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major_clangerMartin Mobberley’s biography of Sir Patrick Moore is saddled with perhaps the most ungainly title ever for such a work, and the first impression that the title conveys is only amplified by the subtitle: ‘A Fan’s Biography of Sir Patrick Moore.’ In the face of such, a reader could be forgiven for expecting a hagiography heavy on anecdote and light on research, and that is certainly what I was prepared for. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Mobberley has produced a well-researched, very thorough (640 pages) and, frankly, surprisingly honest examination of the life of the man who from the late 1950s onwards was synonymous with astronomy in the public eye.
This isn’t to say that readers accustomed to a more academic and restrained style might not find Mobberley’s prose rather florid. He writes as a long-term friend of Moore’s rather than as an objective scholar, although it’s clear that he has tried to present a warts-and-all portrait. Indeed, although the book attempts a comprehensive survey of Moore’s life, what comes across strongly is the number of elements of that life that, as Mobberley shows, were not as Moore presented. Mobberley details his efforts to investigate and corroborate the many aspects of Moore’s earlier life that Moore described or alluded to, and time and time again notes that either there is no corroboration or, indeed, the records flatly contradict Moore’s own account. For instance, Moore’s version of his war history had him join the RAF at 16, fly bomber missions over Germany and reach the rank of flight lieutenant (or even, in some retellings, squadron leader). In fact, records show that he joined at 20 and finished the war as a flying officer, and appears to have flown mainly maritime patrols.
More significantly, in terms of a widely-repeated aspect of Moore’s life, Mobberley concludes that Moore’s account of losing a fiancée during the war to an air raid was, in all likelihood, concocted in the 1960s as an explanation for his bachelorhood in response to insinuations of improper behaviour with boys. Mobberley observes that these allegations arose when he was working at Armagh Planetarium; long-involved with scouting, it seems that Moore made enemies by criticising religiously-segregated scout troops and it may well be that smears against him resulted. Mobberley’s own assessment of Moore is as a pathological mummy’s boy (he lived with her until she died in her nineties) who never got over an unrequited crush on the daughter of a colleague and remained single through unwillingness to form adult relationships.
Indeed, reading Mobberley’s accounts of British Astronomical Association council meetings in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s hard to avoid the view that Moore never really outgrew his eccentric schoolboy persona. He would divide people into close friends or reviled enemies, occasionally reassigning them owing to a perceived slight (or a sufficiently abject apology), and could apparently be a nightmare to work with on committees, abusing those who disagreed with him and sulking if he didn’t get his own way. Mobberley is also frank – rather, I feel, franker than he may have meant to be – about Moore’s social and political views. In public, these were merely ultra-conservative; in private, by his account, they could be vile. Yet at the same time Mobberley also corroborates the many stories I heard about Moore’s vast generosity, his unflagging commitment to charity work, and his exceptional work ethic. (He recounts the occasion where, in the time the rest of the BAA council took to debate who should write the obituary of a recently-deceased long-standing member, Moore completed a draft of it.) Towards the end of his life, it seems, Moore’s friends were those who could compartmentalise and ignore, or at least make substantial allowances for, Moore’s unsavoury side, although Mobberley hints that even some long-standing close friends eventually found Moore’s racism and sexism too much to put up with.
Was Moore a great astronomer? He was certainly a very assiduous observer, for as long as his health permitted, and there is force in his reported griping that some proposed co-presenters of a programme aimed at stargazers had little experience of actually looking through a telescope. But as regards his specialist area, the Moon, he remained firmly wedded to the pre-spaceflight school of lunar studies. Despite overwhelming evidence from the 1960s onwards that lunar craters arose from asteroid impacts rather than vulcanism, he rejected the impact hypothesis until only a few years before his death. He was also a firm believer in TLPs – ‘transient lunar phenomena’ – the occasional glows or apparent foggy patches reported by visual observers in some craters. Their existence, as a sign of on-going volcanic activity on the Moon, was an article of faith for Moore, and Mobberley notes how he would present as hard fact observations that were in reality tenuous, uncorroborated or downright dubious.
In truth, Moore’s gift was as a science populariser. He had the rare ability to get experts to explain their specialist work in terms comprehensible to the lay person, whilst his devotion to practical observing ensured that The Sky At Night remained a programme for enthusiasts rather than just a parade of academics.
My own exposure to Moore came mainly through the BAA, and I was most active in terms of attending meetings during the 1980s, when Moore was a senior presence and indeed held the post of President for two years. I well recall one meeting Mobberley recounts, when Moore introduced an old friend (and long-term BAA member) who happened to be in the country: Arthur C Clarke. But Mobberley’s discussion of BAA internal politics now makes clear to me what were in hindsight some odd tensions in the BAA at the time. As noted earlier, it seems that Moore divided the world into friends and enemies, and there were enough people in the latter camp, thanks to Moore’s thin skin and inability to accept dissent, that the BAA Council at times seems to have been divided into embattled camps.
For that matter, Mobberley’s book is illuminating about BAA politics in general in the 1980s. If that sounds a rather narrow topic, bear in mind that the return of Halley’s Comet in 1985 resulted in an upsurge of public interest in astronomy and there were elements in the BAA wanting to move it from a rather Victorian-style society for gentlemen amateur scholars into more of a popular, public-engagement body. Moore – a very public figure – became BAA President at about this time; on the one hand, this helped the reformers, but Moore himself was very much of the ‘gentleman amateur scholar’ crowd.
As it happened, Moore had a protégé who certainly wasn’t in that category: Heather Couper. She was as enthusiastic as Moore, but was extrovert and attractive rather than eccentric in manner and appearance, not to mention being the better part of three decades younger. Couper had done a degree in astronomy and physics and worked as a lecturer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and after a couple of appearances on The Sky At Night became an active writer and presenter in her own right. Moore nominated Couper as his successor as BAA President, and it must have seemed that the organisation had achieved a happy medium between traditionalists and reformers.
Mobberley, however, having been on the BAA Council at the time, depicts things not quite turning out that way. The first major problem was apparently a Sunday supplement interview with Couper and her personal and professional partner Nigel Henbest. Apparently, the BAA old guard were rather aghast at Couper’s happy admission of her and Henbest’s open relationship, not to mention her being photographed in the bath… A more serious problem arose though when she nominated as her own successor Storm Dunlop, someone who was seen within the BAA as worthy but dull and rather difficult. Worst of all, Dunlop had upset some of Moore’s long-standing friends, and as President went on to fall out with several others. That seems to have led to an almighty spat, culminating in the only presidential recall election in the BAA’s hundred-year history – hardly the sort of thing one expects of gentlemen amateur scholars. Eventually matters blew over, but Mobberley observes that Couper never appeared on The Sky At Night again.
By the mid-2000s, Moore was in his eighties and visibly declining. Always large, he had become morbidly obese and beset by health problems. Filming of The Sky At Night was relocated to Moore’s house in Selsea, but even with this it became more and more necessary for Moore to rely on co-presenters. It didn’t help that Moore, who had no other life than writing or presenting, could not bring himself to retire even in the face of his poor health. Perhaps not since FDR have those surrounding a public figure gone to such lengths to disguise how serious his health problems were. By the late 2000s, Moore was all-but bedridden with spinal problems and heart failure, with little use of his hands, and declining ability to concentrate. But he refused to contemplate giving up The Sky At Night, although by the end his contribution to the programme consisted of little more than short scripted introductions filmed at his home. It must have been an awful position for BBC management: a widely-loved presenter who was in truth far too ill to do his job and who hovered one ill-timed remark from causing widespread outrage.
Perversely, Moore’s decline may have saved The Sky At Night, in that by the time of his death it was to all intents and purposes presented by his co-presenters anyway. Although its future recently looked shaky, it now seems that it will continue, but had Moore been able to contribute more – or had he died before becoming so incapacitated – he might have remained such a centrepiece of the programme as to make it impossible to imagine it continuing without him.
Moore died in late 2012, not far short of his ninetieth birthday. He’d presented (albeit rather nominally towards the end) The Sky At Night for nearly 55 years, missing only one episode due to ill-health, and had become a national institution. At the 2013 Eastercon we had a panel about his influence, and it was clear that he’d inspired many people in both their amateur and professional interests. Moore may have been very difficult for those close to him, but it’s hard to deny his huge positive influence on science popularisation.
It Came From Outer Space… is an odd book. Admirers of Moore may come away from it dismayed by Mobberley’s very frank discussion of Moore’s less savoury side and his tendency to be less than honest about his life, although Mobberley rather charitably ascribes that part of Moore’s character to a tendency for showmanship that led him to exaggerate combined with a rigid refusal ever to admit doing so. (He points out that for decades it was obvious to everyone connected with Moore that he was the real author of a spoof UFO book published under the name Cedric Allingham, but that Moore would angrily threaten to sue anyone who as much as hinted at saying so.) Ironically, it seems that Moore made up stories to boost his reputation, but ended up famous enough that such stories became an embarrassment to him; unable to deny them, they just grew in the retelling, perhaps (as Mobberly concedes) to the point that eventually Moore came to believe them himself.
It may well be that Moore never did shake Orville Wright’s hand, or accompany a violin performance by Einstein on the piano, but he escorted Neil Armstrong around England, interviewed Sir Bernard Lovell when their combined ages were somewhere around 170, and met just about everyone who was anyone in astronomy between 1960 and 2010. There is plenty in such a life to fill 640 pages, and whatever one might think of Moore as a person the story of his rise to become one of the most recognisable figures in the country is fascinating.
This isn’t to say that readers accustomed to a more academic and restrained style might not find Mobberley’s prose rather florid. He writes as a long-term friend of Moore’s rather than as an objective scholar, although it’s clear that he has tried to present a warts-and-all portrait. Indeed, although the book attempts a comprehensive survey of Moore’s life, what comes across strongly is the number of elements of that life that, as Mobberley shows, were not as Moore presented. Mobberley details his efforts to investigate and corroborate the many aspects of Moore’s earlier life that Moore described or alluded to, and time and time again notes that either there is no corroboration or, indeed, the records flatly contradict Moore’s own account. For instance, Moore’s version of his war history had him join the RAF at 16, fly bomber missions over Germany and reach the rank of flight lieutenant (or even, in some retellings, squadron leader). In fact, records show that he joined at 20 and finished the war as a flying officer, and appears to have flown mainly maritime patrols.
More significantly, in terms of a widely-repeated aspect of Moore’s life, Mobberley concludes that Moore’s account of losing a fiancée during the war to an air raid was, in all likelihood, concocted in the 1960s as an explanation for his bachelorhood in response to insinuations of improper behaviour with boys. Mobberley observes that these allegations arose when he was working at Armagh Planetarium; long-involved with scouting, it seems that Moore made enemies by criticising religiously-segregated scout troops and it may well be that smears against him resulted. Mobberley’s own assessment of Moore is as a pathological mummy’s boy (he lived with her until she died in her nineties) who never got over an unrequited crush on the daughter of a colleague and remained single through unwillingness to form adult relationships.
Indeed, reading Mobberley’s accounts of British Astronomical Association council meetings in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s hard to avoid the view that Moore never really outgrew his eccentric schoolboy persona. He would divide people into close friends or reviled enemies, occasionally reassigning them owing to a perceived slight (or a sufficiently abject apology), and could apparently be a nightmare to work with on committees, abusing those who disagreed with him and sulking if he didn’t get his own way. Mobberley is also frank – rather, I feel, franker than he may have meant to be – about Moore’s social and political views. In public, these were merely ultra-conservative; in private, by his account, they could be vile. Yet at the same time Mobberley also corroborates the many stories I heard about Moore’s vast generosity, his unflagging commitment to charity work, and his exceptional work ethic. (He recounts the occasion where, in the time the rest of the BAA council took to debate who should write the obituary of a recently-deceased long-standing member, Moore completed a draft of it.) Towards the end of his life, it seems, Moore’s friends were those who could compartmentalise and ignore, or at least make substantial allowances for, Moore’s unsavoury side, although Mobberley hints that even some long-standing close friends eventually found Moore’s racism and sexism too much to put up with.
Was Moore a great astronomer? He was certainly a very assiduous observer, for as long as his health permitted, and there is force in his reported griping that some proposed co-presenters of a programme aimed at stargazers had little experience of actually looking through a telescope. But as regards his specialist area, the Moon, he remained firmly wedded to the pre-spaceflight school of lunar studies. Despite overwhelming evidence from the 1960s onwards that lunar craters arose from asteroid impacts rather than vulcanism, he rejected the impact hypothesis until only a few years before his death. He was also a firm believer in TLPs – ‘transient lunar phenomena’ – the occasional glows or apparent foggy patches reported by visual observers in some craters. Their existence, as a sign of on-going volcanic activity on the Moon, was an article of faith for Moore, and Mobberley notes how he would present as hard fact observations that were in reality tenuous, uncorroborated or downright dubious.
In truth, Moore’s gift was as a science populariser. He had the rare ability to get experts to explain their specialist work in terms comprehensible to the lay person, whilst his devotion to practical observing ensured that The Sky At Night remained a programme for enthusiasts rather than just a parade of academics.
My own exposure to Moore came mainly through the BAA, and I was most active in terms of attending meetings during the 1980s, when Moore was a senior presence and indeed held the post of President for two years. I well recall one meeting Mobberley recounts, when Moore introduced an old friend (and long-term BAA member) who happened to be in the country: Arthur C Clarke. But Mobberley’s discussion of BAA internal politics now makes clear to me what were in hindsight some odd tensions in the BAA at the time. As noted earlier, it seems that Moore divided the world into friends and enemies, and there were enough people in the latter camp, thanks to Moore’s thin skin and inability to accept dissent, that the BAA Council at times seems to have been divided into embattled camps.
For that matter, Mobberley’s book is illuminating about BAA politics in general in the 1980s. If that sounds a rather narrow topic, bear in mind that the return of Halley’s Comet in 1985 resulted in an upsurge of public interest in astronomy and there were elements in the BAA wanting to move it from a rather Victorian-style society for gentlemen amateur scholars into more of a popular, public-engagement body. Moore – a very public figure – became BAA President at about this time; on the one hand, this helped the reformers, but Moore himself was very much of the ‘gentleman amateur scholar’ crowd.
As it happened, Moore had a protégé who certainly wasn’t in that category: Heather Couper. She was as enthusiastic as Moore, but was extrovert and attractive rather than eccentric in manner and appearance, not to mention being the better part of three decades younger. Couper had done a degree in astronomy and physics and worked as a lecturer at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and after a couple of appearances on The Sky At Night became an active writer and presenter in her own right. Moore nominated Couper as his successor as BAA President, and it must have seemed that the organisation had achieved a happy medium between traditionalists and reformers.
Mobberley, however, having been on the BAA Council at the time, depicts things not quite turning out that way. The first major problem was apparently a Sunday supplement interview with Couper and her personal and professional partner Nigel Henbest. Apparently, the BAA old guard were rather aghast at Couper’s happy admission of her and Henbest’s open relationship, not to mention her being photographed in the bath… A more serious problem arose though when she nominated as her own successor Storm Dunlop, someone who was seen within the BAA as worthy but dull and rather difficult. Worst of all, Dunlop had upset some of Moore’s long-standing friends, and as President went on to fall out with several others. That seems to have led to an almighty spat, culminating in the only presidential recall election in the BAA’s hundred-year history – hardly the sort of thing one expects of gentlemen amateur scholars. Eventually matters blew over, but Mobberley observes that Couper never appeared on The Sky At Night again.
By the mid-2000s, Moore was in his eighties and visibly declining. Always large, he had become morbidly obese and beset by health problems. Filming of The Sky At Night was relocated to Moore’s house in Selsea, but even with this it became more and more necessary for Moore to rely on co-presenters. It didn’t help that Moore, who had no other life than writing or presenting, could not bring himself to retire even in the face of his poor health. Perhaps not since FDR have those surrounding a public figure gone to such lengths to disguise how serious his health problems were. By the late 2000s, Moore was all-but bedridden with spinal problems and heart failure, with little use of his hands, and declining ability to concentrate. But he refused to contemplate giving up The Sky At Night, although by the end his contribution to the programme consisted of little more than short scripted introductions filmed at his home. It must have been an awful position for BBC management: a widely-loved presenter who was in truth far too ill to do his job and who hovered one ill-timed remark from causing widespread outrage.
Perversely, Moore’s decline may have saved The Sky At Night, in that by the time of his death it was to all intents and purposes presented by his co-presenters anyway. Although its future recently looked shaky, it now seems that it will continue, but had Moore been able to contribute more – or had he died before becoming so incapacitated – he might have remained such a centrepiece of the programme as to make it impossible to imagine it continuing without him.
Moore died in late 2012, not far short of his ninetieth birthday. He’d presented (albeit rather nominally towards the end) The Sky At Night for nearly 55 years, missing only one episode due to ill-health, and had become a national institution. At the 2013 Eastercon we had a panel about his influence, and it was clear that he’d inspired many people in both their amateur and professional interests. Moore may have been very difficult for those close to him, but it’s hard to deny his huge positive influence on science popularisation.
It Came From Outer Space… is an odd book. Admirers of Moore may come away from it dismayed by Mobberley’s very frank discussion of Moore’s less savoury side and his tendency to be less than honest about his life, although Mobberley rather charitably ascribes that part of Moore’s character to a tendency for showmanship that led him to exaggerate combined with a rigid refusal ever to admit doing so. (He points out that for decades it was obvious to everyone connected with Moore that he was the real author of a spoof UFO book published under the name Cedric Allingham, but that Moore would angrily threaten to sue anyone who as much as hinted at saying so.) Ironically, it seems that Moore made up stories to boost his reputation, but ended up famous enough that such stories became an embarrassment to him; unable to deny them, they just grew in the retelling, perhaps (as Mobberly concedes) to the point that eventually Moore came to believe them himself.
It may well be that Moore never did shake Orville Wright’s hand, or accompany a violin performance by Einstein on the piano, but he escorted Neil Armstrong around England, interviewed Sir Bernard Lovell when their combined ages were somewhere around 170, and met just about everyone who was anyone in astronomy between 1960 and 2010. There is plenty in such a life to fill 640 pages, and whatever one might think of Moore as a person the story of his rise to become one of the most recognisable figures in the country is fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 09:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 09:34 am (UTC)"I went into the BBC canteen today and found the place in a bit of a stir. Apparently Patrick Moore's suit walked into a dry cleaners and gave itself up."
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 12:00 pm (UTC)I recall a colleague who was invited to present on The Sky At Night, and went for dinner at Moore's beforehand. Apparently he was treated to some racist observations from Moore. Said colleague's wife is...not white. Colleague claims to have nearly bitten through his tongue several times. :/
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 09:48 pm (UTC)