Notebook
Last week I noted with some surprise the recommendation of the Catholic Com- sslon for Racial Justice that Rastafarians should be allowed to practise their distasteful forms of worship in Christian churches. Now it is the Church of hneand's turn to make a fool of itself. It blasphemy recommended that the law of ulasPhemy should be extended to embrace not only Christianity but 'the fundamental religious beliefs of any religious group', a of the group being defined as any section tile community which 'venerates a God ,. &gods'. It should be an offence, says the nu. rch of England, 'to publish matter bete vilifies, ridicules, or insults' their ofs, 'knowing that this is likely to insult breach outrage their feelings, to provoke .a 'reach of the peace or to disturb public ?.rder and tranquillity'. This sounds to me 19te a device to shield from criticism every demented sect from the Moonies to the o4°Ple's Temple of the late Jim Jones. st"Y, when the Christian churches have spent so many centuries trying to convince beliefs to other religions that their neliefs are a load of rubbish, are they now so !concerned to protect them? They seem now t,(3 take the view — perhaps because of the uectine in religious faith — that belief in 4,inYthing at all, however absurd, wrong or dangerous, is something to be cherished and defended. One irony is that the Church of England's anxieties about the !Ilaitenance of public order are valid only 111,!he context of non-Christian religions. It b, hard to imagine nowadays how Christian ,IasPhemy could cause a riot. But when 'inberon Waugh made some jokes about Muslims in The Times a few years ago, the runtish Council library in Rawalpindi was %tit to the ground.
Graham Greene has, I believe, never written a work of non-fiction other than travel books. Yet, at the age of 77, he announced in a letter to The Times this week that he is planning to write a book ex- r)(3sing the criminal underworld of Nice. It would, he added, be 'based on personal ex- perience'. The project sounds both ,1Ysterious and rather frightening. It is the '94 of thing that might daunt even the In- sIght team of the Sunday Times. Why should Mr Greene wish to undertake it? line can only speculate about the 'personal kxPerience' to which he referred. It is Greene, however, that in recent years Mr who lives in Antibes, has been French concerned for the welfare of a young woman, a daughter of close friends LI the neighbourhood. She was married to a 'It who had been in prison, and it subse-
quently emerged that he had had connec- tions with the criminal milieu. Her efforts to divorce him ran into terrible difficulties. It is possible, I imagine, that her experience may have contributed to Mr Greene's sense of outrage. If so, this is a noble motive for writing the book, and it is very brave of him to do it.
As a child, I always felt sick when I travelled in a Rolls-Royce. It was, I think, the smell of the leather upholstery which was mainly responsible. Since then I have never liked these pretentious cars and the mystique surrounding them. If they were once associated in people's minds with the gentry, those days are gone. Since the Sixties they have been more commonly associated with pop stars, hairdressers and upwardly mobile gangsters, which is not to deny that perfectly respectable, if misguid- ed, people also own them. Perhaps it is the image which Rolls-Royce is trying to correct in its current series of newspaper adver- tisements. `For seventy-eight years Rolls- Royce motor cars have been owned by the men and women who shape history', says the advertisement, which proceeds to list the names of people who are supposed to fall into this category — people like Prince Chula Birabongse of Siam, H.M. the King of Serbia, and, not surprisingly, Sir Frederick Henry Royce. One of the only people on the list who have actually `shaped history' is the historian Hugh Trevor- Roper. The most suspect history-shaper of all is someone called `The People's Republic of China — unknown purchaser'. Anyway, the advertisement promises more lists of the same sort and says: `If you know someone who you feel deserves to be in- cluded in such a list, do not hesitate to con-
tact Rolls-Royce motors.' You may put 'em on the list — you may put 'em on the list; And they'll none of 'em be missed they'll none of 'em be missed'.
So John Grigg, our former political col- umnist, has joined the Social Democratic Party. His seems to me to be a significant defection. He has always been on the left of the Conservative Party, but as far as I know, he has never seen himself as anything other than a Tory — his one moment of doubt being, quite rightly, at the time of Suez. So why did he leave? Despite his reputation as a radical — based rather flim- sily on some criticisms of the Queen in the Fifties and his renunciation of his title — he is in fact a traditionalist and a man devoted to the country's public institutions. `The Tory Party of my dreams,' he wrote in his letter of resignation to the Greenwich Con- servative Association, 'was truly national and free from ideology. The party as I see it today is neither.' There are many Tories who think as he does and who believe that there is now no hope of rescuing the Con- servative Party from the divisive That- cherites. But John Grigg is the only Conser- vative of any stature (and I have not forgot- ten Mr Brocklebank-Fowler) to have acted on this conviction that in the SDP-Liberal Alliance lies the only chance of implemen- ting the romantic, conservative ideal of a country united under a compassionate and sensitive establishment.
C ir John Gielgud is nearly 78 years old. 1...3 Lord Olivier is nearly 75. Neither of them, one imagines, will live for ever. And both of them, being actors, have been rehearsing their deathbed scenes before the public. Lord Olivier had the best of it. He spent an entire television episode of Brideshead Revisited dying in sumptuous surroundings. Gielgud's death in the film Arthur was less elevating. He was cast as a butler to the midget Dudley Moore, and died in hospital with the little fellow drool- ing over him. Both actors, however, died peacefully and seemed rather to enjoy it. As a result, they are probably better prepared than the rest of us for the real thing. But so convincing were their performances that I find it rather hard to believe that either of them is actually still alive.
The price of the Spectator is to be incre- ased next week to 65 pence, and a word of explanation is perhaps desirable. We, of course, regret the increase, but it is essential to the paper's survival. We only hope that readers — comparing the new price with the cost of a glass of whisky, or a packet of cigarettes, or a cinema ticket — will decide the Spectator is still worth buying. To those who feel it is not, I should point out that it is still possible to obtain the paper at its pre- sent price for another year if you take out a subscription before 1 April.
Alexander Chancellor
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