Time to Be in Earnest (45 page)

The BBC today is not a happy organization. Efficient managerial systems, providing they do not substitute one onerous bureaucracy for another, are important, but less important than the clear acceptance of the ethos and responsibility of public service broadcasting and a climate in which creativity and artistic excellence can flourish.

For a publicly funded organization and one which frequently proclaims its openness, the BBC is extraordinarily secretive. The costs of the central administration are high in relation to those devoted to programme-making and it is difficult to justify the millions spent on outside managerial advice, particularly in the light of the surely adequate salaries now paid to members of the Board of Management. Radio continues to take second place to television and there sometimes seems with radio a somewhat desperate desire for change, as if change in itself were synonymous with progress and improvement. The high cost of equipping the BBC to compete in the international market of digital broadcasting has drained resources from programme-making. The BBC still produces superb programmes but too often they are peaks of excellence in a depressing plateau of trivia.

Much will depend on the talents, energy and vision of the new Director General. Ours is an age obsessed with systems and managerial techniques. What the BBC needs now is someone who can inspire and enthuse human beings, particularly the creative men and women on whom the future depends. Since it seems unlikely that the public will now be prepared to pay a higher licence fee, perhaps the BBC should concentrate on doing less and doing it better.

Before I finished my five-year stint as a Governor I was asked to address my fellow Governors and the Board of Management after dinner at one of our annual residential conferences. Re-reading what I said then, the talk seems moralistic and even naïve. But what strikes me most forcefully is how old-fashioned it is. I could be speaking of a different age, a different BBC. I find this thought depressing. But the talk still represents what I feel about the purpose and ethics of public service broadcasting and, particularly, about a service which describes itself as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

I have just finished reading
The Trial
by Charlotte M. Yonge, which was kindly sent to me by Dinah Birch of Trinity College, Oxford, following our discussion on the Victorian novel. The main interest for me in this somewhat turgid novel is the insight it gives into the domestic and professional lives of middle-class Victorians, and particularly the subservient
and restricted role of the women. If the author was intending, at least partially, to write what Trollope in his autobiography described as the novel of sensation, as opposed to the novel of realism, she hasn’t succeeded. The murder comes too late, and the story has too little narrative energy to generate either tension or excitement.

With it I have been re-reading
The Duke’s Children
, prompted by Dinah’s excellent preface to the Penguin edition. I agree with her assessment of Frank Tregear, an admirable young man, no doubt, but one definitely on the make, whose head always rules his heart. We feel none of the sympathy for him that we do for poor Burgo Fitzgerald. I love the Barchester saga and these are books I invariably take with me on long journeys but, for me,
The Duke’s Children
is the least successful. Of the young people only Lady Mabel Grex engages my sympathy. Lady Mary Palliser is obstinate and charmless, Lord Silverbridge and his brother no more than amiable nonentities. I found the pert prettiness of the egregiously popular and beautiful American heiress Isabel Boncassen more irritating than appealing. It is obvious that the author was in love with his creation. If Lord Silverbridge had had any sense he would have married Mabel Grex, but the young men in Trollope, seldom worthy of the women who love them, can only be happy with wives who are content to treat them as lords and masters and regard them as young gods. Even the Duke, one of Trollope’s most successful and remarkable characters, loses my sympathy when he treats Mrs. Finn with ungentlemanly callousness and injustice.

I had planned today to go to Hatfield to have lunch with Clare and visit Lady Salisbury’s garden, which is only open on Mondays. However, I had a telephone call from Kay Harper at Swavesey to say that Doris was dying and would like to see me. I caught the 10:15 train from King’s Cross, which should have taken just over fifty minutes, but was delayed and diverted because of a defective rail. Doris was semi-conscious but was able to recognize me and when I bent over to kiss her and say “God bless you,” she was able to whisper “And you too.” She was on one of those merciful continual morphine lines into a vein and was in no pain, although the constant hoarse gurgling in her throat was distressing to hear. But she is fortunate in being nursed to the end at home with Kay’s loving care and with nurses and other helpers whom she knows coming in regularly instead of a continual change of agency staff which so many hospital patients have to face. Despite the growth of the hospice movement, which has led the way in the care of the dying, there are still far too many patients who endure unnecessary suffering at the end, or who
die among strangers. Doris is dying among those who love her, without pain and, I think, without fear. This is the most any of us can hope for.

I went to the Royal Garden Party, arriving at the Hyde Park Corner gate. This meant I avoided the queues and had a quiet, enjoyable walk through the gardens. The lawn seemed more crowded this year than ever and, being reluctant to join the scrum, I didn’t set eyes on any Royal from beginning to end. The Garden Party is wonderful for people-watching, which is its main attraction. I did manage to procure some iced coffee and sandwiches before leaving early. I know that protocol decrees that no one leaves before royalty on occasions when they are present, but I think this can hardly apply to the annual Garden Parties.

Then to the Conservative ward party, held in the Cardinal Vaughan School because of the uncertain weather, where I discovered that I was billed as guest of honour and was expected to make a short speech. This I did and returned home in time to see the first instalment of ITV’s
A Certain Justice
. The adaptation is skilful and most of the acting admirable, particularly Penny Downie, who plays Venetia Aldridge. It was possible not only to hear what the actors were saying, but to know who the characters were. Admittedly, as author of the book, I had a head start in this, but I get increasingly tired of TV series when one has to wait twenty minutes to sort out the characters and their relationships to each other. If tonight’s standard is maintained, this should be a successful adaptation.

Today is Jane’s birthday. We don’t celebrate birthdays with much enthusiasm in the family except those which mark rites of passage, but I expect she will have the usual quiet and enjoyable dinner with her family. I shall hand over my gift when I am next in Oxford.

Inevitably the anniversary brings back its memories. Before she was born I was living with Clare at White Hall in Chigwell Row, Essex. In June, near the expected birth date, Clare was collected by my parents-in-law and taken to Barry, South Wales, where my father-in-law was stationed, and I went to stay with Dr. Lindsey Batten and his family at Lyndhurst Road in Hampstead. Richard Batten had been a contemporary of Connor at Cambridge and at medical school. I had booked in at
Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Goldhawk Road, a decision which, given the distance from Essex, now seems to me somewhat perverse.

While I was at Lyndhurst Road, the V-
1
bombardment began. I can remember gazing with incredulity at my first sight of a flying bomb, which looked more like an aeronautical aberration than a weapon of war. It was shaped like a plump fish, with two stubby wings like fins, and carried at the tail a superstructure from which spurted great tongues of fire. It flew low and the noise was incredibly loud, something between a rattle and a drone. The V-
1
was the first unmanned terror weapon to hit Britain and was much dreaded, partly because there was a depersonalized malice about those pilotless rockets, but chiefly because they were totally indiscriminate. Worst of all was the moment when the engine cut out. The silence then seemed absolute. It felt as if the whole of London was holding its breath. And then, after a few seconds, would come the explosion. I greeted it always with a mixture of relief and shame: relief that it hadn’t fallen on me, and shame that, in a sense, I had benefited from someone else’s tragedy.

Then labour began, and as I went into Queen Charlotte’s the bombardment was almost continuous. Looking back, the morale in the eight-bedded ward was remarkably high. Windows were kept wide open to prevent flying glass. We had our babies in cots by the side of the bed, and when the bombardment began, were instructed to place one of our pillows over the head of the cot. There was, I remember, a shortage of linen and the ward sister seemed as concerned about this as she was about the constant sound of falling bombs and the cacophony above. She would raid the linen cupboard and then secrete fresh sheets and pillowcases in our beds. From time to time a sister from a neighbouring ward would descend on us, turning over pillows and rummaging beneath the blankets before bearing off her trophies in triumph.

Night time was the most difficult to endure with equanimity. All the babies were moved to the basement and our beds were wheeled out into a corridor and placed against the walls. It was felt that this would give us the best chance of survival if the hospital received a direct hit. I can remember lying there silently weeping with that unfocused misery which occasionally follows childbirth and which is made worse by the feeling that one ought to be experiencing great happiness and maternal fulfilment, not this debilitating and uncontrollable sadness. My great fear was that the hospital would indeed receive a direct hit and that in the confusion and carnage I would be unable to find my baby. Where exactly had they put the babies? What if the stairs to the basement were
blocked? How in the darkness and choked with dust would I find the right cot? What if I were injured and couldn’t get to the basement? I can remember praying: “O Lord, if you will let me out of here alive with my baby I’ll never complain again.” It is a prayer which, with uncomfortable persistence, has returned throughout the years to haunt me.

After I was discharged, I went with Jane to join my parents-in-law in Barry. I can remember with what joyous exultation I saw the sea for the first time in years. I stayed for long enough to get strong and then returned to White Hall. Unfortunately this coincided with the bombardment by V
-2
rockets. I found them far less frightening than the V-
1
s, partly because there was no warning. The explosive power was much greater, as was the noise of the explosion, but the fact that I could hear it meant that I had survived. There was a system whereby the siren announced an imminent danger warning, but this, although useful with the V-
1
s, was ineffective with the V
-2S
. There seemed no point in trying to take any preventative measures and we all stayed in our beds until the night when a rocket fell at the edge of Hainault Forest. By then we were all so used to the sound of explosives that we woke momentarily and then turned again to sleep. When daylight broke, I felt an unaccustomed coolness in the room and discovered that the windows had been blown out and that Jane was lying in her cot surrounded by shards of glass, any of which could have killed her. Gathering her up and going to the bathroom, I looked up through the nonexistent ceiling to the sky. Repairs were carried out with remarkable speed during air raids, but after that night we all moved to the cellar.

The authoritarian and largely misguided baby-rearing doctrines of Dr. Truby King were still in vogue, and there were dire warnings about the deplorable results if babies were not fed strictly at four-hourly intervals. But I could hardly let Jane cry at night when the cellar was occupied by the humped bodies of three overworked doctors, the elderly cook, the unmarried housemaid with her small daughter, and Clare. Accordingly Jane had only to whimper to be latched on to a not particularly productive breast, where at least she got comfort if not much sustenance. The cellar door was left ajar for Mrs. Price-Watt’s elegant pedigree cat who, blessed with an unpronounceable name, was called Poo-Poo. She would hunt at night, bringing her prey to eat on our mattresses so that periods of wakefulness would coincide with the crunching of seemingly innumerable bones and Mrs. Price-Watts’s plaintive protests.