Notebook
It Was depressing to read that a fourteenYear-old boy, Paul Kerr, has committed so anY crimes since the age of eleven that the Juvenile court felt obliged to send him to the Old Bailey when he was accused of causing grievous bodily harm to a widow of eightySeven. No doubt the magistrates were right In deciding that they had insufficient powers to deal with the boy who had already been Placed in local authority care on numerous occasions. And the two-year sentence of detention given him by the Recorder, Mr James Miskin, QC, may well have been the most appropriate punishment. But what of the words used by Mr Miskin when he Passed sentence? He told Kerr that it was clear that neither his parents nor the local authority had `the capacity to contain and Inhibit your natural predilection towards (Tune. He might just as well• have been sPeaking Latin, for which judges have a natural predilection. It may be that Kerr is already set on a life of crime — the proportion of young offenders who abstain from crime in the future, who are reformed by the Penal system, is very low. But if there is to be any chance of rehabilitation there must be communication between authority and Offender. No criminal aged fourteen is ever likely to respect and accept the law if the symbols of judicial authority speak a totally different language. And it is no better when seine probation officers describe those in custody as being 'in a closed situation'.
.1,11k crime of kidnapping is committed when the victim is deprived of his liberty and carried away from the place where he Wished to be. Res ipsa loquitur, you —or Mr Justice Cocklecarrot —might say. But it took ,the Court of Appeal to decide the matter last week. The point of issue — amazingly — Was whether the prosecution had to prove that the kidnapper took his victim to the race he intended. The Court decided not, _.ut Lord Justice Lawton said there was very little authority on the crime of kidnapping. In view of what is happening in most of Western Europe this is a matter to which the "ew chairman of the Law Commission, Mr Justice Kerr, should direct his urgent attention. As an expert on air law he should start With hijacking.
Whether Wally Herbert completes his Planned circumnavigation of Greenland by Sledge, or Chris Bonington leads a successful expedition to climb the Himalayan mountain K2, is of no particular concern to me. When they return no doubt we shall salute their courage and read of those times When `conditions reached the limits of 'Inman endurance'. What would be more
interesting, however, would be to learn how Mr Herbert and Mr Bonington spend those lonely hours when the wind moans its threnody through the canvas of a precariously pitched tent, and in particular what books they turn to. In J.M. Scott's Portrait of an Ice Cap (an account of the British Arctic Air-Route Expedition to Greenland in 1930-31), the diaries of the men reveal a variety of reading matter which might not be chosen today. `I read a chapter of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans and St John's Gospel, also two or three chapters of the Imitation of Christ', one of them recorded. Poetry was sometimes read aloud to a companion, and Shakespeare was also popular. 'Read Cymbeline, then started King John. Sledges falling to bits: what can we do? Dogs prowling round tent all evening.' My uncle, August Courtauld, who spent five months alone on the Greenland ice cap, particularly enjoyed Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, The Master of Ballantrae, Guy Mannering, The Forsyte Saga and Whitaker's Almanack. When Wally Herbert and Chris Bonington come to tell their tales for the Sunday Times, which is reporting both expeditions, they should be encouraged to tell us what literature has kept them going.
What an excellent magazine is Country Life. In a recent issue I learnt that a nineteenthcentury engraving in my possession, known as `The Merry Beaglers', depicts the Revd Philip Honywood, of Coggeshall, Essex, who was the first breeder of the modern beagle. Having known nothing of the picture I am now delighted to learn that the good parson was astute enough not only to
found the breed which flourishes today but also to sell most of his hounds for a good price to the Prince Consort. But for entertainment and what might be classified as fascinating useless information, there is surely nothing to beat the letters columns of Country Life (where only titled correspondents have their names printed above the letters). Among the esoteric collection of readers' photographs which often accompany these letters there was last month a picture of a baboon hanging from a chandelier. The correspondent recalled the occasion, at a party in Dublin some seventy-five years ago, when a baboon, which 'somehow made its way into the entertainment', grabbed a tiara from the head of an American lady and jumped with it onto a chandelier. Someone suggested shooting the animal but the owner of the tiara 'was opposed to this revenge on the grounds that a miss might damage her headgear (I think my cousin helpfully suggested this possibility to her). The point was shortly resolved, however, by the baboon catching on fire from the candles it had not extinguished'. Long may Irish parties continue.
Now that the killing of otters has been made illegal, and otter-hunting has been stopped
— voluntarily, according to its enthusiasts — the hounds are being employed to go after the coypu instead. A friend of mine reluc tantly admits to being responsible for the introduction of the coypu into this country. In the early 1930s an Argentinian admirer sent her, one assumes as a token of affection, three females and one male of this ugly rodent species (their skins were used in South America for nutria furs). The animals were kept caged in a pond in Norfolk for several months but then they escaped. They duly multiplied and spread over East Anglia where, as vegetarians, they have become a serious pest to farmers and gardeners. With two webbed back feet the coypu spends much of its time in rivers and does a lot of damage to the river banks. Now that these animals are being killed by hounds perhaps this may ease my friend's conscience in her declining years.
The celebrations in Ipswich which followed the team's victory at Wembley last Saturday (of course the best side won) reminded me of a commentator's description some years ago which, in another place, would no doubt come under the heading of 'Colemanballs'. At the end of a match won by the Scottish team Raith Rovers, based in Kirkcaldy, Fife, the commentator, stirred to convey the excitement of the occasion, ventured the original comment: 'There'll be dancing in the streets of Raith tonight'. Dancing there may have been, but even the most jubilant football fan could hardly have imagined himself to be in the streets of Raith. There is no such place.
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