DIARY P. D.JAMES
This year is the quincentenary of Tho- mas Cranmer, who was born on 2 July 1489, the liturgical genius to w' om the Church of England largely owes its greatest treasure, the Book of Common Prayer. Astonishingly, no commemorative stamp is being issued. I find this the more strange since we have recently had stamps to commemorate the anniversary of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the centenary of public education and the third direct elections to the European Parliament. And last year there were no fewer than four stamps commemorating William Morgan, a Welsh country parson, later to become Bishop of St Asaph, who translated the Bible into Welsh. I don't begrudge the worthy Bishop his com- memoration, but why not Cranmer? Perhaps the Church of England felt that it would be invidious to put his name forward for a commemorative stamp while con- tinuing to neglect both the Book of Com- mon Prayer and the Authorised Version of the Bible. But the quincentenary will not pass uncelebrated. On Sunday 15 October all services throughout the day at St Paul's Cathedral will be Prayer Book services, and on Tuesday 7 November the Arch- bishop of Canterbury will preach at a special Evensong in Westminster Abbey. There is also, I believe, to be a lecture on Cranmer at Lambeth Palace on 31 Octo- ber, and a committee under the chair- manship of the Master of Emmanuel Col- lege, Cambridge, has organised an exhibi- tion which will take place at the British Library and will be opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury on 26 October. This is all very welcome, but I still feel that we should have had a commemorative stamp.
Last month I visited Italy on a short British Council tour and was in Naples on the night Napoli won their football match against Hamburg and became European champions. When the match ended the city went wild; cars and bikes, all precariously over-loaded, roared down the narrow streets, horns blaring, the fans holding aloft streaming blue banners large as bed- sheets. I was escorted back to my hotel after a dinner-party and the walk took three times its normal time. But the experience was totally unfrightening. No one was aggressive, no one was fighting, no one was drunk and, indeed, I saw no drinking in the streets. Neapolitan mascu- linity may have its less agreeable aspects but they don't include getting fighting- drunk in public. In Rome I wandered out to the Spanish Steps late on Saturday night. Young people were perched on every step in a solid mass like migrating birds. Some were strumming guitars, some doing a little buying and selling, all were talking with various degrees of animation. None was drunk. It was a very different scene from the centre of Oxford on a Saturday night. Is it, as was suggested to me, that family influence in Italy is still comparatively strong, that the Italians, being used to wine from childhood, use alcohol with more discretion, or that our weather is to blame, since only in sunless climates do people drink to induce insensi- tivity or get fighting-drunk? Or is it that our young people no longer know how to talk to each other?
Iwent from Italy to Hay-on-Wye for the second Literary Festival and to a very different kind of beauty from that of the Bay of Naples. I don't think I have ever seen West Herefordshire look lovelier. I stayed with an elderly friend in her 17th- century oak-beamed cottage at Eardisley and we drove to Hay through narrow lanes between a foam of cow-parsley. And yet, for me, there has always been something slightly sinister in the beauty of the Welsh marches. After my talk I was interviewed by a radio reporter who tried to inveigle me into discussing local dissensions about the Festival and enquired whether Hay-on- Wye would be a suitable setting for fiction- al murder and which local character I might choose as victim. He hadn't heard of the town's notorious real-life murderer, Herbert Rowse Armstrong, solicitor and retired Army major, who was executed in 1922 for the murder of his wife by arsenic. Armstrong has the unenviable distinction of being the only British solicitor executed for murder and might have got away with it if he hadn't later turned his attention to a professional rival, Oswald Martin. Arm- strong invited him to his house for tea and handed him a buttered scone with the words 'Excuse fingers'. On returning home Martin became violently ill and an analysis of his urine was found to contain arsenic. Mrs Armstrong's body was then exhumed.
During the protracted investigation Martin was instructed by the police to carry on with his daily routine as if nothing had happened and not to betray to Armstrong that he was under suspicion. The unfortun- ate and terrified Martin, bombarded daily with invitations to take tea in Armstrong's office, which was immediately opposite his in Broad Street, had difficulty in inventing new excuses and was reduced to sending out his secretary for buns early in the afternoon so that he could claim that he had already taken tea. It is interesting how some murder cases retain their fascination while others are forgotten. In the Arm- strong case perhaps it is that the little town outwardly has changed so little. Martin's office is still that of a solicitor and the chemist where Armstrong bought his arse- nic is still a chemist's shop. And there is at least one local woman who remembers the case and believes that Armstrong was innocent and that his wife, a nagging • hypochondriac, took the arsenic herself. But that hardly explains the poisoning of Martin. Perhaps, in the mode of old- fashioned detective stories, the Armstrong poisoning should be known as 'The Case of the Buttered Scone'.
Our local gardens are looking wonder- ful. And what an accommodating flower is the geranium. I am amazed to think that once I disliked it and, indeed, I am still repelled by massed displays of eye- scorching red in public parks. But every- thing about the individual flower now delights me, the variety of form and colour and, in particular, the scent of the leaves. How would we London gardeners, with our hanging baskets, window boxes and bleak back-yards, do without geraniums? Mine continued to bloom throughout the mild winter and will last for at least another year if only I can restrain my tendency to over-water.
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