DIARY
Aweek's exposure to the unnatural stimulation of the Edinburgh Festival being a serious risk to one's mental stability, we make for the hills. The drive through the Trossachs to Oban is still a wonder, despite the string of bed-and-breakfast signs which at times seem to constitute the Highlands' sole attempt at commercial enterprise. One of MacBrayne's ferries, those supremely romantic and plucky vessels, lands us at Mull — an island mercifully free of the comfortable suburban sprawl which mars Bute and Arran. You can still find wilder- ness here, and purple hills which the van- dals of the Forestry Commission have yet to desecrate with carpets of conifer. We settle in the cheerful port of Tobermory, the houses on its front painted in brilliant Mediterranean colours. The Western Isles Hotel, once damp and baronial, now serves new Scottish cuisine and dry Martinis on its terrace. The sunset is mellow, the breeze mild, the view across the bay infinite: who needs Sorrento?
After 24 hours back in London, I turn and head for another outpost of Celtic Britain, Anglesey, where I am invited to stay with Charles and Romilly Saumarez- Smith. Anglesey is an oddity: not quite an island, not quite Wales. But it seems less foreign than mainland Bangor, where we go to shop. Here Welsh is spoken as a mat- ter of course, and the town is unexpectedly full of Hasidic Jews — apparently they have a holiday colony nearby. I feel plummy, English and disliked.
On a wet evening, we resort to a round of Cluedo before dinner. At first I am keen to participate, but it soon emerges that this is no longer the box of fun I fondly remem- ber from prep school. Cluedo Super Sleuth it is called now, a new and improved ver- sion, played on 12 boards. Why 12, for heaven's sake? It also features some new rooms (e.g. a cellar) and some fancy moves the significance of which I nervously failed to grasp. At one point I think I must have unintentionally given my opponents Otto Saumarez-Smith, aged ten, and Fred- dy Le Fanu, aged eight — some vital infor- mation, because they were suddenly seized with an interminable fit of sniggering. Oh for the days when you simply threw the die and staked your all on 'I suspect Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the lead pip- lag' and occasionally, yes, you were proved right. What made this experience doubly disturbing was that Otto and Freddy seemed to have no trouble at all with the novel intricacies of Super Sleuth, and I ended up feeling not just middle-aged but senile. Naturally, I lost miserably, but then RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN I always do. The others then moved on to something equally arcane called Uno Rummy, but I lasted only five minutes before I sloped off to find the gin bottle. The only encouraging conclusion is that the parlour-game is one area of our culture where dumbing-down has not taken hold.
Something of piquant interest in the newspapers at last: Genista McIntosh, who earlier this year left her job as chief execu- tive of the Royal Opera House after only four months, is returning to her previous position as executive director of the Royal National Theatre. Because I function as an opera critic, people assume that I must be privy to all the ins and outs of this story, but I'm not. My guess, however, is that McIn- tosh hated the Byzantine hierarchy and fac- tionalism of the ROH, and couldn't bond with any of the major personalities involved. Being divorced and middle-aged cannot have helped: her depression at the hole she was in was as much physical as mental. I hope that doesn't sound sexist or patronising; I have enormous respect for Genista McIntosh, and am delighted that she's back in business.
Ican even find in my susceptible heart a pang of sympathy for the ROH's chairman, Lord Chadlington, widely considered the villain of the piece. He is an optimistic busi- nessman who naively arrived at Covent Garden thinking that a dose of convention- They've backed down on tobacco ads, but they're also against driving.' al management reform would sort every- thing out. But opera houses are not biscuit factories, and his bright ideas and good intentions have only compounded the prob- lems. Worst of all was his peremptory deci- sion to replace McIntosh by his friend and former colleague Mary Allen without a proper process of interview. This has only confirmed the general view that the ROH is a hive of establishment corruption, and that nice Chris Smith made a huge political error in nodding the appointment through. I look forward with interest to the results of the parliamentary select committee's inves- tigations into these matters, but I'm afraid there's no getting away from the fact that the underlying cause of the ROH's current crisis is the substantial drop in public fund- ing it has suffered over the last 15 years.
On Sunday, a glorious morning drive across the Welsh mountains to the Wye Valley, where Felicity Rubinstein and Roland Philipps are my hosts. The next morning, we drive to a local show with eight-month-old Nat Philipps roaring delightedly in the back of the car. Nat would undoubtedly win Class 98 (boy or girl between six and 12 months) if his par- ents had the nerve to enter him for it. Well, I think he would, anyway, but he's my latest godson, so I'm biased. Instead we stomp through the mud and drizzle, admiring the eternal Victoria sponges and prize carrots as well as some of the more unusual cate- gories of competition: necklaces made from dolly mixture, floral exhibits inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, limericks built on the inspiring first line, 'When the secretary broke her arm. . . . '
Iwake in a cold sweat of panic, having realised that I have forgotten to video last Sunday's episode of The Jewel in the Crown. Only three desperate calls to similarly addicted friends in London calm me down — I finally track down a recording in Ken- nington. Despite the moments of melodra- matic heavy-handedness, it is the best drama series of its kind British television has ever produced, not just because of its brilliant script and casting (a special plaudit to Tim Pigott-Smith, whose portrait of Merrick the chippy grammar-school boy confronted with the public-school insou- ciance of Charles Dance's Guy Perron, is a splendidly unselfish piece of acting), not just because of its painting of the broader canvas of imperial India, but because of its depth and complexity of understanding of the operations of our class 'system'. Now how about another television showing of the German equivalent, also first seen in 1984, Edgar Reitz's Heimat ?
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