Mrs May

Steve Bell, the Guardian's political cartoonist, has been very good at nailing British Prime Ministers.  Major with his underpants over his trousers, Blair with his single mad eye, Cameron as a condom; all these are indelible and definitive- but he's missing the mark with May. She came to power during the epidemic of evil clowns and so he's taken to drawing her as one- but it's wrong; May isn't colourful. She's a placeholder. Dull, dutiful, authoritarian. Yesterday- or maybe the day before- she told the CBI that she didn't really mean it when she said they should appoint workers to their boardrooms. It was yet another instance of her backing down from the bold talk she briefly indulged in at the beginning of her reign.

We could do with a General Election- and a leader who has a proper mandate of their own. The commentariat and the pollsters all say May would win- well, good for her if she does- but this is the era of Donald Trump and I don't think anything is certain.

A Snippet Of Autobiography

There was a time when I wrote regularly for the folks at The Chesterton Review- the organ of the G.K.Chesterton Society- which was- and may still be- published in Canada. I lost contact with them as my interest in Chesterton's brand of ultramontanism waned and I found other hobby-horses to gallop around on but I was so well in with them in the early 80s that the editor invited me to guest edit a special issue on the Father Brown stories (which incidentally I still love). It fell through- because none of the people I wrote to wanted to send me copy. Perhaps I aimed too high. I didn't know any academics because that wasn't my world so I wrote to famous people who I thought might be interested- for instance Alec Guinness who played the little priest in the Robert Hamer film. All of them wrote back and I still have the letters.

Alec Guinness said he couldn't help because he was off to the USA and hadn't liked the movie and thought he'd been miscast in it. He suggested I try Kenneth More instead. I did, but Kenneth More had the best of all excuses- that he was dying. Others who wrote back regretfully turning me down included Kingsley Amis, P.D. James, Auberon Waugh and Julian Symons. I found the folder containing the letters this morning as I was rifling through cupboards trying to lighten the huge weight of paper we own.