City and Suburban
By JOHN BETJEMAN THE Central Electricity Authority, England's premier landscape-destroyer, is pursuing the same course for driving its line of 130-foot pylons from Hampshire to Derbyshire as it used for destroying the Cotswolds. It takes one county at a time and bullies the weakest counties first. Ind then confronts the one recalcitrant county. In the Cots- wolds scheme, Wiltshire and Warwickshire submitted and Gloucestershire County Council, which held out, was told, We're sorry. Here's the scheme. Everyone has agreed to it except you, so we are coming through your county.' For the iew plan of landscape destruction, Berkshire, as might have seen expected, has submitted, and so, no doubt, has Warwick- ;hire. Oxfordshire County Council alone holds firm. I see rom Whitaker's Almanac*. that the Chairman of the Central Electricity Authority is Lord Citrine (£8,500 a year). Would he, [ wonder, countenance such methods in the sphere of inter- iational relations as he allows his Electricity Authority to employ in his own country?
EPIGEAL ENVIRONS , Mr. Henry Morris. lecturing recently on 'The Arts in Education' at the Royal Society of Arts, mentioned how sad t was that most of the newer English universities were in 1ismal surroundings or undistinguished buildings or often both. The new University College of North Staffordshire has a wonderful chance of being different. It is sited in magnificent 'oiling open country, but at present has far too many squalid lilts and uninspired permanent buildings which make Keele Hall, the Victorian country house by Salvin near which these 3uildings cluster, seem infinitely distinguished by comparison. So many technicians are educated at the newer universities, Ind technicians today are so powerful, that one cannot be surprised that today they regard xsthetics as subsidiary, trivial and slightly immoral.
GREY MAGIC I wonder how much magic goes on in England outside the Viagic Circle—I mean white and black magic. I have heard )f it in Brighton and near Eynsham, Oxon, and recently of I case in North Devon, that unvisited, remote part 'between :he hammer of the south-west wind and the anvil of the Yellow clay,' to use Sir John Fortescue's words. Here there had been several cases of cattle-maiming at a farm, and he wife of a neighbouring farmer was suspected of having overlooked' the cattle. A parson friend of mine interviewed ler, and she eventually confessed, 'Well, I did do something. [ used to look towards the farm and say some words.' 'What were the words?"0h, you'll think them silly. They were what my grandmother taught me.' What were they?' Th nomnituzy dumminny spiritty sankitty.' Thus does mediaeval Latin survive the centuries.
CIIURCI'I ASSEMBLY I know I am not the only person who thinks that the Church Assembly, which met this week, was one of Archbishop temple's few mistakes. How can such an Assembly be repre- ientative, at any rate of laymen? What representative laymen Are there with the time and means to come up to London and spend some days debating in Church House? Too often he Assembly seems to me representative of the administrative Ind undevout, though let us admit that these two types arc sometimes combined in the same person.
Previous page
