DIARY
ALEXANDER CHANCELLOR E. ver since I grew up and came to work In London, my name, address and tele- phone number have appeared in the Lon- don telephone directory (or in 'The phone book', as it is now officially called). Perhaps I have been unusually fortunate, but I don't believe I have ever suffered any inconve- nience as a result. Even in the nine years from 1975 during which I was editor of this magazine no reader or contributor ever rang me up at home to abuse me (except, that is, for Jeffrey Bernard, who had my number anyway). Whatever the reason, I have always enjoyed having my name in the telephone book, and it was thus with great dismay that I found it had been excluded from the 1992 edition. I wrote to the Phone Book Manager', Martin Stitson (whose telephone number, like mine, is not In the book, although his address is), to say that I had never wanted to be ex-directory and would like to know why my name had been left out. Ten days later came a very Polite letter from British Telecom's 'Cus- tomer Service Manager (Phonebooks)', Jim F. Jones (the rather unBritish middle initial having been included, I presume, to avoid evocations of the Revd Jim Jones, author of the unspeakable Jonestown massacre). Mr Jim F. Jones could not have been more apologetic. The omission of my name resulted he said, from 'a restructuring exer- cise which had caused 'a few entries' to be rejected by the computer. 'Unfortunately Your entry was one of these, and although they were re-input, they missed the present book,' he explained. 'I would stress, howev- er, that these entries have always been available from our Directory Enquiry Bureaux which were not affected by the restructuring.' It was kind of Mr Jones to reply at such length to my complaint, but his explanation was not wholly satisfactory. The fact is that, although Mr Jones•describes them as `few', British Telecom actually has no idea how many names were rejected by the computer during the myste- rl. ous 'restructuring exercise'; so if you live In London, it might be worth checking to see if you too have been left out. As for Mr Jones's point that my number can still be obtained through directory enquiries, this is not quite the same thing. Mr Jones fails to note that it costs money now to use the directory enquiry service — so much motley, in fact, that Ole newspaper for which I work, the Independent, has doc- tored its telephones so that one cannot use the service at all.
Anyway, the question of whether or not I am in the London telephone book is Perhaps academic, for I will soon be leaving e Independent and going off to New 1°rk, where I am to edit The Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker. According to an article in the New York Times last week, it 'would once have been considered an outrage' for an Englishman to be asked to edit such a 'quintessentially American feature' as The Talk of the Town. But why is it no longer considered an outrage? Why am I not thought to constitute a threat? I feel a little hurt. The New York Times arti- cle was on the subject of 'the British inva- sion of US magazines', a reflection of the fact that a surprising number of American magazines ranging from glamorous glossies to supermarket scandal sheets are now edited by people from this country. Maybe American journalists have temporarily lost the urge to protest. Looking helplessly on at this curious phenomenon, they may have decided that the best strategy is to lie low and not complain, reckoning that time is on their side and that one day the British will fall out of fashion and go back home. Alter- natively, it could be that they just don't care. Or it could be that they do care but dare not to admit to the fact, since it is practically unconstitutional for an Ameri- can to object to foreigners coming into the country and competing with the natives on equal terms. The outrage would be uncon- tainable if anything similar were to happen here. It is an astonishing fact that two of America's leading political weeklies — the New Republic and the National Review — are now edited by Englishmen (both of them, incidentally, with names ending in Sullivan). Can you imagine The Spectator and the New Statesman with American edi- tors? Of course not.
Alother consequence of my going to New York is that I have had to resign as a commissioner of English Heritage, some- thing which I feel particularly sorry about. It has been great fun watching Jocelyn Stevens grind into gear as its new chairman, combining infectious enthusiasm with hair- raising unpredictability, and I will miss the meetings. I am told that a seat on the Com- mission is now in as much demand as cen- tre court tickets at Wimbledon, so they will have no problem in finding a replacement. Top of English Heritage's agenda at the moment is the creation of a new visitors' centre at Stonehenge, the most important by far of all the 400-odd national monu- ments in Mr Stevens's care. The idea, origi- nating with Lord Montagu, his predecessor as chairman, is to restore to their natural state the immediate surroundings of the great stones, eliminating the present shod- dy visitor facilities and diverting tourists away to a new centre three quarters of a mile away. The archite,-,tural competition for the new centre was highly unusual in that it stipulated that he new building should be all but invisible. The brief said it should 'have minimal visual impact, inte- grate into the landscape and be hidden from Stonehenge'. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the Prince of Wales's architec- tural vision. Nevertheless 150 architects agreed to enter, and the competition has now been won by Edward Cullinan. Imple- mentation of the project is going to depend on finding private sponsors, and let us hope that the necessary funds will be forthcom- ing. For it is a magnificent project, involv- ing the closure of one main road and, with luck, the diversion of another even more important one, the A303. If it all happens, the magic and mystery of Stonehenge will at last be rescued from the miserable con- crete and tarmac muddle that entraps it.
If Governor Bill Clinton had been to Cambridge instead of Oxford, then maybe President Bush would have greater success in persuading the American electorate that this was an unAmerican, quasi-communist thing to have done. He could have pretend- ed — despite the colossal age gap — that the Democratic candidate had somehow been infected by the treachery of Blunt, Burgess, and Maclean, and maybe some people would have believed him. At worst, Oxford is likely to remind Americans of the harmless decadence of Brideshead Revisited which was such a hit on US public service television a number of years back. From a British perspective it is strange to hear an American president denigrating Oxford in this way. Mr Bush's attitude is especially resented among the university authorities, who for several years now have been trying hard to raise money in the United States, invoking the aid of former Rhodes scholars like Mr Clinton. Whatever their politics, they are all now praying for a Clinton victo- ry, and the latest opinion polls make it look as if their prayers will be met.
Previous page
