Notebook
The weekly column by my friend Mr Ferdinand Mount will continue to ap- pear on the opposite page for the next three weeks. After that he will clear out his locker, brush his hair, tighten his shoelaces, and repair to Number 10 Downing Street. A tentative push on the bell. 'I am,' he will ex- Plain in a hoarse whisper, 'the new head of the Prime Minister's policy unit.' Then England's best political columnist will disappear into the Looking Glass House. Who knows what adventures will await him there? His job will be to advise Mrs That- cher. Will his advice be heeded, or will he suffer the indignities of Alice, who found herself pleading with the Red Queen that she couldn't believe impossible things? It is one of Mr Mount's many virtues as a Political writer that he refuses to believe im- Possible things. Still, some of the Red Queen's instructions to Alice were quite good: 'Always speak the truth — think before you speak — and write it down afterwards'; 'When you've once said a
thing, that fixes it, and you must take the
Consequences.' I doubt if Mr Mount's adventure through the looking-glass will last for ever. When they are over, I hope he will return to his typewriter, better placed than anyone to know whether the mirror of the press'accurately reflects the worrE1 on the other side. In the meantime, we must simultaneously congratulate Mrs Thatcher on her judgment and condemn her for silen- cing a political observer of such rare good sense. Mr Mount's predecessor in the job, Mr John Hoskyns, appreciated the damage he was doing to Fleet Street by vacating his desk. 'I like his column so much,' he told the Sunday Times, `that I almost wonder whether I should leave.' Still, I suppose everybody must sometimes make sacrifices for the good of the country, and ours is, a, fter a particularly happy collaboration lasting nearly five years, to surrender Mr Mount to the Government. The best advice we can give Mrs Thatcher is that she should listen to him.
It was Captain Y. Gavrilov, writing in the Soviet Defence Ministry's newspaper Red Star, who first described Mrs Thatcher, in January 1976, as 'the Iron Lady'. The description, intended offensively, was taken up first by her and then by everybody else with such enthusiasm that it has even earned the accolade of an entry in the latest edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Never has it seemed more ap- Pr9Priate than at the moment, as the Prime Minister pursues her revenge against the Argentinians with a truly iron resolve. There have been times, however, when the
soubriquet has appeared less flattering. Last summer, for example, when unemployment was rising to record levels and there was rioting on the streets, the political correspondent of the Sunday Times wrote: 'Aware of the unpopularity of her Iron Maiden image, Mrs Thatcher may now try to soften its edges.' I don't know how the 'Lady' became a 'Maiden', but the change is significant. For there is nothing flattering about being described as an 'Iron Maiden'. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable also has an entry under this heading. The 'Iron Maiden', it informs us, was 'a mediaeval instrument of torture', consisting of a box big enough to admit a man, with folding doors studded with sharp spikes. When the doors were closed, the dictionary adds rather unnecessarily, the spikes were forced into the body of the victim, who was left to die. These are matters on which Mr Mount may still care to reflect.
Ayou probably do not know, let me tell you what the weather was like in the South Atlantic on Wednesday. It was heavi- ly overcast, pouring with rain, and there were strong winds of about 30 knots. This information comes from the weather bureau in Washington because the British Government has imposed a blackout on weather reports from the area. As the Prime Minister constantly invokes the weather in her speeches and interviews, it is rather unfair of her to deprive us of the means of arguing with her. Not only that. Discussion of the weather around the Falklands has, in recent days, been giving enormous pleasure to millions. Was it really necessary to deprive us of this pleasure? The British forces know what the weather is like; so do the enemy. So what military pur- pose can this blackout be intended to serve? It can only be intended to disarm the Government's critics. From press reports the weather in the South Atlantic would ap- pear to be amazingly variable. On Monday, as James Fenton points out on another page, The Times's man aboard HMS Invin- cible, Mr John Witherow, described the sea as 'curiously leaden and calm.' On Sunday, however, he had been writing about 'in- creasingly severe weather conditions' in- cluding 'heavy rain and lightning'. By Tues- day, he had resorted to generalisations about what the weather is normally like at this time of year. This did not prevent him devoting two thirds of his article to the sub- ject.
Who is in charge of protocol at Buck- ingham Palace? He does not appear to be doing his job very well. And if he doesn't pull his socks up, relations between the Queen and the Pope could soon turn very sour. A few weeks ago the Queen, who is said to have a high regard for the Pope, invited him to lunch with her family at Buckingham Palace during his visit to Bri- tain, having apparently not been informed that the Pope never eats meals with heads of state. The result was a wounding refusal of the invitation. Then, so we learnt this week, Buckingham Palace failed even to reply to a telegram from the Pope to the Queen appealing for peace in the Falklands. The telegram, furthermore, was sent the weekend before last. A similar message was sent to General Galtieri, who of course answered promptly. Asked if the failure to reply to the telegram was a snub to the Vatican, a Palace spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: 'I don't think so, not for a mo- ment'. Maybe it was just forgetfulness. But it seems an odd way to treat the head of the Roman Catholic Church only a short time before he is supposed to be paying an historic visit to Britain. Perhaps it is for- tunate that, because of the Falklands crisis, the visit is now unlikely to take place.
I n Sacramento, California, a mother has been awarded 142,500 dollars in damages because her dead son was sexually assaulted by a female apprentice embalmer. The embalmer, 23-year-old Karen Greenlee, said she had had sexual relations with between 20 and 40 other corpses while living above the funeral parlour. She was found guilty of illegally driving a hearse and of interfering with a burial, there being no law in California against necrophilia. She was fined 225 dollars and sent to prison for 11 days. She was arrested after being found inside a hearse with the dead body of John Mercure, 33. I do not begrudge Mrs Mer- cure her 142,500 dollars. But I cannot help wondering whether she would have been awarded any damages if Miss Greenlee had forced her attentions upon her son while he was alive. It is certainly a curious legal precedent.
Alexander Chancellor
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