Across Europe, 2010 was a year of doom and gloom. PIGS went to the slaughter; that warm glow from across the Atlantic cooled; WikiLeaks—letting us know what diplomats really think—soured international relations for good; and the pin-up of the age, Julian Assange, was revealed as at best unchivalrous.
As tends to happen in such times, imports of exuberantly upbeat pop filled the ears of escapists. Lady Gaga (a situationist disco-diva in frocks made of fillet steak) and Justin Bieber (a barely pubescent Canadian Monkee-alike) carried all before them. If not pop, then retro. Oldies reveled in the Beatles (who enjoyed a resurgence as they became available for download) and the burgeoning posthumous career of Michael Jackson.
There was more trad escapism in the announcement that the Queen's grandson Prince William was to marry his sweetheart Kate Middleton, giving her the very engagement ring his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales, had worn. This caused a giant surge of affection—or something like it—for the British monarchy, and gave rise to a number of more or less tasteful commemorative products available from home-shopping channels.
The Swedish monarchy also enjoyed a surge of interest—though for less decorous reasons. An unauthorized biographer claimed that apparently staid King Carl Gustaf was a philanderer with a taste for sex-parties: "Strip clubs, illegal clubs, rented ladies who are naked under their fur coats." The king dismissed the claims with some well-chosen words at a press conference following his annual moose-hunt.
In the literary world we saw Stieg Larsson established as the new Dan Brown, with no cinema screen, sun lounger or bedside table free from some version of his heroine Lisbeth Salander. The American literary eminence Jonathan Franzen's new book "Freedom" was launched to hysterical acclaim—but a printer's error caused the whole British run to be pulped, and when the author turned up to a party to promote it, his spectacles were stolen from his face by an anonymous provocateur.
We also said goodbye to some well-loved figures from the cultural world. At one end of the cultural spectrum was the death of the spider-spinning French sculptress Louise Bourgeois; at the other, the exit of Leslie Nielsen—the American comic actor known as "the Olivier of spoofs," whose exit was marked by a world-wide epidemic of headlines punning on his catchphrase "Don't call me Shirley." Somewhere in the middle was the combustible Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper—star of "Easy Rider," "Apocalypse Now," "Blue Velvet" and "Super Mario Bros.," and veteran of drugs, alcohol, and a number of dangerous games involving dynamite. Cancer took him in May.
Nobody heard much from J.D. Salinger when he was here—but his death at 91 sparked excited speculation that as many as 15 unpublished novels lie in a bank vault awaiting the attentions of his executors.
We also saw the last of the British novelist Beryl Bainbridge. Party-loving, chain-smoking Beryl was, in sociability terms, the anti-Salinger. She'll be missed.
Beryl, though often shortlisted, never quite won the Man Booker Prize. But this year the fine comic writer Howard Jacobson did—scooping the most prestigious English-language literary prize for his novel "The Finkler Question." This was welcomed by those who think that humor is underappreciated in the literary novel.
Chinese noses, meanwhile, were put out of joint by the Nobel Committee's decision to give the Peace Prize to the jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo. The Chinese authorities responded by founding their own rival peace prize. Tate Modern in London exhibited a work by another bugbear of the Chinese state, installation artist Ai Weiwei. He put 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds across the floor of the gallery's Turbine Hall. The 2010 Turner Prize for art went, for the first time, to a non-physical object—an installation by the sound artist Susan Philipsz.
Speaking of prizes, 2010 was bittersweet for the misanthropic writer Michel Houellebecq. Not long ago he was complaining with some pride that the French establishment was waging a "war of extermination" against him. This year, the same French establishment awarded his new novel the Prix Goncourt—knocking his enfant terrible schtick firmly on the head.
The year was just plain terrible for Houellebecq's rival Bernard-Henri Lévy: the shampoo-loving philosopher-dandy was humiliated when an eminent "philosopher" he quoted as an authority on Kant turned out to be a well-known spoof character.
Another well-known spoof character, David Beckham, was a key figure in the sporting year. Despite not playing, he was much photographed at the 2010 football World Cup in South Africa. Spain won, to the deafening sound of the vuvuzela. Mr. Beckham was also present to lobby FIFA for England's bid to host the 2018 competition. Russia won, to the deafening sound of English newspapers raging over what they saw as corrupt FIFA officials failing to vote for England.
2010 also saw the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, a squeaked win for Europe in the Ryder Cup, and the longest tennis match in the history of the world—as American John Isner took more than 11 hours to defeat Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon. The final score was 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68.
In technology, we witnessed the now-traditional hysteria at a new Apple product coming to market. The iPad—a giant iPhone that doesn't work as a phone—was launched in April. Geeks across Europe went into holy trances.
The year also saw what, by some metrics, could justly be described as the biggest entertainment launch in history. Because it was a computer game, however, many people will never have heard of "Call of Duty: Black Ops." Nod wisely at your grandchild if you hear it mentioned. Say "FPS," "awesome enemy AI," wink and return to your book. In computer-game terms, 2010 really belonged to "Angry Birds"—a game for smartphones that had millions world-wide firing imaginary birds out of imaginary catapults at imaginary green pigs. Can 2011 top that? We shall see.
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