7 JULY 1967, Page 20

Ends of the earth

RONALD HINGLEY

Kenneth Harris's About Britain (Hodder and Stoughton, 63s) is a rum mixture. Though a clutch of superb photographs (by Michael Peto) would have made a memorable volume on their own, they are miscast as illustrations to an account of contemporary Britain intended for American tourists. Their sombre mood creates an impression of impending catastrophe. and may to that extent be accurate; but it is going too far to people the island scene so thickly with doddering peasants and Aunt Ada Dooms. There is also an obsession with fish. All this is better than swinging London, Wilsonian dynamism or jolly Beefeaters, of course; but one trembles to think what it may do for our `image' abroad. As for the text, that is cer- tainly more representative, being well organised to cover British life comprehensively in its cul- tural, religious, political, sporting and every- day aspects. But the light touch seems to elude Mr Harris, though not for want of trying on his part: a reaction which I record with regret, as an admirer of his other work.

That a country vicar should have decided to study famous Lakelanders from Wordsworth downwards in the setting of their chosen home . . . few things could be less 'with it'—or more delightful, if the result is H. A. L. Rice's Lake

Country Portraits (Harvill, 21s). Among the

multitudes who now haunt the northern crags not many can realise that they are treading (or more likely driving) in the footsteps of quite so many and varied literary talents in addition to Little Lucy's immortaliser. Harriet Martineau, Hugh Walpole and teatrix Potter are among them: not names to send the blood coursing through the veins, perhaps, but the composite picture is satisfying when painted by someone with so true a feel for his sub- jects, human and scenic. Nor will Mr Rice's study encourage the reader to over-senti- mentalise the tranquillity of a bygone age: Wordsworth, it turns out, suffered from piles.

Moving further north, we enter Scotland with Ian Finlay's The Lowlands (Batsford, 30s). Claiming to be no more than a guide book, it is a minor work of art all the same. Practical advice well laced with historical in- formation whets the appetite for parts of Scot- land which one has not seen, while deepening one's appreciation of the known. This distin- guished contribution to a genre always threat- ened by vulgarity reminds one that there is no one so literate as a literate Scot.

Americans are so often more intelligent, erudite and amusing than oneself; but literate

is among the things that they often aren't—

to parody an outrageous sentence from William Walton's The Evidence of Washington (Bodley Head, 5 gns): 'Among the things that Washing- ton isn't is industrial.' Not that it matters much, and anyway the above sentence is somewhat exceptional in a solid tribute to Washington

DC, beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated and by no means overpriced at five guineas. To

me the American capital is more of a fun spot than is here suggested, and Mr Walton's deference to politicians and organs of govern- ment may bring out the lurking Muggeridge

in some readers. Still, Washington is a serious city and should be seriously addressed—not

least because (as Mr Walton confirms) it is one of the few remaining places where the British are still accorded proper respect.

One place where the British rate less these days is Australia : our migrants tend to brood on the lost fleshpots of the welfare state instead

of giving it a go in the more bracing atmo- sphere of their adopted country. The wingeing

(bellyaching) of these pommy no-hopers must indeed be a fair cow; but honour is slightly satisfied when one learns that your native-born larrikin leaves work on the Snowy Mountains project to New Australians because he finds the weather too cold up there. Elspeth Huxley's

Their Shining Eldorado (Chatto and Windus),

discourses of such matters, being based on a roughly clockwise tour of the country start- ing at Sydney. She shares my lifelong passion for Strine phonetics and provides a useful list of Australian words to boot. Migrants may profitably note that 'wogs' means insects and is not at all the local manner of referring to them. This is a usefully informative account of a country attractive because it has so few people in it and those few so easy to get on with. Emma Chissit? 42s.

I have never much liked John Gunther's 'Inside' books, to which Inside South America (Hamish Hamilton, 42s) is now added; but no one could fail to admire his talents as an organiser of information and tycoon of the

travelogue. He visited ten South American countries and interviewed ten presidents, to all of whom he alludes with an enthusiasm which they do not in equal measure merit—

to put it mildly. Reverting to matters British, I note that our ice-cream is vended in quantity 2,000 miles up the Amazon—shipped thither from Liverpool; no breakthrough for Wil- sonian dynamism, this: the traffic has been 'going on for years. Turning further south, one learns that the port of Punta Arenas in Chile was murdered fifty-two years ago `by a blunt instrument known as the Panama Canal'; as is South America as a whole for me by the blunt instrument of Mr Gunther's excruciat- ingly chatty style.

John C. Griffiths has produced a valuable account of a little-known country in •his Afghanistan (Pall Mall, 30s). Having first visited the area ten years ago. he has since observed it being booted into the twentieth century: largely by the Russians, who now supply well over half the aid and train the Afghan forces. In fact, he now regards Afghanistan as being pretty well a Soviet economic satellite. This -book is somewhat oddly organised and the quotation in full of the new Afghan constitu- tion in a twenty-three-page appendix seems to knock it off balance a bit.