agog at the news that Margaret Thatcher has been elected Tory leader with a huge majority. Surely no working man or woman north of the Wash is ever going to vote for her? I fear a lurch to the right by the Tories and a corresponding lurch to the left by Labour.
To Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s reception for the media, at least I suppose that’s what we were. Newspaper editors; television controllers; journalists and commentators; Heath looking like a tanned waxwork; Wilson; Macmillan a revered side-show, an undoubted star; a few actors (Guinness, Ustinov, Finney); and all the chaps like me – John Tooley, George Christie, Trevor Nunn. And Morecambe and Wise.
It was two and a half hours of tramping round the great reception rooms, eating bits of Lyons pâté, drinking over-sweet warm white wine, everyone looking at everyone else, and that atmosphere of jocular ruthlessness which characterises the Establishment on its nights out. Wonderful paintings, of course, and I was shown the bullet that killed Nelson.
As we were presented, the Queen asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn’t know. The Duke asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn’t know. The Prince of Wales asked me when the National Theatre would open. I said I didn’t know. At least they all knew I was running the National Theatre.
Home by 2 am with very aching feet. Who’d be a courtier?
Peter Hall
12 February
1927
But I am forgetting, after three days, the most important event in my life since marriage – so Clive [Bell, art critic] described it. Mr Cizec has bingled me. I am short haired for life. Having no longer, I think, any claims to beauty, the convenience of this alone makes it desirable. Every morning I go to take up [my] brush and twist that old coil round my finger and fix it with hairpins and then with a start of joy, no I needn’t. In front there is no change; behind I’m like the rump of a partridge. This robs dining out of half its terrors.
Virginia Woolf
1938 [Nanking]
It really is high time for me to get out of here. At 7 o’clock this morning, Chang brought in Fung, a friend from Tientsin, who is watching the house of an American here and whose wife is expecting a baby, which for three days now has been struggling to see the light of this mournful world, and you really can’t blame him. The mother’s life is apparently in danger. Birth definitely needs to be induced. And they come to me of all people!
‘I’m not a doctor, Chang. And I’m not a kuei ma [midwife], either. I’m the “mayor”, and I don’t bring other people’s children into the world. Get the woman to Kulou Hospital at once!’
‘Yes,’ Chang says, ‘that’s all true; but you must come, otherwise won’t work, otherwise woman not get into hospital, she die and baby, too. You must come, then everything good. Mother lives and baby, too!’
And that puts an end to that – ‘Idiots, the whole lot of you!’
And so I had to go along, and who would believe it: As I enter the house, a baby boy is born, and the mother laughs, and the baby cries, and everyone is happy; and Chang, the monkey, has been proved right yet again. And the whole lark cost me ten dollars besides, because I had to bring the poor lad something. If this story gets around, I’m ruined. Just think, there are 250,000 refugees in this city!
John Rabe
1941
Early spring weather since yesterday. Grateful for every additional minute of daylight, for each degree of warmth, for each yard of ground that can be walked (this especially for Eva’s sake). Eva has declined, lost weight, aged so very much – and yet, as my own body declines, I love her ever more ardently, d’amour say the French.
Hopeful, although threatened by catastrophe. Charge because room not blacked out. That can mean a fine of so many 100M that I am forced to sell the house; it can also be disposed of with 20M. There are examples of both; I assumed the worst for a whole day, I am calmer now.
It was truly a misfortune, liability through negligence, as can happen with a car. We are usually both extremely careful with regard to the blackout, on our evening walks we often grumble about illuminated windows, say the police should really do something. And now we ourselves are caught in the act. On the Monday (the tenth) all kinds of things came together, which made me lose the thread. During the day I usually return from shopping at about half past four. Unpacking, hauling coal, a glance at the newspaper, blackout, going out for supper. On Monday I found Frau Kreidl, whom both of us greatly dislike, here. She wanted to be consoled: The whole house had been inspected by the Gestapo – new tenants? Confiscation of the house? (Cupboards opened in our rooms also – there was rather too much tobacco in the house! But they saw only five packets, as a precaution four others are already with Frau Voss.) It grew late. So blackout after the meal. In the Monopol the food so bad that Eva didn’t eat it. I wanted to get her something else at the station. Nothing there either. So I was very out of humor and distracted when we returned, immediately hurried into the kitchen to make tea. Against the night sky, once the light has been switched on, it is impossible to tell whether the shutters have been closed. When the policeman rang the doorbell at nine, we were quite unsuspecting, we led him to the window so that he could see for himself that it was blacked out. The man was courteous and sympathetic; he had to charge me because neighbours had reported the light. I had to state income and property: afterward ‘the chief of police’ will determine the level of the penalty. Until yesterday I was only expecting the worst; yesterday Frau Voss told me of a case in which someone had only paid 12M; admittedly the someone was the Aryan wife of a general, and I have a J on my identity card. Now I must wait, my mood going up and down.
Victor Klemperer
1951 [writing East of Eden]
Lincoln’s Birthday. My first day of work in my new room. It is a very pleasant room and I have a drafting table to work on which I have always wanted – also a comfortable chair given me by Elaine [his wife]. In fact I have never had it so good and so comfortable. I have known such things to happen – the perfect pointed pencil – the paper persuasive – the fantastic chair and a good light and no writing. Surely a man is a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions. He may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes.
Now that I have everything, we shall see whether I have anything. It is exactly that simple. Mark Twain used to write in bed – so did our greatest poet. But I wonder how often they wrote in bed – or whether they did it twice and the story took hold. Such things happen. Also I would like to know what things they wrote in bed and what things they wrote sitting up. All of this has to do with comfort in writing and what its value is. I should think that a comfortable body would let the mind go freely to its gathering. But such is the human that he might react in an opposite way. Remember my father’s story about the man who did not dare be comfortable because he went to sleep. That might be true of me too. Now I am perfectly comfortable in body. I think my house is in order. Elaine, my beloved, is taking care of all the outside details to allow me the amount of free untroubled time every day to do my work. I can’t think of anything else necessary to a writer except a story and the will and the ability to tell it.
John Steinbeck
1962
Had supper at the Savoy. Ted Heath was of the party. A complete bachelor, with great qualities. I wonder whether he could become Prime Minister one day – he is one of those mentioned. He has a funny schoolboyish
