DIARY
DAVID HARE The readership of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator only marginally overlap, but this is my sole chance to thank the hun- dreds of people who wrote to me about a piece in The Spectator's sister paper describing my difficulties with belief in a Christian God. Freelance writers hardly have the resources to respond to this kind of mailbag. The editor had warned me that the two subjects which most exercise his readership are cruelty to animals and reli- gion. But even so we were both taken aback by the reaction to what was effectively a précis of a talk in Westminster Abbey from May this year, entitled 'When Shall We Live?' It is hard to draw any firm conclu- sions from what may be an unrepresenta- tive sample, but to judge by the correspon- dence nobody on earth can convincingly explain the parable of the fig-tree. The highest concentration of Christians in Eng- land appears to be in Sussex. Petworth, in particular, seems positively overrun. The distinguishing feature of the letters — apart from how many began with the words, 'I never normally write to newspapers' — was how friendly they were. Believers tended to write in sorrow, rather than in anger. Most dared to hope that my concern with the subject at least indicated that I knew I was lacking something in my life. A good num- ber sent me books or pamphlets. Tapes arrived which now serve well in traffic jams. They feature wacky-sounding Americans in varying states of hysteria. My favourite evangelist convulsively speculates that the world was created when God chose to exhale, and that therefore we should all be on our guard. It is only a matter of time until he chooses to inhale.
Only Roman Catholics felt moved to be abusive. It was not the first time I've noticed that a particular type of Catholic intellectual feels that his religion entitles him — for it's always him — to be aggres- sively nasty to everyone else. Although one monk wrote movingly to express his per- sonal sense of shame at the wartime record of Pope Pius XII, it was a couple of letters from the refined postal areas of SW3 and SW10 which took the biscuit for unfettered malice. The usual alibi for this Roman rudeness is some parroted paraphrase of Evelyn Waugh's famous answer to John Freeman — that if it weren't for his reli- gion, he'd be much ruder — but this excuse has now become so glib and second-hand as to be completely unconvincing. The problem seems to me to be more with the actual nature of the belief. If you hold that human beings are worthless until they are redeemed by divine grace, then it seems to make you disproportionately angry and
spiteful. The slept-with-a-prostitute/con- fessed-it-next-morning approach to religion encourages you to think you have the right to take your revulsion for your own sins out on others.
Like many people in the late 1970s, I was involved in a brief attempt to realise the potential of the wonderful Roundhouse building in North London. Like everyone else, we failed. Even so, it was sobering ear- lier this summer to visit and find it had become the location for the Royal College of Art graduation show. Whatever aspira- tions Arnold Wesker and his admirable col- leagues first had when they dreamt of a common culture radiating from this great engine shed in Chalk Farm, they probably did not have fashion shows very high on their list of priorities. You could say its cur- rent usage was a sign of the times. Plainly there are two views about Jocelyn Stevens's aim of changing the RCA from a free- thinking arts institution into a slick fly- paper for corporate sponsorship. Either you like it or you don't. But what interested me most were the clothes themselves. All but the very best students opted for a jaded kind of futurism. Models came on dressed like robots or space-people, wrapped in aluminium foil or with silver discs hanging from their noses. Make-up tended to be in various shades of green. A smaller group preferred to go for nostalgia, harking back to a time when fashion was more leisurely, more easy-going. You left with a feeling I find myself getting now increasingly in cine- mas as much as in art galleries: that in all the arts today the hardest thing is to know how to be contemporary.
'Nazi gold card? That'll do nicely.'
Whave endured years of Thatcherite propaganda telling us that we all ought to be nicer to businessmen, because they are the fount of all wealth, and therefore same thing — wisdom. But why can't they occasionally try being nicer to us? The new Bankside Tate Gallery is proposing a wonderful scheme to throw a pedestrian bridge across the Thames, landing on the steps by the City of London School. This will link Southwark to the north bank and bring life to an area which desperately needs it. But this imaginative idea is being given little help by the Corporation of London, whose town clerk and chamber- lain, Bernard Harty, has been heard to say that he wishes to keep the City as a place of business. The City should continue its policy of discouraging tourism. Somebody should call him on this. Discrimination against tourists is the last great permissi- ble snobbery. The effects of tourism are continually exaggerated, and environmen- talism is hypocritically invoked by the rich as a reason why no one else should share what they have. A generation which once enjoyed Europe at their ease is now get- ting ratty because they don't think every- one else should get to enjoy it too. In fact, of all European cities, only Florence has been completely destroyed by mass tourism — the thing you go for has gone — though I admit Prague in midsummer may be getting a bit borderline. Rome, however, seems just to soak us up and remain gloriously itself. So does Paris. Indeed, Paris would be a miserable place without us. My own area of London is made gayer and more friendly by the inva- sions we enjoy every weekend. And, con- trary to all warnings, a visit to Venice last September proved almost eerily peaceful after dusk, and perfectly unpressured throughout the day. There was no one at the Biennale.
Mr Harty's idea that the generation of money must go on in some marked-off zone that the rest of us are discouraged from entering no doubt explains why any- one who wants to enjoy St Paul's Cathe- dral has to pass through one of the more scandalously cheerless piazzas in Europe. The contrast with Wall Street and its wel- coming riverside walks could hardly be more marked. But Harty has said he doesn't want us, so let's take him at his word. I suggest The Spectator's London readers make a personal sacrifice. Although it will mean we miss the ravish- ing concerts of the LSO, let's try and pla- cate Harty, and boycott his hideous Barbi- can. Or is that what we're effectively doing already?
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