It is too early to say what the sad death of the BBC means to the nation

FRANK JOHNSON

Though long expected, which of us could not fail to be moved by the death, though peaceful and at a great age, on an Easter Saturday afternoon, of the BBC?

Yet some newspapers — the Daily Mail, the Sun, but also the Daily Telegraph — were dismissive; gleeful, almost. I myself felt obliged to jam the BBC switchboard for several hours with protests at Mr Peter Sissons's disgraceful interview with Mr Greg Dyke, a close relative of the newly-deceased Corporation.

Mr Sissons (seated on a whoopee cushion, and wearing a fluorescent kipper tie, in the middle of which were small electric bulbs that lit up at the most solemn moments): It must have been a very private moment, Sir Dyke.

Mr Dyke: Yes, it was a very moving and sad moment.

Mr Sissons: And, without wishing to intrude too much, who was there?

Mr Dyke: No, I won't go into that. It was just a few million close viewers.

Mr Sissons: And after you all came out of the bulletin, what happened?

Mr Dyke: No, sorry, I really don't want to go into those sorts of details, Mr Sissons: Do you think that, to some extent, the BBC had outlived its time? That people no longer need all those alternative comedians, and crass interviewers who Can't get any toff s title right?

Mr Dyke: I think, in a very real sense, after the trouble you've got me into, 'cos of the balls-up you made of things on Saturday night, you've outlived y'time, Sissons.

The reality is that, throughout all that long lifetime, the BBC never ceased to touch our hearts. It made us laugh. It made us cry. Above all, it educated our democracy by providing it with a vast range of political opinion, from Tony Senn and John Pilger all the way over to the far-Right as embodied by Charles Kennedy. All who came into contact with him will cherish Mr Dyke's disarming smile and willingness to tell anyone, no matter how humble, to 'cut the crap'. He mixed freely with people as different from one another, in views and outlook, as Gavyn Davies and Tony Blair.

Inevitably, the question will be asked: what does the loss of the BBC mean for the future of republicanism, and indeed of sex and violence before the watershed? It is too early to say, The BBC will try to recover by reporting that no one at all is observing the royal jubilee in June, apart from the Queen Mother, who is dead. We shall see.

By the time this appears, Mr Blair, Mr Duncan Smith, Mr Kennedy and others will have paid their parliamentary tributes to the Queen Mother. We should not envy them. As speakers, Mr Blair and Mr Kennedy are fluent. Mr Duncan Smith is not, or not yet. But fluency can easily slide into glibness. The last thing that could be said about Mr Duncan Smith's speaking is that it is glib. Whatever may be said about the three, none of them is a parliamentary orator, as the term was once understood. Only an orator could find something fresh to say about the Queen Mother after so much already has been.

It would need a Churchill. In fact, Churchill did say something about her in sad circumstances. It was during an address, as prime minister in 1952, on her husband's death. The passage is an example of something about Churchill's oratory which is overlooked: that by as early as the middle years of his parliamentary career, it was already out of date. Hardly anyone else in British politics spoke like that. Before the war, the critic Herbert Read wrote a brilliant book, English Prose Style. He singled out a passage, about the fall of the Russian monarchy, from Churchill's history of the first world war as an example of how not to write English. 'Such eloquence is false because artificial . .. the images are stale, the metaphors violent, The whole

passage exhales a false dramatic atmosphere.' But many of us would consider the passage magnificent. Its 'dramatic atmosphere' is not false because of the scale of the drama it describes.

To return to the Queen Mother, that Churchillian passage in 1952 went:

My friends, it is at this time that our compassion and sympathy go out to his consort and widow. Their marriage was a love match with no idea of regal pomp and splendour. Indeed, there seemed to lie before them the arduous life of royal personages denied so many of the activities of ordinary folk and having to give so much in ceremonial public service. May I say, speaking with all freedom, that our hearts go out tonight to that valiant woman with famous blood of Scotland in her veins who sustained King George through all his toils and problems and brought up, with their charm and beauty, the two daughters who mourn their father today. May she be granted strength to bear her sorrow.

Some of this may indeed be false. We do not know whether it was 'a love match'. We do not know whether their life would have been 'arduous' — perhaps far from it. Was her blood all that 'famous'? In any case, the phrase is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so. Did he mean that all Scottish blood was famous, or hers in particular? But no prime minister should be considered on oath when talking publicly about royalty. It was the 'false' — or, to put it less harshly, heightened or dramatised — aspect of Churchill's language which made it suited to large events such as wars and large themes such as a queen's sudden bereavement. For such themes, utilitarian language will not do.

What, incidentally, was the Churchill prose that aroused Herbert Read's scorn? It included the words:

Exit Czar. Deliver him and all he loved to wounds and death . but pause then to tell us who else was found capable. ... But not in vain her [Russia's] valiant deeds. The giant mortally stricken had just time, with dying strength, to pass the torch eastward across the ocean to a new Titan long sunk in doubt who now arose and began ponderously to arm. The Russian Empire fell on 16 March; on 6 April the United States entered the war.

That does not seem inappropriate for the vast and terrible events it concerns. Let us see if Mr Blair finds similarly appropriate language for any war on Iraq, though let us hope that the events will not be so vast and terrible.