Notebook
A lot of nonsense has been put about in the effort to save three British mercenaries from the firing squad in Angola. It was right that Mr Callaghan should appeal to President Neto for clemency, but since then several Politicians have made largely irrelevant statements about the mercenaries being denied a fair trial and being sentenced merely for being mercenaries, which was no crime. Mr Maudling, for the Opposition, told the House of Commons on Tuesday that we should demand justice for the mercenaries, and he drew a puzzling analogy With British citizens who fought in the Spanish Civil War
The British citizens fighting in that war expected to be shot if captured. So did the mercenaries in Angola. This is the only relevant point to make; and if the winning side in the Angolan war chose to hold a Show trial of some mercenaries who fought for the losers—as a result of which four men are sentenced to death—there is little cause to cry 'injustice'.
How one wonders, did the Observer draw the conclusion last Sunday that the newlyelected Warden of All Souls, Mr Patrick Neill, is 'fairly apolitical in a low-key. Conservative way, a sort of Heathite' ? While Mr Neill, as chairman of the Bar Council, Was quite rightly careful to conceal his own Political opinions, there is no reason to supPose that he differed very strongly from the views of his wife Caroline, who was among the most militant campaigners against the Common Market and felt an unusually intense dislike of Mr Edward Heath. Not that it matters much anyway (except for the Maintenance of respectable reporting standards), because All Souls no longer has the Political significance that some believe it had in the 'thirties, when the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Editor of the Times and the Archbishop of Canterbury could meet there at weekends. If All Souls has a modern equivalent in that sense, it is Nuffield College, whose Visiting Fellows include Jack Jones, William Whitelaw, Len Murray and Eric Varley. Nuffield also has the dubious distinction of having provided the Prime Minister with a trash course in economics.
It is not extraordinary to learn of an exhibition of paintings, gouaches and prints by Graham Sutherland for sale in early September at the Redfern Gallery, but it is disconcerting to find that all the works come from Douglas Cooper, the art historian, Whose famous collection of cubist paintings by Picasso, Braque, Leger and Gris has for many years adorned his home, the Chateau
de Castile at Argilliers in the south of France. Douglas Cooper and Graham Sutherland have been friends and distant neighbours for many years. Mr Cooper has never been particularly sympathetic to modern British art, so that the publication of his large and copiously illustrated, monograph on Sutherland some years ago caused surprise in art circles.
For Mr CoOper to sell every work by Sutherland in his collection seems a dismissive gesture after such warm partisanship. The occasion should arouse the interest of serious collectors: Douglas Cooper's eye for fine quality is well known and the Sutherland paintings from his collection embody many of this artist's best known images.
Meanwhile, Sutherland has chosen to commemorate the great debt he owes Pembrokeshire, whose richly bleak landscape inspired so much of his early woyk, by presenting a large group of paintings, drawings and studies from his own collection to Picton Castle, at Haverfordwest, Dyfed. Through the help of his friend Nanning Philipps, the collection will be housed in a special public gallery at Picton Castle and should add immensely to Ideal interest for visitors to Wales.
Even if you are lucky enough to receive an honour from the Queen, you cannot escape the tentacles of Whitehall bureaucracy. You are provided with an absurdly complicated list of instructions concerning the expenses you are entitled to claim when you journey to the palace to receive your honour. Among these is an entitlement to draw 65 pence from the government as a subsistence allowance if you should be obliged to be away from home for more than five hours. One wonders how many newly elevated barons, who find the expedition takes them a little less than five hours feel tempted to dawdle on the way home. When a public servant makes a complete fool of himself there may be cause for relief: the idiocy may be exposed and thwarted early. An example is the grotesque statement by Mr Tony Banks, chairman of the GLC's general purposes committee, that he would like to lend £2 million to keep Chelsea Football Club going. He made his attitude all the clearer by saying that he would no more let the Club disappear than some of his colleagues would let the Royal Opera. Comment on that comparison is superfluous, and it is no doubt useless to point out that Chelsea's misfortune is at least as much the result of misjudgment as of bad luck. London ratepayers should be thankful that Mr Banks has exposed himself so clearly and to such widespread derision. It is now scarcely possible—even given what our local authorities are capable of—that he can get away with his act of charity.
It is good news that the Young and enterprising publishing company Quartet has been acquired by the remarkable entrepreneur Mr Naim Attallah. More publishing houses have been feeling the financial draught of late, and Quartet was not the only one to experience an acute cash problem.ln their case difficulties were aggravated by their adventurous but, alas, unsuccessful policy of publishing 'Midway' editions: soft-covered original books, priced between hardbacks and paperback reprints.
The press reports of the takeover, incidentally, refer to Mr Attallah as an Arab, suggesting that he is another of the Gulf sheikhs who have been buying up London. He comes, in fact, of a Palestinian Christian family, and is a British citizen who has lived here since 1949.
David McEwen, who died of a stroke last week at the age of thirty-seven, will be missed more than most. A man who devoted his life to friendship, giving freely of his full attention, the spur of wit, the refuge of charm, and—for the fortunate few—his enduring affection, he found in communication with others both his finest moments and his worst. His worst because in worldly terms he seemed a failure, a flaneur whose larger intellectual powers were 'wasted in the devouring love for talk. But his best for the same reason : he never stinted of time or care if the subject were right.
Some will say that David McEwen lived out of his time, more typical as he seemed to be of an earlier age, a more spacious, aristocratic and frankly leisured life. Yet this is not enough : a natural melancholic, he was only as out of step with our own drab times as any thinking man might be, and his generous humour could illuminate and relieve even this bleak era. And what he found in the history of his much-loved Scotland was not nostalgia but a sense of real things happening, real issues fought for. His existence expressed a whole pattern of values at odds with today's. Perhaps that was what made him cling so loyally to his many friends.
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