Notebook
Without perhaps going quite so far as Peregrine Worsthorne in Monday's Telegraph, describing him as 'Britain's greatest postwar hero', I cannot help feeling there is some justification for the belated admiration now being widely expressed in Britain for Ian Smith. Before the lefties set up their ritual howl, consider this. No one can any longer pretend that what Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe stand for in Zimbabwe has anything to do with 'democracy' in the Western sense. They are tribalist demagogues, competing respectively for the right to set up Matabeleor Shonadominated tyrannies. The only justification for Britain supporting them is purely a Matter of Realpolitik — that of protecting our future interests both inside and outside Zimbabwe. So if we are not talking of 'majority rule' as meaning anything other than the fact that there are a great many more blacks, of different groups, than Whites in the country, where does that leave any of the leaders, Smith included? They are all looking out primarily for the interests of their own group, ahd by those standards lan Smith has done a superb job over the Past 14 years. One may also have the suspicion, viewing the increasingly batty ranting of Mr Nkomo on the television screen, that the best interests of the majority of Zimbabwean citizens could only be served by keeping him and Mr Mugabe as far from Power as possible. But then, of course, there are still those who believe that, in some Mystical way, the 'majority rules' in Russia.
So We did it! I am deligbted to say that, after following their up-and-down fortunes (mostly down) for 33 years, I was present on the sunlit afternoon at Lord's last Saturday When Somerset became the last first-class County to win a title, by their handsome victory over Northants in the final of the Gillette Cup. For nearly 100 years Somerset were known as the colourful giantkillers who never quite pulled it off (I shall always remember from my boyhood, for instance, that in the Edrich-and-Compton Year 1947 they were the only county to beat the otherwise all-conquering Middlesex twice). But like Essex before them, having done it once, they did it in style, ng landing their second title, in the John Player League, only 24 hours later. From the moment I sat on a freezing afternoon at the Oval last April, watching their remorseless demolition of Surrey in the first John Player game of the season, I felt certain thatSomerset would succeed in some way this year. Under Brian Rose, they have developed the one quality they always previously lacked— that steely determination to win, and to stick at it. which this season gave them 19 victories in their 24 one-day games (and • which characterised Vivien Richards's impeccably responsible century at Lord's last Saturday). One thing I am glad to say, however, has not changed. The side which 30 years ago, produced, in Gimblett, Wellard and Tremlett, three of the most explosive six-hitters of the imrnediate post-war era, can still be relied on for spectacular blows, and it is appropriate that the Yeovilton Gorilla's 137, mainly before lunch, at Leeds, with its five sixes, remains the most memorable innings of a fine season. As the Somerset supporters' placard had it, 'God Made Ian Botham, Then Adam and Eve'.
One of the least reported facts about the dispute at Times Newspapers is the extent to which the real obstacle to a settlement has increasingly become the intransigence of just two individuals. One is a Mr Barry Fitzpatrick of the NATSOPA clerical branch, and the other is the curious Mr Reg Brady. Until last week, like some 18th century clerical pluralist, Mr Brady held three powerful and influential positions in Fleet Street — as Father of the NATSOPA machine-minders chapel at the Sunday Times, Father of the Chapel at the Even* Standard and Deputy-Father of the Chapel at Reveille. On Friday, however, he and his colleagues pushed their luck too far. After three issues of Reveille (circulation 500,000) had been lost, the Mirror group management simply decided to close the magazine down for good. One down and two to go for Mr Brady — although at least the signs for The Times seem at last genuinely more hopeful.
The most unforgettable musical event I have ever seen on television was a performance some 10 years ago, by the already venerable A rtur Rubinstein, of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. What a far cry from last Sunday's televising of the Promenade performance of the same work by Daniel Barenboim and the Israel Philharmonic, under Zubin Mehta. Wrong notes are forgivable when they are a by-product of brilliant energy and imaginative interpretation. On Sunday, however, the wrong notes which littered Barenboim's playing were only one aspect of a performance which seemed thin and tired beyond belief (a friend who had been in the audience the previous Wednesday told me that the final chord of the first movement was so misplayed as to produce a current of shock around the hall, though this could only be discerned on the screen from the somewhat horrified expression on Mehta's face). All this would not matter so much if it had not been for the quite absurdly schmaltzy puff given for the Israel Philharmonic Cone of the great orchestras of the world') by David Jacobs before the concert began (not to mention the appallingly sentimental cutaways of Jacqueline Du Pre applauding her husband in the audience). Except for master-classes, music sits uneasily enough on television at the best of times; at least it should be put on straight, without the BBC's growing habit of icing the cake with showbiz banalities.
It is not often these days one sees those political cartoons (the kind of which Leslie Illingworth used to be such a master) which in one large, dramatic image sum up the whole of a political situation. One such, however, was the drawing by Auth which the Guardian reprinted on Monday from the Philadelphia Inquirer. As on a cinema screen, it showed a huge steam-boat, bearing the name 'Carter Presidency', sailing away down the Mississippi into the sunset, while over the screen rose the words 'The End'. If only the remaining 16 months of the Carter presidency could be disposed of so easily. Alas, we now have to endure the pitiful spectacle of Jimmy's attempt to re-establish a masculine image by trying on a re-run ofthe Kennedy-Kruschev Cuba Confrontation Show — with these wild allegations about 'Soviet combat troops' that do not even appear to exist. Golly, Jimmy must have the Russians puzzled.
I suspect that regular readers of the Spectator may find this week's Private Eye rather more comprehensible than will that fortnightly's other readers — for its centrepiece is a three-page parody of a magazine entitled The Spectacular-ly Boring. I will not give away which of the Spectator's regular contributors were responsible for this effort, except to hint that the television column (a dissertation on vegetable marrows, under the title 'Switched Off') seems peculiarly indulgent towards its target, while the article 'The ITV Strike and The Lost Anima' by 'Christopher Borer' seems even more incomprehensible than the usual Spectator contributions of Christopher Booker
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