Cosmo Landesman

To walk out of a public performance before the end – be it the theatre, a concert or a lecture – is not the done thing. It’s considered an antisocial act that disrupts the performance and thus other people’s pleasure. To walk out provokes tuts of disapproval and scowls of indignation. And yet while it’s something we all disapprove of (at least in theory) it’s also something we all secretly long to do. Who hasn’t sat and squirmed in their seat at some tedious piece of theatre and wondered: how much more of this must I suffer? And who hasn’t been subjected to one of those long, sycophantic interviews with some self-adoring author flogging their latest book and not prayed for the courage to make a run for it?

In 1908, the iconoclast writer Lytton Strachey – the bad boy of the Bloomsbury set – pointed a long finger at a stain on artist Vanessa Bell’s dress and asked, “Semen?” Later, Bell’s sister Virginia Woolf wrote: “With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down… It was, I think, a great advance in civilization.” Americans tend to think that the English are sexually repressed and too refined and cultured for such talk I was recently in a bar in Bloomsbury – one that actually serves a “Virginia Woolf hamburger” – when talk among the young women at my table turned to men they knew who were, how should I put this, well-endowed. Of course, I’ve heard such talk before, but not in a long time and not in such anatomical detail.

I’m one of the Silent People who sit on the sidelines of the great political events and debates of the present. We Silent People don’t sign on-line petitions or go on protests to show solidarity with this group or that one. We don’t tweet our outrage, or blog our bile. We prefer to keep what we think to ourselves. When a verbal punch-up erupts over Gaza or trans rights at a dinner party, I stay silent and wonder what’s for pudding. The thing we Silent People are most silent about is our silence. It’s easy to see why: the silent are suspect The thing we Silent People are most silent about is our silence. It’s easy to see why: these days the silent are suspect.

For me, one of the great pleasures of public transport is getting into a conversation with a stranger. But in our age of smart-phones and headphones, where everyone is plugged into their own private space, it’s a pleasure that’s becoming increasingly rare. So when I heard of a new scheme by Transport for London (TfL) to encourage people to chat to each other, I was eager to sign-up. I admit that I’m not keen on most of TfL’s schemes to affect public behaviour. Has the public ever been subjected to a slogan more irritating – and relentless – than TfL’s demand that we be on our guard and, ‘See it, Say it, Sort it’? And if we’re not looking out for terrorists we’re told to watch out for pervs ‘staring’ at women.

London Everyone has at least one friend that none of their other friends can stand, someone you love but everyone else loathes. Mine is called Toby Young. For around thirty years people have asked me: are you still friends with that awful Toby Young? And with a bit of hesitation I say, well... yes. And they shake their heads or roll their eyes in disbelief and disapproval. They don’t like his politics — he’s a right-wing conservative and founder of the Free Speech Union, which defends victims of woke ideology. And they don’t like Toby the person because of a series of sophomoric and “sexist” tweets that came to public light in 2018. It was national news and it cost Toby his career in public life.

This is a tale of two London parties. They say something about London society, status, power, fame and fun — but I’m not sure what exactly. Party one was what I call a Power Party. It was full of famous faces from the upper echelons of British politics and media. I spotted chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves talking to the former Tory chancellor George Osborne and the former foreign secretary David Miliband. Party two was what I call a Pulchritude Party — a dazzling array of beautiful women and handsome men. There was a mix of young writers, journalists, lawyers, filmmakers and artists. It did not have the high social wattage of name recognition that the Power Party had — but it had beauty and youth on its side.

What in twenty-first-century Britain is it better to be: posh or cool? Of course the correct answer is: it’s best to be posh and cool. But posh people, on the whole, tend not to be cool and really cool people aren’t usually posh. But the tribes have a lot in common. They share a certain insouciance, which is a posh word for total indifference to the feelings and thoughts of other people. They are both anti-democratic and anti-meritocratic in spirit and practice. No matter how hard you try and how much money you have, you can’t join the posh or be cool. Like sex appeal, you’ve either got or you ain’t. Defining either group is not easy, but you know when you see it — or in the case of the posh, hear it.

London When an old friend says to you, “we must meet up for lunch sometime,” you can be sure of one thing: you will never meet for lunch. Why? Because your friendship is over. The clue is in the word “sometime.” It’s a rain check that never gets cashed. It’s what friends say to each other when they feel obliged to see a friend they don’t really want to see — but they don’t want to dump either. We all have friends like these: I call them the Undead friends, when the friendship is neither fully alive nor totally dead. You don’t delete them from your contact list — just your social life. This will lead to the odd spasm of guilt but don’t worry; we all do it. And it gets done to us too. There are people you think of as your great friends.

I had just left Tate Britain and was heading toward the Pimlico underground station when I noticed an attractive woman coming toward me. I smiled at her and she smiled at me. And then she stopped and said, “Are you Cosmo Landesman?” There are writers and journalists who get public recognition like this all the time. Alas, I’m not one. But I was married to one of them, and it’s a real drag having a famous partner. You have to stand there at the supermarket checkout line with a big fake smile on your face as your loved one laps up all the love from some adoring fan. Imagine how poor John Gregory Dunne must have felt being married to the very recognizable Joan Didion. Having a famous writer friend is also a bummer. Socially, you will always be in their shadow.

This Letter from London is coming from Kardamyli, a small town by the sea in the southeast of Greece. I’m on holiday. Readers who are now rolling their eyes at the thought of yet another account of someone’s “amazing” holiday experience have my sympathy. I feel your pain; there’s nothing worse than the “my amazing holiday” bore. In the 1970s people who subjected friends to long and tedious slideshows of their holiday snapshots appeared in British sitcoms as the bores next door. Now we don’t project our pics onto our living room walls; we post them on social media. And friends feel obliged to post comments like, “Wow! That looks amazing!” and, “I’m so envious!” But what they’re really thinking is: what a terrible show-off you are.

There’s a form of social anxiety that a lot of people suffer from — FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. “Fear” suggests something imaginary, that isn’t really happening. Not so. I don’t fear missing out, because I know I am. Friends are always asking me: are you appearing at the Hay Literary festival? No! Am I speaking at the Idler festival? No! Am I reading extracts from my book at the Cambridge Literary festival? No! “What?!” they exclaim in mock disbelief — and then ask why I’m not appearing at some small, obscure, local village literary fête, somewhere in the rectum of rural England. I’ve gotten used to the seasonal snub from the lit-festival establishment. And there are literary events all over London that I haven’t been invited to as well. OK, I’ll live.