DIARY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
This, I'm afraid, was the year of the dic- tatorship of sentiment. It has been a most peculiar time, when government, newspa- pers and television have joined to encour- age strange waves of popular emotion, regardless of the morality of the cause. Ini- tially, its fusion of cheerful sanctimony and emotional coercion seemed to stem from Blairism's anti-liberal conviction that peo- ple should be forced by law to do what it decides is right. This laid the foundations of the dictatorship of sentiment. It exploded in the reaction to Princess Diana's tragic death when cruel, bitter crowds hijacked television to rant and demand attention. With Louise Woodward, thousands were outraged, regardless of what she had or had not done. Now no one cares whether Neil Hamilton was really guilty or not because the sanctimonious, sentimental mob sensed his guilt and was satisfied with that. Now there is the anti-hunting fever. The key characteristic of this dictatorship, which recalls Robespierre's tyranny of reason, is the conviction that the very fact of having the emotion makes it right, and that anyone who does not agree with it should be silent. Frank Rich, the American Columnist, has apparently described it as being 'emotional- ly correct', but that is too weak. Whenever these occasions arise, it is not the role of Blair and the media to follow sentiment but to denounce it and show leadership. Am I alone in thinking that this has been a most alienating year? Sometimes I've felt like a foreigner in my own land.
Another feature of this year has been the attacks on journalism itself, or at least the paparazzi. Journalists are even more terrifying when they leave journalism to get into power, though many have shown unex- pected military prowess. The most famous ex-journalist to die this year was Zaire's Mobutu, who came to prominence as the editor of a local current affairs magazine, a sort of Congolese Spectator. Mussolini came to power via his journalism. Trotsky and Lenin counted themselves as journal- ists even when they were in power; Trotsky moved seamlessly from writing leaders to writing military commands. The other mili- tary genius who started as a journalist was Giap, the Vietnamese Napoleon who defeated the French, Americans, Chinese and Cambodians.
Lord Irvine's Wolsey complex reminds me of my favourite story about the dangers of hinting about being a cardinal. In 1825, Cardinal Albani went to see another ludi- crously vain Chancellor, Metternich, who mentioned in conversation that his favourite colour was red. Albani staggered
out of the meeting convinced that Metter- nich had demanded a cardinal's hat. The Pope felt he had to grant it. Metternich was bemused by the offer. Only when he inquired did he learn, as Irvine did, what trouble cardinals make.
Iwas most amused at the latest row in the Bonaparte family about who is the rightful imperial heir: I was once at a party in the country somewhere when a succes- sion of imbecilic girls ran out of a room screaming with laughter. 'What's going on in there?' I asked them. 'There is a mad- man in there,' replied one gigiot, 'who says he's Napoleon Bonaparte. Ha! ha!' I went in to discover an elegant but bemused little Frenchman who explained, 'I am Napoleon Bonaparte.' As a descendant of a kinglet Bonaparte brother, it was his name.
'm spending half my time next year in Moscow to write my biography of Prince Potemkin. There for a weekend recently, I discovered Moscow Babylon's best night- club is called Bulgakov's after one of my favourite authors who lived upstairs. Like Conan Doyle, Schnitzler and Maugham, he was a doctor who used his medical analysis to write about the human condition. His Notebooks of a Country Doctor was wonder- ful. As one writhes in the louche nightclub to M People's rhythmic rave gibberish, Russian girls always take the trouble to whisper respectfully, 'Mikhail Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita and White Guards in this very building!' Russia really is a literary nation.
There was a church service this week to pray for the two English aid workers, Camilla Can and Jon James, kidnapped in July in Chechnya. I feel for their plight because I had some terrifying experiences there myself. They were there purely to help Chechnya, that brave warrior-nation which still suffers grievously from the wan- ton destruction caused by its war for free- dom. Their kidnapping may involve the
machinations of Russian intelligence to dis- credit independent Chechnya. The more attention we draw to their disappearance, the more likely they are to return.
was recently in Tbilisi in Georgia, where the trial is finally starting of the most fasci- nating rogue to arise from the end of the Soviet Imperium, Jaba Ioseliani, whom I got to know well in various wars. Despite his deeds and the danger he presented to democracy, I could not help but enjoy his company. He served 18 years in the gulags for raiding the GUM store in Red Square in 1953, rose to become a mafia godfather, studied literature, became a professor, wrote a wonderful novel (1 have the only copy in English) based on stories he learned in prison; then founded a private army, Mhedrioni (Knights on Horseback), overthrew Georgia's first president and backed Eduard Shevardnadze as his succes- sor. This warlord-gangster-novelist became Shevvy's deputy until he allegedly tried to assassinate him. 'I'm a mediaeval knight,' he often told me, wasn't made to die in my bed.' Will he die in jail or beat the odds one more time?
Annie Lindsell's death from motor neu- rone disease brought home the exuberant courage of that paragon: when I interviewed her for the Sunday Times, she impressed me as proof that even when there is no cure, laughter is the best tonic. Her winning the right to death with grace is a victory for all of us. But it would not have been possible without the two ordinary men who eared for her like saints — her partner Ron Hicks and the nurse-cum-pianist Martin Seger: they must share her laurels.
Iwas privileged to know Lord Wyatt of Weeford, who died on Saturday, a fearless- ly eccentric 18th-century wit, fascinated by the game of serious ideas who played momentous, usually discreet, roles in great events, from granting Indian independence to creating the Thatcher revolution. His genius for friendship with statesmen, press lords and royalty was never based on syco- phancy: he would tell them exactly what he thought, usually with rumbunctious frank- ness. Warm, kind, hilarious, he really lived. I know that the Mail's Ephraim Hardcastle column had the following anecdote about him this week, but I think it deserves a smaller readership. When French tele- phone operators were too dim to spell his surname, he teased them ruthlessly: 'W-Y- A-T-T!' he'd yell. 'Waterloo-Ypres-Agin- court-Trafalgar-Trafalgar!' 111 miss him terribly.
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