Portraits and Miniatures(86)

Why should this be so? The most obvious explanation is that history helps to lengthen perspective and by so doing discourages excessive partisanship. This must, however, be qualified by saying that it applies to a reasonably detached study of history and not to living in its shadow with an obsessive concentration. No communities are more difficult to bring together - Northern Ireland, Cyprus - than those where the contemplation of ancient wrongs is a way of life. It could also be cited in contrary evidence that few politicians have been more short-sighted than the elegant biographer Harold Nicolson, with his five switches of party, or more partisan than were the great constitutional historians A. V. Dicey and William Anson at the time of the Parliament Act of 1911. I suspect it is more that historical knowledge stems from a mixture of curiosity and a generally well-stocked mind, and that those with these attributes are better equipped than those without.

There has been another recent development of possible beneficial importance: this is the enormous growth of memoir writing. It applies on both sides of the Atlantic. Of the eleven British Prime Ministers between 1880 and 1940 none of them wrote anything approaching full-scale memoirs. Balfour wrote a fragment of autobiography and Lloyd George a major pièce justificative about his stewardship of World War I, but not an autobiography. Of the nine Prime Ministers since 1940, only Edward Heath and Mrs Thatcher, both said to be busy writing or in the latter case being written for, have been silent.

In the United States there were twelve Presidents between 1880 and 1945. Three of them (Theodore Roosevelt, Coolidge and Hoover) did write memoirs. But since 1945, of the eight who have gone from the highest office, no one has remained silent except for John Kennedy who obviously had no choice. Even George Bush has already produced an interim volume of autobiography, memorable, if for nothing else, for its sole reference to Britain, which was a statement that ‘Barbara and I met with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Norman.’

The inevitability of the political memoir has become a fact of political life. This may not produce much good literature, or even in some cases satisfactory narrative reading, but it does, I believe, make the prospective authors a little more aware of how their actions may look in longer perspective and of their comparative performance vis-à-vis others who will be working at the memoir face alongside them. And the effects of this are more likely to be good than bad.

I therefore give my vote in favour of history and memoir writing rather than in favour of Henry Ford’s dictum that history is bunk, but I do so with suitable caution and reservation. What I really believe is that those with curiosity, whatever their educational and occupational backgrounds, are bound to have interest in and acquire some knowledge about the past; and that those without it are likely to be dull men and uncomprehending rulers.





Oxford’s Appeal to Americans



This is based on an article written for The American Oxonian magazine in March 1989.





I Am Writing this article on the evening of Easter Sunday, 1989, twenty-four hours after attending my first University Boat Race for thirty years. On the previous occasion in 1959 I watched from the Hammersmith riverside house of A. P. Herbert, author, musical comedy librettist, and the last MP for Oxford until the abolition of the university seats in the House of Commons in 1950. He and I were currently engaged in a joint enterprise to liberalize the law relating to literary censorship.

The three-decade interval makes it clear that I was not and am not a rowing man. But this year I gladly accepted an invitation to go on the Oxford launch and follow a few yards behind the umpire’s craft, which was itself accused of being too close behind the Cambridge boat - the Oxford boat, after the first half-mile, being happily outside its reach. The pressure for my presence arose out of the attendance for the first time of the Cambridge Chancellor, Prince Philip. I could hardly be expected to balance him in rank (Oxford, despite its more royalist history, has been consistently faithful to political, non-princely and elected Chancellors since the eighteenth century), but at least I would have prevented the Oxford crew being bereft of any official support in the event of defeat, and in victory was able to commiserate with Prince Philip (who had elided gracefully from Cambridge partisan to independent royal personage) for his having to present the Beefeater Gin Trophy (sponsorship seems unavoidable these days) to the rival crew.

Oxford on this occasion slipped through to victory rather against the expectations. But as it was the fourteenth Oxford victory over the past fifteen years it could hardly be regarded as an underdog’s triumph. Underdoggery is certainly not one of Oxford’s characteristics, although it must be said that in this specialized sport of propelling boats through the water, Oxford, in spite of the triumphs of the 1970s and 1980s, has never since the beginning of the event in 1829 been ahead of Cambridge. It has, however, been consistently ahead in other concours, such as producing Prime Ministers, Archbishops of Canterbury and Lord Chancellors.