DIARY
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE My delight in Kinglsey Amis's Booker prize has been rather spoilt by the snide comments which the various profilers have made about his second wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard, a good example of which can be found in last Sunday's Observer. `During his second marriage,' the anony- mous profiler writes, 'he surprised his friends by adopting a genteel lifestyle at his home in Flask Walk, Hampstead . . . . He told a chum, the columnist Henry Fairlie, that he would be in future less welcome to call because he failed to meet Ms Howard's standard of decorum.' What nonsense. Henry Fairlie left this country for America long before Kingsley's marriage to Jane and has not been back since. So there can never have been any question of him calling. Jane did, it is true, try to moderate Kingsley's very heavy drinking, which meant discouraging some of his more Importunate drinking companions. But a wife does not have to be genteel to want to stop a husband destroying himself. As for being some kind of a governessy killjoy, trying to transform Lucky Jim into little Lord Fauntleroy, that is a travesty of the truth. Why, she even allowed him to continue dousing his food in HP sauce, than which, coming from one of London's most distinguished cooks, there can be no greater mark of loving tolerance. Jane and Kingsley's marriage was not ideal. In latter years it was very sad. But attempts to suggest the cause lay in Jane's desire to. gentrify her husband is to do a fairly horrible injustice to both.
How greatly the Commission for Ra- cial Equality would improve its standing if it took the lead in pillorying those Labour councils which are now persecuting whites on grounds of race. I do not doubt that there is still much discrimination against blacks and browns. But at the present time the most flagrant and brazen examples of racial discrimination apply to white people. Brent Council, for example, is trying to argue that only black and brown teachers should be allowed to teach black and brown children, because white teachers cannot be trusted to give them a square educational deal. Now that, it seems to me, is unquestionably a racialist discrimination, as becomes obvious if one turns it round and argues that only white teachers should be allowed to teach white children, be- cause black and brown teachers cannot be
trusted. It should not be the Secretary of State for Education who has to fight this
kind of pernicious nonsense. It should be the statutory body set up to do precisely that: the Commission for Racial Equality. Up to now, as far as I know, the chairman of that body has not said a word. Racial victimisation, or the fear of, also lies behind the mystery surrounding the identity of the author of a new book, The London Dialogues, the excellence of which I have already mentioned in an earlier diary. The book has wise things to say about race and there lies the problem, since the author is now a schoolmaster and we all know what happens to schoolmas- ters who say wise things about race. Taking his courage in both hands, however, the author has now authorised me to disclose his identity. He is David Hurst, a former beak at Eton, a former Law don at Reading University and at present teaching at a school in Dulwich. Not entirely a stranger to controversy, he was sacked from Reading for writing articles in the Daily Telegraph describing how little work university teachers did. The London Dia- logues, however, is a very serious work and ought to be widely read. It can be got from G. Hartley & Company, 35 Piccadilly, London W1 (tel. 01 439 8985) price f18. But how scandalous it is that such a scholarly work should now have to be distributed in this hole and corner way, for fear of the author being driven out of his profession.
13 elow are the results of my friend and colleague Adrian Berry's computerised `good English' test, in which various contri- butors to the Spectator, the Times and the Sunday Telegraph are judged by the length of their sentences.
Writer Number of words per sentence Ferdinand Mount 18 Peregrine Worsthorne 19 Jeffrey Bernard 20 Taki 21 Bernard Levin 26 Auberon Waugh 36 Alastair Forbes 51 I was surprised that Bernard Levin did not come out of this great test as badly as I had expected, but he uses a great many dashes, exclamation signs and question marks, all of which are legitimate sentence termina- tors. Auberon Waugh disdains to use these devices, and prefers to end his sentences only with full stops, which is why his score appears, unjustly I think, to be rather poor. But I believe that for this reason
Auberon is not a good subject for this rather crude computer test, and he is
obviously a good writer. On the other hand, the computer has captured Ali For- bes's style to a nicety. The length of his sentences, and his age-long subsidiary clauses, are intolerable! As a general rule, when considering post-war non-fiction texts, the grammarians say this about the number of words per sentence: 0-14: staccato, or 'sergeant-major English' 15-24: good English 25-37: long-winded 38 upwards: intolerably verbose, legalese.
James Joyce would obviously come out of this test extremely badly. Nevertheless, he is considered to be a very fine writer. As against this, however, not many people can understand him.
At the end of my street in Fulham two estate agents' notice-boards were last week ripped from their moorings and left un- gainly across the pavement. Nails were bare and could have ripped clothing, or worse. Across one board was scrawled in graffiti-friendly magic marker 'Death to parasitic house-sellers'; across the other `Down with free advertising'. Apart from the vandal's objection to free advertising did he or she not object to the paid variety? — what struck me most was the grotesque violence of his protest. Surely it was wholly out of proportion to the alleged offence? Not for the first time I thought that the scandals which we are asked to decry animal vivisection, racist remarks, parasitic house-selling and all — are not one half so dangerous to civilisation, indeed to the peace of the world, as is the totally disproportionate fury with which they are denounced.
Afew weeks ago I had the honour of taking the chair at a Foyle's literary lunch for Jeffrey Archer. In a few weeks' time I am to have the honour of doing the same for Princess Michael of Kent. Enough said. Incidentally, knowing Jeffrey Archer's romantic liking for the grand gesture, I am amazed that he did not seize his opportun- ity to emulate the great Duke of Welling- ton and tell the woman to 'publish and be damned'.
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