DIARY
JOAN BAKEWELL
The Duff Cooper Prize is one of the pleasantest occasions on the literary circuit. Not here the threat of dinner-table place- ment between a minor sponsor and the sales director of a printing company. Instead an interesting mêlée of people with an affection for books and for each other. It's a family affair endorsed by friends, which explains much. John Julius Norwich organised it for many years. For many years his mother, Lady Diana Cooper, moved among the guests, frail but commanding, a small dog in the crook of her arm, the exquisite porcelain skin still a marvel to behold. More recently — this is the prize's 40th year — proceedings have been organ- ised by Lady Diana's no less commanding grand-daughter Artemis. But proceedings among chattering crowds sipping unlimited Modt et Chandon can go awry. The prize was won by Gitta Sereny for her book, Albert Speer: His Battle With the Truth. In making the award Tony Quinton averred that Speer, Hitler's architect but also minis- ter for weapons and munitions, had been a good man who went wrong. This, of course, makes him a bad man, but nonetheless something of what had been good survived and it is this paradox that Gitta Sereny with her remorselessly thorough research has sought to uncover. The author herself then began to enlarge on her theme. Soon the attendant crowds were getting restless, eager to resume their own conversations, beginning to muter among themselves.
In Monty Python's Life of Brian, those at the fringes of Christ's Sermon on the Mount get things wrong. 'Blessed are the cheesemakers! What does he mean, blessed are the cheesemakers?' And so it was with Gitta Sereny's address. She explained that Speer had 'never been formally informed' of the policy towards the Jews. In the next breath she recalled that the same phrase had been used by Mrs Thatcher in her evi- dence to the Scott inquiry concerning Sad- dam Hussein's genocide of the Kurds. At the fringes, the word was quickly whispered that Mrs Thatcher was being compared to Hitler. The babble developed an unsympa- thetic rumble. 'Can you hear me at the back, because we can hear you,' Ms Sereny pressed on. The prize was duly given, the applause died away, conversations resumed. Then suddenly Paul Johnson who could contain his rage no longer, crossed the room and delivered to Gitta Sereny a strong piece of his mind. Unwise, I think, to advance subtle arguments to a half- attentive throng. They got it wrong about cheesemakers. Nonetheless 'never formally informed' joins 'economical with the truth' in the lexicon of political evasion. Agood man who was 'never formally informed' of Nazi policies but remained good was Helmuth von Moltke, a brilliant and heroic German lawyer whose story is told for the first time in the film for BBC Television, Witness Against Hitler. Through- out the Thirties von Moltke was a regular visitor at All Souls, Oxford, where he met Lord Halifax and others and failed to con- vince them of what lay ahead. They remained, after all, 'never formally informed'. Back in Germany, von Moltke brought together what became known as the Kreisau Circle from his estate in Silesia, a group dedicated to working against Hitler and planning the framework of a post- Reich constitution. The failure of the Stauffenberg bomb plot brought his name to light. Von Moltke was hanged in the last months of the war. His widow Freya escaped with their two small sons and now, aged 85, lives in Vermont. She has made available to the man behind this film, writ- er-producer Jack Emery (incidentally my husband), not only her memories but the hoard of letters Helmuth wrote to her from prison. The film is their love story as well as another piece of German history put in place.
Atogether it has been a tense and busy week in our household. Not only was Wit- ness Against Hitler given a Bafta showing, but my book The Heart of the Matter was published and I was being bounced by its publishers, BBC Books, round the promo- tional circuit. Twenty-four hours a day there are whole armies of radio broadcast- ers hunched before their consoles, slotting in records, commercials, traffic news and weather, who raise their eyes to greet you through the abundance of wires and tech- nology and offer instant familiarity.
A, radio studios and corridors are much the same, only their styles differ: Talk Radio, alert and argumentative; GLC, relaxed and neighbourly; Viva, funky and friendly; Premier Radio, the Christian channel, concerned and committed. The only surprise was at the latter. Commercials for charities were fair enough, but then came one for the Singles Directory. And it didn't refer to records. In the corridors of Broadcasting House I find the whispers are all of Liz Forgan's resignation as managing director of BBC Radio. Why has she gone? None of the workers seem to know. In the absence of any explanation — her own, `now seems a good time to move on' won't satisfy the pundits — gossip is rife. She's moving to her new home in the Orkneys; she's had a major falling-out with John Birt; there's a serious financial deficit in radio; she's angry at losing the battle to keep radio news and current affairs in Broadcasting House rather than move to the windswept desolation of White City. All unsubstantiated rumours, of course. But everywhere Liz is spoken of warmly. She offered that rare thing these days, a real sense of leadership. Even the naivety of her arrival memo — the tenor of which was `gosh, isn't radio wonderful?' — endeared her to employees much in need of some human warmth in the wasteland of Birtian diktats. Even John Tydeman, who retired somewhat vociferously in 1994 after a life- time's dedicated service to radio drama, eight years as its head (`they assure me they're eager to manure the seedlings of talent, but I fear they mean to slut on them') — even he had admiration and affection for Liz. So why is she going? BBC news programmes, so eager to analyse management crises elsewhere, remain silent on the matter. If the broadcasters won't tell us, who will?
Arainy Saturday afternoon and we decide to catch a film at a cinema in central London. We set out by car only to find Regent Street blocked off by the police. A bomb alert? No one says. Traffic clogs up as it's rerouted, the pavements of Oxford Street are denser than ever with people glumly seeking ways round. Only then does the thought occur, 'Why are we going to a central London cinema, planning to leave our car in a vulnerable high-rise car park? Is that wise?' While foreign tourists desert London in their thousands, local people take a more fatalistic view. But how long before they get irritated, depressed, care- less? By now we are late for our chosen movie. We turn round and head instead for the Odeon at Swiss Cottage and see Seven, a film about the unspeakable violence meted out by a vengeful maniac in the thrashing rain of inner-city squalor. The irony is that it is appallingly entertaining, an exhilarating relief from the dispiriting monotony of real threats to people's lives.
Previous page
