Bruce Anderson

Lockdown provides time to think, and to reminisce. A South African friend, trapped in Amsterdam, phoned the other day. Had I written about the David and Nadia wines from Swartland we had tasted at the end of last year? Not yet: I was awaiting further particulars, which may have been remiss of me. Justerini and Brooks is a major stockist and they are some of the best wines coming out of South Africa, which is saying a lot. Wines have been produced in South Africa since the Huguenots settled in vine-friendly lands not far from Cape Town. Stellenbosch, Paarl and the aptly named Franschhoek are well known. Swartland is catching up. The names take me back to so many evenings in the 1980s, drinking wine in Stellenbosch and discussing the future.

I was thinking about tragedy. Could one use the term ‘chronically tragic’? My first instinct is against. Tragedy is the soul-ravaging final scene of Othello or King Lear, when hope is overpowered by implacable despair. In Kent’s words: ‘Break, heart; I prithee, break.’ Flesh and blood could not withstand such emotional intensity in chronic form. Then again, how else can we describe the modern history of Lebanon? I have just heard of the passing of a splendid old girl. Yvonne Sursock was caught up in the terrible explosion which shattered Beirut at the start of August. Being a tough old bird, she lived for more than two weeks. Being 98, she succumbed. Yvonne could claim kinship with most of the Christian great and good along the Mediterranean littoral.

We were celebrating the end of lockdown by talking about war and deer stalking — over a business lunch, naturally. My friend David Mathew, from a distinguished legal, military and political family, told a story about Churchill’s arrival in Athens at Christmas in 1944. David’s father, Robert, then a young officer, was sent to meet the great man, who was grumpy and preoccupied, with good reason. He had come to save Greece from communism, with little guarantee of help from the Americans, let alone left-wing opinion in Britain. The sucking-up to ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin may have been necessary to win the war. It would not be helpful for winning the peace.

I feel like a prisoner, making daily marks on the cell wall to chart the approach of freedom. But will it be freedom, or will we be on parole, obliged to wear a tag and subject to re-incarceration at authority’s whim? Such thoughts do not encourage equanimity. On that subject, I remember a delightfully splenetic political column by the late — alas — Alan Watkins, published a generation ago. As Christmas approaches, even the most acerbic hack feels obliged to relent and sound a little more like Fezziwig, a little less like Scrooge. Perhaps because he was never given to excessive astringency, Alan did not relent. He was complaining about secretaries, who were then numerous in newspaper offices.

At least in London, midwinter spring has not been entirely vanquished, and the trees are still a couple of strong winds away from losing their autumn glory. This will give the government some undeserved help. People can sit outside, and the view from windows is not too depressing. Before long, though, those indoors are likely be cursing the PM and his close associates: ‘sic a parcel of rogues in a nation’. Burns and the onset of seasonal bleakness makes one think of the dark. In earlier times in Scotland, Hallowe’en was a characteristic festivity: an attempt to embrace the oncoming winter. Its theme was ghouls and witchcraft. Children, dressed as witches or warlocks, would go from house to house making sepulchral noises.

I am in an Eliot mood, not a Keatsian one. ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ is a surprisingly… mellow poem. There must have been a brief ceasefire between poor Keats and the advancing forces of premature mortality. But I have just heard of the appallingly premature death — by today’s standards — of a fascinating fellow. So it is more a matter of ‘Under the brown fog of a winter dawn… I had not thought death had undone so many’. At 69, Tim Beardson died of the ultimate effect of a tick bite, which compounds the sadness. At the beginning of the 1970s, he read history at the House.

I had known Perry Worsthorne for several years before I went to work for him in 1986 (horrifying how time passes). Then again, everybody knew Perry. He was one of the most colourful figures in London. Elegant, silver-haired, always amusing, regularly original and frequently provocative, he was a triumphant refutation of the idea that conservatism is a dull creed, based on worship of the Gods of the Copybook Headings. Perry was incapable of dullness. He also felt ambivalent about Margaret Thatcher. At moments, he would acknowledge that she had saved the country from decline. But on one famous occasion, he accused her of ‘bourgeois triumphalism’.

It had been a long and no doubt fractious sea voyage. The crew would have signed up for a variety of reasons: pay, adventure, escape from domestic ties — in some cases, no doubt, escape from the authorities. After ten weeks at sea, some of them would have doubted their judgment, if not indeed their very sanity. Then came the lookout’s cry: the Spanish for ‘Land ho’. Christopher Columbus had set forth to find a passage to China. Instead, he had discovered America, a new world, large parts of which would soon be known as New Spain. The 12th of October 1492, when that forgotten sailor announced that the world had moved on its axis, was one of the most important days in history.

Three bottles, three questions that delivered three different answers. I was in Dorset — cannot keep away — enjoying the Indian summer while cursing the government’s ineptitude. As always, we ate well. I believe that those of us said to be at risk are supposed to bulk up. I did so with the aid of La Ratte potatoes, outstanding waxy spuds, even if they are French. Although many Frogs affect to despise the potato as an Anglo-American interloper, they do know how to grow it when they try. But the pièce de résistance, among several rivals, was carpaccio of halibut. I would aver that there is no finer fish to prepare in that way. Young Arthur, not quite five, tucked in with relish.