DIARY
There's nothing quite so satisfying as a good row among Christians. Shedding all Pretence of turning the other cheek and stripping off all claims to charity, the God- fearing wrestlers go at one another in a blood-spattered spiritual clash that owes more to The Gladiators than to Corinthi- ana. When I struck out against the Chris- tian fundamentalists at Holy Trinity Brompton CA contagious case of HTB', 20 September), their counter-attack was swift: they deluged the sainted editor with letters of complaint and filled my Daily Telegraph postbag with angry missives. I fear, there- fore, that much of the past week has seen ale in combative mood, skirts hitched up and shirt-sleeves rolled back like some washerwoman from the back streets of Naples, eager for another go at the posse of Puritans. In pursuit of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I sacrificed an entire evening on the telephone with H.TB's resources and communications director, Mark Elsdon-Dew. 'Our congre- gation is not made up only of the well- heeled and double-barrelled!' Mr Elsdon- Dew (nothing double-barrelled about him) denied hotly all allegations of social ambi- tions. I tried to explain to him that it was not the predominance of Barbour jackets, Jere Yn Street shirts and pearls that had me b. P in arms about HTB, but rather its Importation of Bible Belt fundamentalism. Behind their clean and glossy façade and under the misleading label 'Church of Eng- land', HTB and its ever-expanding network of satellite churches are touting a sinister theology rooted in a literal interpretation of the Bible and obsessed with Satan. In an unscrupulous emotional manipulation of then- followers, the vicars and lay ministers constantly invoke images of demons and thunder about 'the Antichrist', generating we very fears they purport to allay.
hen I spoke to Michael Owen, an Essex schoolteacher who last February attended an Alpha course at St Paul's, Onslow Square, he bore out my suspicions about r r riTh's positively mediaeval focus on the Devil. Owen remembered how John ?eters, the vicar at the fashionable Kens- ,Ingtou church, warned the initiates about co yens of witches' and 'demonic posses- sion' surrounding the faithful. (One can °MY guess what effect the sighting of witch- es astride their broomsticks would have on .house prices in the exclusive, leafy neigh- bourhood.) Not content to regale their con- tregations with native satanic lore, HTB has Imported international experts on the subject. My favourite is the pastor David Letiggi Cho, leader of the world's largest church in Seoul, South Korea. Two years ago, when the HTB vicar Sandy Millar CRISTINA ODONE played host to the balding and bespectacled Dr Cho, the Korean told a crowd of 11,000 at Wembley Arena that the Antichrist would come out of a united Europe. Scrip- tural 'evidence' for this could be found in the Book of Daniel: Dr Cho believes that the world has reached the age correspond- ing to the feet and toes made of mixed iron and clay of the statue in Daniel's dream, and that these toes are the nations of the European Community.
If HTB threatens to affect Kensington house prices with its warnings of Beelzebub and witchcraft, its plans for a Millennium Village will blot the urban landscape just south of Chelsea Bridge. Ken Costa, a vice- chairman at Warburg's, is the architect behind this ambitious project. 'It's only a vision at this point,' Mr Elsdon-Dew sighed. 'All we can do is pray, pray, pray.' Mr Elsdon-Dew was annoyingly vague about the village, which Mr Costa, an HTB regular, first mooted several years ago, but I gathered it would be built along the lines of a born-again Disneyland. The mind bog- gles at the notion of an all-Christian theme park where rollercoasters will be called `Via Crucis', bobbing for apples will take place in baptismal fonts, and the Ferris wheel will be in the shape of a huge, rotat- ing crucifix. Few would accuse me of being publici- ty-shy, yet until this week and the publica- tion of my novel, A Perfect Wife, I had not appreciated the full horror of limelight- seeking. Unlike good Catholic girls who say no when they mean yes, I found myself (repeatedly) saying yes when I should have said no: no to articles about (yawn) being single, no to radio programmes about look- ing for Mr Right, no to autobiographical pieces about disastrous dates. While raking over the infertile soil of past courtships and failed relationships, I unearthed a singular encounter — buried so deep in the darkest recesses of my memory that I had forgotten it until now. A few years ago, a friend and colleague invited me to dinner. 'There's a very suitable prospect,' she coaxed. I went, to find my friend and her live-in boyfriend, a second couple and — God forgive me an irredeemably unattractive specimen. Hiding my annoyance, while mentally urg- ing my so-called friend to take a long walk on a short pier, I engaged my 'suitable prospect' in conversation. His name was Stephen and we talked about politics (his thing) and about Washington (where we had both lived). As soon as courtesy allowed, I made a move to leave — but chivalrous Stephen immediately offered me a lift. We crossed London with my body pressed against his car door, willing him not to touch me. He didn't. 'We must get together soon,' Stephen said when he dropped me off. We didn't. Two days later I woke up to hear on Radio Four that Stephen Milligan MP had been found hanging in his kitchen, wearing suspenders, an orange in his mouth.
et a novel in contemporary media Lon- don and everyone assumes that it is a roman a clef. No amount of protest or dis- claimers from the author will dampen the flames of gossips' guesswork, and inevitably some character or other will be revealed triumphantly as the fictional portrayal of someone you never sought to depict at all. This became all too evident at my launch party this week. Frank Johnson had no sooner arrived, suavely coiffed and sharply suited, than a buzz rose to the Art Deco ceiling of the Ivy. 'It's him,' said a critic, `Clive Walton-Ellis.' Absolutely — to a T,' whispered a wag. 'Did she think we wouldn't notice?' snorted a hanger-on. I gasped in amazement: Frank Johnson was being mistaken for a character variously described as a bon viveur who edited a small but prestigious magazine, a middle- aged intellectual who abhorred fanatics, and a man-about-town who left a trail of seductions in his wake. Now, does that sound like the eminent editor of The Spec- tator to you?
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