Diary
A ny middle-aged journalist worth his .salt must have been trying to remem- ber just where he was and what he was doing on VE Day, so as to be able to cash In on the potential for reminiscences cre- ated by the oncoming 40th anniversary. Unfortunately for me I cannot recall any- thing at all about that historic day. But 1 can well remember VE Day plus one — the first day of peace — since then it was that I disgraced myself by for the first time firing in anger the revolver that I had been carrying on my hip for the last three years, and firing, furthermore, to kill. The fatal incident took place somewhere in the countryside near Hanover where my Phan- tom patrol had set up camp. Feeling that the end of the war justified a more elabor- ate celebratory dinner than army rations Would rise to, my corporal and I approached a local German farmer, whose barnyard looked particularly well stocked, and asked whether we could exchange Cigarettes for some of his poultry, expect- ing, of course, the answer la'. But instead of responding with the expected deferen- tial obsequiousness, the farmer, a great bull-necked ruffian, started hurling Teut- onic defiance at us. This put me into a rage and I drew my revolver, took aim at a range of about five feet, and shot his largest turkey stone dead. Doubtless there Will be many other reminiscences sparked off by VE Day in these columns in the weeks to come; but none, I imagine, quite so bathetic as mine.
It is now as fashionable among the -I-American Right to be violently anti- European as it was and is among the European Left to be violently anti- American. I had not realised the full extent of this Europhobia until attending a con- ference on East-West relations in London recently where some of the most promin- ent participants were American right- Wingers, including old friends like Irving and Bea Kristol. Not only does the prevail- ing view of this highly intelligent and influential Reaganite group seem to be that Europe is dead' — a phrase they actually use — but they also seem to think that unless the United States distances itself from 'this rotting corpse' it too will run the risk of going soft on Russian Communism. Anyone who dares to suggest that Russia is not as overwhelming a menace as they seem to assume gets dismissed as a `closet fell. ow traveller'. What worries me about this lot is not so much their views as the fanatical intensity with which they are expressed and the contemptuous impati- ence reserved for anyone bold enough to contradict. (The only Englishmen they
regard as sound are Paul Johnson, Hugh Thomas and Lord Chalfont). During this conference the American ambassador in London gave a small lunch for Mrs Jeane Kirkpatrick, also one of the participants, to which he invited a few English Tories assumed to be roughly of the same persua- sion as the guest of honour — including Sir Keith Joseph, Sir David English, Jonathan Aitken and myself. All went well until over the coffee I mildly suggested that it might be a good idea if Mrs Kirkpatrick talked a bit less grandiloquently about 'freedom' and 'democracy' because there, was no agreed sense in the West as to what these terms actually meant. Instead of reacting to this tease in a friendly way, the harridan angrily asked the ambassador 'Who the hell is this guy?', very much implying by her tone that there must be something wrong with the embassy security arrange- ments for such a subversive to have got in.
If this is how she treats someone who is roughly on her side, then one dreads to think what those Third World representa- tives at the United Nations — with even less easily recognisable names! — have had to put up with.
T first heard the name of Dolly Burns, 'millionaire daughter of the art dealer, Lord Duveen, from Richard Crossman, who uncharacteristically declined a first course at lunch with me on the grounds that he was dining that night at Dolly's. A few weeks later — it must have been in the mid-Sixties — I met Dolly herself at the Kingsley Amises (her circle of friends was very catholic) and we were regular guests at her famous Mayfair dinner parties from then almost until her death, aged 82, last week. For Dolly, entertaining was more than a hobby; it was an obsession, even an addiction. She could not get through a single day without giving dinner for at least 20; sometimes a large luncheon as well. So inevitably many of the same faces Harold Wilson, Woodrow Wyatt, Douglas Houghton, Robert Maxwell — kept on re-appearing like a stage army. Not all the guests were celebrities, since she was the least snobbish of grand hostesses, prefer- ring quantity to quality (and socialists to
'At least I know what its like to be a member of high society.' Tories, too, as it happened). Why did people keep coming? Partly, I suppose, for the luxury — footmen, champagne, etc but also because Dolly's particular com- bination of vulgarity and regality was strangely magnetic. Also she needed her guests so desperately. Of all the hostesses I have known only Dolly brought hospitality to such a fine art that she made guests feel that by eating her foie gras they were also doing her a great kindness, thereby trans forming our self-indulgence into an act of charity. A rare hostess indeed!
Scarcely a month goes by nowadays without a new biography appearing which is hailed on all sides as a master- piece. Mountbatten by Philip Ziegler (su- perb, outstanding), Lloyd George by John Grigg (superlative, incomparable), Hugh Dalton by Ben Pimlott (a classic), Birken- head by John Campbell (consummate) and so on and so on. It could be, of course, that all these new works are indeed as good as their critics affirm. But surely the law of averages would seem to suggest that there must be something a bit odd about such a bumper crop of classics all in one year. My explanation is that contemporary biog- raphers have it quite exceptionally easy, because the rules of the game, which were once rigged to make success almost im- possible, have now been changed to make it almost inevitable. The crucial change, of course, is that biographers are no longer prohibited from delving into their subjects' private and sexual lives; indeed are now positively encouraged by publishers to do so. Thus it is really not surprising that Robert Skidelsky's recent life of Keynes, which does justice to his homosexuality, is better than Roy Harrod's earlier one which
never referred to the subject at all; no more surprising than it would be if a boxer with two free arms beat an opponent with one arm tied behind his back. So perhaps reviewers in this literary genre should start setting more demanding standards of judg- ment, since for a new biography merely to be miles better than all its predecessors is not really saying very much.
Waving always taken the view that the 1
only thing worse than a bad German is a good one, the news that Princess Michael of Kent's father was in the SS rather than just another hypocritical anti- Nazi — comes as a bit of a relief. That the Princess knew about her father's back- ground I can hardly doubt for a moment, since she is as shrewd and on the ball as it is possible to be. Of course she ought to have come clean before marrying the Prince. But enchanting adventuresses cannot real- ly be expected to ruin their chances by quixotic gestures of that kind. Skeletons in the cupboard are- no new experience for our Royal Family and after all these confessions they should be able to rally round better than most.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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