faster than the UK, but the UK still having a significantly shorter power distance than Poland.

Differences in power distance between the UK and Poland (and within Poland) can be seen by the use of the form 'Pan/Pani' to address one's boss. In the UK, it's first-name terms from the outset, and so it has been, generally, since the 1970s. Finding a Polish-owned company (even in the UK) in which an employee can address their boss in first-name terms, is rare.

The notion of an autocratic, paternalistic boss or ruler, accepted by those of lower status, is in Western European terms, rather pre-Enlightenment. The French Revolution and the American War of Independence, were about saying 'no' to an autocrat's divine right to rule.

In the context of the rise of civilisation, the emotionally-intelligent, aware leader is conscious of the sources of their leadership attributes (innate intelligence, good education, determination, physical mien) and does not feel a need to lord it over their subjects or employees. In return, the subjects or employees feel they can participate in decision-making, and have a greater sense of ownership and engagement in their society or company.

High power distance, therefore, is less civilised than low power distance. We humans, like all animals, naturally seek a place in a hierarchy. The higher the better. The notion that 'I'm it, you're shit' is something that civilisation has sought to temper. Through good manners, politeness, respect for others regardless of their natural place in the hierarchy. And yes, political correctness. Democratic societies tend to laugh at pompous buffoons. The success of Britain's best TV comedy shows - from Dads Army to The Office - is based on this.

The shorter the power distance, the more it behoves those in power to be understood by those over whom them have authority. A high power-distance leader can waffle on in a boring drone, his subjects noting his every word (and making the effort to understand what is being told to them). A low-power distance leader works on that speech to make sure that everyone gets the message, couched in plain, clear language. Tax offices too - compare the UK's tax return form with the Polish one. The former - a model of clarity (with a Diamond Mark from the Plain English Campaign). The Polish one - well, you need to hire an advisor to tell you what the tax office requires of you.

But what can we see today? People are confused, anxious, lost. Globalisation has created winners and losers. Consensus and democracy has failed the Western world. Elites are plotting to keep the little man in his place. And so the little man seeks someone strong, someone who can take the tough decisions to make the world a less uncertain place. Someone like Trump or Putin.

The less plugged in to the complex operations of government and business people are, the less they know about what is actually going on, the more likely they are to believe conspiracy theories and seek a strong 'cut through the bullshit' person who will make their world clearer.

It is a fallacy. It was proved a fallacy in the rubble of German cities in 1945.

Voting for an autocrat is a dangerous short-term fix.

* Postać. Figure? Character? Personage? Naah! Postać in this context is a word missing from English. I suggest it becomes a loan-word. Pronounce it POST-atch. With a short 'o' like in 'box'.

This time two years ago:
Wes Anderson's Grand Hotel Budapest

This time four years ago:
Painting the Forum Orange

This time seven years ago:
That's what I like about the North

The Polish individualist

Walking past a long line of stationary cars in the rush hour this morning, I had another insight into cultural differences between Poles and Britons. [WARNING: Sweeping broad-brush generalisations follow, of course there are exceptions, but I'm trying to present a Big Picture.]

Sitting fuming one-per-car in traffic, these individual(ist)s cannot not bring themselves to collaborate with others in getting to work. The streets of Warsaw are bunged up solid with one-per-car commuters driving short distances to work because it's beyond them to even think of sharing a bus, tram or train with their fellow citizens. We could all whisk into work in half the time by public transport were we to cooperate effectively with one another. If even half of those who had an alternative to driving took it, Warsaw would be an even better place to work.

The wonderful British 1960s TV series, The Prisoner, has, I think, some very Polish characteristics. There's no doubt that the protagonist played by Patrick McGoohan is clearly on spectrum. Often brusque in his dealings with others, he is obsessed with small details and takes the matter of his personal freedom very seriously. He is accused of being 'unmutual', of not wanting to get on with his fellow inmates. Being 'mutual', showing a willingness to cooperate with others with the aim of a building a better society for all - the notion of win-win (or even win-win-win) does not come easily to Poles.

Business in Poland is far more adversarial than it is in the UK. Both parties to a contract subconsciously consider that the natural outcome is that there will be a winner and a loser in this deal. And they'll do everything to ensure the other party doesn't win, often doing themselves down in the process. In the UK, there's a basic, background appreciation that things can be done on trust, so less time is spent ensuring one's interests are protected. The cost of mistrust is high - between businesses (lengthy legal contracts); within businesses (internal audits, compliance teams); between citizens (padlocks, crowbar-proof doors, alarms, security services); between tax authorities and taxpayers (endless kontrole - audits).

Building trust across society is the best investment any nation can make in itself. Everything else - education upward - stems from a basic belief that we can all trust one another, our neighbours, employers and government. And while that background level of trust has been steadily growing in Poland over the 18 years I've lived and worked here (it's still not as high as in the UK), I fear it may be going to reverse, taking into account the 19th Century mindset of Jarosław Kaczyński.

Yet there is clearly something about Mr Kaczyński that appeals greatly to many Poles. PiS is currently enjoying a 42% approval rating in the polls. Statements from government ministers against 'lefty liberal fads' such as cycling, vegetarianism or recycling resound with the grumpy individualist, who, like Patrick McGoohan will not be pushed around. The PiSite nagonka aimed at the WŚOP charity has something to do with the high profile of its organiser Jurek Owsiak successfully getting people to pull together. The concept of individualism (in opposition here to teamwork, rather than collectivism) is very Polish. This is not the 'rugged individualism' of the American West, rather an unhealthy individualism that cuts off the 'other'; nasz and nie-nasz.

Why are Poles such individualists? Why are they not so good at teamwork and collaboration? The very word 'collaboration' has negative connotations in Polish - and for good historical reasons. Poles tend to be better at solitary work, focusing in depth of the subject matter, rather than working in teams. Brits are good at teamwork, sharing a project in a cross-disciplinary approach, avoiding the information silo.

This, I think, comes from schooling. In the UK, there's a school subject called 'games'. One afternoon a week, for two hours, there will be competitive team sport activity - for all pupils. Football, cricket or rugby for the boys, rounders and netball for the girls. In Poland, there's WuEf - Wychowanie Fizyczne (literally 'Physical Education' or PE). Seen as a non-subject by children and parents alike (the number of zwolnienia or sick-notes I wrote for Moni and Eddie does not bear thinking about), WuEf entails little more than getting changed into shorts and a vest and running round the gym hall for half an hour. If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, it's the lack of that ingrained teamwork that has held Poland back; its sporting heroes on the international arena tend to be individuals rather than teams.

And Poles love to live in hierarchies, clawing their way up the vertiginous career ladder from młodzy specjalista, via specjalista to starszy specjalista. They don't like sharing information within the company, the starszy specjalista fearing that the młodszy specjalista is after his job. Which of course he or she is. A boss of a British company in Poland employing several hundred people told me that the day he posted the new organisation chart, showing who reports to whom, he was inundated by petitioners telling him that this reporting line was unfair, or that this person (shown above the petitioner on the org chart) should actually be lower, based on age, length of service and education.

Having said all of the above, collaboration in the workplace is attracting a backlash (see this article from the current Economist). Maybe Poles' ability to focus in solitude is an unrecognised reason why the economy's been doing so well. Whilst open plan offices are not controversial in the UK, in Poland they generate much resentment when they are being introduced by multinationals, while Polish firms (especially state-owned enterprises) tend to stick to the traditional long-corridor-with-individual-offices layout.

How this will pan out in the long term, with innovations in technology threatening to upset the world of work as we know it, is a moot point. Which approach will prove more resilient - the teamwork-based collaborative approach, or a cluster of focused individuals beavering away in solitude?

Time will tell.

This time last year:
Winter woes and a crisis of creativity

This time three years ago:
Warsaw - the more it snows

This time four years ago:
Get orf my lairnd!

This time five years ago:
A Dream Too Far - short story

This time six years ago:
Compositions in white, blue and gold

This time seven years ago:
Dobra and the road

This time eight years ago:
Polish air force plane full of VIPs crashes on landing in fog

Cultural differences, Poland - UK

Sitting in the Stag and Huntsman in Hambleden, a lovely old pub in a lovely old Buckinghamshire village, one of the essential cultural difference between Poland and Great Britain became clear to me.

It is the village. Cities tend to be similar. But examine the villages in both countries, and you will see the core of what makes Poles different to Brits.

In England, the village is the central repository of essential English values; decency, politeness, community - and privacy. 

It is here in Hambleden, not far from Henley-on-Thames, that W.H. Smith, newspaper vendor and bookseller - who made his fortune placing kiosks in stations as Britain's railways boomed - retired to. The village - like many around it - Fingest, Turville, Skirmett, Frieth - is extremely picturesque (it often appears in films and TV series). Its topography bears some examination, for it is here that lies the heart of the difference between Poland and England.

Hambleden is a largish group of cottages and a manor house clustered around a village green, a village church, a village hall, a village store and a village pub. Fields are regular in shape, interspersed by woodland and divided by hedgerows. Roads run off in all directions - down towards the river, up into the wooded heights, east and west to neighbouring villages. The terrain undulates; villages nestle cosily in the folds of hills. Below: the Village Hall, Hambleden.

It's a Sunday lunchtime, and the Stag and Huntsman is packed. Poles would look through the window, and remark that these people would be better off saving money by cooking their own food and eating it in their own homes - it's cheaper. It occurred to me that what these English rural folk are doing as they spend their money on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is investing in their community. It's not just about creating local jobs for bar staff, kitchen staff, farmers and brewers. It's about building trust and friendships between people in the village.

Below: beyond the butcher's shop, Hambleden's village inn, the Stag and Huntsman. Note how all cars are obediently parked on one side of the road. Porządek, Panie.

The Polish village, in contrast, is typically strung out along a long, straight road, with no discernible centre. This makes sense as the landscape's table-top flat. Ideal for mobile warfare. Left: ribbon-thin strips of land run off at right angles from this road, each farmed by different farmers (click to enlarge), the sons of sons of sons who had too many sons. I've also mentioned the importance of primogeniture in defining the difference between Poland and England - and in particular the countryside. In England, custom and law had it that the eldest son inherited the entire landed estate - as a whole. Younger sons joined the army, the church, the civil service. Or went off to conquer an empire, invent steam engines or football. In Poland, a father would divide his estate between sons, with each son ending up with ever-smaller strips of land, just enough to subsist on.

Other than the church on Sunday, there's no social focus. Yes, there's the shop, and outside it Pan Heniek and Pan Ziutek will while the afternoon away supping tins of Warka Pstrąg. And indeed, they bring with them to the UK the habit of outdoor drinking and depositing their empty tins of Lech, Tyskie and Żywiec around Britain's parkland, rather than paying the premium for sitting down in a pub to imbibe one's ale, as is the British wont.

And so, roaming around the Polish countryside, I yearn for those village hostelries where a pork pie (what's that in Polish!?) and a pint can be consumed in agreeable surroundings while resting weary legs.

The result of primogeniture is that the British aristocracy is numerically a minute percentage of the population. The Polish szlachta, or nobility, watered down by split inheritance, numbered some 8%-10% of the population at its peak. Better to be a somebody with a tiny parcel of land and a noble surname than a nobody forced to invent stuff like steam engines, telegraphs, mechanised looms, or blast furnaces.

As I have written before, the English countryside is where one wants to retire to, the Polish countryside is where one wants to escape from. The Polish wieś seethes with zawiść - jealous hatred or hateful jealousy - neighbours cannot countenance the fact that others are doing better than they through harder work, more judicious crop rotation, earlier (or later) planting (or reaping) - or just better luck.

But back to Hambleden. I doubt if all but the smallest number of villagers living here actually makes a living from the land. The large landholdings are efficiently and industrially farmed; here and there some organic farming takes place, but generally this is arable and livestock country, well maintained and managed. The majority of its 1,500 villagers are recent arrivals who have bought picturesque properties with monies earned or inherited or both; I'd guess the village is 50%+ retired City folk, entrepreneurs who've exited their businesses or inherited wealth, with the minority being people connected to the village through their kin. The influx drives up property prices.

In Poland, I get the sense that the majority of Varsovians are only one or two generations removed from the land. In 2001, I remember going for a walk with my children, then aged eight and six, and seeing a slaughtered pig being drained of blood, its throat slit, lying on a large wooden table in the middle of a farmyard. At work the next day, I mentioned this to my colleagues Beata and Joasia. Both laughed and said they could still remember seeing the same scene as children on their grandfathers' farms. Most of urban Britain is five or even ten generations removed from the land. And with that comes learned dependence - on the mill-owner or the state - but that's another story. In January 2006, on my way to a conference in Sandomierz, I noticed on the thermometer it was -26C outside. I glanced at the landscape; an elderly woman was carrying a bundle of firewood from the forest to her house. It occurred to me that at minus twenty-six there's no such word as mañana - rural life is hard, and one takes full responsibility for one's fate. You don't outsource it to a welfare state. 

Rugged individualism can become pathological individualism, however.

Poland needs its villages to get more connected, to discover a sense of community, of win-win, of public-spiritedness, building trust between neighbours. The pub is essential to that process. Village pub teams - bowling, darts, cricket, quiz - compete with one another in English. Nothing like this happens in Poland.

But to get things kick-started, there's no better way to do it than by opening small cafés, bars, restaurants, pubs. Maybe in a generation or two's time, the Polish village is where wealthier Poles will want to retire to.

[UPDATE NOVEMBER 2017: I buy a działka in Jakubowizna, a village 40km south of Warsaw.]

[UPDATE JULY 2022: I find I'm spending more time in Jakubowizna than in Jeziorki.]

This time last year:
Schadenfreude! The downfall of Hofman & Co.

This time two years ago:
From the Mersey to the Tyne

This time three years ago
Autumnal Gdańsk

This time four years ago:
What Independence Day means for Poles

This time five years ago:
Words fail me: what's the Polish for 'to fail'?

This time six years ago:
Autumn in Dobra

This time eight years ago:
Autumn ploughing

Hello Pork Pie

Pork pie. One of the culinary wonders of Britain. Over the last 72 hours, I've eaten, quite literally, nothing other than pork pie. Let me explain...

On Tuesday, we launched the second round of the Food is GREAT/Taste of Britain campaign, the largest and most concerted effort ever mounted to see the best of British food and drink onto the shelves of Polish supermarkets and delis. The focus has been on quality premium products. Some have been here for a while (Scotch whisky, fine teas), some are emerging (cider, Cheddar cheese, chutneys, pickled onions, Indian sauces, shortbread biscuits) others are entirely new to Poland (Wensleydale cheese, pork pies).

Let's examine the pork pie. The defining savoury snack of England. Along with the sausage roll and Cornish pasty, the idea of encasing minced and seasoned meat into pastry, ideal for eating on the go. Britain's answer to the hamburger (from Hamburg) or frankfurter (from Frankfurt).

Pork pie. Two succulent syllables requiring seven to articulate into Polish - wieprzowina w cieście. And launching this product on to an audience of food writers, buyers, distributors and importers, we stumble upon a major cultural difference between Brits and Poles.

Do you serve a pork pie hot or cold?

In my entire life, the question has never even entered my mind. Cold, of course. You do not heat the pork pie. That is its essence. It demands to be eaten cold (stored at +6C to +8C, served at room temperature), with English mustard*, chutney or pickles, and to be washed down with a fine ale, cider or a mug of tea. Eating a pork pie hot is a bizarre cultural quirk, rather like drinking tea with milk.

And yet Poles seem to expect that this delicacy be heated through before it can be eaten. And also prefer to eat it with a knife and fork, off a plate, rather than to be eaten from the hand, scattering crumbs on the floor.

Like Polish kiełbasa, pork pies fall into two categories there's the good stuff, and the mass-market product made down to a price point which has little to do with the original concept. Let's focus on the good stuff. The particular pork pies presented in Warsaw on Tuesday are made by Toppings Pies from Yorkshire, and by Dickinson & Morris (est. 1851) from Melton Mowbray (the home pork pie). Between them, the two firms presented a vast range to be sampled - pork pies topped with caramelised red onions, with Stilton cheese, with sage and onion stuffing; huntsman's pie, game pie (where partridge and pheasant replace humble pork), vegetarian pie with spinach and Feta cheese...

Pork pie anyone?

The pork pies delivered to the Taste of Britain/Food is GREAT event were transported from the UK frozen then defrosted for the Big Day; all the samples that did not get consumed now need to be finished off in express tempo. So I'm doing my bit. And enjoying it thoroughly. Accompanied by fresh fruit and veg, man can live on pork pie alone. It contains the protein and carbohydrates, and - all-importantly - the taste.

Ah. And we need some chutney and pickles. And nostril-blasting English mustard (which a Polish colleague described as 'yellow wasabi'). These came courtesy of Tracklements of Wiltshire, a family firm producing premium condiments. The perfect accompaniment to pork pie.

My lunch, today. With a single-estate Pfunda tea by Birchall. No milk.

Pork pies need to be promoted to Polish consumers who've not yet tried them.

"Mr Ambassador, the Polish nation awaits your verdict..." HMA Robin Barnett enjoys.

Kruche ciasto z nadzieniem mięsnym = Pork pie

Everything must be eaten by Friday evening, so I take home one large pie and two smaller ones.

I hope that in 20 years time, British visitors to Poland will say: "It's the little differences. Example? In Poland, people eat pork pies hot." Just as Polish visitors to Britain say "In Britain, people drink tea with milk."

Now all that's needed is a good distribution network to get this culinary delight into Polish shops and thence onto Polish tables.

* 2019 update - Roleski of Poland makes an 'English mustard' (musztarda angielska) that is easily the equal or even the superior of Colman's English Mustard.

This time two years ago:
The meaning of class - in England, in Poland

This time three years ago:
First frost 

This time seven years ago:
First frost 
(this week the temperature has not fallen below +10C, not even at night)

Respect the pedestrian? Not if Poland's parliament can help it.

One of those great, nation-defining things about Britain is the institution of the zebra crossing. Loiter around one and instantly traffic comes to a halt, allowing you the pedestrian to proceed unafraid of being hurt. As both driver and pedestrian, treating zebra crossings (with their attendant Belisha beacons and zig-zag road markings) as sacred is part of what makes Britain a wonderfully civilised country. It is also one reason why road deaths per million citizens are three times lower than in Poland.

But when deputies from the ruling PO (Civic Platform) party last year put forth the proposition that UK-style rules apply for pedestrian crossings, uproar ensued among their motor-mad fellow parliamentarians, who continue to block any changes to the highway code that would give pedestrians greater security. It's worth noting that last year, 248 Poles were killed on zebra crossings. In the UK? Eight. Yes, eight pedestrians killed on a zebra crossing, according to Department of Transport statistics. If you include all forms of road crossings in the UK, the number of pedestrians killed rises to 47. Five times fewer than on Polish zebra crossings alone.

This makes me really angry. My fellow Poles - let's stop slaughtering one another using cars as lethal weapons. Pedestrians and cyclists are vulnerable; let them live.

In today's Metro newspaper, the lead story on the front page names the parliamentarians who insist that the current law - which states that a pedestrian may only step onto a zebra crossing when they judge that given the speed and distance of an approaching vehicle, it is safe to do so.

It is worth bearing in mind that the bulk of Polish highway regulations date back to communist days, when Party members, chauffeur-driven in their black Volgas, were kings of the road and the underlings walked, cycled or put-putted around in funny little two-stroke engined cars or motorbikes. There was a regulation making it an offence, punishable with a fine, for a pedestrian to slow down while crossing a road in front of a car. How dare the plebeians get in the way of Party business!

Times have changed, but among some Polish parliamentarians the mindset is the same. "We are the rulers - we have black SUVs with darkened windows - you are the plebs, walking to the bus stop." They dare not say this - but this is what they are thinking.

Enough already! Dość już! Pedestrians in Poland should be treated with exactly the same respect by Polish law and Polish drivers as they are treated in the UK. As sacred beings with a divine right to walk as they will across properly signed and illuminated zebra crossings.

Things are getting better in Poland, though slowly. Looking at September's road accident stats, the number of Poles killed on the road fell by 14.5% (from 317 to 271) compared to the same month last year, the number of accidents fell by 11.5% (from 3,525 to 3.121) compared to the same month last year. That's progress - but it should be much faster. Road deaths are completely unnecessary and entirely preventable.

If you wish to keep an eye open for road traffic accident stats for Poland, the Polish police is very good at keeping the score - on a daily basis. Check out www.policja.pl. Today, we learn - on the home page - that yesterday's tally was eight deaths in 73 accidents. That's eight human lives lost for good. One day. Tragic.

This time two years ago:
Autumnal gorgeousness in Warsaw

This time three years ago:
The genius of Donald Tusk

This time four years ago:
Tragic road accident kills 18: Has Poland learnt anything from it?

Bar mleczny formula still doing well in Warsaw

Before Western-style fast food invaded Poland, the only place to eat cheaply and quickly was the bar mleczny - literally 'milk bar'. The name would suggest a chromium counter serving various colours of the milkshake, but the Polish take on the milk bar was a self-service restaurant where you can buy home-made-style soups, pierogi, goulash, beetroot, cabbage and potatoes, a large meal for a bargain price.

Many have disappeared in Warsaw, displaced by more sophisticated eateries, but here and there you will still find a few - and they are doing well. The old-school format appeals to the young as well as to the retired.

Today, I chanced by one I'd often walked past and ignored when working on ul. Nowogrodzka - Bar Bambino on ul. Krucza. Entirely undistinguished from the outside, it was only by gazing in (I was hungry) that I could appreciate its charm.

It's busy in the kitchen at lunchtimes, a blur of activity

To use a bar mleczny, join the back of the queue to the cash-till. Select your meal, pay, collect a ticket. Take your ticket, pick up a tray and cutlery, and join another queue hanging around the serving hatch. A lady will shout 'następny!' ('next!') and you hand her your ticket. There's a blur of activity, after which a lady bustles towards the hatch shouting out your order. You collect your dishes from her and make a dash with your tray to an empty table (the place is busy!). After enjoying your meal, it's a self-clear system, and you take your plates and cutlery to the a hatch marked zwrot naczyń ('return of tableware').
 

Love that 1960s moderne decor.

The jadłospis (menu) gave a huge variety of soups, main courses, side dishes and desserts, at prices which showed that someone's really worked hard to strike the balance between profitability and affordability. I chose sorrel soup with hard-boiled egg (3.63zł), pierogi ruskie (pierogi with a cheese, mashed potato and horseradish stuffing) and buckwheat groats with a rich mushroom sauce. My order came to 13.74zł, or £2.89 for a huge and entirely filling meal. The soup was served piping hot, the pierogi came with skwarki (crunchy chunks of pork fat) which I sadly left untouched as it's Lent.

Bar Bambino compares favourably in terms of price, speed of service and spacious layout to bary mleczne from the Mleczarnia chain (there's one on ul. Bagatela, close to our offices that's tiny and usually packed).

If you are unfamiliar with bary mleczne, ask a Polish colleague to point you to the nearest one. They are a great Polish lunchtime institution.

This time last year:
Nikkor 45mm f2.8 pancake lens reviewed

This time two years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time three years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time four years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza
[four years on, nothing's changed...]

This time five years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

You've either got or haven't got... class

A word that came up in three conversations over the past two days made me stop and think. The word was klasa – class – as in a personal characteristic (be it a colleague, a politician or a celebrity).

It's a near synonym for the English word 'class', but doesn't carry with it any baggage connoting social hierarchy. Klasa does not come from breeding, but does come from the home; it is not the product of wealth, but it's not associated with squalor. It doesn't necessarily go together with sophistication, but it certainly isn't primitive. Klasa is a seemingly effortless self-discipline; it's about being well-turned out, immaculately clean, well-dressed without conspicuous display. People with klasa avoid vulgar language, are polite to one and all, cheerful yet respectful. People with klasa are never impatient, yet do not hang about – they're not lazy either.

A person with klasa doesn't give in to anger but can talk with precision about their* feelings. Klasa in the home is visible. Tidiness, cleanliness, fresh flowers. Plenty of books. Signs in the kitchen of healthy eating – fresh fruit, cookbooks hinting of imaginative cuisine. And whatever car a person with klasa drives – one part of it that's never used is the klaxon.

Politicians with klasa are more convinced about their convictions rather than with using political power to gain advantage for themselves or their coterie. I will not name names here, but it's worth looking at some of our elected officials through this prism. People with klasa age gracefully, neither trying to artificially maintain an illusory youthfulness in increasingly comical ways, nor slumping into the abnegactwo (self-neglect) of terminal decline.

Below: enjoy Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin convincing Bing Crosby that you've either got or you haven't got style - or indeed class. Or charm!



* I have given into the recent shift in English usage to replace the singular possessive pronouns 'his and her' when used together with the plural possessive pronoun 'their', even when it doesn't confirm with a singular noun. The BBC has taken to doing this; it is less clumsy and – more importantly – politically correct. 

This time last year: 
First frost 

This time five years ago:
First frost 

[this year's one should be coming up soon... first snow 29 November?]

He could have been a contender

He died a śmierć Polaka - 'a Pole's death', one that was futile, avoidable, and leaving the question 'what if?'. At the end of a drink-fuelled evening in Los Angeles in December 1968, Krzysztof Komeda was pushed off a two-metre high escarpment by writer Marek Hlasko. A scuffle? An angry exchange? Drunken horse-play? The ensuing head injury led to Komeda's death in a Warsaw hospital days short of his 38th birthday. And Hlasko never got over it either. He died two months after Komeda. Suicide?

Here was a man reaching the height of his creative powers; in one brilliant decade, Komeda had written over 70 movie soundtracks, including those to Roman Polański's Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, and recorded several jazz albums.

Who knows what he would have achieved had he lived? This morning, I saw a huge billboard for a ballet set to the music of Philip Glass and Wojciech Kilar. These two composers, both contemporaries of Komeda's, give one an idea of how his career could have progressed after reaching he had Hollywood. He could have been another John Williams (another contemporary).



Above: Jazz from the score of Polański's 1962 film, Knife in the Water, and the haunting lullaby from Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), below.


Komeda's life and times have been brought to the big screen in a documentary film, Komeda, Komeda, written and directed by Natasza Ziółkowska-Kurczuk. His story is mainly told by his Polish contemporaries, guys who played jazz with Komeda from the 1950s, along with directors Roman Polański and Andrzej Wajda. They're very much alive - guys in their late 70s and early 80s, still playing, still enjoying life, with some great stories to tell.

Born Krzysztof Trzciński in April 1931, he came by his stage name, during the war. According to his sister, he was playing soldiers with school friends, he wrote the word for 'headquarters' (komenda) using an ę rather than an en. 

Komęda - without the Polish nasal diacritic mark - the name stuck.

The film gives an intriguing portrait of the communist authorities' confused attitude to jazz. Music of a decadent, commercial West? Or the music of the downtrodden Negro? Archive film of Polish jazz festivals from the 1950s show Trad rather than Be-bop, When the Saints go Marching In, rather than Scrapple from the Apple. Komeda was into the latter.

The film presents a portrait of a perfectionist - "He'd make us practice a piece a hundred times - the same few notes, over and over, for an hour," said one of his band members. This is one of the marks, according to Malcolm Gladwell, of an outlier. The other is being in the right place at the right time. Sadly for us all, Krzysztof Komeda was in the wrong place with the wrong people when he incurred the injury that would kill him, depriving jazz-lovers and film-goers of what could have been one of the 20th Century's greats.

This time last year:
What gets eaten, what gets thrown away

This time four years ago:
Rush hour in Białystok

Is there hope for Russia?

For Moni

To the Royal Castle today for a talk about contemporary Polish and Russian cinematography, led by Gazeta Wyborcza's Tadeusz Sobolewski, and Russian movie critic, Irina Rubanova. The meeting was part of a series promoted by the Ministry of Culture and the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding. The two pundits agreed that movie-making in both countries was better in the communist days. Mr Sobolewski touched on the important influence of the Afghan War (1980-1989) on Russian movie-making, which, for the USSR started and finisheda decade and half after the US involvement in Vietnam, and had similar social fall-out. Polish cinema, he said, had no Afghanistan or Vietnam hanging over it. Poland's cinema industry may churn out drivel like Kac Wawa or Wyjazd integracyjny, but it does make 50-60 films a year and they do attract a reasonable, though undemanding, audience.

Russian audiences used to love Polish films in the old days, said Ms Rubanova; today's generation of cinema goers, however, are largely ignorant of the works of Wajda and the other great Polish directors. Russia currently makes fewer films than Poland does, she said, speaking of the huge wall of money on hand to make state-sponsored films - some €1.25 billion a year. Yet few directors are willing to make such movies, distributors are not interested, few privately-owned cinemas would want to show them and few Russians would wish to see them. Yet at the same time, 64 anonymous directors have recently signed a petition calling for an end to 'dark' films that portray Russia in a bad light.

After the discussion - a screening of Aleksey Balabanov's Kochegar/('Stoker'). A well-crafted film, but a 'dark' one; so utterly bereft of hope for the Russian condition that any concept of Polish-Russian dialogue might as well crawl under a carpet and die. For how can Poland (or indeed any other nation) have a meaningful dialogue with a nation as brutal, dumb, greedy and so entirely lacking in redeeming characteristics, as the one portrayed in this film?

The titular stoker in the film is a Hero of the Soviet Union, a Red Army major of Yakut nationality, who was invalided out of the war in Afghanistan and now spends his life keeping the fires burning in the basement of a run-down block of flats somewhere in Russia. As a Yakut, he is an outsider, a gentle and honourable man. The local mafia use the furnaces to dispose of corpses; something to which the stoker turns a blind eye as one of the mafiosi is another Afghanistan vet. If he tells the stoker that it was a bad person going into the furnace, then so must it be.

Unlike Hollywood, where the American mafia is portrayed with generous dashes of humour and humanity (I'm thinking Goodfellas here), the Russian mob as shown in Kochegar are devoid of any human characteristics whatsoever. Murderous, deceitful, avaricious, without any scruples - or thoughts, or reflections, or conscience - they are one-dimensional cut-outs of mindless evil, driving around in their black SUVs with darkened windows, murdering colleagues for a bundle of banknotes or for a larger cut of the business.

Between shovelling coal into the furnaces, the stoker spends his time typing a story about an evil Russian coming into a Yakut home, back in tsarist times. The stoker's daughter, tarnished by Russia, has herself become like Russia; bereft of emotion, sponging the last roubles off her father despite being co-owner of a furrier business. Russia is shown as without any redeeming features; utterly corrupt, crumbling and mindlessly brutal. The film carries in it a strong charge of nostalgia for the USSR; there was order back then; order and honour.

If you've been to Modlin (the fort, as opposed to the airport), you will find the scenery familiar - the film was set in Kronstadt, the fortress-island in the Gulf of Finland, 25km west of St Petersburg. Kronstadt, of course, was the setting of the major insurrection against the Bolsheviks in 1921, brutally crushed by Lenin and Trotsky, a major sign that the 1917 Revolution was not intended to improve the lot of the ordinary Russian, but a seizure of power by an ideologically motivated gang.

At the end of the film I thought - if this is the way that a contemporary Russian film director portrays his country - then the only rational thing that Poles can say to Russians by way of dialogue is "thank the Lord God that we are out of your clutches; that Poland's in NATO and the EU".

It is not a happy film to watch. It has not come from a happy nation. After watching it I felt I understood the 64 anonymous film directors and their criticism of this type of movie. Yet what is cinema but a reflection of the state of the nation? Look at how the dark, introspective, self-questioning American films of the 1970s gave way to the gung-ho brashness of the Reagan era. Society changed, and with it, its movies.

This time last year:
In praise of Marmite XO

This time two years ago:
Second round of the presidential election - on a knife edge

This time three years ago:
Summer dusk, Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Lublin and the Road

A telling Metro vignette

A scene on the Metro from Politechnika to Wilanowska this evening. It's rush hour, the carriage is packed. Sitting on the seat nearest the door is babcia, in her early 70s. And sitting on her lap is her wnuczek, aged around 11. There's clearly six decades between the two, and yet the strapping grandson and his diminutive grandmother both see it right and fitting that he sits on her lap rather than a) stand, or b) that she sits on his lap (they seemed of equal size and weight).

What happened at the next station - Pole Mokotowskie - was even more remarkable. Many people got off the train - students on their way to an evening lecture at SGH I guess - and the seat next to babcia was vacated. Somehow no one was in a rush to take it. Half way to Racławicka station the seat was still vacant. And yet wnuczek did not get off his grandmother's knees to occupy the seat himself. Somehow, it was more natural for the boy to remain seated on Babcia's lap; he felt more comfortable sitting on her than beside her.

I have seen this scene many a time - on trams and on buses. Always boys, never girls - the oldest (on a number 24 tram on Al. Jerozolimskie) must have been at least 16. It tells me much about the way that Polish grandmothers - a powerful institution, a fundamental wellspring of power in the Polish state - treat their male heirs.

In many of these cases I have observed, I guess that the two live in the same apartment along with the boy's mother and father, who work long hours. The boy has developed a strong bond with his grandmother who still takes him to podstawówka and back. And even when wnuczek moves on to gimnazjum, that bond remains a time-honoured habit.

Grandparents are an essential source of wisdom for children wherever they are growing up; parents shout at their children; grandparents rarely do. Grandparents are less stressed by the exigencies of the workplace and have the benefit of an extra few decades' experience to pass on to their vnooks. But then grandparents also have a tendency to spoil their male grandchildren, as the scene I witnessed today seems to show.

I get off the Metro at Wilanowska and make my way to the bus stop. I see babcia and wnuczek behind me. They are both running and laughing. I can see that the relationship between the old lady and her grandson keeps her fit and happy.

This time last year:
How I almost saved the life of Barack Obama

This time three years ago:
Ansel Adams, Count Basie, Sir John Betjeman

This time five years ago:
The hissing of the summer lawns

Who are the thickies of Europe?

A big thanks to Tutkaj News for flagging up this story last week. (For those who don't know it, Andrzej's site is the best compendium of links to English-language stories about Poland and Poles in the UK on the web.)

The story, in Britain's socially- and economically left-leaning Guardian, points out that poor Poland produces more students at A-level (matura) than does the UK. The article is condescending in tone, its analysis superficial and ideologically-motivated.

Read this passage.

The UK has a smaller proportion of adults with A-levels or their equivalent than Poland or Bulgaria, an analysis by the European Union's official statistics agency shows.
Several former eastern bloc countries now have adult populations that are more highly educated than the UK's, the Eurostat data reveals. They include Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria.

Oh golly-gosh. Those funny people with those funny unpronounceable names are actually cleverer than us? "And why is that?" ask the well-meaning Guardian readers. It is, so the newspaper asserts, "due to the rising cost of learning".
Hang on a second! Rising cost of learning? Then cut the cost! Pay teachers less! Don't invest in schools! Do something! Patently a heap of illogical drivel.
Look at the sixth word of the second quoted paragraph, 'now'. And then take a look at the very statistics linked to the article. They stretch back to 1999, and then the gulf between the UK and Poland was actually bigger than it is today. So this is not about now; it's a systemic problem that was actually worse under Tony Blair.
A quick canter over those stats for those who can't be bothered to do so themselves.
Total population (aged 25-64) having completed at least upper-secondary education. In 2010, this was 88.7% of Poles, and 76.1% of Brits. Europe's brain-boxes are the post-communist countries. Lithuania (92%), Czech Republic (91.9%), Slovakia (91%) and Estonia (89.2%) beat Poland. Generally, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has the highest proportion of young people in Europe leaving school at what in the UK is sixth-form level.

So who are Europe's thickies? In ascending order: Malta (29%), Portugal (31.9%), Spain (52.6%), Italy (55.2%) and Greece (62%) (Making any connections?)

Is the root cause of poor educational outcomes a lack of funding? No. At heart, I think it is that CEE societies place a far greater store on educating children than do either western Europeans or Mediterranean types. When I was a teenager, almost all my UK-born Polish peers went on from school into higher education, when that figure for the UK population as a whole was just 8%.

Our parents pressured us to do well at school in England just as Polish parents pressure their children to do well at school in Poland today.

But before Poland and the other CEE countries think about relaxing, remember than 100% of South Korean parents want their children to go to university...

Words which I remember my mother quoting to me as a child:

Chcesz być czymś w życiu, to się ucz
Abyś nie zginął w tłumie,
Nauka to potęgi klucz
W tym moc, co więcej umie.

Ignacy Baliński (1862 - 1951)

('If you want to be someone in life, then study
To avoid dying among the masses,
Education is power's key
In him the power, who knows more.')

This time last year:
Oldschool Photochallenge: Response No. 2

This time two years ago:
Oligocene water from Jeziorki

More than just an Iluzjon

The Polish National Film Archive runs a very decent cinema, Iluzjon, which is currently being renovated. During this process, Iluzjon shows its very decent repertoire of movies at the National Library, on Al. Niepodległości. I must say, I like its temporary home; not only does the architecture of the place appeal to me, and its setting - on Pole Mokotowskie - but also the venue itself.

Above: the main entrance to the National Library, separated from Al. Niepodległości by neatly illuminated grounds. Below: looking like a Soviet nuclear physics institute north of the Arctic Circle, the entrance to Iluzjon/Filmoteka Narodowa.

A large lecture room, it reminds me of Warwick University' L3 lecture room, where the university's Film Society projected movies. Currently on - a short triptych of Coen Brothers' films - A Serious Man, The Man Who Wasn't There and Burn After Reading. It's one thing watching a film on DVD, quite another to see it as it should be viewed - on a large silver screen. Prices are cheap (11 złotys weekends, 13 złotys during the week - less than three quid) and a well-selected repertoire of classic films old and new. Highly recommended.

[Postscript: Sadly the Last Picture Show at the Iluzjon/National Library was in June 2012; Iluzjon was meant to open after the summer holidays. Well here we are - 2 November 2012, the National Library's no longer host to the cinema, and Iluzjon's not re-opened yet. Next week, we're told but this has been the story since last autumn.]

This time last year:
Oldschool photochallenge

This time two years ago:
Warsaw's wonderful nooks and crannies

This time four years ago:
Viaduct to the airport at ul. Poleczki almost ready