A Spectator's Notebook

Have we heard the last of the proposal to compel museums to introduce charges for admission? Hugh Leggatt, the art dealer and carripaigner, begins to hope that this may be the case. He draws my attention to what Norman St John-Stevas said in the House last week, in a written reply to the question asked by Andrew FauIds of Mrs Thatcher, the Secretary of State for Education, whether she intended to request the trustees of the national museums and galleries to apply to the Price Commission for permission to charge for admission during Phase 2 of the counter-inflation policy. Mr St John-Stevas said, "My noble friend the Paymaster-General does not intend the trustees to do this."

The Paymaster-General is Lord Eccles, minister under Margaret Thatcher in charge of the arts and such like. It is Hugh Leggett's theory that to bring in the museum charges after Phase 2, would be to do So in the run-up to the election. Since this, he argues, would be unpopular, he concludes that the policy of compulsory admission charges to places like the British Museum and the National Gallery is now being abandoned. It certainly ought to be. The policy is mean-minded and foolish, and bears no sensible relation to the policy of generosity to the minor arts of ballet and opera zealously favoured by Lord Eccles and, presumably, the Government.

Fears and suspicions

I learn that there are several former British agents and members of such wartime organisations as the Special Operations Executive who, even now, do not travel' to France because of their lingering suspicion that their wartime knowledge of the behaviour of the communists in the French underground, not only in France, but in parts of the former French colonial empire, puts them at risk., The theory is that some French communists, rather than have ageing wartime agents blowing the gaff on their wartime records, may be prepared to go to very violent lengths to prevent this. According to this theory, Sir John Drummond was not killed by Domenici at all, but by some ex-Resistance men. Likewise, the recent Cartland murder may be similarly explained. The apparent inefficiency of the French police in these investigations would certainly be explained if, in fact, the two murders were in this sense 'political.' I wonder whether certain ex-members of the SOE have, as a matter of fact, been advised not to travel to France.

Whole roast lamb

I am not one for elaborate meals, but I want to congratulate the Savoy on the food it produced for the dinner given to mark the presentations of .the 'Food and Wine Writer of the Year' awards last week. Some of the vegetables served were a trifle fussy — artichoke hearts partly scooped out and filled with minute asparagus spears was, I thought, going a bit too far; and I could see no reason for making a kind of mousse out of Scotch salmon. But the piece de resistance was a superb lamb, roasted whole and delicately under-done to an even pinkness. I pride myself as an amateur roaster. My warmest congratulations to the 'professional roaster of that Savoy lamb (and also to the farmer who grew it and the butcher who provided it). Congratulations, too, to our own Pamela Vandyke Price who, having previously .won the chief award, this year almost repeated her success. She came second, after the judges, one of whom was myself, decided that Ian Sainsbury of the Sheffield Morning Telegraph should win the Glenfiddich trophy — a strangelooking object which turned out to be a silver model of a pot-still.

There has been some carping about these awards. Egon Roney apparently disapproves of them. Pompous fellow!

Decorative Guinnesses

At Cambridge last weekend for the first conference of the new British Irish Association. On the whole, useful. It could not have done any damage and may have done some good. There was a good turn-out of academics, journalists and Irish priests and politicians. The Scots were under-represented, and the Welsh, so far as I could discover, not at all. The Irish, of one sort or another, did most of the talking by day, and the best of the singing by night. John Hume, the Social and Democratic Labour Party leader, was in particularly fine voice, both by day and night. He spoke with good sense and sang with good feeling.

The Guinnesses were around, decorating the place in the shapes of Lady Dufferin and Lady Henrietta Guinness. Among those whose contributions were, I thought, valuable, were Conor Cruise O'Brien, Lord Longford, Professor Vaizey, Roy Bradford, Keith Kyle and Tom Haddon: a mixed bunch. Indeed, it was a very mixed party including, according to one estimate, about sixty Special Branch chaps. This must have been an exagerration; but they had the laugh on some of us, declaring suddenly, in the early hours of last Sunday, that there was a bomb warning. Before we had finished singing, they were saying "April Fool."

Whining ways

I was sitting in the saloon bar of a smartish hotel — an old coaching inn done up, which kept its public bar very firmly way back down a side alley — and heard a customer whining on about his lot to a sympathetic barmaid. The customer's complaint was that one of his children was about to be taken into care, because the people on the local council had not found him a suitable house or flat. He could not get a job, he said, that was worth his while working. "Do you mind about your family being broken up?" the barmaid asked him. He pondered the question for some time, then replied "Well yes, I suppose I do. It's only natural to mind isn't it? Mind you, it will make life easier." Life, I thought, looked pretty easy for him as it was, drinking in the fancy bar — and drinking pints of expensive draught lager, and smoking the priciest of king-size cigarettes, at that. I do not suppose that he would have bothered me at ,all, except for the way he whined.

Mine's bigger than yours

When a reporter from one of the great national newspapers wrote a story about a £5,000 winch that the Prime Minister is having put into his new boat, the story was killed — on the grounds that the wagefrozen public might take some kind of offence. The newspaper involved was the Daily Mirror.

Ted's new winch is, I hear, a remarkable as well as a remarkably expensive toy. It can do three things at once, pulling in a couple of genoas at the same time as it lets out a spinnaker. It is able to save three crewmen, provided it works. It is known in yachting circles as a coffee-grinder. I heard in a Daily Express pub that the Prime Minister was recently exchanging notes with Sir Max Aitken on the subject. Sir Max also has a coffee-grinder being installed on his new yacht. The Prime Minister was unsure about Sir Max's new yacht. "HOW big?" he wondered.

"Six feet bigger than yours," said Sir Max, triumphantly. The King of Cowes isn't giving up his crown to the Prime Minister, according to this account, which may, of course, be apocryphal.