DIARY
JEREMY ISAACS On the morning of 4 July 1975 — it was semi-final day at Wimbledon — my brother Michael and his wife Ribbie left their two young boys, one two years old, the other ten weeks, with her mother, and went to do the weekend shopping. Twenty min- utes later there was a loud bang. The PLO had strapped explosives to the back of an old refrigerator and left it on the pavement, as if awaiting disposal, at a traffic light where shoppers crossed to the market. Both Michael and Ribbie were killed. That night I told my parents — the worst thing I have had to do in my life — and flew next day to Israel, and up to Jerusalem. I stayed then, where I have always stayed since, in the house of my parents' dearest friends, the Michaelsons, in Balfour Street. Last week I was there again. Ora, 86, a captain in the British Army in 1942, came to the door to welcome me. My room was ready. The Isaacs and Soifer families, with a boost from the Clore Foundation, set up a fund to commemorate Michael and Ribbie. It provides a biennial award for an illustrated children's book. This year Vivien Duffield presented the prizes. I told the gathering that Michael and Ribbie had another memorial: their children, Hillel and Boaz, lovingly brought up on Staten Island by Ribbie's brother and his wife. Hillel passed through London the other day, on his way to a frisbee tournament in Rotterdam. Life goes on.
Early every morning that baking hot week in Jerusalem in 1975, I walked down the hill to prayers and sat in mourning with Ribbie's father, Israel Soifer, receiving visi- tors. One day a brash stranger entered, unannounced, sat down and told us he would adopt the children. There were too many Arabs in the country, he said; they would all have to go. The orphans should be brought up in a settlement on the front line, across which Israel would, one day, expand. I protested that we were in mourn- ing, and that, in any case, this was our busi- ness: the family would adopt the boys. You don't know who I am,' he said, 'I am the son of the famous Rabbi Kahaner.' The bereaved, broken man beside me looked up and muttered, 'I think you mean the infamous Rabbi Kahaner.' Since then Kahaner senior has himself been assassi- nated. The big gainers from the recent Israeli elections, though, are the religious Right. The tensions between them and a secular Israel increase.
The Royal Ballet gave Swan Lake in the Roman amphitheatre in Caesarea. Darcey Busse]] and Jonathan Cope were their usual joyously commanding selves.
The corps de ballet were in fine form, con- sidering they had just flown in from Buenos Aires. Four thousand in the audi- ence — many Russians among them, and in the orchestra — roared their applause. The British ambassador beamed his pride. The evening was made special by the pres- ence of Shimon Peres, who narrowly lost the election, a statesman for peace but a loser. The audience stood for him, and came to shake his hand. Ahead, as he thought, in the polls, he had fought a pas- sive campaign, letting Mr Netanyahu, who accused him of being too close to Yasser Arafat, make the running. In the Knesset the other day, he rounded on the winner, saying, 'You too will walk with Arafat if you walk the road to peace.' He should have said it earlier.
`Testy scenes at the Royal Opera House', the Times Diary noted on Monday. There were. We close for two years and a bit in July 1997; income from box office and other sources will fall steeply; costs theatre rental, for example — will rise. To get through closure, we must reduce core cost. That means job losses. On Friday, we told the staff. `You have torn the heart out of this House' was one charge hurled at me. I hope not, But if you define the House as the people who work in it, as all of us, including me, have done, then you face a problem when you have to choose between the House's long-term future and the staff's immediate interests. Govern- ment involves choice; the harsh conse- quences of this choosing are inescapable. But I am confident that my colleagues, under my admirable successor, will see the House through a difficult transition into the promised land.
The other day, as work began at last on the Covent Garden site, I donned a hard hat and posed for funny photographs. The Press Association sent a reporter. He asked what I thought of tabloid criticism of our Lottery grant. I said the indignation it exhibited was spurious and synthetic. In
the story he put on the wires, the PA's man in Covent Garden had me rebuking oppo- nents for their attacks on me and 'the infa- mous £78.5 million grant'. I rang him up and asked where 'infamous' came from. He wasn't attributing that to me, was he? No. Was it his view? Surely the agency's practice did not run to that? 'No. But the tabloids had thought it infamous, hadn't they?' He was taking their verdict at face value, and sending it out again as cold fact. We know mad tabloid disease is infectious, but if the PA gets it too, the very wells are poisoned.
Ten remarkable slays for the future of British broadcasting: the BBC announces a drastic restructuring, and it is revealed that the Government has plans to priva- tise Channel 4. The BBC has been doing so well recently, both in share of audience and in quality of programming, that the need to act quite so forcefully, with so lit- tle public debate or internal discussion, in response to the challenge of the coming digital age came to the rest of us as a sur- prise. John Birt says he worries constantly . about the creativity of his programme- makers. But what counts there is a struc- ture that encourages them to do their best. I doubt whether the new dispensa- tion will guarantee that. As for Channel 4, set up by Act of Parliament to 'encourage innovation in the form and content of pro- grammes; to cater for interests ITV does not, to provide overall a distinctive ser- vice', it is hard to see profit-motivated pri- vatisation sparing much of that. At least, though, if the Government makes it an election manifesto commitment, there could and should be public debate before the great axe falls.
Sit Jeremy, at last. As I mentioned here before, I've been getting letters of com- plaint addressed to Sir Jeremy for so long now that it seems only reasonable to have the prefix to go with them. The great new thing is that, to the delight of all her friends, my wife, Gillian Widdicombe, becomes Lady Isaacs, losing, when proper- ly introduced, both the Gillian and the Widdicombe Fair. Not fair.
Readers of this magazine and of the Daily Telegraph cannot fail to have noticed how frequently the editor of The Spectator boasts of his balletomania. One of his first acts was to appoint a ballet critic, improba- bly named Giannandrea Poesio. I believe the editor is Giannandrea Poesio. Is there proof to the contrary? Has anyone ever seen them together? We should be told.
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