Paul Johnson

There are many odd tales behind the origins of classic gastronomic dishes. Who would have believed that the old Ipswich bruiser, Cardinal Wolsey, was responsible for that perfect combination, strawberries and cream? No one had thought of serving them together before. There is an even more curious history of that admirable side dish, pommes duchesse. It was not invented by Talleyrand’s chef or a three-star maestro from the Michelin, but by that earthy, not to say peat-stained, painter Sir Edwin Landseer (1803–72). How so? He came from a fairly humble background. His father was an engraver who campaigned vigorously (as any student of the Farington Diary will know) for those of his trade to be admitted as full members of the Royal Academy.

‘When markets are unsteady and investors are nervous, you can’t beat gold.’ That was my grandfather’s saying, common enough, I daresay, in late Victorian Manchester. Jimmy Goldsmith was another believer. ‘You know what the Aztecs called it,’ he would say with relish, ‘they had a special word for it — the excrement of the gods.’ Jimmy was a great buyer of gold, especially towards the end of his life. He bought bullion — gold bars — and would inspect them in the bank vault where they were kept. ‘Like visiting Fort Knox,’ he’d say. He also bought shares in gold mines, the simplest way to invest in gold.

Recently a friend from abroad, anxious to enrich himself from our past, asked me about the cathedrals. Which must he visit, which should he visit if he had time? These are not easy questions. Many years ago I wrote a book about British cathedrals and was surprised to discover how many of them there are, if you spread the net wide enough. And also how varied they are, much more so than comparable buildings on the Continent. Our individualism turns each of them into something unique. Indeed, one of the oldest and most splendid of them, Westminster Abbey, is actually a ‘royal peculiar’. Founded, renewed and adorned by kings, it has always been a sacring-place of monarchs, where they are crowned, married and buried.

In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. In this age of creeping censorship ‘mad’ is not a word to be used lightly. It would certainly be unlawful to use it in Kipling’s sense when he refers to frontier tribes being ‘stirred up’ by ‘a mad mullah’. I rather think Winston Churchill used it in this sense in his book The Malakand Field Force, but then practically everything the old boy said or wrote in moments of excitement or exaltation would now be banned. To be fair, mad has long been suspect.

I suppose in 100 years’ time, perhaps much sooner, no one will smoke. So we will be back where we were before the 16th century, when adventurers like Raleigh brought the Red Indian habit of smoking tobacco to Europe. I suppose in 100 years’ time, perhaps much sooner, no one will smoke. So we will be back where we were before the 16th century, when adventurers like Raleigh brought the Red Indian habit of smoking tobacco to Europe. It was one of the points on which he intrigued Queen Elizabeth. ‘I can weigh tobacco smoke, Your Grace.’ ‘Oh no, you can’t, Sir Walter.’ Then he would produce a small pair of scales, weigh a bit of tobacco, smoke it, then weigh the ashes. ‘The difference between the two is the weight of the smoke.

The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913–66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political cartooning in the 12 Uhr Blatt, he had gone for Hitler as far back as 1928, and was a marked man. The cartoonist Vicky (Victor Weisz, 1913–66) fled to London not long after the Reichstag fire, with the Gestapo at his heels. Had he not possessed a Hungarian passport he would never have got away, for as the boy wonder of Berlin political cartooning in the 12 Uhr Blatt, he had gone for Hitler as far back as 1928, and was a marked man. He spoke no English, and he told me he found it hard to learn.

At this time of year my thoughts often dwell on the Loch Ness Monster. Let me recapitulate what we know about this beast. It was first spotted on 22 July 1932. It was described as crossing the main road running north of Loch Ness and being about six feet long. Later it was seen in the water, with its head above the surface. It had a long neck, a snake-like head and flippers, and was at least 20 feet long. A famous but indistinct photo was taken corresponding to this description. The monster has never again been seen on land but is often sighted, always in midsummer, holding its prehistoric head up and swimming strongly. Scotch stringers for London newspapers regularly visit the Loch at this time, hoping for a silly season story.

The wet weather this summer has made me think about umbrellas, and the curious moral associations they attract. It is not so in the Orient, where they were invented (in China) sometime early in the first millennium bc. There they were designed to protect exalted persons against the sun. They were carried by attendants in state processions and were associated with power, privilege and class. We would call them parasols. The plebs were not allowed to possess or use them and often they were carefully graded, in size and elaboration, in accordance with the dignity of the owner. There are occasional hints of similar status-parasols in the West.

Retirement, especially for a prime minister, used to being frantically busy in the full gaze of the public, is a melancholy thing. The younger he — or she — is, the more it hurts, with long years of inactivity and growing oblivion stretching ahead. I often think that the most successful of all British politicians, in a worldly but also in a personal sense, was Lord Palmerston. Not only did he hold offices of one kind or another for longer than anyone else, a total of nearly 60 years, but he died as prime minister. His last words, as reported, were: ‘Die? My dear doctor, that’s the last thing I shall do.’ So he was confident to the end; and if the key word in the rhetorical question had been ‘resign’, the saying would have been even more apt.

A MasterCard survey shows that London is now the most important and efficient city in the world — financially that is — and another reveals it is also the most expensive, Moscow alone excepted. The two are connected no doubt. Certainly a lot of successful people live here: over 10,000 of them, I hear, earn more than £1 million a year. I have lived here 52 years and expect to die here, for I like my house despite its 52 stairs. People pour into London from all over the world, in greater numbers and variety than ever before. I now come across tourists from Sri Lanka and India, as well as Korea and China, to add to the countless Japanese. Half a million Poles work here, 350,000 Filipinos, almost as many French and countless Brazilians. How do they all fit in?

Funny creatures have begun to appear in Somerset. Little herds of vicuna, llamas and guanaco, and other similar animals. They are farmed for various purposes, chiefly hair. We already have riding camels, but I am expecting camels to appear any moment as a dairy herd. What, can you drink camel’s milk? Certainly. The view of Dr Ulrich Wernery, a vet and microbiologist, is that it is ‘the nearly perfect animal product for humans’. This ingenious German has for 20 years been looking after the hawks, horses and camels of the Emir of Dubai, and I learn from the Financial Times that he has now assembled a herd of 500 milking camels to produce the stuff on a commercial scale.

Lady Diana Cooper used to relate that, at a dinner she gave in the British embassy in Paris, not long after the war, Madame de Gaulle was asked what she was looking forward to now her husband had left office. To the consternation of the table she replied, ‘A penis.’ Whereupon the General spoke: ‘No, my dear, you are mispronouncing the word. You mean “appiness”.’ Yes: but what did the lady really mean? What does anyone mean by happiness? It is the most subjective of all emotional states. As Kant said in his Ethics, ‘Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.’ Nevertheless, public-spirited people, wishing to ‘do good’, are always subjecting it to rational analysis, so as to devise government policies to maximise it.

One of the secrets of the universe is buried in the word rubbish. The word itself is secretive: no one knows its precise provenance. The big OED says: ‘Of obscure origin app. related in some way to rubble.’ But if you look up rubble, it says: ‘Of obscure origin, app. related in some way to rubbish.’ Dirt is matter in the wrong place. Rubbish is matter in the wrong place but on a larger scale. Getting it into the right place is beginning to perplex governments as never before. The earliest general attempt in English history to deal with the problem can be found in the Parliament Roll for 1392–93: ‘Qu nulle ...gette ne mette ...ascuns fymes, ordures, mukes, rubbawes ou lastage in la dite eloe entre les lieux sus dites.

I studied with interest the recent photo of Prince William and Prince Harry attending a military occasion in mufti. For officers in the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry, the sartorial drill is, or used to be, strict. Here is my report on the two young men. Bowlers: all right but nothing spectacular. Harry’s better than William’s. Indeed, the latter’s, worn a bit fore and after, might have inspired his great-great-grandfather’s scathing comment: ‘Hello, William, goin’ rattin’?’ Dark suits: oh dear, and no weskits so far as I can see. Who’s your tailor, William? Oh yes? Change him. Tightly rolled umbrellas: just passable. Shoes: well, it’s a democratic age. But — no gloves. No gloves? I can hardly believe my eyes.

That fierce neighbouring cat, which has killed or scared off our mice, has not yet destroyed our robin. Cats do not enjoy eating robins. If they do so by mistake, they vomit. But that does not stop them attacking the birds for sport. We think of robins as very tame, and they are — in England. In the past we killed them for various purposes. In the 17th century robins (and sparrows) were eaten to break up kidney stones, for which a surgical operation, in those days, was dangerous if not impossible. If the surgeon was not swift and skilful enough to get the stone out within 20 minutes, the pain was so intense that the patient died on the table. People justified eating robins accordingly.

Active young men, going to work, now sport a new kind of uniform, part oik, part kiddy: trainers with upturned toes, baggy pseudo-patch trousers of the kind worn by dustmen, short zip-jackets, a child’s rucksack and a baseball cap. In the Sainsbury’s queue the other morning, a man thus attired addressed me in a marked Wykehamist accent. He was on his way to the City. This is the latest example of what I called prolerise, the way in which culture springs from the depths. If those at the top hit upon a really useful gadget, like the French table fork, brought to England by Richard II, then it will gradually catch on lower down the scale of class and wealth. But the process usually works the other way, since poverty is a spur to utilitarianism.

The best thing this country has ever produced is a fine-sown, closely mown and weedless lawn. You really relish it this sunny time of year, when it becomes a work of art, or as Wordsworth put it, ‘a carpet all alive/ With shadows flung from leaves’. I have been thinking about lawns because ours, in London, the green punctuation mark between the steps leading down from my library, and my beloved cedar studio, had become hopelessly overgrown with moss. So a friendly lorry, controlled by a gruff-jovial man and his hard-working daughter, delivered an immense number of sausage-rolls of new turf.