Neil Clark

Thursday

Neil Clark

On safari in Gloucestershire

The heat was still sweltering as we headed off at dusk towards the hide to watch wildlife with our enthusiastic guide, Leonie. My wife and I were on our first ever safari — or rather ‘stayfari’. No, we weren’t in deepest Africa, but in deepest Gloucestershire. And we weren’t on the look out for lions and elephants, but beavers. We were staying at Lower Mill Estate, near Cirencester. Consisting of 550 acres of beautiful lakes, fields and woodlands, it’s been described as the most important private nature reserve in Europe. In Lower Mill, the houses fit around the wildlife, and not the other way round: all of them have bird boxes and bat-friendly roofs.

Wednesday

Neil Clark

A perfect haven of peace in north Devon

It was late September. My wife and I were feeling overworked and overstressed — our mental states not helped by the fact that we hadn’t managed to get away for a proper summer holiday. We couldn’t face the prospect of middle-of-the-night flights or airport queues, so we looked for somewhere in the UK where we could drive to. We hit upon Wheel Farm cottages near Combe Martin in rural north Devon. The journey there was an adventure in itself, taking us over seven hours from our Oxfordshire home. The A39 coastal road was closed at one point, meaning a long detour along single track roads on Exmoor in the dark. We got to Wheel Farm at 11 o’clock at night but were already feeling more cheerful than when we’d set out.

Neil Clark

Castro’s Cuba was no place for a socialist like me

It’s a country where the vast majority live in poverty, while a tiny, corrupt elite live in luxury. It’s a place where, 14 years after South Africa abolished apartheid, a form of it still operates. And it’s a country where you can be threatened with prison not just for criticising the country’s leadership, but also for querying a medical bill. Welcome to Cuba, the ‘socialist’ paradise built by that great egalitarian Fidel Castro, who after 49 years at the helm has finally decided to hand over power — in the manner of a true democrat — to his brother Raúl. My wife and I, as unreconstructed paleo-lefties who support Clause Four, free school meals and NHS dental provision, had long wanted to visit Castro’s Cuba.

Thursday

Neil Clark

Where did all the sweet people go?

To say someone was ‘sweet’ used to be quite common in Britain. We didn’t just use the word to describe our mothers and grandmothers, but a wide range of people, including public figures. But not any more. Public acts of sweetness, such as gently warning people that their shoelaces were untied, are now rare. Sweetness seems to be in terminal decline. Having just celebrated Valentine’s Day, now seems an appropriate time to ask why. Sweetness is not just about niceness, or good manners, though both help. Sir Cliff Richard may be nice and well-mannered, but is he sweet? He’s a little too self-regarding — and self-regard and sweetness don’t go together.

Saturday

Neil Clark

An actor from the age of elegance

I don’t think I have ever been so nervous before a telephone call. I had written to Ian Carmichael, via his agent, to ask if I could interview him for an article I was writing on the late Dennis Price, who had played Jeeves to Carmichael’s Bertie Wooster in the 1960s BBC series The World of Wooster. Carmichael had written back to say that he’d ‘try to oblige’ if I telephoned him at his North Yorkshire home. ‘I don’t think I’ll be very much help,’ he added. ‘Dennis was a very private man.’ Hardly encouraging. I was nervous because Carmichael, like Price, was a hero of mine.

Wednesday

Neil Clark

The face of a muffin

What was it about post-war British cinema? Our films were lit up by a collection of wonderfully idiosyncratic performers. Think Alistair Sim, Terry-Thomas and Robert Morley. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of them all was Margaret Rutherford. The drama critic, J. C. Trewin once remarked, ‘When you have seen any performance by Margaret Rutherford you are certain to remember it.’ How right he was. She stole Blithe Spirit with her portrayal of the exuberant bicycling medium, Madame Arcati. She was wonderful as Miss Whitchurch, the domineering headmistress of a girls’ school mistakenly billeted at a boys’ school in The Happiest Days of Your Life. And she was a far more colourful and entertaining Miss Marple than the rather grey character in Agatha Christie.

Saturday

Neil Clark

On home ground

Neil Clark on Cyril Hare’s Tragedy at Law, first published in 1942. ‘The best detective story that has appeared for some time and at the end of the year will tundoubtedly stand as one of the class leaders in the English school’ was how The Spectator described Cyril Hare’s Tragedy at Law, when it first appeared in 1942. ‘A detective masterpiece’ was the New Statesman’s verdict. Others were even more generous in their praise: the crime writer and critic, Julian Symons, included the book in his survey of ‘best, anywhere, ever’. Tragedy at Law is a detective story like no other. There can’t be any other murder mystery in which the killer strikes so late — on the 221st page out of 252.

Saturday

Neil Clark

The human commodity

Have two words ever said so much? President Bush’s unforgettable greeting to the British Prime Minister at the G8 summit in St Petersburg last summer epitomised how the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America had descended into one of complete servility. Can anyone imagine Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher or even John Major being addressed in such a condescending way? Geoffrey Wheatcroft can’t, and in his masterly 150-page polemic describes how under Blair’s calamitous premiership, Britain has ceased to be an independent nation. It’s a depressing story of corruption, personal vanity and mendacity unequalled in our country’s political history.

Saturday

Neil Clark

How the battle lies were drawn

If you ever get to Belgrade Zoo, don't miss the snake house. There, in nicely heated tanks, you will see two rather fearsome-looking pythons, one named Warren and the other Madeleine. The names of Bill Clinton's secretaries of state – Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright – will not be forgotten quickly in the capital of the former Yugoslavia. Seeing the two pythons slithering in their tanks reminded me of the murderous foreign policy of the Clinton administration and the enthusiastic support it received from New Labour. For amid the present furore over the no-show of Iraqi WMDs, let us remember that in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be fraudulent.

Saturday

Neil Clark

Let’s hear it for David Blunkett

Like most New Labour ministers, David Blunkett gets considerably more things wrong than he does right. Up to now, his tenure at the Home Office has been characterised by a series of ill-thought-out reforms, half-baked policy proposals and regular verbal gaffes. In three years we have had the draconian Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act – which suspends the 800-year-old habeas corpus in the case of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism – attacks on trial by jury, as well as criticism of Asian arranged marriages, and lectures on what language immigrants should speak in their own homes. When he strays from his Home Office brief, Blunkett's public pronouncements have been even more toe-curdling.