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Everything’s for the best
Does it matter that Simon Jenkins, apart from saying nothing new or amusing or well-expressed, is wrong when he says that Harold Pinter and Kingsley Amis were “angry young men”? Pinter took no part in that supposed movement. Kingsley Amis actually refused to contribute to Declaration, which was a collection of essays that publicised “the angries,” nearly all of whom were on the make via politics to fame. One key, unmentioned figure of the time was Colin Wilson, whose affectations of intellectual cosmopolitanism heralded the intrusion into cultural punditry of a non-graduate, unconnected outsider indeed, who was first saluted and then dismissed the literary service.
As for there being no female writers, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook was soon an important, if now obsolete, manifesto, as was her first book about Africa (The Grass Is Singing). Shelagh Delaney’s plays made a big impact at the Royal Court; Edna O’Brien made her name in one way and another. If Jenkins thinks that today’s London competes in the arts with New York, what pictures has he seen, what plays has he admired, what authors does he hurry to read? If you compare David Hockney’s recent appalling show with the work of, say, Victor Pasmore, in the 50s and 60s, and the overweight sculpture of A Gormley with Henry Moore or Michael Ayrton, only a clownish apostle of presentism could possibly find our contemporaries superior. Ayrton’s criticism alone proves how much more a writer in those times could rely on the cultural broad-mindedness of his readers than can today’s puff-writing journalistic pundits. Look at The Rudiments of Paradise for evidence.
Do you, does Jenkins, does anyone truly suppose that David Dimbleby was an improvement on Kenneth Clark as a cultural guide? The whole article reeked of the inescapable aura of Panglossian optimism which is too often the witless mark of the Prospect style. Simon Jenkins is such a busy and important person that all he did was to cut you a swatch of the obvious, of which he is a prompt and regular supplier. I do not know him and I am sure he is every bit as much of a crinkled charmer in person as he is on TV, but how much of what he said was worth printing, even when it was not inaccurate? As for Wain and Amis, I will try to make you smile by recalling a remark by WW Robson (a good critic in his day): “One thing you can say for Amis and Wain, they have a good sense of humour, except for Wain.”
As for the Iranian regime not being as gruesome as it is painted, what interest group is being served, what backer solicited, by making the Islamic inquisition and a long history of quasi-judicial murders and represssions into a bit of a lark? Are you looking forward to rigged elections here and the domination of a clerical hegemony which tortures only insignificant people?
No, no, I do know: none of it matters all that much, because nothing does.
Frederic Raphael
London
Thank you, Simon Jenkins. I’ve been feeling very gloomy about England over the last few years (mostly because of its wish to emulate America so much), but this article has cheered me up enormously. A truth about the English that I have always enjoyed, is that they have the ability to look back critically at their history. English history books do not necessarily whitewash or gloss over barbarism, greed, royal blunders and defeats, but mix them up with all the proud moments too. In America, past presidents all are saints, their faults completely obscured by the rewriting of history. This article has reminded me of that. When we move into a bad patch, the tendency is to become nostalgic for the past, but it is important to remind ourselves not to look back with rose-tinted glasses and see the present as progress from the past.
Francine Last
Via the Prospect website
The problem with Britain
Why does Prospect continue to use the term “Britain” (“Elizabeth’s Britain,” June) when you must mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? The replacement of UK with Britain is becoming widespread and it really irritates. Britain excludes Northern Ireland, and republicans and nationalists in Northern Ireland cheer every time they hear the prime minister refer to it in that way. Language is very important, particularly in parts of the UK where dissident groups are still using arms to further the cause of a united Ireland. We didn’t spend 40 years fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland in order to remain British now to be gradually edged out by careless but dangerous misuse of language.Kate Hoey
MP (Labour) for Vauxhall
What Rowan got wrong
Rowan Williams’s citation of Michael Sandel on the blood supply in the United States is lamentable (“From Faust to Frankenstein,” May). For Sandel to claim that blood is redistributed from the poor to the rich is inflammatory, sensational, and inaccurate.
It is true that in the US there are those who sell their blood plasma, and that much of it is donated by low income members of society—often street people looking for money for their next drink. Yet to say this is redistribution of blood from the poor to the rich is unfounded. It is redistribution from (in large measure) the poor of a certain sort to the rest of society. Where do the rich come into the equation? It may be popular to vilify the wealthy at present, but the distribution is on the basis of need. It is not the wealthy who benefit, but all those in need. William Johnson
Maine, USA
History lesson
David Kynaston considers private education “at odds with any progressive vision of the future” (“Best and worst of Britain,” June). A surprising view from a historian, since private education considers history important to the development of students, and actually teaches it. In contrast, state education generally considers history irrelevant and teaches it as little as possible. If state education provided the standards and effort required for a progressive vision of the future, Mr Kynaston’s wishes would be realised. Peter Stoppard
The age of ads
Will Self sees the real masculine image of Marlboro as emerging in the 1970s (“The Big Sell,” June). However in 1957 when I worked at the agency handling the account, the long gone CPV, it was already there. The slogan was “There’s a lot to like in a Marlboro. Filter, flavour, flip top box.” The 60-second TV commercials, costing an astounding £5,000 each to make, featured outdoors men. One had a Scottish laird catching salmon. To everyone’s horror he failed. But the male model stand-in succeeded.
Richard Cox
Coombe Bissett
