Dynamite Doug (Project Brazen)
Death of an Artist (Pushkin, Somethin’ Else & Sony Music)
Cover Up: Ministry of Secrets (Somethin’Else and Sony Music Entertainment)
Saturday Night at the Movies (Classic FM)
Secrets. I’ve had a week of them. Three different podcasts, all attempting to solve forgotten mysteries. But these aren’t your everyday cold murder case shows. Instead, the secrets are wrapped inside wars (both cold and not so much); they weave around high-value art; they concern spies, the British establishment, the 1980s New York scene, a Khmer Rouge child soldier. The topics are far wider than usual, and the podcasts are trying to answer questions that others would rather weren’t even asked, let alone answered.
One, Dynamite Doug, demonstrates how posh Brit Douglas Latchford, over a period of 50 years, became the premier dealer in Cambodian art treasures. He made a fortune selling to western collectors, including the highest of institutions, such as Sotheby’s and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the art was looted, ripped from sacred temples, made palatable to buyers with forged documents. The second, Death of an Artist, a series that came out at the end of last year, tells the story of Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, who died in 1985 aged 36 when she fell from the balcony of her husband’s apartment. Her husband was the American minimalist artist Carl Andre (if you can’t place him, he made Equivalent VIII, the “bricks on the floor” piece). Finally, I’ve also been enjoying new series Cover Up: Ministry of Secrets, which doesn’t concern itself with art at all, but instead wonders what happened to long-lost Royal Navy frogman Lionel “Buster” Crabb and, more importantly, why the files of him are still classified, almost 70 years later.
So, let’s start with Ministry of Secrets, the jolliest listen of the three. In it, historian Giles Milton and producer Sarah Peters are inspired to try to solve the mystery of Crabb’s death when Milton meets an old military diving man who actually knew him. Feted as a second world war naval hero, in 1956 Crabb was asked by MI6 to go on a hush-hush underwater mission. It entailed him venturing out into the murky seas of Portsmouth harbour, in the vicinity of three Soviet Union cruisers, one of which contained Soviet head of state Nikita Khrushchev. Crabb never came back.
This story – not one that would usually grip me, I have to say – quickly expands into a wider subject, as Milton and Peter’s poking around uncovers that almost everything about Crabb appears to be classified and anyone to do with the British establishment appears keen to stop them finding anything out. Initially, the revelations are slowish – by episode three we’re not much further than a few lines down a Wikipedia entry – but that’s the way of all entertainment these days, especially podcasts keen for you to pay to get all the episodes at once. Milton’s charming presentation and the excellent soundscaping by Peregrine Andrews are more than enough to keep you interested. Plus, not to reveal too much, the story really does go quite wildly rogue and comes right up to the present day. Once you hear that Crabb’s ex-wife was sure he’d gone to the Soviet Union, you’re hooked.
Death of an Artist is far sadder. The story of Mendieta, her exciting life and interesting work, is extremely upsetting, simply because it ends far too soon. Host Helen Molesworth lets us decide about the guilt of Andre, the only other person in the apartment at the time Mendieta died. (He was found not guilty when taken to court.) But what makes this podcast far more than a cold-case examination is how Molesworth also moves the story forward and out, to look at how Mendieta and Andre’s work is received today.
As she explains, Molesworth herself was once part of the US art establishment, and her interesting analysis of that establishment’s silence around influential artists, and the opposing shift in how the public sees art, really makes this podcast stand out. Is it still right to divorce the artist from the art? How should the art world react to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter? Molesworth’s sensitive presentation makes us wonder.
Finally, in Dynamite Doug, presenter Ellen Wong sounds rightly angry at some of Latchford’s most egregious crimes (including colluding with the Khmer Rouge). This series moves far quicker than the other two, because there’s a lot to get through, and Wong’s presentation keeps us moving along, too. And yet again, we’re brought right up to the present day, as the podcast demonstrates that, although some of the looted treasures are being returned to Cambodia, there are many, including some at the Met, which are being held on to.
Like I said: a lot of secrets. Each podcast seems somehow to venn diagram upon one of the others, and there are other connections. Death of an Artist reminds me of one of the best documentaries of last year, Fallen Women, which looked at the UK deaths of solo women from balconies. Sarah Peters, the producer of Ministry of Secrets, has worked on two Bed of Lies series about establishment cover-ups. At the centre of the venn diagram is how those at the top protect their own and keep information away from the public. Such an establishment actively needs denial and secrets in order to work. In de-secreting the secrets, each of these podcasts sing.
Here’s another small secret solved. A week ago, presenter Andrew Collins hosted his last episode of Classic FM’s Saturday Night at the Movies after seven years at the helm. “I wonder who’s taking over?” he tweeted. A few days later it was announced that Jonathan Ross had got the job. Another big-name presenter poach for Global, though no doubt the professional, likable Collins will continue onwards and upwards.
