DIARY
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE Iwish I could see some great principle to invoke against MPs having to register their extramural earnings. But try as I may, none carries conviction. The best reasons my Tory friends — a dwindling band — have been able to come up with are that their constituents, most of whom feel lucky to have even one job, resent the whole idea of MPs having several, and resent equally any earnings above the average. Concern about sleaze is only a fig-leaf. The root of the trouble is simple envy. So long as MPs were allowed to keep quiet about their earnings the envy was relatively muted. But now that they are going to be forced to make their earnings public, the poison will grow uncontainable. A good enough objection to compulsory exposure, I would have thought. But not, unfortunately, an objec- tion of principle; only of expediency. Like- wise with the Queen's wealth. So long as it was kept discreetly under wraps, few cared. But once the wraps were taken off, every- body cared. Most sensible arrangements depend on a measure of discretion and even secrecy — and none more so than par- liamentary government. Trouble arises, almost always, from too much openness, not too little.
Watching the television shots of Maoris doing their savage war dance in front of the Queen, I could well understand why our forebears thought it wise to take their lands away. What I could not under- stand is why she agreed to apologise for such an obviously sensible action. I suppose she has to do whatever the New Zealand Prime Minister advises. But if being Head of the Commonwealth makes it necessary for the Queen to mouth such politically cor- rect idiocies, it must be time to call it a day.
The new monthly, Prospect — designed to fill the gap created by the demise of Encounter — is beginning, in its second number, to take shape. The first number was far too political and economic, full of indigestible left-overs from various think- tanks, with no leavening of culture. No longer. In the new issue the mind is enlivened as well as stretched. But I have one complaint — its most inappropriate layout, more suitable for a children's pic- ture-book than for a journal of opinion. In a sparkling article by the newly- deceased Ernest Gellner on Isaiah Berlin, for example, the columns of text are Indented with large coloured drawings of a fox and a hedgehog, the snout of the lat- ter reducing one line of text to a single word. I know such visual gimmicks are meant to facilitate the onerous act of reading for a generation accustomed only to television, but surely the kind of read- ers likely to buy Prospect, to be counted at best in tens of thousands, do not need this kind of titillation. Unfortunately the broadsheet newspapers, supposedly cater- ing for a literate readership, set a bad example by over-illustrating their texts rather as some posher restaurants over- garnish their dishes. The rot set in during my period. I recall having to cut to rib- bons a bombshell of an article by Ray- mond Aron on the Vietnam war so as to make room for some art editor's totally superfluous montage of the Hanoi sky- line. Comparable nonsense is ruining. Radio 3 which seems to assume that nobody can be expected to listen to classi- cal music without it being broken up by light-hearted chatter. It is not enough for Prospect to be serious; it must have the courage to risk being seen to be serious. Why not try dropping illustrations alto- gether? It would certainly have novelty
To save the inconvenience of future muggings would you like to consider the advantages of direct debit?' value and get the magazine much talked about.
Because Elizabeth Jane Howard's latest novel — much to be recommended — came out in the same week as her erstwhile hus- band, Kingsley Amis, happened to die, she has received far more publicity than might otherwise have been the case — double-page spreads in both broadsheets and tabloids. In that sense, Kingsley could be said to have done her literary career more of a service in death than he ever bothered to do in life. Unfortunately, there is another way of look- ing at it. For instead of publicising the novel, all the double-page interviews and so on were exclusively about the failed marriage, with the novel scarcely getting a mention. Sad to say, one cannot be quite sure which result would have pleased Kingsley most.
Some young women told me last week that I reminded them of Elizabeth Bennet's handsome father in the BBC TV adapta- tion of Pride and Prejudice. Since Mr Ben- net was in early middle age, at least 20 years my junior, I should have been very flattered. But instead of being flattered, I was irrationally resentful at not reminding them of Mr Darcy. I felt rather the same a few years ago when Jilly Cooper told me that her mother thought me 'super', my pleasure in her mum's admiration being overshadowed by displeasure at not elicit- ing the same reaction from the daughter. I don't think the explanation lies so much in ludicrous vanity as in my reluctance, in the world of romance, to accept the ageing pro- cess. When it comes to climbing a stile, run- ning a mile or even writing an article, I am absolutely resigned to being old. But not in affairs of the heart, where I still believe that time has miraculously stood still. Hence my resentment at being made, however flatter- ingly, to face reality.
Publishers really can behave very badly. This time it is my wife, Lucinda Lambton, who is the victim. On the final run-up to publication of her new volume of the histo- ry of the water closet she discovered that the publishers, Pavillion, had lamentably fallen down on the publicity arrangements. Someone else was then put on the job. But even with these last minute efforts, my wife had to do a lot of the work herself. Instead of being grateful, Pavillion is refusing to contribute even a brass farthing to the book's launching party — mean as well as slack.
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