MAX HASTINGS
Friends ask if one suffers withdrawal symptoms from newspaper-editing. Yet if one is a writer, there is no greater joy than to write. After an interval of 16 years, I am once again travelling the world, interviewing veterans for a book about the second world war. I love sitting in old men's homes, listening to their stories of experiences mercifully beyond the compass of anything our generation has known. The Russians talk wonderfully, but it is dismaying to see how poor they are. Old soldiers have a black jest: 'Maybe it would be better if the fascists had won the war, and now we might all be living like the Germans.' In Germany, I was sorry to see old Waffen SS men displaying a defiant assertiveness which they would not have dared to expose when I last met their kind, 20 years ago. In New York, I spent an extraordinary three hours last week with a Jewish woman who had survived Ravensbriick. A taxi was supposed to collect me afterwards, to catch a flight to London. It was very late. I grew nervous. 'Relax!' my hostess cried. 'Don't worry about it! It doesn't matter. When you have been in a death camp, you realise how unimportant it is to miss an aeroplane.'
0 n Saturday, on the same quest for my book, 1 saw an 82-year-old British doctor, who was medical officer to a parachute battalion. I thought I had heard every kind of war story, but I was astonished by one of his memories, which is undoubtedly authentic. In January 1945, his unit had been fighting for three days in a Belgian village, unable to dislodge a Tiger tank fiercely defended by panzergrenadiers. The doctor was treating a casualty when his sergeant reported that there were five badly wounded men in a house on the front line, whom he was going to get out. Preoccupied, the doctor nodded assent. On their front, the Germans usually respected the red cross. The chaplain said he would go too. The two men drove their ambulance up the main street. Firing died away. As the British began to load stretchers, however, with a roar the huge Tiger careered up the street and stopped in front of them. The hatch opened. The German commander appeared. He wagged an admonitory finger and observed in fluent English, 'This time, I let you do it. Next time — I shoot!' The hatch clanged down. The tank disappeared back up the street. In daily journalism, one often questions whether what one is doing is worthwhile. I suffer no such doubts, recording the memories of the wartime generation.
It must be ten years since I filled up a car at an American gas station. After doing so last week, I paid a bill for just $12 after
driving 300 miles. In principle, I support high fuel-duty. Since we must pay taxes, forking out steeply for using a car seems as fair an impost as any. In principle, I agree that America's cheap fuel policy is shockingly unkind to the environment. But gosh, that bill was a nice surprise.
Breakfast has always been the best meal America offers, but it seems to be suffering a decline. Having eaten cardboard waffles and tasteless fried eggs in big cities and small, at hotels and short-order diners. I was disappointed. Yet maybe the problem is just that I am older. As a very young man living nomadically in America, I ate ravenously and indiscriminately. Nowadays, there seems nowhere that the food tastes better than in one's own home.
am an eager book reviewer. It is a pleasure to be paid for reading new history and political writing. Once upon a time, review copies were sent to literary editors six weeks before publication. This gave the editor time to consult possible reviewers, and, above all, granted the reviewer time to read the book carefully, and to think about it. Nowadays, however, it is normal practice for titles to reach newspapers only a fortnight, a week, before they go into the shops. Academic publishers — and especially Oxford University Press — are cava her about sending out books at all, or even issuing comprehensive lists of what is coming. They fail their authors, and their own balance-sheets. Big books by well-known writers will always get reviewed, but publishers are providing a poor service for the second-division titles, sometimes books of real quality, by failing to give us leeway to do justice to them.
Everywhere I went in America I was asked for a credit card. Many shops and hotels did not want my direct-debit card, and did not even much care for cash. A decade ago I gave up my American Express card because I wearied of the company's greed and inefficiency. Last year, I tried Amex again. For a few months they made a lot of money out of my business-spending. Then one day in a London restaurant I found my card rejected. although I was nowhere near my credit limit. An embarrassing phone call confirmed the company's refusal to honour it. They claimed not to have received my previous month's payment. After kicking up a fuss, some sort of apology was belatedly forthcoming, but I abandoned the credit card in disgust. Now, however, I find myself embarrassed without it. My wife says I will have to eat my pride and get another one. She points out that my bank is even more incompetent, but I have swallowed its bungling for years because I cannot be bothered to change. Freedom of choice is supposed to be one of the privileges of a capitalist society. Yet in truth we are all prisoners of a tiny handful of banking bureaucracies.
Ihave always been a great fan of British Airways. After paying my own fares for the first time in years, taking a lot of overseas flights on research trips, I feel even more loyal. The planes have all been punctual. The service has been great. The new transatlantic economy-plus seats are very comfortable, even for someone as absurdly tall as me. I experienced only one stab of irritation — eating in the lounge at Kennedy Airport before flying home. We had to use plastic cutlery. This is, of course, no fault of BA. It is a consequence of the manic security measures which have followed 11 September. Over the past decade or two, al-Qa'eda and the IRA have between them made flying progressively more troublesome. It is fantastic to contemplate the inconvenience tens of millions of travellers are suffering because Osama bin Laden had an unhappy childhood, or whatever. I would like to see more of the Blitz spirit towards terrorists. Sealing cockpits makes sense. But, for heaven's sake, stop confiscating nail scissors. Western society diminishes itself by being so silly.
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