DIARY
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER On Monday there were quickly stifled reports that Prince Charles himself was horrified by the first of the two ITV films about his public and private life — as well he might have been. One can understand the desire of himself and his family to provide a counter-balance to the plethora of fanciful and often malicious rubbish about them which fills the lighter parts of the press. As the heir to the throne is constantly portrayed by paparazzi like Nigel Dempster as a crazed eccentric dab- bling with ouija boards, it might seem reasonable for him to want to show himself on television as a perfectly sane and serious fellow, trying to do an extraordinarily difficult job with humour and dedication (as, to be fair, the second ITV film did to some effect). But the trouble is that televi- sion is such a shallow and treacherous medium. By allowing the cameras in be- hind the scenes, to show life at Highgrove or 'the royal team' preparing a tour of Australia, as in Sunday's episode, the monarchy not only loses mystique and comes to seem like just another road show, it does nothing to diminish the kind of personal speculation which is so ludicrous and offensive in the press, so that, far from being impressed, most viewers end up discussing the evidence the film has pro- vided for the state of the royal marriage Mid you notice how embarrassed she was when he poked her in the ribs?') and whether Diana is not just a star-struck groupie. If, as some reports have sug- gested, Prince Charles only approaches these ordeals by camera with reluctance, he should have the courage of his original convictions and say 'no more'.
Over the next few weeks we shall be treated to a spate of articles about the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, many of which will no doubt prattle gaily on about 'the Hungarian economic miracle' of recent years, and how happy most Hungarians are today enjoying the most relaxed version of communism in Eastern Europe. A very different picture of life in Hungary today was given by friends of mine who recently returned from several weeks living in the country. They found it a deeply depressing experience. Certainly Hungary is marginally better off than other East European countries, though Budapest with its fumes and traffic jams is scarcely 'the Paris of the East' as a recent travel article rhapsodised. The food in such once noted restaurants as the Hungaria, where I recall a meal of a lifetime only ten years ago, 'has gone off appallingly'. Most Hungarians are ex- hausted from having to do two or even three jobs, to keep up with rampant inflation and a kind of dull obsession with material values. There is not a trace of the inspiring idealism and spirituality of the Poles — even a huge funeral ceremony for the respected Bishop of Esztergom was `taken over by the Party and made into a typical, stupefying communist occasion'. My friends concluded that 'Hungary has been lobotomised since 1956 — they made that one tremendous gesture, and since then the country seems to have made its pact with the devil and sold its soul for a rather dubious mess of materialist pot- tage.' It will be interesting to see how much of this side of 'Mrs Thatcher's favourite East European country' we hear about in coming weeks.
In my limited experience of the higher reaches of the Church of England I have on the whole found deans — the chaps who preside over cathedrals — much more impressive than bishops, the bureaucrats who run dioceses and make the headlines with their pronouncements about nuclear weapons and the Virgin Birth. A year or two back I for some reason found myself addressing the annual get-together of Bri- tain's deans. After I had made one or two ineffective stabs at a collective noun for deans, I was told that the definitive version had been provided at a previous gathering in Manchester by the inimitable Eleanor Bron — 'a forest of deans'. Sadly, in recent weeks two of the outstanding deans of our time have retired, both men admirably suited to their august role in voice, pre- sence and intelligence. I first met Michael Stancliffe of Winchester when he was rector of my local church, St Margaret's , Westminster, back in the Sixties. The sermons he preached on such themes as `Sale; 'Water', 'Hands' were works of art, the most memorable I have ever heard. The distinguished-looking, white-haired Sydney Evans who has just left Salisbury was known among other things for his determination to adorn the cathedral with works of contemporary art. Some of these attracted controversy, such as the Frink Madonna on the grass of the close and the `Political Prisoners' window which has given a Chartres-like blue glow to the east end. But my family owes him a particular debt for the enthusiasm with which he welcomed a memorial to my sisters, two luminous windows of engraved glass by Laurence Whistler on each side of the north door. His last legacy to Salisbury, a breathtaking prism of the cathedral in which Laurence Whistler is commemorat- ing his brother Rex, is nearing completion, to be dedicated in the next few months.
Itook a personal interest the other day in the report that a sale of titles to be lord of the manor had reached record prices, including £8,000 for one lordship that was bought by a Welsh shopkeeper to boost trade in his supermarket. On my father's death in May I became by inheritance the lord of the manor of a tiny village in Worcestershire, where my family lived for 200 years. On a visit to Worcester the other day, my Uncle Michael thought it might be a suitable moment to register my new status with the appropriate authority. 'I went to the Shire Hall,' he said, 'and was told to go to the Rural Communities Office, but they showed no interest and suggested that I went to the Citizens' Advice Bureau. They said that this kind of thing in the county of Worcester and Hereford was now dealt with in Swansea. Not having time to go down to Wales,' my uncle continued, 'I thought I would look in on the County Registrar's Office, but they were only interested in births, marriages and deaths and suggested I should try the Land Registrar at the new County Hall'. At this point the trail dried up. Did someone once say that everything in the modern world came down in the end either to bureaucracy or money? All I can add is that, despite having drawn a blank with the bureaucracy, my manorial title is not for sale.
We got in rather a tangle about dates last week. It was not in 1964 that the Third Programme came to an end, but Septem- ber 1967. And the omission of a line in my item about Halley's Comet made it appear that I ascribed Halley's original observa- tion to 1758 — the year when his prediction of the comet's return was confirmed — rather than 1682. I am writing before any learned reader has had time to explain my riddle — of how a 76-year cycle can take us back to 1066, when the Comet supposedly coincided with the Norman invasion — but my apologies.
Previous page
