Sunday, 6th January 1991
Yesterday I was unaccountably cheered by having written a silly little article for Country Life which I thought would be beyond me. Too serious for such a mag. Then today I read a short review in the Telegraph of the reprint of my William Beckford, referring to my ‘jerry-built prose’. This has plunged me down again. I am an object of contempt to young critics who regard me as passé. I shall certainly never write another book, to be insulted in this manner.
Clarissa staying the weekend, brought by her lover Billy. She tells us that every full moon he becomes a different character, abstracted, moody and somnolent – a ‘lunatic’, so to speak. This may explain the slightly odd look in the eyes which Oenone noticed in him.
Monday, 6th January 1992
We hear from Elizabeth Longman that Chiquita Astor has suddenly died, having just returned from Argentina in the best of form. Poor good silly little Chiquita, whom we have known since her father was at the Embassy in Belgrave Square during the war.
We watch a film on TV about chimpanzees. These ugly little brutes are shown to be very family-minded, even sharing food with their favourite relations. Then there is the blood-lust which drives them to hunt rival monkeys, chasing them up trees and making them fall to the ground where their mates tear them limb from limb. A. loves these nature films, but I find them disturbing. As David Attenborough says, we derive from these creatures, whose civilisation is just a step behind ours.
Wednesday, 6th January 1993
I had a feverish cold and stayed in bed yesterday, not meeting A. for fear of infecting her. Listened to Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss, one of my favourite composers, and became intoxicated with the nostalgia evoked. Was transported back to Roquebrune; imagined myself sitting in a café with A., I in whites, she with greying hair and severe magisterial expression, being served breakfast by a white-aproned waiter. Around us the smells of brioches, coffee, pine trees, the clean early morning freshness of the sky; no birds singing, but in the distance the susurration of the sea and the hesitant piping of a shepherd’s flute. The senses heightened, expectant of lovely future days without end. And then I heard the languid drip of water falling from our basin in the little enclosed garden onto the water hyacinth – all mixed up in the daydream conjured by the music in my feverish condition.
To my surprise I received a very nice letter this morning from Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, saying she regrets ‘very sincerely and vehemently’ the bad publicity the Sun has been giving to ‘our Queen’. That she constantly points this out to her son Rupert, to whom she is forwarding my letter. So that’s something achieved, I feel.
(All, James Lees-Milne)
6 January 1999
Announcement of the engagement of Prince Edward to the girl he has been living with for years, Sophie Rhys-Jones. Speculation about a possible dukedom. Sussex would be the most innocuous. All the others have military associations or disreputable memories.
6 January 2003
Roy Jenkins dies at eighty-two. Although for some years we had a guarded, even frosty relationship, it thawed considerably in the last decade or so. He consulted me on his book about Chancellors of the Exchequer and we corresponded about Mr Gladstone. In particular, I recall the long and amiable talk we had at Buckingham Palace two or three years ago at one of the Queen’s evening parties: each of us in a vast gilded fauteuil in an otherwise completely empty, enormous room. I think one reason for our friendship, or at least cordiality, was his becoming less touchy and me being ready to laugh at his own foibles. I cannot imagine who could make as able a Chancellor for Oxford – certainly not Chris Patten.
I learn a new word from his obituary in the Daily Telegraph – ‘rhotic’: the substitution of a ‘W’ for an ‘R’ in speech, e.g. ‘Woy’.
(Both, Kenneth Rose)
* Gottfried Helnwein’s Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi) is a strange take on a traditional New Testament theme in art. The work depicts a Madonna-like mother displaying her baby to attentive Nazi officers. But this is no traditional painting — its eerie, sinister overtones are unmistakable. The time frame has jumped to the period of the Third Reich. The figures of the officers are taken from a Nazi propaganda photograph that Helnwein reworked on the computer, transferred to canvas, and overpainted with acrylics and oils. While the mother looks much like an updated (Aryan) version of a sweet-faced Madonna from Renaissance paintings, the baby, with his full head of dark hair, looks strangely like an infant Hitler. With the work’s hyperrealist style and disturbing content, this unsettling work generates anxiety. The viewer is drawn in by both its beauty and its seductive, malevolent overtones. (Denver Art Museum)