Jonathan Miller

The journalist Jonathan Miller, a cherished Spectator contributor, died last week at his home in Occitanie, France. Below is an extract from the memoir he had only just completed, Shock of the News: Confessions of a Troublemaker. Here he explains how he came to write about French politics and culture for the magazine. I t was Andrew Neil who prodded me from my lethargy. Andrew lives on the posh Provençal side of the Rhône while we’re on the plouc side nearer Spain. I’m more likely to run into him in England or New York than France. But we keep in touch by email. When Emmanuel Macron began his manoeuvres for the presidency, I sent a gossipy email to Andrew explaining why I thought he might win, and how peculiar he was.

The French government has banned smoking at the beach, a performative gesture for a government that’s incapable of doing anything about a €3 trillion deficit, uncontrolled borders and lawlessness. As it’s in the mood for banning things at the beach, it should listen to me and ban caravans. Here in the Deep South of France, just by the interchange of the A9 motorway and the departmental route 13, is a sprawling prairie containing thousands of dead, rotting caravans and camping vans. The only good caravan is a dead caravan. Unfortunately, as one dies, another is born It’s like an abandoned suburb of Dante’s inferno. It’s the Hotel California for these mobile pollution factories. The damned things check in, and never leave.

I like King Charles. I visited him at Windsor Castle recently as Mrs Miller picked up a gong. The castle has been beautifully restored. It is full of treasures, looted from the Empire. There were no refreshments, only a porcelain water bowl for the guide dog of one of the honourees. The King was charming, looking a little the worse for wear, perhaps. He graciously laughed at Mrs M’s joke. He’s a thoughtful guy. A little odd, which is no bad thing. But he seems to have gone completely doolally on his trip to Canada this week, where he opened Parliament with the most modern of empty gestures. The King’s land acknowledgement will have pleased the Canadian blob.

I started out as a reporter covering the criminal and civil courts in Ohio. I got to read every piece of paper filed with the clerk’s office, a bottomless source of stories. These were the days when people still trusted reporters and talked to us. I hung out with the prosecutors and cops, and wandered in and out of the judges’ chambers. It horrifies English lawyers when I suggest there is merit in electing judges rather than allowing them to be appointed by the diversity-obsessed Judicial Appointments Commission After the closing gavel, judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and we reporters would assemble in chief judge Kessler’s chambers for a whiskey. He kept a spittoon by his desk, a cigar in his jaws and hens at his farm.

More Indians? Bring them on. The more the better. The prospect of a forthcoming tidal wave of immigration following Labour striking a trade deal with India is the best news in years. The last tidal wave of Indians arrived from Uganda and they were a shot in the arm of moribund Britain – where because of half-day closing, you couldn’t even buy a pint of milk on a Wednesday afternoon.  That changed after August 1972 when Ugandan dictator Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of approximately 80,000 South Asians (primarily of Indian descent) from Uganda, giving them 90 days to get out and changing Britain massively for the better, not least because they taught a nation of shopkeepers how to keep shop.