Barons Court to Belarus

Local Film Star

Anthony Quayle is the only actor in the picture most people will remember; for his parts in Ice Cold in Alex and Lawrence of Arabia, probably. He was not as well known in 1935 as Roy Byford in the centre. Roy (1873-1939) was in a fair few early films beginning in 1916 but should be remembered as an actor with the New Shakespeare Company, with whom he toured the US and Canada more than once.

The General asked me recently, “are there any famous people buried in Margravine Cemetery?” No, but there are a lot of interesting people of whom Roy Byford is one.

Inside Downing Street

In September I was invited to Downing Street but my post, News from Downing Street, only went as far as the famous door. May I now share some observations?

In a ground floor reception room in Number 11, I was charmed to see this by pre-Raphaelite disciple, George Howard. I have admired his work for many years since I was wed to one of his descendants. Her family have many of his pictures but I didn’t expect to see one in Downing Street. Nor did I expect to see a Henry Lamb but there is one in the same room.

An unexpected aperçu of my visit is that Prime Ministers like to leave their personal mark. Harold Wilson commissioned Raymond Erith to design a small staircase as a shortcut to his flat. John Major modified an ante-room upstairs to display contemporary British art. It is, or at least was in September a disaster, and the most disliked room according to my insider. Tony Blair, in an act of hubris, had bookcases in an upstairs study decorated with six bees to commemorate his family’s residence. This room was Margaret Thatcher’s preferred study and David Cameron’s touching contribution was to hang a, not very good, portrait of her above the chimney piece. The elm table in this study was designed for and used at the G8 summit at Lough Erne in 2013.

Do you remember I visited Giro’s headstone at the top of the Duke of York’s steps in April 2016? There are two dogs buried in the Downing Street garden in unmarked graves: Zulu, David Lloyd George’s pug, and Megan, Clement Attlee’s Welsh terrier. It is thought that a scarab given to David Lloyd George is also buried in the garden; his superstitious housekeeper feared it would bring bad luck and interred it. I beg to differ. I think she sold it to J Preston Peters.

“Father of Aline, Peters is an American from Memphis, Tennessee, a forceful, self-made millionaire who as a boy made twenty dollars a week selling mint to saloon keepers. After over-work gave him indigestion and led to a nervous breakdown, he took up collecting scarabs, and amassed a vast and prodigious collection. His indigestion has left him quick-tempered and an insomniac, during bouts of which he likes to be read to, ideally out of a well-thumbed cookbook. His digestion is improved no end by the regime of exercise he is put on by Ashe Marson, in Something Fresh (PG Wodehouse).” Wikipedia.

I paid £20 for a transit visa to Belarus in 2013. It allowed me to traverse Belarus on the night sleeper from Warsaw to Moscow. Technically I infringed the terms as I got off the train to watch the bogeys being changed to the Russian 1,520 mn gauge. Now I’m in Minsk and don’t need a visa.

It’s a lot quicker to fly. Lufthansa from Heathrow to Frankfurt and then to Minsk. I’m here on an Election Observation Mission for OSCE – my 4th this year. You know the rules: there will be nothing about politics in Belarus, nor will any comments on the subject be published. Minsk looks as if it’d be lovely in the summer; plenty of water and wooded parks. There are some good 1950s buildings when the city was largely re-built after the war and some striking 21st century architecture. Here’s the view from my room on the 13th floor of Hotel Belarus. It’s around 8 C and everyone says how warm it is for the time of year – they attribute it to climate change.

I read Dr Thorne on my last EOM. Now I’m reading Framley Parsonage. I was disappointed in Dr T but now I rejoice in the return of characters introduced in The Warden and Barchester Towers. Trollope is on top of his game again. His insight into human nature is acknowledged but his understanding of the psychology of a 21st century beagle is spot on too.

”It is no doubt very wrong to long after a naughty thing. But nevertheless we all do so. One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam’s fall. When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things.” (Framley Parsonage, published 1861)