Taking Morgan

With trouble brewing up in most parts of the Middle East, David Rose’s book Taking Morgan, although fictional in essence, is based on true events – and shows you why the cauldron of fire and savagery is becoming a daily occurrence in that part of the world.

Told with gusto and a rare flair, the book is compulsive reading and will keep you taut till the very end…

Hurry and get yourself a copy before stock runs out.

Are the Gentler Sex a Blessing in Disguise?

A recent study claims that women who are normally considered to be the gentler sex are in fact more controlling and aggressive in relationships than men.

Increasing numbers of women can now be classed as ‘intimate terrorists’ in which they are more verbally or physically violent towards a partner.

Psychologists at the University of Cumbria questioned 1,104 young men and women using a scale of behaviour which ranged from shouting and insulting to pushing, beating and even using weapons.

And to their amazement they discovered that, contrary to perception, women were significantly more likely to be verbally and physically aggressive to men than vice versa.

The term ‘intimate terrorism’ was coined in the 1990s when US sociologist Michael P. Johnson used it to define an extreme form of controlling relationship behaviour involving threats, intimidation and violence.

He said men were almost always the culprits. However, the latest research turns the accepted view on its head.

Women today seem to have the upper hand in controlling their men. They have the initiative and the power to mould their partners through their sexual weaponry, which some men find totally devastating. Women also have more self-control in this regard and wile to boot. Men are mostly slaves when their willy is erect and lose their heads in consequence.

It reminds me of a story I read the other day, which sheds some light on how members of the gentler sex operate.

When Dan found out that he was about to inherit a fortune from his very sick father, he decided he needed to find himself a woman to enjoy his impending good fortune. So that evening he went to a singles’ bar where he immediately spotted a very beautiful young woman. He decided to go over and chat her up and gauge her response. He said, ‘I may look like just an ordinary guy but in about a month’s time my very ill father will sadly pass away and I will inherit his fortune of over £20 million.’ This immediately got the young woman’s attention and they had a great evening together, leaving the bar later arm in arm, taking a taxi back to his place.

Two weeks later she became his step-mother.

Dig that, if you can.

I still believe that most women are a blessing, and are worthy of the sacrifices we make – notwithstanding their determination to cow us into submission.

If you can live without them, then it is perhaps a blessing in disguise.

Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m a glutton for punishment.

A Short Man with a Tall Outlook

For once, I find myself in total agreement with John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, who said that making fun of someone because of their short height should be as socially unacceptable as homophobia or racism.

Mr Bercow has naturally an axe to grind for being referred to by some people as a ‘stupid sanctimonious dwarf’ during a debate in the House, although to his credit he claimed that the mere putdown because of his height did not particularly bother him.

Mr Bercow went on to say that criticism of people on the basis of how tall they are was unacceptable. He went on to say, ‘Whereas nobody these days would regard it as acceptable to criticise someone on grounds of race or creed or disability or sexual orientation, somehow it seems to be acceptable to comment on someone’s height, or lack of it.’

‘Does it affect me personally? Not at all. It’s just low grade, intellectually sub-standard and schoolboyish.’

The speaker also laughed off claims from his wife Sally Bercow that his role in the House of Commons had made him more attractive. He said in a recent interview: ‘I have most certainly not become a sex symbol. Sally does have a very good sense of humour.’

His last statement rings true in more ways than one. She certainly has a bizarre sense of humour and more than that her liberal view of sexuality is far too palpable, I imagine, to give her husband the comfort his job demands.

In 2011, she sent ripples around Westminster and beyond when she appeared in a newspaper wearing nothing but a bed sheet. She also spoke of the ‘aphrodisiac’ effect of life at the Palace of Westminster.

Any other husband would have been appalled by her behaviour but to his credit Mr Bercow was a stalwart of support, which to many appeared beyond the pale.

In this latest interview, Mr Bercow reiterated that the couple are not concerned by the public scrutiny of their marriage saying they have their own approach and ‘are perfectly comfortable in our skin’.

Having said all that, he has grown in stature in my view – and I no longer see him as 5′ 6” but rather much taller than that.

As for Sally, my advice to her is grow up, act responsibility and hang on to your husband and stop mucking around. No other man I know will put up with any of your escapades, especially that notorious snogging scene in a nightclub.

Hell on Earth

I spent last weekend in low spirits bordering on a bout of depression seeing children and civilians being torn to pieces in Gaza while, agonisingly, the world still looks on.

I have repeated many times in my long career as a publisher that the killing of any human being, whether a Palestinian or an Israeli, is a crime in a civilised society which pretends to care and worship the sanctity of life.

And yet in reality, this is not the case. We make excuses for dispensing with human life on the grounds that we have to defend ourselves against the aggression of the other side, and the arguments relentlessly carry on while blood is shed on a scale that makes horrible viewing and instigates more hatred and violence.

When will the butchery stop? There will be no winner in this brutal battle. On the contrary, grieving mothers will darken the skies with their tears and homeless families will mourn their losses for years to come. Haven’t both parties to the dispute suffered enough? Every day that passes will become a reminder of atrocities perpetrated by a senseless political dogma that inflicts great pain and unimaginable suffering on people stricken by poverty, forlorn and whose main objective in life is to survive in a world now bereft of any dignity, even in death.

The world at large has a duty to put a stop to this heinous state of affairs where the use of the gun as opposed to diplomacy has become the tool of oppression and the only way to resolve a dispute.

President Obama seems unmoved by the extent of the bloodshed taking place and carries on despite the seriousness of the situation, as if telling the world that the greatest power in the world, which he presides over, is unable to bring the warring parties to their senses.

Yet without US support neither Israel nor for that matter Egypt can operate without the aid of their benefactors. It is time that Obama rediscovers his balls or be confined to history as a weak president whose rhetoric invariably fails to match his actions.

Let us pause for a second and learn from history. We study it at school and at university and yet we ignore its consequences because we believe we know better. The biggest culprits in this regard are the politicians who wage a war they can never win and who sacrifice their citizens for a lost purpose.

Is man self-destructive by nature? I often wonder but refuse to accept it for fear of becoming a cynic and spending my life seeing the ugly side of things. Pessimism and reality need not be bedfellows and liberalism must clean its image and change direction to embrace the more sympathetic credo that it pretends to advocate.

2014 is proving a disastrous year on the world stage. Therefore, let us all pray for better days to come when man wakes up from his folly, searches for peace and tranquillity and gives up the notion that conquest is the better alternative.

An Hour’s Contemplation

It has been a constant fascination to me how many people turn out to be completely different to their public image.

Monsignor Alfred Gilbey, the ultra-Orthodox Catholic society priest who resided till his death in 1998 at the Travellers’ Club, was for decades a chaplain at Cambridge.

When I interviewed him he emerged as a woman-hater extraordinaire, nostalgic for the days when universities and other institutions were male preserves.

He considered his view ‘wholly compatible’ with the god-given idea that women are not the equal of men.

We must hope, for Gilbey’s sake, that God is not a woman.

Conor Cruise O’Brien, who had a reputation for benevolent liberalism, revealed himself as an old reactionary.

And the saintly, pacific Sir Laurens van der Post turned out to be quite jingoistic. He was also ungracious about Nelson Mandela, could not bear to be criticised and had an unedifying tantrum during the interview.

The great and the good, just like the rest of us, can be perfectly ridiculous.

My favourite eye-opener was Lord Goodman, a giant among men. After vetting me over breakfast – a sumptuous affair – he agreed to appear in my book, Singular Encounters, which was to include several other ennobled celebrities.

But about a month after the interview he withdrew permission for publication on the grounds that Richard Ingrams was to appear in the same volume.

‘It is inexcusable to have lured me with a number of respectable names and to withhold the fact that Mr Ingrams was to be included in the book,’ he wrote.

A staggering example of pomposity.

Interviewing can also be perilous. I was shown the door by feminist icon Betty Friedan and bawled out by Patricia Highsmith, mistress of the psychological murder.

Auberon Waugh said that my strength as an interviewer lay in my unshockability. It is true that I seldom feel shocked, but I do occasionally raise an eyebrow.

Sir Kenneth Dover, distinguished Greek scholar and chancellor of St Andrews University, told me how he was so struck by the beauty on top of a hill south of Mignano, that he sat down on a log and masturbated.

Who would have thought that a scenic view would have the same effect as a naked woman, dripping with sexuality? Man has to live long to find out.

Fortunately, I am blessed with a highly developed sense of the absurd – a condition sometimes found in those who are not, nor can ever be, establishment figures.

Albert Camus, himself an outsider, battled his whole life with cosmic meaninglessness, eventually finding refuge in the absurd, which he saw as the fundamental idea and the first truth.

I have learned to be wary of the business of truth, but the absurd seems to have as much claim on my psyche as anything else.

Hence, that’s where my impassivity comes into play.

A. L. Rowse

A. L. Rowse was born in Cornwall in 1903.

He was educated at a local grammar school and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and emeritus fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

He was one of Britain’s best known and most eminent historians. His publications include Tudor Cornwall (1950), Heritage of Britain (1977) and Four Caroline Portraits (1993). He also wrote many works of literary criticism, including several on Shakespeare and a life of Marlowe. He died in October 1997.

When I look at some of the people I interviewed for the Oldie magazine in the mid 1990s, most of whom were usually well past their allotted time-span, some have since departed this world and are presumably now talking to that great interviewer in the sky. I like to remember them for their foibles as much as their good points.

A. L. Rowse divided people into two groups: those ‘complacent in their ignorance’, and those ‘complacent in their mediocrity’.

Having told me his sexual proclivities were private, he went on to fondle my thigh throughout our brief encounter. It was rather embarrassing and totally out of order. In brief, I did not find common ground with him.

Here is the full text of my interview with the old bugger.

You are the living incarnation of local boy made good, rising from the working class to become a fellow of All Souls. On the one hand you seem to be very proud of your working-class origins, yet on the other there is no question that you wanted to leave them behind as far as possible. Are you aware of that as a contradiction?

I think it’s enrichment. It was quite natural when I got to Oxford that I should emphasize my working-class background because it was something very exceptional. You must remember how very difficult it was in those days for a working-class man to get there, I had had the greatest difficulty in collecting scholarships because my people hadn’t got a bean. I managed to get an open scholarship in English literature at Christ Church and there I was taken notice of by someone who became a lifelong friend, Lord David Cecil. He came from a tremendously famous aristocratic family, and I developed aristocratic standards partly from him, but I was also by nature an aesthete. I really loved music and pictures and books and art and all things that you couldn’t get in a working-class home. I had very much the same attitude as D. H. Lawrence, although he turned his back completely on the working classes. I never did that.

In the first volume of your autobiography you say that you thought of going into the Church. Did this ambition come from within, or was it something that was suggested to you? 

It goes back to something very important. In the culturally rather impoverished way of life of the working classes the Church meant a very great deal to me. I had a rather fine voice as a boy, and I learned about music in church. It also opened my eyes to history. Of course people at Oxford thought that because I was a Cornishman I was a nonconformist, but I never was; I was always a Church of England man and that was a bit upper class too.

Why didn’t you join the Church? 

I rather grew out of that boyish idea, because as a schoolboy I was already not only writing poetry but being published. My headmaster sent my poems to Public School Verse, and there I am along with Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood and Evelyn Waugh, all the people with whom I had to compete later on.

The impression I have from your autobiography is that religion ultimately was a bit of a disappointment – its appeal was purely aesthetic and emotional. Is that still your position today? 

You’ve got it absolutely right. It never really meant anything to me intellectually. It was aesthetic, and therefore consistent with my make-up; I’d always loved the ritual and the music and the historicity of the Church, and still do. And I subscribe to the church financially, though anonymously.

Did you ever turn to the Church in extremis, for example when you were seriously ill? 

No. By that time I really had become very much of a stoic. Stoicism was also the religion of most of the boys who sacrificed their lives in the war against filthy Hitler. They did not believe intellectually in the dogmas of the Church any more than I did, but they did their duty, and I too was very much motivated by doing my duty. I learned that from All Souls, where all the old fellows were very loyal to the British Commonwealth and served it to the best of their ability. And I rather caught that. My own service was really to my daimon which drove me to writing – that was what I was intended for.

Your case for studying history is based on the fact that our problems are essentially political and social. In that context you say: ‘To that end no amount of physics and chemistry will help, but a knowledge of history may and should.’  Would you not agree that this is a rather idealistic view and that in practice we seem to learn very little from history? 

I don’t think I do agree with that. I still am very much wedded to facts. I really do not like an awful lot of people who are what I’ve always called middle-class do-gooders. I’ve never been geared to ethics. Ethically and perhaps morally, I’m rather uneducated. My real interests are factual – that’s history – and then the life of the imagination, which is poetry.

But historically, apart from being factual, is also subject to interpretation… 

Yes, but I’m not very much interested in people’s interpretations. I’m terribly anti-theorizing; indeed real historians don’t like theorizing. Right up to the war I remained tremendously anti-Chamberlain, because of his policy of appeasing Hitler. I knew at the time that it was all nonsense, though the whole country went whoring after it. So I’m not surprised when later on in life I find that people haven’t really been able to understand my work, since they don’t really know how to think.

At secondary school you were very affected by the death of a schoolfriend. You describe it as the only friendship at school that was based on ‘mutual attraction and affectionate sympathy’, and your account is very moving. Were you in love with the boy? 

I don’t think so. You must remember how long ago all this was, and how very innocent a small grammar school was. We didn’t really know much about the facts of life. John was a dear fellow, with the advantage of a London background, but he was rather a follower of mine, because I always had a leading personality.

When you went to Oxford you described yourself as ‘largely a creature of feeling and sentiment’, and uncertain of yourself intellectually… 

You’re absolutely right there. When I was a boy at school I was rather lonely because there weren’t many others who could really catch up with one, but when I got to Oxford I came into contact with other people who were as clever. The scholars at Christ Church spent an awful lot of time arguing about everything, and that was how I learned to think.

Your decision to go to the history school rather than the English school increased your interest in politics. How much was the interest to do with the idealism of a young man? 

Quite a lot. I did not choose the history school, however, but I was sent there by the dons. I was a scholar in English literature and I expected to read English because I was writing poetry and was really very literary, but in those days Christ Church didn’t teach the English school. Later on, they asked me would I take on being their English literature don, but they had already made the mistake of asking me to stand for a history fellowship and then appointed somebody else, so I turned them down and banged the door and bolted it. That was overreacting a bit, don’t you think?

Elsewhere, in A Cornishman at Oxford, you write: ‘How limitless is human folly in the sphere of politics.’ When did disillusionment creep in? 

As an undergraduate I was a member of, and ultimately chairman of, the university Labour club. This was partly loyalty to the working classes, because all my artistic taste was very un-Labour. I then learned from the political elections what idiots the masses really are about politics. President Roosevelt, a great democrat, once said, ‘the public never understands’. Well they don’t. And that was one of the fundamental factors that disillusioned me with political activity.

What do you think of politicians today? 

I’m rather sympathetic to the poor souls who public-spiritedly take up the burden of being in politics. I think they have an absolutely awful time of it. I’m quite sympathetic to John Major, and also to Tony Blair – I’m sure that they’re out to do their best. Despite hating being a political candidate, I did get to know people whom I greatly admired. I was a great follower of Ernest Bevin, who was a truly great man, and so was Clem Attlee. They were both great servants of the country. Later on in life, I got to know Winston, and of course he was top of the lot, because not only was he a great man, but he was also a man of genius, and a historian, and a writer, so that naturally he spoke to me.

You have sometimes said that but for your working-class roots you would have been a natural conservative. If you were standing for election today, which party would you be representing? 

I think that very naughty of you, asking something like that which I can’t very well answer. You are right in suggesting that my tastes were conservative, but I’m now non-party, and that’s consistent with my being sympathetic to the burden of all politicians. Look at the awful time Clinton is having. I’m rather shocked at the way in which people in any high place of responsibility are unfairly attacked constantly. It’s just like attacking the royal family, which is terrible when you think how devoted to their duty they are. This is a very important reflection on contemporary society, where everybody thinks he’s as good as everybody else. Well, that’s nonsense, and since standards of every kind are going down the drain, it is discreditable to attack public figure, whether they’re in politics or the Church. I wouldn’t be a bishop for anything today.

Your approach to academic matters has often been controversial, some would say adversarial. You have also been very dismissive of colleagues, calling them third rate and ultra conventional. Has this been a considered approach in the sense that you have set out to be controversial, or is it merely the pattern which has developed? 

It’s the responsibility of other people. I don’t think of my work as controversial at all. I think of it as very down to earth, commonsense; but commonsense is itself very controversial today. An awful lot of people writing in the papers, especially liberal intellectuals, don’t have any commonsense at all. There was nothing controversial all those years ago about my attitude to appeasement. People were absolutely wrong in thinking that you could appease Hitler, and just as I was absolutely right then, I’m absolutely right about Shakespeare now.

But your Dark Lady theory is not accepted by the world of scholarship. You seem to attribute that more to professional jealousy than to flaws in your own argument. 

I don’t think that’s right. When the great scientist Harvey discovered the circulation of blood, nobody in his own profession would believe it and his practice as a doctor fell to zero. So it doesn’t disturb me that a lot of third-rate people don’t really understand something that’s first rate.

To press you further, you seem to be absolutely certain of your theory, even though there is no circumstantial corroboration – Shakespeare left no notes to Emilia Bassano – and you dismiss everyone else who does not share that certainty. Isn’t this a rather rigid approach? 

No, it’s completely consistent with my view that when it comes to thinking people simply can’t do it. And by the way, I have a bit of news for you – people are really coming round to my view. When I was interviewed by Ned Sherrin, he understood the whole shoot, and was in agreement with it. Why? Because he’s a very clever man with a first-rate brain. I’ve always been misunderstood by people with third-rate brains, which, although it’s rather irritating, doesn’t upset me, being just what I expect. But you be careful to keep your ears open and your eyes, because you will find that my identification of the Dark Lady is absolutely irrefutable. The great bulk of people don’t know anything about the Elizabethan age, so they would do very well to shut up and listen to somebody who does know about it. After all, Cornishmen are apt to be rather cautious, and I would never risk my neck if I weren’t completely certain. As the leading authority on the Elizabethan age, I would not have been worth my keep if I didn’t really know best what was going on in it.

Most scholars seem to believe that Shakespeare was a homosexual, and the evidence does seem to be overwhelming. Why are you so unwilling to accept that theory? 

Well, because it’s absolute rubbish. Everything in William Shakespeare’s work shows that he was more than normally interested in women. That’s true of his work, and it’s true of what we know personally about him.

Enoch Powell, no intellectual lightweight, is convinced that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a committee. What is your reaction to that? 

It’s just dotty. And I don’t agree that he is no intellectual lightweight. That’s exactly what he is, and conceited with it. He ought to be prepared to learn from other people who know. Take this latest nonsense of his, that there was no crucifixion; there’s not a sliver of evidence to support it. Enoch Powell has very erratic judgement. I believe he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon and I think the explanation of his nonsense about Shakespeare is purely psychological. I regard it as his adolescent reaction against Stratford.

You divide those you disagree with into two categories: those who are ‘complacent in their ignorance’ and those who are ‘complacent in their mediocrity’. Which group does Powell fall into? 

He’s just a crank. I think if you’re a historian you know how stupid people are throughout the whole of history. I mean, imagine the whole of the German people, or most of them, voting to support Hitler. Or the great bulk of English people voting for Neville Chamberlain thinking that he could do a deal with Hitler and then surprised when it lands them in a war. I don’t really respect ordinary people’s thinking; they can’t think, only they don’t know it. Ordinary people’s thinking is practical; they can mend a fuse or they can extract a tooth, but they can’t think in the abstract. I quite like human beings, but I don’t respect their stupidity.

Your attitude towards homosexuality seems to be quite relaxed. You see it as a variety of ordinary sexual experience, but you don’t approve of gay-rights activists or homosexual lobbies. Why not? 

I’ve never been in favour of people really sticking their necks out about awkward subjects like that. My own principle is that people should keep their private lives private. Of course if they want to make their private tastes public, like my friend Wystan Auden, then they’re open to discussion, but I happen to think that’s rather vulgar. And an awful lot of activist propaganda, whether on the part of men or of women, is also vulgar. I would prefer them to shut up.

You once said in a newspaper interview in 1993, ‘My sympathies are entirely homo.’ Was your own disposition exclusively towards homosexuality? 

You must always be careful about this word exclusive, because people are really much more mixed than they realize. I have a strong feminine side in my sensibility, but I also have a rather strong masculine side in my aggressiveness. I’m against people categorizing themselves too simply. In all my work I’m very sympathetic to the complexity and ambivalence of human nature. And I don’t expect them to listen to me.

You were in love with Adam von Trott during the thirties. It seems to have been a very complex relationship, made more difficult by relations between Germany and England … how do you look back on that relationship? 

I still value and remember it. Of course it was completely platonic, both of us being terribly high minded. I owed a good deal to it because it gave me a window into the German soul and enabled me to understand things which most English people don’t really understand. I once asked Adam why it was that the Germans have to be so hysterical about everything, and he gave me a fascinating reply to the effect that Germans don’t really feel that they’re alive unless they are being hysterical.

Have all your loves always been platonic? 

Wouldn’t you like to know…

Yes I would… 

I told you that I think people should keep their private lives private. But if you read my poems you will find that my private life is all in my poetry, and you can read between the lines for yourself.

You have never married … did you ever come close to marriage? 

I’ve always had women friends and I’ve really been quite close to at least two or three of them, but as one of my friends in Oxford, a Roman Catholic monk, observed, I’m really married to my work. The other thing is that due to all that strain of trying to get to Oxford and being a political candidate, I developed the most appalling duodenal ulcers which nearly killed me, and since I was always under the strain of ill health, that helped to prevent me from being caught. In this respect I’m a little ahead of my time, because people don’t really go in for marrying nowadays. It saves the expense of divorce.

Do you think women are bad for one’s health? 

No, I’m in favour of marriage for ordinary people. But I think that marrying a man of genius is an awful strain for the woman. Look at all the frightful stories of married unhappiness among gifted people.

C. P. Snow once said: ‘I wish I was as certain of anything as Dr Rowse is of everything.’ Do you find that remark cutting? 

No, I didn’t have a very high opinion of Uncle Charles Snow as a novelist, and in any case that remark is a complete piece of plagiarism. It is actually what Lord Melbourne said of the historian Macaulay. One of the things that people don’t understand is that privately I’m really rather sceptical. If you notice, I haven’t really stuck my neck out about many things of public importance. But I am certain about things in the Elizabethan age, and so I damn well ought to be, having spent my life at it.

You seem to believe that since the end of the war British society has gone rapidly downhill and consequently you do everything you can to isolate yourself from it. Isn’t that a completely escapist outlook on life? 

Don’t you think it’s a very good thing to escape from a burning house? To escape from a flood, washing everything down the drain? Yes, I do think that modern society is very shocking. There is a real breakdown of standards in public life.

You once said that modern Britain is governed by three things: thuggery, muggery and buggery. Did that statement appeal to you for its aphoristic qualities, or do you think it is a theory with a serious basis in fact? 

I think I must have been making a joke, if I said it at all. I must say I don’t recognize it as a quote. You have to be awfully careful nowadays because people will print things in the newspapers that were never said.

Although you are an Elizabethan at heart, it is unlikely that you would have risen in society under Elizabeth I. Does this strike you as irony? 

You’re absolutely right that I am more geared to Elizabethan standards than I am to the complete downfall of standards in democratic society. But I don’t agree that people couldn’t rise in the Elizabethan age. William Shakespeare rose from a rather good middle-class family in Stratford to be the leading dramatist of the age and he made himself independent with a small fortune. Francis Drake, a fellow west-countryman, did far better, because he started as a poor boy like me with absolutely nothing at all, and see what he made of his life.

You have often said that you know you are a better poet than most poets published today. What do you think has prevented this from being more generally recognized? 

You’ve got a very searching point there. It’s partly due to the specialization of today. People think of me as just a historian and nothing else, whereas the truth is that I was writing and even publishing poetry years before I ever dared to write a work of historical research. Also I always regarded my poetry as fundamentally private and I think that’s one of the reasons why it isn’t really fully appreciated. Of course people never understand anything complicated and I rather think that my work is so complicated that it will only receive true recognition in the next century.

Is this a difficult cross to bear, given how important your poems are to you? 

Partly, but it only confirms what I think about ordinary people’s stupidity. I never really take seriously what anybody thinks, because I know they don’t know how to think. I have known a number of poets in my time. I owed a very great deal to T. S. Eliot, who published the first three volumes of my poetry and wrote the blurbs. I’ve always thought that if my poetry was good enough for T. S. Eliot, it’s certainly good enough for third-rate people who never understand anything.

Do you think perhaps you have stayed young by remaining angry? 

I’m rather less angry than I used to be. My attitude now is much more one of acceptance. At one time I was a very angry young man politically, and it made me hate people’s idiocy. I don’t agree with religious people who talk about original sin and say that human beings are fundamentally evil. I think that’s rubbish. The trouble with them is that they’re just stupid. It is human folly which is responsible for all the wars and all the hatreds between peoples. William Shakespeare recognized the fact of human idiocy, but he was more accepting than I am. My mind has been much more influenced by Jonathan Swift who thought that humans were awful fools. That’s really the true explanation of what goes on in Northern Ireland, or the Lebanon, or India, or South Africa, or nearer home.

In A Cornish Childhood you say that you never for a moment understood why humanity should be regarded as a virtue. ‘I thought it was contemptible,’ you say. Why do you think humanity so contemptible? 

I think it’s quite right that humble people should enjoy the pleasure of humility, but an awful lot of humility is really bogus and just an inverse way of people recommending themselves. I think self-deprecation is nonsense. I’m more in favour of absolute honesty and commonsense.

You have compared yourself to Stendhal in the sense that you don’t expect your work to be fully appreciated till half a century after your death. What is it, do you think, that prevents it from being fully appreciated during your lifetime? 

You’re asking an awful lot there. For one thing, I don’t really have an English temperament. Like most Cornishmen I’m really much more cutting and aggressive, and that’s one thing that makes it difficult for English people. The English have a great weakness for humbug, like Lord Baldwin. He was absolutely made of humbug. Well, I don’t stand for any humbug, and I have a very sharp nose for it. Another thing is that people don’t really understand an aesthete. There’s also a whole side of my life which people really know nothing about, and that’s America. So it would take them an awful long time to catch up with what really amounts to three lives: Cornwall, Oxford and America. All this will come right in time, but in the meantime it would be very difficult indeed for somebody to get all the way round the mountain.

Abuse is Never the Answer

 

The Ukraine crisis will never be resolved by a barrage of continual threats against Russia by the Western alliance.

It can only worsen the crisis and cause mayhem rather than pave the way for a measured and sensible dialogue between all the parties concerned.

The age of bullying is no longer a viable factor, given that Russia is a formidable power and a very important player in world politics. The more isolated she finds herself the more aggressive will be her response.

China, which has now joined the league of superpowers, will side with Russia against the United States and its Western allies if it comes to the crunch – and no one can afford a global war which will have a catastrophic effect the likes of which we have yet to experience.

Every Tom Dick and Harry is now throwing abuse at Putin, whose precarious position will turn him into a diehard to the detriment of the West. His popularity in Russia is well established and make no mistake about it the more he’s pushed to the wall the more the present turmoil will persist – and more lives will be sacrificed in the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

Western leaders should watch their language and try to be more conciliatory if their true intentions are to bring peace. They should refrain from the cheap abuse that can only fuel hatred and give scope to those whose power craze will lead us to uncharted and perilous waters.

Russia is not an inconsequential toy you play with. Napoleon tried it, so did Hitler. They paid a heavy price for their fatal mistake.

Let’s therefore be sensible and use the art of diplomacy as opposed to the murderous gun and hope for salvation.

A Cry For Sanity

The fighting in Gaza is a great blemish to humanitarian values and a return to the barbarity of centuries ago, when man settled a dispute by killing his foe and razing to the ground every standing monument and living creature to assert his domination.

And we call ourselves civilised. Far from it.

Is defending oneself a licence to kill and maim civilians as well as children, and in the process manage to get the backing of politicians worldwide who sing the tune which is expedient to their given objective so as not to antagonise one party as opposed to another? David Cameron is a prime example. Every time he speaks he drops a brick. He is rapidly becoming a master of platitudes.

In the meantime the killing continues and the world watches while the bells of calamity toll loud and clear.

Both sides bury their dead and mothers weep and see devastation all around them. Is that a recipe for peace or has man lost his head?

Hatred knows no boundaries. It is a plague that spreads so quickly and effectively, and destroys everything in its path.

The world must act now and stop the butchery before God loses His temper and confines us all to eternal damnation.

Berlusconi the Survivor

I’m glad that Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted last week of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute at his ‘bunga bunga’ parties for lack of evidence.

An appeals court in Milan reversed the conviction delivered last year by a lower court in which the former Italian prime minister was sentenced to seven years in jail and banned for life from holding political office.

The original trial was perhaps the most lurid and sensational of the many trials Berlusconi has faced since entering politics twenty years ago.

The seventy-seven-year-old billionaire was accused of paying thousands of pounds for sex with Karima el-Mahroug, a Moroccan nightclub dancer nicknamed ‘Ruby the Heart Stealer’, who was seventeen at the time of the alleged offences.

Prostitution is only legal in Italy if the woman is above the age of eighteen.

Both deny they ever had sex and Mr Berlusconi insisted his bunga bunga parties were ‘elegant dinners’ rather than orgies in which young starlets and showgirls performed stripteases and danced around a priapic statuette.

Berlusconi might be a rogue whose lifestyle is perhaps not to everybody’s liking, but at least he’s a character whose flamboyant ways strike a chord with the hedonistic world that so many rich people inhabit – and that includes politicians, of course, whose sexual perversions are kept under wraps while pretending to be morally puritanical and guardians of the nation’s high standards of conduct.

When one looks around the globe, there are very few people in high positions who inspire confidence and are genuinely role models to follow and don’t bore your arse off.

Berlusconi is at least a joker’s juggler whose deeds are not more reprehensible than most, but a likeable devil whose presence makes the political scene a merry-go-round of uninterrupted mirth.

Comedians of his calibre are a necessary evil, if the political arena is to survive its worst decline in living memory.

Call me what you will, for I have a soft spot for the old goat.

Baria Alamuddin

 

 

The future mother-in-law of George Clooney is now centre stage and I’m sure people might wish to know more about her, and especially her view on the role of women in our society.

I had the opportunity to interview her in 1987 when I was researching my first book, Women.

At that time I compiled the following biography for inclusion in the list of the extraordinary range of women I had interviewed:

 

Baria Alamuddin is Lebanese and was educated in Beirut. She graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1972 with a degree in journalism, mass media and political science. She has been editor of the Lebanese television news programme and of Al Assayad magazine and, since 1986, editor-in-chief and chairman of Media Services Syndicate. She is a freelance journalist, specializing in interviews with heads of state. She is also visiting lecturer on journalism to Lebanon and London Universities and a Middle East political advisor to Lebanese and British television. Baria Alamuddin is married and has two daughters.

 

Here is what she told me then…

 

ON HER EARLY INFLUENCES

 

‘My father and mother divorced when I was one year old, so the biggest influence in my life up to now has been my mother. She’s the image I always try to follow, because she was among the very few educated women of her time. She was a Palestinian Jordanian, and when she came to the American University in Beirut she was the first Jordanian woman to study there. I was always influenced by her beauty, her charm, her intelligence, everything she did. I don’t know that I still try, but I copied her for a long time, and I always stop and ask, would my mother like this, would my mother like that? There was no other person in my life.’

 

ON ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

 

‘Sometimes I feel emotionally disadvantaged because I feel things differently from the way a man does. Sometimes I lie awake all night because of one word that’s been said to me, and the man doesn’t even notice what he’s said.

 

‘I always tell my two daughters to enjoy their souls and their bodies, because I think at the base of all this repression of women in the Middle East is a lot of sexual and soul problems. The women in the Middle East are not sure of what they want to give, and what they have to give. Many people of my age who went to university with me wanted to have lovers, to have sex, yet inside was this tremendous struggle: what would society say, what would my aunties say, what would the man I love and marry say? There is a very long struggle, and not everybody in the end wins, and this is why you see lots of complexes in our society. In the West, I see this to a great extent, too, because women are basically the same all over the world.’

 

ON FEMINISM 

 

‘I am not a feminist. I don’t want a woman to be a fighter, or to rule the life of a man. I would still like the man to ask the woman to marry him, not the woman to ask the man to marry her. I still would like him to buy her a rose and call her and tell her I love you. I don’t like the roles to be switched. In general, I think a woman is much more emotional, she is a softer person, she can live her emotions and her feelings a lot deeper, by the nature of her own being. Why so we want two creatures exactly the same? The world would be a very boring place to live in, But, to have a productive society, we should have equality between men and women. You cannot run the world with half its powers. In the West, I think it is slowly improving, although sometimes in the wrong direction, but in the Middle East, it’s taking longer because of different factors, basically the wars. People are not busy educating women at the moment. In Lebanon now, there is a whole new generation of boys and girls who have nothing to do with education and refinement or culture, and the same is true in many other Arab countries.

 

‘I think a liberated Western woman is a woman who can easily shed all the social factors and just walk away from them and go towards whatever she wants as a completely liberated individual, regardless of tradition. This is something that people in our part of the world can never do. I have often felt I have been a pioneer of this in my society, because, even as a child, I always wanted to do things differently. I remember wanting to hurt society, to attack society and do things just to spite society because I felt it interfered in every single detail in my life. My God, society in our countries can even marry you off! There will always be a difference between the woman in the West and the woman in the East. A woman in the East has femininity which the women in the West never had maybe, and never will have. Basically, I like the evolution in the Middle East, in the Arab countries, better than in the West.’

 

ON SEXUALITY

 

‘Needs are basically the same in men and women, and sex is a matter of education and culture, upbringing and training. In our society, a man is brought up to be aggressive, to look for it, to go and get it; whereas a girl is not. She also has the need, but the application is different. Application is a very individualistic thing. I don’t think any two people can make love like any two other people. I always have the feeling that there is a misconception about sex in the world, both in the East and the West. I have personally interviewed people about marriage, and to some women it is just a means to get children. I interviewed one woman who had never even been kissed. I know women in the Middle East who hate sex, who think sex is dirty and not something you talk about. I am sure in the West too, if you have a father attacking a daughter, then this girl’s perception of sex will never be the same. There are many elements involved in the application of sex. To me, sexual relations only make sense in the context of love. Any other time it is just like eating; you can go and get it in this restaurant or another restaurant. And I don’t believe a man can make love to another woman if he loves his wife.’

 

ON RELATIONSHIPS 

 

‘I feel most comfortable with men by far. There is no comparison. Most women actually bore me, and most women I find unsure of themselves, especially in the Arab countries, and that really upsets me. They are not in control of their destinies or lives, and I feel they are just souls floating around waiting for things to take them away, here or there, and I find it a waste of time.

 

‘Marriage has all the disadvantages the world has. It is a very difficult institution. I think most people are married because they are scared of society, because it is convenient and they have a car, and they carry a name and the children are there. I know of hardly any marriages that are there by virtue of love. I’m not taking about my marriage, because that is another story. I look at my marriage differently. I work very hard at it and yet I am always afraid. Not of losing the marriage, no, but of losing me in the marriage, or of losing the marriage to me. I am scared.

 

‘For the world to be straightened out and for us to be able to have a peaceful, strong, productive society, the woman has to change her attitude towards life, and the way she expects things from herself. I think she controls society since she brings up the child. For example, my husband has two boys from a previous marriage, and I brought them up. It was a beautiful experience as far as I am concerned, and I think for them, too. While they were growing up, they started coming and saying to me, today I kissed her, or I did this or that to her. I used to say to them, it takes two to kiss, it takes two to make love, it takes two to love, to build, to bring up a child. Anything not done together with the same intensity is not done properly. You can kiss a wall.’

 

Rereading this interview, I still remember the encounter with this formidable and enchanting woman. No wonder George Clooney has fallen for her daughter if she’s anything like her mother! He will be a lucky guy.