Sooner or later you discover that your hero or heroine has tastes of clay. The magnificently austere Gordon Brown, having kept himself aloof from the great drive downmarket pioneered by other politicians, goes and spoils it all by confessing he’s a fan of
Pop Idol. The magnificently wise Daniel Finkelstein, whose judgment on everything from politics to football I instinctively accept, still perplexes all right-thinking people by preferring the Beatles to the Stones. But in the last week I have had to sustain an even greater disappointment, a profounder shattering of faith. My respect for J. K. Rowling has taken a knock from which it will take a long time to recover.
Recover it will, for the scale of the Rowling achievement, the creation of a children’s canon to rank with Lewis or Carroll, written in cafés while still a single mum, demands respect. But the blow that the creator of Harry Potter administered to herself last week would have finished off many other writers in my eyes. Ms Rowling admitted in public to a lapse of taste I still find hard to credit. That it’s a weakness shared by millions, and likely to be indulged by many more this Christmas, doesn’t make this any more forgivable in my eyes. For J.K.Rowling is a Mitford girl.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph the other week, she confessed her admiration for Jessica (“Decca”) Mitford in a review of Decca’s collected letters, published this month by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. The appearance of a piece of Mitfordiana every autumn is as inevitable a part of the pre-Christmas publishing preparations as another Schott’s Miscellany or collection of Clarkson columns. But, as far as I’m concerned, infinitely more irritating.
Whether it’s a new life of Diana (the one who married Mosley), a selection of the letters exchanged between Nancy (the one who wrote the century’s definitive guide to snobbery) and Evelyn Waugh, or a group biography of the sisters (there was one in the 1980s written by a brace of Guinnesses and another published in 2001 which has been reprinted 15 times since then), there is never any shortage of new Mitford material for any Christmas gift-giver. Tragically.
I have every confidence that Decca’s letters will fly off the shelves and on to thousands of drawing room tables (never living rooms, as I’m sure Nancy would tell us if she could . . .). Following on from J. K. Rowling’s enthusiastic review there was another five-star endorsement for the collection from the eminently respectable Miranda Seymour in The Sunday Times. But I shan’t be making any room for the work — even in my guest toilet (as Nancy would never think of calling it). Not because Jessica Mitford was a bad writer — like Nancy she wrote clear, confident, waspish English — but because the whole Mitford mythology illuminates a strain in our national character I can’t abide.
It’s not just the snobbery, although the creepy adoration these society girls inspire is bad enough. It’s not just the respectful recording of their childish games (speaking to each other in their own private language of “Boudledidge”, forming “The Society of Hons”, making a fuss about who was on “non-speakers” with whom), with all these country house affectations treated as though they were the Acts of the Apostles. It’s not even the way in which their slim body of slight memoirs, light novels and personal correspondence, all really just a gathering of overlapping perspectives from the same looking-glass world, is treated as a literary resource to rank with the canon of Pope, Swift and Gay.
No, what really leaves me queasy is the affection still inspired by a family that considered referring to the lavatory as a toilet to be an unpardonable sin but seemed a little less censorious about support for totalitarianism. Diana and Unity were out and out fascists. Diana was not just the willing partner of Oswald Mosley on a political journey characterised by race hatred and active treachery, she was an unrepentant admirer of Hitler, whose own memoirs paid tribute to the F ührer’s well-manicured hands, fastidious appetite and charming, cultured ways. To her the anti-Semitic ideologue Julius Streicher was a “kitten”. Unity was, if anything, an even more ardent supporter of Nazism whose Hitler worship was total. Compared with these two Jessica was indeed a saint, but by any other standards her politics would have troubled most consciences. She was a convinced Marxist who adored what she found during her visit to Communist Hungary in 1955. And her reaction to the Soviet Union’s violent suppression of the democratic uprising in that country a year later hardly suggests someone given to moral clarity. According to a biographer, she “fidgeted unhappily”. She only found it in herself to leave the American Communist party two years later.
The English have a fatal weakness for “wit” and “charm” and can excuse those who have it a surprising amount. But champagne personalities cannot disguise sulphuric views. And I’m afraid there’s just too much acid in the Mitford mix for me to find their vintage productions at all palatable.
My hi-fi dreams crash to a halt
Hubris has many forms, and in my case it is cassette-shaped. Last week I felt confident enough in my carmanship to ask readers how I could keep up with contemporary recordings in my motor, given its sad lack of anything more than a tape-player to provide musical accompaniment to my motorway cruising. Many of you were kind enough to write in with helpful advice on the gizmos that can be connected to an iPod or CD player and that then slip into the cassette cavity , allowing you to listen to the latest download or release.
But all this advice has proved useless.
Because on Friday night, while driving along a dual carriageway in Surrey, listening to Ann Widdecombe talking eminent good sense on Any Questions, I had a car crash.
It all happened incredibly suddenly and I was amazingly fortunate to emerge without a scratch but I have learnt several lessons. Skodas are exceptionally robust cars. There’s more to driving in the wet than just having your windscreen wipers on. And, after a crash you assume that your vehicle will go up in flames like a Bond villain’s, so you get out like a shot. But leaving your key behind means that Ann Widdecombe is still talking even while you’re expecting a fireball.
Above all, being in any sort of crisis makes you realise how good our emergency services are. It underlines one of the enduringly good things about this country. In how many other parts of the world can you be sure that the arrival of people in uniform means that you are in the safest of hands?
Shocked silence
Oh, and one other thing. I found out on Friday that one of the surefire signs that you’re suffering from shock is non-stop yawning. I now realise that I was in shock throughout this year’s Lib Dem conference.
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath
I have No idea why this is a deal let alone a big deal.
Vishal, London,