Charles Moore
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I had passed 60 years on the planet without seeing a work of Gilbert and Sullivan performed — until last week. Friends took us to the ENO’s Iolanthe at the Coliseum. Being so ignorant, I was in no position to enter purists’ discussions about whether the production was too silly and should not have depicted Boris Johnson en route. But it did seem to us that silliness is an admirable part of the original, starting with the idea of muddling up faeries and the Lord Chancellor (at a time when both entities had much higher standing than today). We had a very happy evening. As so often in English political life, the silliest things are the truest. The famous song about the House of Lords (‘When Britain really ruled the waves…’) makes the point that ‘The House of Peers made no pretence/ To intellectual eminence/ Or scholarship sublime;/ Yet Britain won her proudest bays/ In good Queen Bess’s glorious days…’. During the Napoleonic war, it did ‘nothing in particular/ and it did it very well’. There is a perpetual lesson: ‘And while the House of Peers withholds/ Its legislative hand,/ And noble statesmen do not itch/ To interfere with matters which/ They do not understand,/ As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays/ As in King George’s glorious days.’ This is simply, seriously true, and has been forgotten — with constitutionally damaging consequences.
I find the switch of the Guardian to tabloid format curiously upsetting. It makes me realise how good the paper was, and is now ceasing to be. It is not necessarily a mistake to go tabloid — the Times managed it well — but one has to recognise that form dictates content. If your size is smaller, your copy must be snappier. You must either — like the Daily Mail — rigorously impose your editorial priorities on every page, shouting your head off as you go, or — like the Times — cram a lot in, clearly and succinctly presented. What you must not do is to give the journalists their head to write just as they did when it was broadsheet (or Berliner). The Guardian has not asked its journalists to adapt, and so the thing now feels as slow-paced as a broadsheet, but without its authority. It looks like a student newspaper. It also feels more programmatically left-wing, as if there is literally no space left to take a wider view of the world.
There is a once-famous Osbert Lancaster cartoon of two railwaymen throwing up their hands in despair as white stuff descends on the platform and exclaiming, ‘Good Heavens! Snow in January.’ That wouldn’t happen now. Thanks to long-range forecasting, they can start cancelling the trains before any snow has fallen. (Yes, I realise it’s now March, but the point stands.)
As in past years, the editor has kindly let me advertise the Annual General Meeting of the Rectory Society in this column. It will take place in the chapel of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, at 6 for 6.30 p.m. on Monday 12 March. The guest speaker will be Field Marshal Lord Guthrie. His talk is called ‘Confessions of a Christian Soldier’. Tickets can be obtained by emailing Alison Everington — ali@everington.net.
Because you read about jeremy corbyn
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