Another voice

Oversensitive

Auberon Waugh

Nobody in that select band who read his early novels can doubt that David Pryce-Jones was once a very sensitive young man. His heroes were always having dif- ficulties with their love lives and weeping copiously; they had even greater difficulty adjusting to the brutal, insensitive world around them, their idealism was always be- ing abused or affronted. Of the four in- fluences which one might identify as mak- ing up the Pryce-Jones we all know and love — the Welsh, the Jewish, the old Eto- nian and the person of restricted growth only the last two were in much evidence. Perhaps there was a Jewish sadness somewhere underneath this image of a sen- sitive, rich old Etonian midget struggling through the pangs of growing up to his first experiences of sex, but it did not at that stage seem an important ingredient. There was no sign of the Welsh strain.

One should not perhaps place too much emphasis on heredity as a determinant. Some might even think it vaguely insulting. Prycie, as I never tire of pointing out, was not the only half-Jewish Old Etonian Welsh dwarf setting off on life's journey at about this time. There was also the admirable and universally admired Anthony Armstrong- Jones, now first Earl of Snowdon, also Vis- count Linley and a Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order. Just see how their paths have diverged. Prycie does not even seem to have got into Who's Who yet.

Determinism of this sort — whether genetic or economic — may be vaguely in- sulting, as I say, when applied to individual cases, but any ad hominem analysis is more dangerous. The English libel laws do not allow us to speculate about people's motives. The one great difference between Snowdon and Pryce-Jones in what might be called their genetic or socio-economic coding is that whereas Snowdon was born without much money, Prycie is very rich in- deed. Snowdon had his way to make in the world, at any rate until the glorious mo- ment when (if Princess Margaret's biographer is to be believed) he received a five-figure golden handshake on leaving Kensington Palace. Prycie had only his sen- sitivities to contend with.

Perhaps this explains his subsequent development. I do not know. Nor do I know exactly when the sensitive David Eugene Henry fell away to be replaced by a SuperJones, a sort of literary Irgun Zvei Leumi terrorist, or limousine Wiesenthal, determined to avenge his people who died in their millions in the concentration camps by creating a bad atmosphere from time to time at smart London dinner parties. At any rate, the noisiest of his early ap- pearances in the role of Nazi-sniffer was when he fell upon the corpse of poor Unity Mitford, dead these 35 years, and started savaging it with all the ferocious tenacity of a Welsh terrier.

At the time of the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon last June there was a general feel- ing that Mr Begin might have played the Holocaust card once too often, at any rate so far as eliciting instant world sympathy was concerned. The moment came when he was asked about the bombing of an apart- ment block in Beirut where more than a hundred women and children died and which had been used as a meeting place for the Palestinian leadership. He replied by asking whether it would have been wrong to bomb a building with Hitler in it if it housed 20 other people.

Obviously the parallel was not ap- propriate, and it was a singularly maladroit use of Israel's strongest card. For all that, I was never able to see the Israeli invasion as unjustified, even if the unfortunate Lebanese never wanted the PLO there in the first place. And I can well understand, even sympathise with, the burning self- righteousness and desire for revenge of those like Begin and Wiesenthal who lived through the Holocaust.

But Prycie, who was born in 1939, has presumably suffered nothing much for his Jewishness beyond the unpleasantness which arises when someone makes the sort of Jewish joke which non-Jews have been making since the days of the Pharaohs. These are not appropriate moments for playing the Holocaust card. He played it, in a scream of self-righteous indignation, against Nicolas Bentley, a gentle and benign old leftie, whose harmless and amiable drawings, familiar to every educated Englishman from Cautionary Verses, were equated with the vilest outpourings of the Nazi propaganda machine. He played it more recently in a review of Patrick Mar- nham's controversial history of Private Eye which appeared in Encounter, identifying the Eye with some long-forgotten scandal sheet in pre-war Berlin and attributing, by association, the same genocidal intentions.

Last week in his Spectator review of John le Carre's The Little Drummer Girl (`Drum- ming up hatred'), I thought he excelled himself. Those who have not read the book will not know which of us to believe when I say that I have never, in all my experience of reviewing, seen such a misrepresentation of any author. I do not know le Carr& and do not give a fig for the Palestinian cause or for any other cause which uses terrorism.

Nor do I give a fig for the Eretz Israel Zionism which seems to be the major in- spiration of Mr Begin's Sephardic followers. In fact, I wish a cordial plague on both their houses. But I do resent it when I see a fellow book reviewer, in the grips of some obsession or commitment of his own, misrepresent a book so grotesque- ly.

Perhaps I should explain. As I read the book, it was the study of a silly, mixed-up, promiscuous English actress, a compulsive liar and fantasist, whose emotional and social inadequacies lead her into a dangerous game involving strange psychopaths in the world of international terrorism and counter-terrorism. It is true, as Pryce-Jones complains, that her motiva- tion is incoherent but that, on my reading, is what the book is all about, and I thought she was brilliantly portrayed in all her sex- ual and philosophical confusion. She is call- ed Charlie and an additional source of pleasure, for those who know him, is in transposing the editor of the Times for this sexually attractive but obviously unbalanc- ed heroine in her various adventures.

It is true that le Cure is on record as hav- ing criticised the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and occupation of Beirut. Perhaps he is a fully paid-up Palestinian sympathiser. I do not know. It is also true that he puzzlingly describes the Palestinian terrorists as being poor, with only their idealism to inspire them, while the Israeli counter-terrorists have unlimited sources. But that was the only internal evidence of partiality by the author. Its 'political' con- tent relies on deliberately stale and exag- gerated rhetoric from both sides.

Pryce-Jones sees the story as offering a 'very old figment indeed, the nice Gentile girl who has fallen into the hands of secretive and scheming Jews who will stop at nothing. It is true that the Jews stop at nothing, but neither do the Palestinians, and Pryce-Jones either misses the whole point of the book or deliberately distorts it if he sees it as a work of Palestinian pro- paganda. The Gentile girl is not nice at all, and the Jews are perfectly nice, with one or two exceptions.

'When Charlie screams that the Israelis are fascists and rotten killing bastards, these obscenities can appear to be wished on her by exigencies of plot. Such is not the case, however. Here is a matter which .. - belongs to the realms of agitprop. It is wret- ched. It is also childish in its sentimental personification of good and evil.'

Exactly. But it is Prycie who is being a baby. He might be like some terrible left- wing student who can't bear to listen to a debate for fear he hears something he is not going to agree with — except that in this case we are not even meant to take Charlie seriously. She is simply mixed-up bird-brain in the process of being confronted by her own silliness. The novel is about her, not about the political issues involved. Prycie should really go back to Proust or someone he understands.