Jeremy, you mustn’t neglect your hinterland…
‘E verything is simpler when you don’t have one unique goal in your life.” Mark Taimanov, the chess grandmaster, who died this week at the age of 90, spoke wisely. As well as being a master of the board game, he was also a concert pianist. At the height of his career, he undertook 80 concerts each year and 80 chess matches: a well-balanced life.
Today, we would say he came from Ukraine. Back then, he was a Russian, and was used literally as a pawn in the game of Russian diplomacy, with unfortunate consequences. Vanquished 6-0 by the American Bobby Fischer in 1971, Taimanov was effectively sent to Siberia for letting the side down. Not good enough, comrade.
Music clearly helped him to retain his sense of proportion, and he enjoyed that quality in others. “Each world champion,” he said, “was also interesting beyond the chessboard.” It’s always edifying to note the interests that great ones pursued in their spare time. Nabokov collected butterflies. “Literature and butterflies are the sweetest passions known to man,” said the literary lepidopterist. Rossini loved his food – hence the Tournedos Rossini – and Churchill painted. Disraeli wrote novels, and Ted Heath conducted orchestras, badly. CB Fry, this country’s greatest sportsman, was a representative at the League of Nations, and turned down the throne of Albania. A rounded life, most people acknowledge, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Yet how many people in public life put a value on it as, say, Denis Healey did? When you look at those who govern us, or seek to, do they strike you as people who have more than one goal in their lives? The Cleggs and Milibands, reeking with ambition, appear to have no hinterland at all.
As for dear old Jeremy Corbyn, and other members of Labour’s sixth-form debating society, Ronald Reagan’s lines are made flesh: “The student leaders of today will be the student leaders of tomorrow.”
We should have the courage to lack convictions, wrote Tom Stoppard. Well, not quite. We need people with convictions, but those who have tried to understand something of the world beyond their areas of specialism, be it politics or sport, are invariably better companions, and likelier to live richer lives. Taimanov, who never became the world champion he would have liked to become, seemed to live a very rich life. Advent is here, so last week we had the first vigorous blast of “O come, o come, Emmanuel”, one of the great musical auguries. Rejoice, indeed, while you can. The forces of secularism advance further each year, determined to take the Christian message of hope out of Christmas.
A teacher friend revealed this week that, last year, she had attended a Nativity play that turned for music to the disco hit, We Are Family. They could have used the Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, L’Enfance du Christ by Berlioz, or Britten’s
Ceremony of Carols, masterpieces in any language, but they opted for a piece of pap. And for what? “Relevance”? Cultural deprivation isn’t the half of it.
Meanwhile, at Kew Gardens, one of the great places in London, they are warming up for their winter wonderland with amplified choral effects that amount to bland humming of vague melodies. Christmas carols are musically magnificent, and afford great pleasure to believers and non-believers alike. What are the people at Kew afraid of? On BBC Radio 3 this week, a lady from Birmingham who sounded as dim as a Toc H lamp did something remarkable. Sharing a conversation with three others about “the liberal elite”, she said “you know” nine times in a single sentence! In the course of the programme she used the phrase more than 60 times.
You may be surprised to learn that the lady in question, a regular guest on such programmes, is a visiting fellow in cultural studies at the John Moores University of Liverpool. Or you may not. There was a time when universities bestowed fellowships on those who have demonstrated true scholarship, but that idea is dangerously old-fashioned.
Another lady on the show said she was “actified”. She is a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University in “creative writing”, but then you probably guessed as much. What fun their students must have.