SHARED OPINION

Kingsley Amis has persuaded me to spill the beans on the closet liberals

FRANK JOHNSON

The late Kingsley Amis's letters, pub- lished this week, reveal him to some people as even more right-wing than they thought. Publication of the late Philip Larkin's let- ters a few years ago did the same for Larkin. Music's polite society also expressed a certain amount of surprise, interest, and regret when recent biogra- phies of Stravinsky showed him to be some- thing of an anti-Semite.

I have enjoyed what little I have had time to read of the Amis letters, especially those — the majority — addressed to Larkin. These, as can be imagined, are a tourna- ment of competitive right-wingery. I have not had the time fully to understand their `bum' joke. This consists of the two masters of language ending their letters to each other with some play on the word 'bum'. For example, Amis looks forward to Larkin visiting him so that they can play, or possi- bly just listen to, some jazz. He ends the letter: 'PS — don't forget the bumpet.' I think I understood that. It is a pun. But a 1951 Amis letter, touching on arms control, ends: 'Russia has no wish to agree to the inspection of bum.' That seems to me not to be a pun. Sum' here cannot mean, for instance, 'gun'. Arms control does not entail just one gun. I do not wish to seem posthumously to be advising such a man of letters, but I suggest that 'bums' would have been better than the singular 'bum' because then it could be taken for a pun on 'guns'. But, as I say, I have only just got to grips with this large book and I may have overlooked the nuance.

Some of us, however, are becoming jaded and unshocked by all these famous people being revealed as privately professing illib- eralism. Almost everyone, in private, is right-wing about something, often about a lot of things. That includes plenty of liber- als- Liberalism, for many liberals, is purely for public consumption; mainly by other liberals. What would excite us — the jaded --- would be if famous illiberals were revealed as privately liberal; say, in a corre- spondence between Lord Tebbit and Sir Denis Thatcher. We can be sure that both are capable of letters in the vividly demotic Aouls-Larkin style.

My dear Denis,

Absolute sod of a weekend. Our country retreat burnt down. Some Tory smoker we had staying to blame, I'm sure. Fire brigade arrived. Not single woman or gay among 'em. So much for New Labour inclusiveness. Have you noticed that there's still a whitey present- ing Channel 4's seven-o-clock news? Frightful s— named Snow. Snow by name, Snow by skin pigmentation, eh?

Yours ever, Norm PS: hum's up for Livingstone!

My darling Norm,

All these years of having to play the right- wing p— artist are beginning to make me show the strain. Something I got stuck with by the media when the boss became leader, same as you did in order to win Chingford. Had to speechify to a typical rugger buggers' annual dinner the other night. They poured gallons of G and T down me. They believed my media stereotype, y'see. Another triumph for the corporate drinks oligopoly that's poisoning the lot of us. So much looking forward to sharing a few fruit-juice cocktails with you. Endured another Tory country-house party. Only the Mail and the Telegraph to read at breakfast. Had to walk a mile into the village for a Guardian.

Your loving Denny PS: last time we met you looked fit enough to bum the London marathon.

Denis, old love, Share your hatred of Tory country weekends, especially the breakfasts. Slag-heaps of bat- tery-induced eggs, bacon, sausages and black pudding — not a decent helping of muesli among 'em. But that's how the supermarket chains, when they're not despoiling green- field sites, make their disgusting profits.

So amusing to bump into you at the great anti-capitalist demo as you came round from the other side of the plinth when — each of us heavily disguised and unbeknownst to one another — we were both vandalising Churchill's statue.

Norm PS: it was such good bum.

Norman the Conqueror,

I don't think I've ever told you how much it meant to decent people everywhere when our young amigo Senor Portillo confessed to a bit of a gay past. For the first time, it made him seem normal. By the way, great to see them losing Romsey, what?

Yours liberally, Den PS: your letters to me are like a ray of bumshine.

This week, as at the start of it only the Daily Telegraph reminded us, was the 60th anniversary of one of the most important weeks in our history. Churchill became wartime prime minister. The books say it was sunny and warm at the beginning of May 1940. Sitting on a bench in the sun and deep green of Hyde Park this week I read the recently published Five Days in London, May 1940 by the Hungarian-born American historian Mr John Lukacs. It is beautifully written. It sweeps the reader along. But it is no disservice to it to say that it does not answer all the questions about the fateful days — because it can- not. Much is still to be known, as soon as certain papers can be got at.

What we have known for a couple of decades, thanks to government papers becoming available after 30 years instead of 50, is that the Cabinet considered 'peace feelers' to Germany. Mr Lukacs — and a Channel 4 documentary last Monday takes the orthodox position that Churchill acquiesced in this only in order to mollify powerful old 'appeasers'. Why assume that? Perhaps so as not to seem to diminish Churchill. Mr David Reynolds, in his essay Churchill and the British 'decision' to Fight On in 1940 (1985), has the essence of the matter: There can be little doubt that, contrary to the mythology he himself sedulously cultivated, Churchill succumbed at times to the doubts that plagued British leaders in 1940 . . . The Churchill of myth (and of the war memoirs) is not always the Churchill of history. Schol- ars working on the 1930s and on World War II have long been aware of this discrepancy, but it deserves to be underlined in view of the dogged rearguard action fought by popular biographers and television producers. Con- trary to national folklore, Churchill did not stand in complete and heroic antithesis to his pusillanimous, small-minded political col- leagues . . . He also expressed acceptance, in principle, of the idea of an eventual negotiat- ed settlement, on terms guaranteeing the independence of the British isles, even if that meant sacrificing parts of the empire and leaving Germany in command of Central Europe. This is not in any sense to belittle Churchill's greatness. On the contrary. My contention is that the popular stereotype of almost blind, apolitical pugnacity ignores the complexity of this remarkable man and sets him on a pedestal.

What is the answer to this? I suspect none.