Religious mania
And there is a great deal of it,around. it is difficult offhand to recall a time when the establishment The language evoked. by Mr Heath's mission to Paris .among the supposedly intelligent and literate has been the language normally used by those converted by miracles at Lourdes or the noises of Billy Graham. Consider the descriptive passages from the Guardian's Peter Jenkins, describ- ing Heath's and Pompidou's press con- ference in 'the grand reception room of the Elysee Palace, dripping with gilt and laden with its heavy chandeliers, the rich Gobelin tapestries for a backdrop'. Nothing the mat- ter with that purple piece—the room is, of course, the same for all presidential press conferences, whether momentous or not, but let that pass. Jenkins, however, continues: 'We can only guess what Mr Heath felt on this occasion. Although he showed nothing of it he must have been deeply moved. For he was now within reach of a personal goal which he had pursued for more than twenty years and which had been cruelly denied him in that very same room nearly ten years previously. His private asides during the two days in Paris allowed no doubt that he felt himself to be retracing the steps of a personal pilgrimage, with the walls of Jericho this time before him.'
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