DIARY JOHN MORTIMER
Idon't suppose anyone would deny, even the politicians who are quick to deny every- thing, that we are going through a particu- larly glum chapter in our island story. I was thinking back to the times when cheerful- ness broke out and our national esteem was high. The war years were, curiously enough, such a period; the country was united in a common purpose in a way that has hardly happened since. After the war we were flushed with victory and felt that society was changing for the better. During the much-decried Sixties, when English films, plays, fashions and popular music were suc- cessful throughout the world, we had a spring in our steps. Even the Thatcher era had a certain vitality; those who supported her were triumphant and those who couldn't stand her had a colourful villainess to blame. It's very difficult to discover any cause for national pride today. Our mines have been closed and our car industry sold off to the Germans. The Home Secretary is chipping away at our age-old liberties, and we may not even be an island if a claustro- phobic underground to Europe ever gets finished. Banks and companies which make vast profits sack thousands of employees, recklessly ruining their lives and often breaking up their marriages. We're about to hand Hong Kong over to a murderous regime, and two years' pathetic dithering over Yugoslavia has hardly added to our self-esteem. Our remaining source of pride may be in our history, and that, it seems, is to be removed from us. Children are no longer to learn about Nelson and Welling- ton, the Civil War and the Empire. Igno- rant of Cromwell, they won't ever under- stand why bombs are found at Heathrow airport. Their schooldays will be spent on maths and science, equipping them for jobs they may never get. This week I discovered that many schools no longer teach French because the best technological text-books are in German. As Scott-King, Evelyn Waugh's gentle, elderly schoolmaster, said, I think it would be very wrong indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.'
Another poor educational idea recently revived is `compulsory games'. I suppose the notion is that a brisk run round the playing field will cut down mugging. Untrue. Games lead to riots, criminal dam- age and mayhem on a scale never produced by the study of history or literature. People rarely throw beer cans at each other or knee each other in the groin in the foyers of the National Theatre — such diversions are reserved for football matches. I remem- ber my father saying he never minded the work at school, it was the playing he found so tremendously unpleasant. Hours of standing in the rain on the edge of dank playing fields, or when `over' was called during cricket matches retreating further and further into the long grass, have left me with such an allergy to sport that I can hardly force myself to play beggar-my- neighbour with the children. I never care who wins, I just want the whole thing to be over as quickly as possible; and I have never been able to understand the state of mind of a brilliant modern playwright who minds desperately if he loses at ping-pong. Certain things can be made compulsory, but playing is not one of them. Anyway, why should we wish to turn out a nation of Gazzas with no sense of history?
Lord Justice Henry has also had a poor idea this week. It's the control of legal costs. He suggests that judges should make a report at the end of cases by which well- behaved banisters are rewarded and rude or prolix briefs may have their money cut. Certainly the costs of all litigation, particu- larly civil cases, should be reducgcl, but to offer a bribe to an advocate to srPten the length of his speech for the defence in a serious criminal trial would be a denial of justice. It's not an entirely new idea. I remember John Platts Mills, that excellent and fearless barrister, demonstrating to an Old Bailey jury, years ago, how a finger- print could be removed from some inno- cent object, such as the prisoner's packet of cigarettes, and transferred to a gun barrel or the casing of a bomb. For this important and interesting information an irate Mr Justice Melford Stevenson suggested that John's fees be dramatically docked. And rudeness is sometimes, unfortunately, inevitable. 'Why is it, Mr Smith,' a judge once said, 'that your argument seems to go in at one of my ears and out of the other?' `Probably,' the cynical advocate replied, `because there's nothing in between.' Lord `You'll like Harold. He's a good loser.' Justice Henry would no doubt have reduced F. E. Smith's dosh to nothing.
Iwas glad, this week, to have lunch with Peter Hall. As he said, we see far too little of our friends. He looked, as always, like a particularly cheerful, somewhat mis- chievous Henry VIII. He should be happy with plays on all over London, and he was about to embark on an admirable project, doing Hamlet in the West End, something that hasn't happened much since Gielgud was a young man. We discussed the present tendency of directors, apparently bored with having to do Shakespeare, who import their own stories, never for the better. I had recently seen a production of The Tempest at Stratford in which Ariel appeared like an overweight and elderly bell-boy at the Savoy Hotel, and ended the play by spitting in Prospero's face. If Shakespeare had intended this to happen there was nothing to prevent him writing it. Although direc- tors may be bored with Shakespeare, young audiences, who have never seen the plays before, aren't. They deserve to see them as they have been written, unless we are determined to find even more ways to cut us off from the glories of the past. Peter also said that before every Shakespeare production he had to spend weeks teaching the actors how to say the verse. At least his Hamlet won't be a play about gay rights, or the sad story of someone who got Aids from a dirty rapier.
If I had fulfilled my childhood ambition and become an actor I suppose I might have been resentful of Peter's tuition; although the actors I know who underwent it have been profoundly grateful. As a mat- ter of fact I didn't want to be a Shake- spearean actor. I wanted to put on a top hat, white tie and tails and dance down a marble staircase. I wanted to be Fred Astaire and, though I was never any good at singing or dancing, I live in hope that the ambition may yet be realised. I was on a book tour, talking in a smart store where sandwiches, sausage rolls and bottles of Spanish white were set out ready for when the chat was over and the signing began. As I spoke I saw what was invisible to the audience turned in my direction: sleepers in doorways and cardboard boxes were straying into the shop and scoffing the sandwiches. When I was signing books an elderly bag lady appeared and asked me to sign a scrap of newspaper. When I'd done so she said mysteriously, 'Don't give up hope, John. Fred Astaire was born under the sign of Taurus the Bull, as were you. I believe you may become a famous dancer.' Is it worth investing in tails?
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