Notebook
Last week's leading article in the New Statesman was entitled 'Walrus and the Carpenter'. It was an attack on the „,°verritiient's economic policy. One ,"ondered what the Walrus and the "AarPenter had to do with it. Perhaps the New Statesman had Sir Geoffrey Howe and fZs Thatcher in mind. Perhaps it envisaged ern treating Britain's bankrupt industries c, the Walrus and the Carpenter treated wYSters: ‘! Weep for you,' the Walrus said: .deeply sympathise.'
_with sobs and tears he sorted out
Pot thereof the largest size. there isn't much in the article to sup- n such a theory. The real inspiration for the headline was a 19th-century French eco liornist. Quoting Keynes's dictum that Practical men who believe themselves to be Suite exempt from any intellectual in- da-i.enees, are usually the slaves of some ,;-'1111ct economist,' the New Statesman ia.ittied that the economist by whom the Minister and her Chancellor were enslaved was 'a Frenchman — of whom neither probably have heard, certainly igtlisread'• 'He is Leon Walrus, who died in n ,u at the age of 76 and whose most in- A,Iftelitial work, Elements of Pure joQiilematics, was seminal'. What a terrify- sot,tclkea — that one can be enslaved by nobody one has never heard of. Perhaps Do .°13, am a slave of the great Walrus; MarITPS millions of people are. Perhaps we nave ideas from Elements of Pure theinaties racing around in our sub- thrlseteals. But I think not, because luckily ere wnowevea s vvr no su There was, , someone ch calledperson. Leon Walras who Er,ce" a book called Elements of Pure t; °fifties. He also advocated the na- rialisation of land. 'They wept like /11114 to see such quantities of sand'. One or two people have been hear.1 wh. complaining about the sycophancy col eh has characterised the reviews of our hilt Patrick Marnham's best-selling thst°rY of Private Eye. It is true, indeed, tea! quite a high proportion of the p:lewers in the national press have been kn°Ple either involved in the magazine or \Own to be friendly towards it: Auberon riallgh in the Daily Mail, John Wells in the ijaines, and Malcolm Muggeridge in the no Te/egraph, for example. The bitter- % ss which quite a lot of people feel towards inefi_nlagazine has been hardly reflected at all th.the reviews, and this is perhaps no bad iriv4, for the reasons why people dislike are Eye are a good deal less interesting than the reasons why people like it. The general atmosphere of the reviews has been 'Good old Private Eye', 'Good old In- grams', with varying but on the whole favourable assessments of Mr Marnham's account of the magazine's first 21 years. A quite different note is struck, however, in this week's Spectator. The review by Christopher Booker, Private Eye's first editor, on page 24 is remarkably acrimonious. It accuses Mr Marnham, a former Private Eye journalist who was chosen by Richard Ingrams as its official historian, of malevolence and inaccuracy; of seeking to 'convey a picture of a little band of brothers seething with hatred and bitterness':, of 'tired and inaccurate malice, unrelieved by humour'. Mr Booker's review gave me quite a turn. Having read the book myself, I can see that there are things in it which might irritate or annoy Mr Booker, just as there are things in it which might an- noy Mr Ingrams, who is also said to take a dim view of Mr Marnham's efforts. But the picture which Mr Booker sees of unrelieved hatred and bitterness is almost completely invisible to the innocent outsider. Whatever its defects, the book does offer the reader a detailed account of the magazine's develop- ment, spiced with quite a lot of humour, and it is hard to believe that the inac- curacies of which Mr Booker complains are so widespread that they falsify the whole pic- ture. The effect on me of Mr Booker's reac- tion has been to deepen my incomprehen- sion of the Private Eye world. Are there deeply offensive things in Mr Marnham's book written in invisible ink which only members of the Private Eye gang can recognise? I suspect that the members of the gang themselves have little idea — and why should they? — of what they have been doing for the past 21 years to make their
magazine into such an astonishing success. Each perhaps identifies with different aspects of it — Mr Booker with the humour, Mr Marnham perhaps more (to judge from the book) with its investigative, subversive side. Perhaps, by getting a history written, they hoped that someone would explain their success in a manner satisfactory to all of them. That, I fear, would have been an impossible task.
Much sentimentality surrounds the portly figure of Sam White, not only because he is a very good journalist and because he has been around a very long time, but also because he is one of the last representatives of a dying breed — the British foreign correspondent. The foreign correspondent, as I like to imagine him, is someone who establishes himself in another country and soaks himself in its life and its history, so that eventually — after a number of years — he is in a position to convey to his readers at home a real understanding of its people and their ways. Sam White, who also now contributes to the Spectator, has been representing the Evening Standard in Paris for the past 35 years. He has been in London this week to receive from the Queen an OBE — an honour which, it would appear, was oppos- ed by the ridiculous Foreign Office man- darins who have always considered him unhelpful. He was approached by the British Ambassador in Paris a couple of years ago and asked if he would accept an honour, but the offer was subsequentlj withdrawn and only made firm this year. In succession to people like Sam White there seems to be a new breed of foreign cor- respondent, exemplified by Mr Peter McKay of the Mail on Sunday. Until lately assistant editor of the Daily Express, 'top reporter' McKay was recently appointed Washington correspondent of the re- vamped Rothermere Sunday newspaper. His first column, `McKay's America', was published the Sunday before last, at a time when he was still working out of the Daily Express's London office. He had, however, stayed in Washington for one night during the previous week, while on his way back from a facility trip from Seattle. There was just time for him to get himself photographed in front of the White House and cobble together some copy before fly- ing back to London on Concorde. He used his Daily Express air travel card to obtain a Concorde flight, rather than use the first class seat already booked for him, and the bill is being sent by the Express to the Mail on Sunday. For his second column McKay did not visit America at all, but sent out from the Express office for a copy of the Washington Post. But now he is finally there and is bound by his contract to remain there for at least two years. So Mail readers may look forward to some 'in-depth' repor- ting after all.
Alexander Chancellor
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