Bruce Anderson

In the mid-18th century, London was awash with gin. Socially-conscious members of the bourgeoisie believed that this was the root of all evil, contributing to crime and depravity. Fielding and Hogarth combined to denounce gin as responsible for ‘the reigning vices peculiar to the lower classes of the people’. Both of them hoped to persuade the lower orders to drink less gin and more beer. They extolled beer’s rustic health-giving properties, rather in the way that Burns exalted the nourishing virtues of haggis. In a different age, Hogarth’s cartoons of Gin Lane seem more comic than sermonising, but they are still powerful. In various countries, the early phases of distillation were menaced by disapproval and harassment.

Journalists exaggerate, often reaching for superlatives to chronicle mildly interesting events. Even so, there are times when it is necessary to become hyperbolic. 2019 was an extraordinary year. As Chou En-lai might have said, it is too early to assess its significance. We will be doing that for at least the next 20 years. Indeed, it may turn out to be one of the most important dates in our peacetime history. The new year has also started with a bang. It was cunning of the government to persuade Donald Trump to drive Dominic Cummings out of the headlines, but that will not exhaust 2020’s disruptive potential. Exhaustion leads one to the end of Christmas.

Christmas: without being grand and Proustian, this is a season when time present inevitably takes one back to time past. When we are very young, despite the grown-ups’ best efforts to promote moral uplift, Christmas means presents. I remember being given King Solomon’s Mines when I was nine or ten. No book has ever thrilled me with more sensual pleasure and I devoured all of Rider Haggard’s related oeuvre. The other day, I came across a shelf-load in a friend’s house. They did not work. The magic could not be reconjured. For me, the Haggards ride no more (though at least the Rudyards have not ceased from Kipling). But I hope that today’s boys will still follow Allan Quatermain and Umslopogaas, and be awed by She. It should be part of a gradus ad Parnassum.

I wonder how they do things now at Tory headquarters. For the ’79 election, the preparations had been completed weeks in advance. Press conferences had been planned on the basis of a four-week campaign, press releases drafted and shadow ministers told when they would be needed in London to go on the platform. Then the starting gun was fired and von Moltke kicked in. No plan survives the initial contact with the enemy. Some of the material was used, but not in the order that had been expected. There was a lot of improvisation. But it did not seem to matter. Something similar happened in 1992. The first press conference was to be devoted to tax. Labour’s tax plans would be lambasted, allowing the Tories to move on to other themes.

In the era of vinyl, lost in one of Bruckner’s longueurs, it could be hard to tell what was stuck, the record or the composer. Sir Jim Gastropodi would make regular appearances in the Peter Simple column, conducting the Soup Hales Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Bruckner’s interminable symphony. Despite Boris Johnson’s attempts to enliven it, this is the interminable election campaign. In effect, it has been going on since 2016, but the end may be in sight. Barring a 2017-scale upset (which is unlikely — though Boris has faults, he is not Theresa May mark two), he will return to No. 10 with a majority. He will also enjoy some fiscal laxity, and he may turn out to be a lucky prime minister.

First, an apology. In my last column, I appeared to be saying that good champagne does not age. This must have been the impact of Brexit fatigue, for I had meant to write the exact opposite, along the lines of age cannot wither it (as it were) nor custom stale. Good — and especially great — champagne can taste youthful at 20 years old. If I alarmed anyone lucky enough to have such bottles in the cellar, they should relax. The UK is not the only country where political contentiousness causes stress. The other night, in a repast organised by the Hispania restaurant, I tasted some superb wines in the excellent company of thoughtful Spaniards. That admirable nation has its current troubles, but the wines might have been chosen to lend long perspectives.

The other night, I dreamt about Brexit. Awakening to the oppression of an urgent task, it took me a few seconds to realise that my only task was to go back to sleep. I described all this to an MP friend, who said that he had done the same several times, as had a number of his colleagues. But there is a difference between that and a normal bad dream, instantly dispelled by wakefulness. It merely intensifies Brexit nightmares. How long, O Lord. Sometimes, much of the public comes to a conclusion without plunging into the detail. A few weeks ago, lots of people who had never taken any notice of prorogations or the royal prerogative decided that Boris had been underhand. Now, there is a similar mood about Brexit — but this time, it is on Boris’s side.

Poor Old Girl. The final act may not have been sanglante, but as the third volume of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher makes clear, it was sad. It may seem unwise to expend great praise on a contemporary book before time has had a chance to lend perspective: not in this case. Time’s verdict can be anticipated with confidence. Boswell apart — sui generis — this might be the finest biography in the language. Alas, the final volume is also a story of decline. It did not help that the Lady was sacked with as little ceremony as a cleaning woman guilty of plundering the gin bottle. But a more dignified exit would still have hurt.

My friend Dominic decided that it was time to convoke a lunch. There were matters to discuss, including that perennial topic, the travails of the Tory party. We met at the end of last week, before the Labour conference. In the old pre-Blair days, Labour conferences were generally run as benefit matches for the Conservatives, whose poll ratings were usually enhanced by several points. Perhaps those good old times would return. There was a jingle of yesteryear: ‘Anything you can do, I can do better.’ Mr Corbyn seemed determined to replace ‘better’ with ‘worse’, and the Labour conference did indeed go as well as we had hoped. Then the Supreme Court took a hand. We are back to confusion worse confounded.

What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4 a.m. and says: ‘Is there a dog?’ There was a lot of dog talk this weekend, and about the tributes they bring to their owners in the shooting field. A South African who had just enjoyed his first days at the grouse, walked up and driven, was incoherent with joy, especially as he had made a respectable contribution to the bag. The Afrikaners have always been an embattled race. God usually directs them to the windy side of the hill. When they do find some refuge to enjoy a settled life, perhaps planting a few vines, they often become lyrical about hemel en aarde: heaven on earth.