Diary

Happy 190th birthday, dear Spectator. And in what fine health you are, at such an advanced age. This was hardly inevitable when I joined the magazine, as deputy editor, in 1987. It was just about to mark its 160th year of unbroken losses, a corporate world record which I don’t see being matched by any other business. It was around the second year of my editorship that it began to make a profit. The then chief executive, Luis Dominguez, declared to an amazed board that this unprecedented achievement should be revealed to the world, in the form of a press release. To his evident consternation, I urged them not to agree to this.

In this gloriously sunny week, the cavalry horses are off on their summer break to Bodney, Norfolk. They can be seen prancing across Holkham beach, scattering oyster catchers, pushchairs, Cath Kidston picnics and naturists. Everybody loves to see the horses, some plunging into the sea, others shying gingerly from the spray. I am especially keen, having watched some of them Trooping the Colour a couple of weeks ago. Charles Moore has already noted approvingly that, when Field Marshal Guthrie took a tumble, his horse stood immaculately still. It is a slightly equine-centric view of the episode, but not heartless, since Guthrie is on the mend.

I know some people are fretting about Brexit, and others about the drive-by violence the President is doing to the US constitution, but what preoccupies me and the nation’s allotment-holders at the moment is news that the RHS is warning of a ‘bumper year for slugs’. The slimy little bastards not only ate every single lettuce seedling I planted last year, but they have taken to invading my kitchen in the night and dying extravagantly, and in a way that makes a stain, on hard-to-clean surfaces. The RHS is currently conducting trials on five different alleged slug repellents — copper tape, horticultural grit, pine bark, wool pellets and broken eggshells — to see if any of them actually works.

By 74 it is easy to feel that you have seen it all, done it all, that nothing much surprises you any more. Striving gives way to coping. Drop a pencil and it rolls under the sofa. What you have to do is think about the best way to find it and pick it up. Problem. Do you get down on your knees and reach in under, which of course means you will have to get up again, or do you simply push the sofa away? Such problems don’t really bother you. You cope with it. You don’t reflect on growing decrepitude. It has been so slow coming, you have hardly noticed. Push the sofa away. Bend slowly, pick it up. Done. Straighten up. No one was watching. That’s good. Even an unwelcome medical diagnosis does not surprise you. You cope because you have to.

Monday morning. Sitting in Ed the physio’s waiting room. He is theatreland’s go-to man for fractured bones and torn muscles — essentially, an MOT garage for weary actors. A herd of cast members from The Lion King hobble in; the expression ‘suffering for your art’ comes to mind. I hurt my knee playing on all fours, but as a dog rather than a big cat. Since training at Laban, I had always wanted to do absurdist theatre, and when a role in Auden and Isherwood’s The Dog Beneath the Skin came up, I thought my prayers had been answered. But what a challenge! On stage for two hours every night, wearing a boiler suit, dog head, and gas mask. No more dog parts for me.

The family ranch, which my father acquired when I was about six years of age, lay along the banks of the Kafue river in northern Rhodesia. Immediately above the river it was swampland. Then it rose up into ranching country where there were good, thick strands of what was then known as Rhodesian grass — a sweet, sweet grass, very nutritious to cattle and to any feeding stock. My father built a lovely old Rhodesian-style house with a thatched roof, adobe walls, and whitewashed verandas. I would come home from boarding school in July and August, which was winter and the best time to be in the African bush: not too hot and not too rainy. I was expected during that holiday period to work for five days on the ranch, doing anything my father decided I had to do.

I spend my life moving. Over recent years it was research. Now it’s caused by that research. But I have become adept at adding things on to each trip. In Naples at the weekend, I visited the Sansevero chapel which contains the ‘veiled Christ’ of Sanmartino — a work Canova said he would have given ten years of his life to have created. This is so moving to see in the flesh — even the nail wounds visible through the marble shroud — that you have to make an effort not to ignore the other masterworks around it. Afterwards I steal a night down the coast in Positano. The sun is searing and the Mediterranean like glass. Only the tablecloths billow frenetically in the wind that rushes down from the cliffs.

Dining in splendour beneath Van Dycks as we forked in the delicious venison, it was hard not to agree with my neighbour that we were in illustrious company and in one of the most beautiful rooms in England. Our hosts had, however, as we agreed, been bold in the choice of multinational guests, many of whom had never met one another. A challenge for the shy. How much easier, we said, were children’s parties. If all dinner parties had conjurors, or games of Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs, they would lose their terror for those of us who still feel tongue-tied by social demands. Lo and behold! As we swept down the stairs for our coffee in the Great Hall, there stood a smiling young man called Archie Manners, with 20 chairs arranged in rows.

Our ducks are back. Two wild mallard have spent the last five springs on the brook which gurgles past us in Herefordshire. Each year they produce a paddling of chicks; each year most of the ducklings are killed by predators. Our friend Becky thinks she spotted an otter, more likely stoat or mink, in the brook. The fluffy ducklings have little chance of survival. We wish the mother duck would nest somewhere safer but there is no telling her or her green-headed drake. If I have felt kinship with the ducks lately it was because I was being pursued by sharp-fanged ferrets from the anti-meritocratic, politically unrepresentative, over-indulged arts establishment. In a Daily Mail theatre review I questioned diversity targets and colour-blind/gender-blind casting.

If you write a book, even a novel, about Shakespeare you must at least consider the theory that Will of Stratford was not the author of the plays. The arguments for that seem nonsensical to me, but they appeal to conspiracy theorists who, a couple of hundred years from now, will probably contend that Joanne Rowling could not possibly be the author of the Harry Potter books because she’s not a recognised authority on owls. Some years ago an amateur troupe staged Twelfth Night in Charleston, South Carolina. A newspaper review next morning struck me as odd because, instead of discussing the performance, the critic wrote a brilliant essay on the authorship debate, but made no judgment on who did write the plays.

When the much-admired (and very tall) literary agent Gillon Aitken died in October 2016, he left most of his estate in a charitable trust to be named after his daughter Charlotte, who had, very sadly, predeceased him. Quite soon, the trust will start its work, which is to ‘educate the public in the appreciation of literature’, including poetry and drama, by whatever means seem appropriate — to include prizes, grants, scholarships, the funding of retreats, courses and so on. As one of the trustees, my job is to find the best ways to fulfil Gillon’s wishes. The slate is blank.

On the gently lapping shores of the Persian Gulf, in the steely shadow of the Burj Khalifa, I bump into former chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw: I in my dishevelled blue trunks, he in his well-fitted white T-shirt (always strong on uniforms). We are guests of the Varkey Foundation’s global summit on education and skills. Whilst I am there to explain the V&A Museum’s new programme to support design teaching in industrial communities, Sir Michael is still rightly beating the drum for strong leadership and high standards. Aged 72, he remains a model of Carlylian workfulness, mentoring headteachers in Argentina while supporting a multi-academy trust in Derby.

If I needed a safe space, I would nominate California. Against most odds this seedbed of censorious liberalism has thrown up the antibodies to the lurgy it created. Here within a short space of each other are a group of leftists and conservatives, religious and non-religious, all of whom are united in deploring the ‘You can’t say that’ culture which has torn across America and the West in recent years. The state may still have the shoutiest students. But it now also has the best first-responders. On Monday morning in Los Angeles I go to be interviewed by Dennis Prager, a devout, Republican talk-show host. From there I go to the studios of Joe Rogan, a libertarian comedian and martial arts expert.

Everyone’s mood is affected by the news, especially bad news. A recent review found that heavy news-watchers show ‘misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, desensitisation, and in some cases … complete avoidance of the news.