Notebook
Having received from the author a free copy of the A uberon Waugh Yearbook 1980 (Pan £1.95) I feel it would be ungentlemanly not to bring it to the attention of our readers. Mr Waugh explains its purpose in his introduction — 'There is no other press digest or news summary which is indexed to allow a particular incident to be identified Within the context of the day's or the week's Other events.' This is perfectly true. But the book also repays being read straight through as if it were a novel. For it is a chronicle of folly on a global scale. It would be forgivable to suspect Mr Waugh of distorting the picture. He has a weakness for the bizarre and inexplicable incident, like the mass suicide of a berd of cows in Cornwall, and for the non-event, like the marriage of Mr Dai Llewellyn. He includes five references to Mr Jeremy Thorpe, who appears to have done nothing at all during 1980, and 17 to Sir Harold Wilson, who also did practically nothing except get ill. Yet)/ occasionally he unleashes, his opinions, as when he describes Jimmy Carter on television as 'alternately petulant, dishonest and absurd.' Sometimes' he uses the cunning juxtaposition of facts to draw attention to political humbug — 'Mrs Thatcher launched a campaign to curb wage rises in the public sector . . . The government agreed to a 31.4 per cent pay award for doctors and dentists' (Monday, 19 May). Bat, on the whole, all he does is to record (with a clarity and brevity that should guarantee him a job as a Fleet Street sub-editor when the Red Revolution comes) the principal events of each day of the year ,ts they were reported in the British press. Stripped of explanations, analysis and other obfuscations, these events speak for themselves. The cumulative impression they create is often surprising. The Royal Family, for example, seems to have endured a Year of irritations — the Queen jeered in Switzerland and Australia and humiliated by the King of Morocco; Prince Philip embarrassed by the Olympic boycott; Princess Anne challenged 'in her struggle' to be e. lected chancellor of London University; and, of course, Lady Diana Spencer. And When, for example, you read a year later that Princess Margaret and Mr Roddy Llewellyn flew to Mustique under the names of Mr and Mrs Brown, you suddenly Wonder what on earth the Queen's sister thought she was up to — Mrs Brown, indeed! India, as Indians often complain, is portrayed as a kind of monstrous lunatic asylorn, in which pOlicemen, when they are not blinding prisoners, are beating up blind me on the streets, and in which the reported discovery of a piece of pork in a But making every allowance for possible flaws in Mr Waugh's selection and presentation of the year's news, the book leaves one dominant impression of 1980; and this is the disunity, weakness and hypocrisy of the West towards the provocations of Afghanistan and Iran. Mr Waugh's chronicle exposes this record in all its naked ignominy.
The Italian Communist party uses the word to 'radiate' (radiare) to describe a particularly exquisite form of punishment for those who stray too far from the party line. The victim of 'radiation' (a word which in the nuclear age has an agreeably sinister ring to it) is not expelled from the party; he simply ceases to exist. His name disappears from party lists, he becomes a non-person. This is the fate that seems to have befallen Mr William Rodgers. He has notbeen expelled from the Labour Party, nor has he so far resigned from it; but he would appear to have been 'radiated'. After his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet, he was kicked out of his room in the House of Commons and, only after much pleading, given a new office in the Norman Shaw North building on the Embankment. But he returned there from attending the opening of the Social Democrats' new headquarters on Tuesday to find his belongings had been removed and his door locked. On top of that comes news of Michael Foot's decision to withdraw the invitations to Mr Rodgers and the rest of the Gang of Three to attend this Thursday's dinner in honour of Mr and Mrs Callaghan. Mr Rodgers has described Mr Foot's initiative as 'extraordinarily offensive'. He should rather look upon if as yet another example of the Party's changing character, and yet another good reason for leaving it.
Isabel Colegate, the novelist, is to be commended for many things — but, in this case, for her courage. As winner of the W.H. Smith Annual Literary Award for her successful novel The Shooting Party (Hamish Hamilton, £5.95), she came up from the country last week to attend the presentation lunch in London. The speech which she was required to make could merely have reflected her delight at receiving the award and her gratitude for the useful (if not terribly generous) sum of £2,500 that came with it. But while she gave sincere expression to both these emotions, she did rather more. In front of the assembled directors of Smiths and its subsidiary, Bowes and Bowes, the booksellers, she deplored the fact that books of literary merit are becoming more and more difficult to obtain in most parts of the country, The 'common reader', she said, although still a ;vigorous species, was getting a very raw deal. In what seemed to me to be a display of mock innocence, she claimed to be puzzled by this situation; she did not know the answer, she did not know whom to blame. Let us try to help. The story of The Shooting Party is instructive. It was published five months ago and had an enthusiastic critical reception. It also sold very well. But in no branch of W.H. Smith or, indeed, of Bowes and Bowes was it anywhere to be found — until, that is, a few days before the presentation of the award. The shelves, you will be delighted to hear, are now groaning with it.
So ills to be Harold Evans after all. From the moment it was announced that Rupert Murdoch was buying The Times , he seemed the most obvious choice of editor for Murdoch to make. Everything Mr Murdoch has said since has made the choice seem more obvious still. He told journalists on The Times that he wanted the paper to be 'gingered up'. He told David Dimbleby on Panorama last Monday that he wanted it to appeal to younger readers. Harold Evans, although in fact older than Mr William Rees-Mogg, is the sort of person to whom such objectives would appeal. He is also, among all the candidates one can think of, the most likely to make of The Times a commercial success. We hope he succeeds. Another of the objectives that Mr Murdoch declared on television, however, was that The Times should acquire greater 'authority'. David Dimbleby wondered what this might mean. So do I. Among the dictionary definitions of the word 'authority', the most applicable in this case would seem to be 'weight of judgment or opinion, intellectual influence'. Whatever improvements Mr Evans may make to The Times, it is fair even at this stage to question why his appointment should be expected to increase the paper's 'authority', at least as the word is defined above. Mr Rees-Mogg may be angry with me this week, to judge from his letter on page 16, but I would support any claim he might care to make for the 'authority' of his own opinions. Furthermore, he writes extremely well. His own contributions to the paper are what I, for one, will miss most under the new regime.
Alexander Chancellor
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