Diary
The Anglican preferment which the controversial Dean of Peterhouse, Dr Edward Norman, has at long last received will be particularly galling to his enemy, the Master, since while it adds to the Dean's eminence — which is bad enough — it does not elevate him so far in the hierarchy — to abishopric, for example — as to remove nun from the college altogether. Dr Nor- Tan has been appointed one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral, a uni- que office established after the Reforma- tion by Archbishop Cranmer, the only con- n'emPorary duty of which is to preach on wSunday afternoons during July and August, eaving him free to spend the rest of his time Psettiog Lord Dacre. As an old member of the college, I much regret the likely con- tinuation of this unseemly row — enjoyable as it is in its way — because one can't visit she Place any longer without having to take .ides. Since Lord Dacre has gone to great !engths recently to publicise his own Chris- Lian religious convictions, which previously had been modestly hidden from view, Per le i-. -aps the Archbishop could solve the col- ge Problem by making him a bishop or something.
hen can anybody last recall reading W
, the word truth except as a synonym At any rate in the media telling the nor dirt? light, alwaYs means exposing darkness not 'light, vice rather than virtue. Given the eaclitne 'Truth about Convent', there ca uld be no question of expecting the ac- innanying story to tell about prayer, !,anctitY or chastity. And imagine the fate ()mat , would befall a young reporter who, .,,ruered to discover the truth about Mother wteresa, returned all the way from India h Ith nothing better than another account of et good works. Nor does the barrister who quJUres the accused to tell the truth at all ex- pect this to make him whole, still less set :lint free, any more than it is reasonable to tnxPeet good cheer when a friend threatens D- tell. you the truth about yourself. In s'lissia Pravda has come to mean quite ,InVIY lies, which is preferable to the _,'evious ways we have gone about ulscrediting this holy word.
One of the many signs of Britain's grow- the 8re ing a insularity is the disappearance of ,t foreign correspondent whose anle is a household word. In the old days, Journalistic fame and fortune were to be thN°On Primarily on the international stage. at so any longer. For judging by several of '1,se magazine features which tell us who is :,.n and who is 'out', all the journalist 'ins' l',7 nowadays commentators or columinists Z0 write about home affairs. Before the at, and for a time afterwards, it would fave been quite the other way round. The anions names then were Sefton Delmer, Rene McColl, Vernon Bartlett, G. Ward Price, all of whom concentrated on foreign affairs. On the Times, when I joined in 1948, the diplomatic correspondent enjoyed a far higher status than the political cor- respondent, who did not have any universi- ty degree. This was true all the way down the line. Even the foreign subs room was regarded as far superior to the home subs room, and those in the former — the roll of honour included Graham Greene — never mingled with the latter in the canteen. To- day a young journalist who wants to specialise in foreign affairs takes a great risk with his career, since once he goes abroad he may never be heard of again, unless he happens to find himself covering a war as Robert Fisk did in the Lebanon or John Pilger in Vietnam. Nowadays, reputations are more likely to be made by one lively report from a by-election or one witty parliamentary sketch than by any amount of daily reportage from Paris, Bonn or even Washington. The late lamented Frank Johnson is a case in point. Now he is in Paris, nobody reads him in the Times. My predecessor in this space suggested that this is because his words are badly displayed. In truth, it is because very few want to read about Paris, except for its gossip of which Sam White has a monopoly. Twenty years ago, any educated English person would have known the names of all the Westforeiern
European prime ministers and gn ministers. Today few could get even one right. Although now part of the European Community, the British are less interested in European politics than at any time since before the Norman Conquest. The same goes for European literature. Whereas Lon- don publishers used to queue up literally on the Left Bank to buy up the English rights, say, of the Prix Goncourt winner, nowadays they don't even bother to put in a telephone call, so little reader interest is there on this side of the Channel. I suppose this could be because we are no longer a great power, and do not see why we should
spend hours mugging up on developments abroad over which we can exercise precious little influence. My first job as a foreign sub on the Times was to make sure that all the names of the new Sudanese cabinet were correctly spelt. But in those days this was not wasted effort because a significant sec- tion of the paper's readership would have been involved in governing the country. To- day foreign financial news is still read; perhaps more so than ever. But not the political or diplomatic stuff. Television news does include quite a lot of foreign reporting. But this is a further confirmation of my point, since most of it is of a quality which could only satisfy those not very in- terested in the subjects. Is insularity undesirable? Yes, if only because in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. And he, in this case, is the Foreign Office mandarin.
Normally we come to our weekend
house in Wivenhoe 'to get away from it all'. Last Saturday we ran slap bang into it all, in the shape of a demonstration against the villager's tiny port — about 300 marchers, on to whose tail we tagged. Wivenhoe port used to import timber. But under dynamic new ownership it has started bringing in coal, the quantities of which have more than doubled during the strike, reaching the terrifying figure of 200 lorry- loads a day. As a result, the village is smeared with coal dust, as well as terrorised by the articulated lorries which roar down the High Street. This little local difficulty has, naturally enough, complicated the villagers' attitudes to the NUM pickets who are also against the port, for their own obvi- ous reasons, and even the most anti-union Tory inhabitants can be found offering them tea and sympathy. For Wivenhoe now has personal experience of being a local community threatened by economic forces beyond its control. It has also experienced the ruthlessness of modern management, which pays not the slightest attention to local concerns, like the safety of children. Before the port became such a burning issue, Trot students from nearby Essex University were persona non grata in the village. But now, like the NUM pickets, they are surprised to receive quite a warm reception in the most unlikely quarters, a measure of the seismic change in attitudes taking place around here.
Itgave me quite a jolt last week to see the first name 'Peregrine' attached to a Spectator article which was not written by me. Until Peregrine Hordern arrived on the journalistic scene, I had been the only one around. Most, if not all, other writers share their first name with dozens of others. (There are even several Auberons.) But I had become accustomed to assume that Peregrine was my exclusive copyright, and the sense of injury at a sudden loss of long- standing privilege is none the less acute for being wholly unjustified.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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