Digby Anderson

Christmas is one of the few remaining occasions when the English feel obliged to cook a proper meal at home. To help them, in the autumn, kind publishers bring out lots of huge, glossy books. The idea, or collusive polite fiction, is that the cooks read the books carefully, plan their meals, buy ingredients and any necessary equipment — Jamie Oliver lists a vast amount — and then successfully cook a whole delicious meal. I have long suspected that in reality, the purchase of the book, its subsequent prominent display and discussion are acts of propitiation that take the place of actually cooking and excuse the cook from her obligations. These books certainly fulfil this second task. They are huge, very heavy and some contain as much garish illustration as text.

Europe thinks ‘that to achieve peace no price is too high: not appeasement, not massacres on its own soil, not even surrender to terrorists... Europe is impotent. A foul wind is blowing through [it]... the idea that we can afford to be lenient even with people who threaten us... This same wind blew through Munich in 1938... It could turn out to be the death rattle of a continent that no longer understands what principles to believe.’ This is not Michael Gove but Marcello Pera, President of the Italian Senate. But in fact the views of the three authors fit remarkably well. Celsius 7/7 is centrally about the political response to Islamist terrorism. Pera discusses the relativism that undergirds so much of the thinking that responds to terrorist Islam.

Alan Jacobs quotes Philip Hensher on C. S. Lewis: ‘Let us drop C. S. Lewis and his ghastly, priggish, half-witted money-making drivel about Narnia down the nearest deep hole … They are mean-minded books, written to corrupt the minds of the young with allegory, smugly denouncing anything that differs in the slightest respect from Lewis’s creed of clean-living, muscular Christianity, pipe-smoking misogyny, racism and the most vulgar snobbery.’ He doesn’t like the ‘science fiction’ trilogy or Screwtape either. Mr Hensher is not about to be obeyed. The Narnia Chronicles have sold 85 million copies and, as a special Christmas present to keep Hensher sputtering, Disney is bringing out its first Narnia film this December. There are more to follow.

Spectator readers have known of Dr Dalrymple for many years through his regular column in this magazine. Every week we muddled our way through, unreflectively finding life all right and other people not so bad. Then, on Fridays we took Dr Dalrymple’s little magic pill and suddenly saw that we were knee-high in a rising sewer. The column was short and usually followed a pattern. There was an abbreviated story of a patient who had tried to kill himself or someone else. The Doctor’s questions revealed a little more of the patient’s disgusting life, and it ended with a comment by the patient showing his total lack of moral responsibility for his actions.

The Pentateuch belongs to all sorts of different people and I cannot speak for them and their needs, so I’ll stick with what I know. Most of my church friends rarely read the first five books of the Bible because they rarely read the Bible. They own Bibles, of course, several, maybe a Vulgate, a King James, a Revised Standard or even one of the more modern ones such as the Jerusalem. But they seldom open them; for a very good reason. They think it wiser to take their Scripture in short chunks edited and organised for them by authority. So they read it as presented in the Breviary or Prayer Book, in the various readings at Mass or in extracts followed by commentaries. They like their gin with plenty of ice and lots of tonic.

Atheists were rare before the mid-18th century. The 200 years from then to the mid 20th century were their moment, especially among intellectuals. Much opinion imagines their success will continue. Professor McGrath thinks it has already turned into decline. ‘Religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the 21st century.’ He here gives us a potted history of atheism over those two centuries. He helpfully dissects its various strands. Some atheists reject religion on ‘logical’ grounds. Some indict it as old-fashioned and out of date. Others reject it for justifying war and oppression and class domination. Yet others see it as a man-made invention to solve psychological problems or reject it as pleasure-denying.

Alice Thomas Ellis is not a person to be trusted — in the kitchen. I am surprised to find this. I have always admired her elsewhere, in her novels for instance. But there is no doubt that when it comes to food she is simply left-wing. She makes steak and kidney pudding without the kidney. That’s bad enough, but the reason is worse: the first she had smelt (unsurprisingly) of urine. Adult cooks should have got over childish impressions. She does not care for pesto: it smells of silage. She draws woodcock. She finds gazpacho, of all things, ‘a nuisance to prepare’. And she ‘could not get hold of asafoetida’, though Asian shops are awash with it. Now I am untrustworthy, especially in the garage and up ladders.

Anthony Kenny does not believe in the existence of God, but his disbelief is qualified and complex. He does not believe that the existence of God can be proved through something like the five Thomist ‘proofs’: they depend too much on ‘outdated Aristotelian cosmology’. Further, he thinks that the traditional attributes of God such as omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence are incompatible. He implies that there is also a traditional attribution to God of (total?) ineffability and this, too, damages proof of existence. I don’t quite understand his emphasis on the un-utterability of God. It’s true there is a strand of ineffability-thinking in the Church, but there are even stronger strands of Revelation.

In 1845 Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church. More than a century and a half later, the fires of controversy ignited by the Oxford Movement which he led, as an Anglican priest, until his reception, seem to have died down. Newman himself is widely regarded as a great Christian apologist and a sympathetic and good man. Above all, the story of Newman is a popular and moving tale. English Roman Catholics are proud of his fame. Many Anglicans are happy to accept his sacramental legacy, if not the disciplines that go with it. Conservatives admire his stand against liberalism and liberals enjoy using and abusing his doctrine of development.

In 1743, 393 livings within the gift of the Archbishop of York were occupied by clergymen who did not live within that diocese and another 335 incumbents held plural livings. One bishop of Winchester distributed 30 incumbencies among his family. The Church of England was corrupt and slumbered. The facts of John Wesley's life and of his 'Great Awakening' which disturbed the slumbers are clear. Born in 1703, he was ordained and died a priest in the Church of England.

I have always counted myself a loyal, even an enthusiastic eel fan. I seek them out and buy them whenever I can find them live: they deteriorate quickly and should be killed just before cooking. The French like to buy them skinned. This is a culinary error and usually, though not necessarily, means they are bought dead. I keep them in the bath with the cold tap just dripping. I like cutting them up holding the body with the women's pages of the Daily Telegraph and watching the advice about alternative health disintegrating in a mess of blood and slime while the severed head watches, approvingly winking and squirming in sympathy. I like eels fried with olive oil and garlic or with ginger or jellied or matelote or stewed with parsley liquor.