Notebook
At the time of writing, the British Task Force in the South Atlantic has already lost five ships and at least 63 seamen. On the very day that Alexander Haig was Predicting a quick British victory in the Falklands, the navy suffered its worst day of the War, with the losses of the guided missile destroyer Coventry and of the CUnard merchant vessel Atlantic Conveyor. Victory may well be within our grasp, but there is no longer any doubt that its price will have been high. Already it is high enough to dampen the jingoism of the popular press, and this in itself is no bad thing, kg. It is high enough to ensure that, once tne war is over there will be a serious ex- arrunation of whether it was all necessary, and that will also be no bad thing. It is high enough, furthermore, to encourage a rapid e,nd to the conflict, for honour on both sides has already been satisfied. If a British victory is inevitable in the end, one must hope that the Argentinians, having proved their bravery, may begin to feel it is possible 10.1- them to withdraw from the islands Without loss of face and, more importantly, of further lives. But that, I fear, is to hope rather to much.
This week has seen the publication by Weidenfeld and Nicolson of a book Failed Henry Root's World of Knowledge. I have looked through it and am now finally persuaded that I have absolutely no sense of humour at all. It is sad to have to admit Lulls, but there it is. I know I am right book two years ago I skipped through a luook Called The Henry Root Letters and rashly wrote in the Spectator that the letters were. °of absolutely no interest'. The book was Instantly welcomed by everybody I ad- mire as practically the funniest thing ever written. It sold an incredible number of cokes and made both its author and its publisher extremely rich. A second volume "eon,' Root letters appeared soon after- ards, and again reduced the entire nation fto stitches. I anticipate a similar reception c3r Henty Root's World of Knowledge, and than this 1-^ -aPpens, I will be more pfi erlexed ever. It is described as `thefirst and most , comprehensive one-volume en- cyclopaedia of British common sense ever published'. It is laid out like a conventional eencYclopaedia, but is obviously (of this I am mfident) meant to be funny. I have tried to laugh — oh, how I have tried — but it's no / '1; good. To my relief, however, I find that have at any rate one thing in common with Root, who is in reality a man called 11"1.111ani Donaldson, presently gossip col- „ Trinist of the Mail on Sunday: we are both Ilckers when it comes to hoaxes. I fell for the original Henry Root hoax, when he sent out hundreds of cranky letters to people soliciting replies. I actually wrote back. Nobody likes to feel a fool, which is perhaps why I could find so little to laugh at in The Henry Root Letters. But Mr Donaldson has a simple way of dealing with this sort of humiliation; he denies that it has taken place. Two weeks ago, in his Mail on Sunday column, he published extracts from a letter by Richard Ingrams, 'leaked to me by one of his many enemies at the Eye'. It was certainly an unusual letter. Addressed to Patrick Marnham, author of a forthcom- ing history of Private Eye, it censoriously demanded the excision of certain passages, including an allegation that Ingrains had engaged in homosexuality as a boy at Shrewsbury. To Donaldson the lesson was clear — that Ingrams, 'this fearless defender of free speech, has, indeed, become power-mad and paranoid'. But the truth was sadder. Ingrams had become no better than Donaldson. The letter — if not perhaps technically a hoax, because In- grams did indeed write it — was a plant; it was written with the express intention of fooling Donaldson into printing it. The suc- cess of this boring little prank was duly reported in next day's newspapers. But, come the following Sunday, Donaldson was still insisting in his column upon the letter's authenticity and accusing Ingrams of inven- ting a cover-up story. I am afraid there is no doubt whatsoever that Mr Donaldson was taken for a ride, and I say this with the dreary certainty of an utterly humourless man.
Another book published this week is Graham Greene's J'Accuse — an ac- count of how, in the course of a divorce ac- tion, justice and humanity were denied to a young mother and her children by the machinations of the criminal milieu of Nice. It is a moving document, and an ex- ample of influence well used. For it is doubtful if a writer of lesser stature than Graham Greene could have secured such publicity for a domestic tragedy of this sort. Mr Greene's point, of course, is that the tragedy could never have taken place without the climate of corruption which gave the villain of the piece, the crooked husband, 'good reason to believe that he can obtain any impunity he may need'. He hopes that his account of one personal ex- perience will lead to the eventual cleaning up the whole criminal milieu. I hope so too. Mistakes, however, were made in the advance publicity for the book. For one thing, it is not really a book, the text occu- pying only 21 rather small pages. For another, it is not in itself an exposure of the milieu. Either Mr Greene originally intend- ed something more ambitious, or his publishers have been guilty of over- enthusiastic promotion, or both. But those who are disappointed may look forward to publication of a new full-length Greene novel in the autumn.
whatever happened to the bust of Lenin? This was the question Gavin Stamp was asking in the Spectator two weeks ago. The bust, presented by the Soviet government to Finsbury Borough Council, was part of a memorial to Lenin erected in 1942 in Holford Square, where the Russian dictator once lived. This was almost immediately vandalised, and the bust taken into Finsbury Town Hall for safe-keeping. Now it can be revealed that the bust survives. The new Labour coun- cillors of Islington (which absorbed Finsbury in 1965) celebrated their recent electoral triumph over the SDP by taking it out of storage and putting it on display in the town hall. But its 40-year absence from public view does not seem to have diminish- ed popular resentment towards it, for it has now been vandalised again. Someone has painted on spectacles and daubed it with the revisionist slogan 'What a lot of bottle'. Perhaps the Russians had better take it back.
Ithink I am rather in favour of graffiti. They publicise causes and obsessions so obscure that we would never otherwise hear of them. I am thinking of slogans of the `Free Joe Bloggs' variety. Around the cor- ner from our office, for example, there is a scrawled announcement: 'Fifty innocent libertarians in prison in Spain.' I often think about these unfortunate libertarians, wondering who they are and how they got themselves locked up. As propaganda, it is quite effective. Although I have made no inquiries, I now have it vaguely embedded in my mind that Spain is a country which takes a dim view of libertarians. Richard West, travelling by train from Canterbury to London this week, found the following grafitto in the lavatory; 'In most towns ten per cent of the skinheads are queer. Why is it that in Whitstable all the skinheads are bent? Even the skingirls are blokes in drag'. Most graffiti are as elliptic as the an- nouncements of Mr Ian McDonald, but this one was unusually detailed and infor- mative. Can it possibly be true about the Whitstable skinheads? The matter should be investigated.
Alexander Chancellor
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