DIARY
JOHN GRIGG An article that I wrote last week for the Times, on British holiday and weekend habits, brought me an invitation to appear on the Jimmy Young programme (BBC Radio 2). In Mr Young's absence the interviewer was Sue Lawley, and one of the matters we talked about — television news coverage — is, of course, right up her street. She defended charmingly, though to my mind unconvincingly, the policy of making television news bulletins at weekends only half as long as during the week. News, she said, simply did not happen at weekends, or happened much less. Parliament was not sitting, expert reports were not being published, etc. So why have long news bulletins when there was no supply of worthwhile material to fill them? Experience hardly bears this argu- ment out. Over and over again major events have occurred when the British have been in the semi-limbo of an ordinary weekend, or the almost total limbo of a Bank Holiday weekend. At Easter 1916 a rebellion took place in Dublin, whose consequences are still plaguing us. But for the absence of the responsible minister, Augustine Birrell, that rebellion would almost certainly not have taken place. Officials on the spot wanted to carry out pre-emptive arrest of the rebels — a small and then quite unrepresentative bunch of fanatics — but were unable to do so without Birrell's authority. His absence was an example of the British holiday ethos, of which the television networks' attitude to weekend news is surely another example. There was no lack of news material last weekend. More than enough was happening in Argentina, the Philip- pines, Lebanon and elsewhere, including this country, to fill half an hour without any need for padding. Yet it all had to be crammed into a quarter of an hour per bulletin — or rather ten minutes, because one-third of the reduced time given to news at weekends is devoted to sport. Worse still, at holiday weekends, time is nearly always wasted reporting the holiday itself, with fatuous footage of motorway traffic jams and crowds on beaches. The reason that the television networks, unlike the press, provide a rotten weekend news service is that those in charge have been allowed to get away with saving themselves effort, and their organisations money, by cutting the product on two days each week. This restrictive practice should be brought to an end.
A
n instance of public service broad- casting at its best was the series of Beet- hoven piano sonatas, played by Daniel Barenboim, which ended on BBC2 last week. Though transmitted very lat2 in the evening, after Newsnight, when most view- ers could be presumed to have gone to bed, those performances were, I am told, attracting audiences of between 300,000 and 400,000. Barenboim was, therefore, reaching each evening the equivalent of an ordinary recital audience multiplied hun- dredsfold. The production (by a German company) was admirably restrained and discreet, with no commentator, and with the cameras sticking to the player and his instrument, not exploring the Rasumowsky Palace decor or wandering out into the streets of Vienna. The sole object seemed to be to concentrate attention on Beet- hoven and Barenboim, a combination that requires no gimmickry to achieve over- powering effect.
Before leaving the subject of televi- sion, I must say that the trilogy on the life and work of Evelyn Waugh (BBC 2) was absorbing and, on the whole, brilliantly successful. But one detail that would, surely, have irritated Waugh himself was the caption identifying one of the friends who contributed as 'Lady Diana Mosley'. Without going to the length of being strictly correct (the Hon. Lady Mosley) it would have been all right to call her Lady Mosley, Diana Lady Mosley or Diana Mosley (which is anyway her nom de plume). But she would qualify to be called Lady Diana only if, like the Princess of Wales, her father had been a duke, mar- quess or earl, which in fact he was not. Similarly, the authoress Frances Donald- son (Lady Donaldson of Kingsbridge), daughter not of the Earl of Lonsdale but of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale, was captioned in the programme 'Lady Frances Donaldson'. This solecism now occurs almost daily, even in supposedly posh newspapers. Our complex system of titles has long mystified foreigners, but at least we used to understand it ourselves and revel in its niceties. Now we no longer do, and there seems little point in continuing to play such an elaborate game if we have forgotten the rules. Compared with the festal days of Saints Andrew, Patrick and David, St George's Day is very little regarded or observed. For me, though, it was once the occasion of an unforgettable experience. On 23 April, 1940, my father took me to the annual lunch of the Royal Society of St George at the Dorchester Hotel, at which Winston Churchill was to have been the principal speaker. We found, however, that Churchill had been called to an Allied conference in France and that Duff Coop- er, at very short notice, had agreed to speak in his place. In Old Men Forget Duff Cooper writes that when the change was announced 'something like a groan of disappointment rose from the audience'. But he goes on to say that this speech turned out to be the most successful he ever made. 'At the end of it the whole audience rose spontaneously to their feet, clapping and cheering.' I hope I wasn't one of the groaners; certainly I was one of the clappers and cheerers. The speech was a tour de force to stay in the mind for a lifetime. Though broadcast (I think live), it was delivered, like all Duff Cooper's speeches, without notes, and with a fire and eloquence to stir even sceptical adults, much more an impressionable schoolboy.
Cecil Harmsworth King never lost his interest in history. But he never quite had the chance to make history as earlier members of his family had done. In the first world war, Northcliffe and Rother- mere in particular were given high appoint- ments in the political sphere, because the press was then immensely powerful as the only medium of mass communication. In the second world war, Churchill could afford to treat the press more cavalierly, because broadcasting had become the all- important medium and it was a public monopoly under effective government con- trol in wartime. King had given Churchill strong support in the late 1930s, when he had very few backers, but the debt was not repaid. All the same, King made history in other ways, as a newspaper publisher and above all, perhaps, as a diarist. His record of people and events should always find readers, and will be of lasting value to historians.
he authors of graffiti are humble
T
artists, content that their work should swiftly perish. Of all forms of the art the most evanescent is the inscription made by a finger in dust or grime, which the first shower of rain is sure to wash away. I have just seen a white van, thickly coated with dirt, on whose side some passing wit has written, 'Also available in white.'
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