DIARY
CHARLES MOORE ussian masterplan for the indust- rial domination of space', said the headline excitedly on Monday. According to Keith Hindley, writing in the Times, the Soviet Union is preparing to put huge mirrors into space. These will be able to 'light cities and boost crops'. He went on:
The ambitious Soviet space plan is aimed at solving the world's energy and pollution problems, giving the world access to the unlimited mineral and energy resources of space.
Goodness. One wonders how much of all this the Russians will actually want to share with 'the world'. One also notices, indeed the report suggests, that the satellites will be a peaceful equivalent of America's Strategic Defense Initiative. This is good propaganda, but, like the claims made for Star Wars, not wholly credible. The story's half-hidden message seemed to be that the Government here should try to compete. (`at a time when Britain is refusing to increase its spending on space research
• • •'). But even if the Russian plan does work, it will be a nightmare, not a blessing. It surprises me that political satirists have not included control of the weather in their dark visions of politics. Future Stalins will not need all the bother of starving the Ukraine: they can simply arrange to flood it or dry it up. Democratic countries will introduce pale versions of the same abuses. The governing party will engineer sun- bursts before crucial by-elections, or down- pours in opposition strongholds. The Brit- ish like talking about the weather because it is the most strictly non-political subject. Now we are moving towards a world in which remarks like, 'What a lovely morn- ing', will brand one left- or right-wing depending on political circumstances.
0 ur British Telecom Horror Competi- tion has now closed. There are some excellent entries, and I hope to announce the results next week. The telephones at the Spectator's offices are now more or less working. This may or may not be con- nected with an audience with the chairman of British Telecom which I and our pub- lisher, James Knox, were recently granted to discuss our countless telephone prob- lems. After we had debated these for some time, the talk turned to BT's destruction of red telephone boxes. The chairman, Sir George Jefferson, said that the new tele- phone boxes were elegant and attractive. As he was speaking, I noticed the view from the window behind his back. The window frames St Paul's cathedral and the concrete block next to it. Inspiration struck me, `If you turn round,' I said, 'you will see the difference between the old and new
telephone boxes.' I was very proud of this comparison, but I fear it made little im- pression. Stop press: British Telecom near- ly deprived us of our cover story this week by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. The London telex system broke down and transmission of his piece was delayed for several hours.
0 ne of the difficulties abour Sir George, as about Sir Denis Rooke, the chairman of British Gas, is, who can sack him? Normally a large company has major shareholders who can combine, if they are dissatisfied, to change the management. The company can be taken over. British Telecom and British Gas are different. The shares are widely dispersed. The predomi- nant shareholder is the Government (with just under 50 per cent). This is supposed to be a safeguard of the public interest, but at present it is not, because for the Govern- ment to intervene would imply criticism of its own privatisation policy. So Sir George and Sir Denis are sitting pretty. Even if they deserved to be doing so, such security would be no way to run a company.
Thomas Gray wrote most of his famour Elegy 250 years ago, on Sunday 28 August 1737, to be precise. This is the view of Mr Peter Watson-Smyth, an amateur literary detective, who first advanced his evidence in an article in the Spectator in the issue of 31 July 1971 (the bicentenary of Gray's death). Mr Watson-Smyth also argues that the poem was not written in Stoke Poges, but in the cuhurchyard of St Peter's, Burnham. His case is too complicated to recapitulate here (the article is about 4,000 words long), but it is highly ingenious and on the whole convincing. I am disposed to believe it for the unscholarly reason that it is romantic to think of one of the very greatest English poems being written by a 20-year-old. The Elegy does read like a young man's poem. It has youth's self- pitying, self-dramatising preoccupation with death. It has pleasing, youthful melancholy, but also a vigour which, other evidence suggests, drained out of Gray's quiet, sad life as he grew older. And although it does not directly concern any- thing personal, it reads like a poem occa- sioned by deep personal feeling. Mr Watson-Smtyh explains this feeling: Gray had just attended the funeral in Westmins- ter Abbey of Lady Walpole (hence 'the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault'?). Lady Walpole was the mother of his best friend, Horace, with whom, Mr Watson-Smyth believes, Gray had a homosexual affair. Her death coincides with Gray's realisation of the end of his adolescence. When he returned to the poem and reworked it in 1749-50, the relationship was long ended (although friendship was restored after a great row in Italy), and Gray knew himself to be condemned to a life of loneliness. Possibly Mr Watson-Smyth stretches his points a little, but his argument reminds one how utterly unbland the Elegy actually is. It is full of tension, and it has that ability of great lyric poetry to make one's flesh tingle as one reads.
The Gulf, where so much is happening this week, now has no other name. The Times until recently continued to call it the Persian Gulf but now omits 'Persian', apparently because of complaints. So it is just 'the Gulf'. It is a mystery why the word Persian will no longer do. It was never an insulting name or one, like Rhodesia, which reflected a colonial status. The Persians were merely, for the ancient Greeks, the dominant tribe in the region and so gave their name to it. Iran was a word for the plain between the Tigris and the Indus, never the name of a nation until the Shah's father, Reza Shah, took it up in 1935 as a piece of racial and self- aggrandisement (Iran means land of the Aryans). This was not a good reason for the rest of the world to follow. Now we are stuck. We cannot talk of the 'Iranian Gulf since that would imply that it had just been conquered by Teheran. And we have to try to follow a war between two countries divided by only one letter.
For the first time for many years, we publish two and a half pages of letters this week. We now get far more letters than before, and of high quality. I am sorry that I do not match readers' courtesy in writing letters for publication by acknowledging them. This is because we have not, at present, got enough staff. I very much hope that we can remedy this in the autumn. Next week's Diarist is Barry Humphries.
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