There is much to ponder in that icy interview Theresa May gave for the latest edition of US Vogue. Its author, Gaby Wood, revealed: “She says she doesn’t read much history and tries not to picture how things will be in advance.” Not read “much” history? Is that the same as not going to the gym much or not doing much volunteering?
We sympathise. Working lives are busy. Perhaps May does in fact take the odd volume of Thucydides or Christopher Clark or Antonia Fraser off the shelf, flick through it negligently and then put it back, before cracking on with the job of triggering article 50. And if an interviewer were to inquire what historians May reads on this partial basis, she surely wouldn’t be hubristic enough to reply, like Sarah Palin on being asked to name the newspapers she read: “All of ’em!”
Nowadays, history on TV or in schools is said to be dominated by Tudors’n’Nazis. Henry’s break with Rome or the trials of 1940 might be inspirational topics in Downing Street, but the prime minister doesn’t read “much” about them, and moreover tries not to picture how things will be in advance. Not encouraging.
Margaret Thatcher once convened a panel of historians including Timothy Garton Ash, Norman Stone, Fritz Stern and Hugh Trevor-Roper to advise her on German unification. May needs to assemble some historians of her own to discuss European de-unification.
Games 1 Endgame 0
My inner arty teenager is enraged that insufferable sports-playing types at schools now have their incredibly tiresome matches broadcast. Rugby’s Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens is being live-streamed, and football and hockey events are increasingly shown on the web. Thousands of parents, rather than shiver on the touchline, now stay in bed and claim to their offspring that they really were watching – honest.
The Fotherington-Thomas in me resents this promotion of sportiness in schools. I was the one in class who carried Camus’ L’Etranger in a blazer pocket, and ostentatiously displayed the Buzzcocks album Another Music in a Different Kitchen in the record shop’s special souvenir carrier bag.
If there had been a move to televise school sports in my day, I would have indignantly demanded equal time: cameras to broadcast my respectably attended lunchtime production of Beckett’s Endgame, and the poetry reading interspersed with thoughtful solo pieces on classical guitar.
Baffled by our coffee fetish
Waitrose is getting tough with the overcaffeinated freeloaders and latte-slurping scroungers blocking the aisles of all their shops.
Until recently, possession of a MyWaitrose loyalty card entitled you to a free coffee, no questions asked. At any moment, I was expecting Waitrose to throw in a free Proms programme as well. But as of next month you will actually have to prove you’ve bought something before you get your coffee.
But why is Waitrose promoting the coffee fetish anyway, which seems to have arisen as drinking beer in pubs has fallen? For me, the most baffling thing is Thermos-style mugs for drinking coffee while you’re on the bus, on the streets, or walking around any of the other shops that aren’t offering free coffee.
At the Berlin film festival this year we were actually offered a free travel coffee mug each, which we could refill from a free unlimited coffee tap. I didn’t want one. However if, instead of coffee, Waitrose or the Berlin film festival were to offer a free plump muffin, or sugar-glazed danish, or one of those huge medallion-sized foil-wrapped chocolates, I could be tempted.
