The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Re: Who wrote this, Lewis Carrol? Archived Message

    Posted by Keith-264 on August 18, 2020, 6:59 pm, in reply to "Who wrote this, Lewis Carrol?"

    I've been curious about the LRB line since I renewed my subscription.

    Letters

    Vol. 42 No. 4 · 20 February 2020

    In the course of his excellent piece about the December election (LRB, 6 February), James Butler says that Jeremy Corbyn possessed the quality of resilience: ‘He withstood a level of opprobrium almost unprecedented in public life.’ One wonders whether ‘resilience’ is quite the word, when complaints about the supposedly unprecedented opprobrium have been noisy and outraged. Butler echoes the claim in the Labour Party’s post-election report that ‘there is also little doubt that four years of unrelenting attacks on the character of the party leader, an assault without precedent in modern politics, had a degree of negative impact.’

    Perhaps they ought to read Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher. He records some of the statements by public figures, in public or in writing, about her character, appearance and personal attributes. Dennis Potter called her ‘repellent’. David Hare said that her influence would disappear after she went, ‘leaving nothing but the memory of a funny accent’. Alan Bennett said that she was ‘a kind of maiden aunt who knows all about marriage’. Mary Warnock said that a film of her in Marks and Spencer had ‘something really quite obscene about it’. Jonathan Miller called her ‘loathsome, repulsive in almost every way’. Songs were released by pop bands with lines like ‘I want to change into a dog so that I can use Madame Thatcher daily as a lamp-post,’ or ‘When they finally put you in the ground/They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down,’ or, concisely, ‘Maggie, Maggie, you ####/Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, you ####ing ####’. Alice Thomas Ellis called her ‘a mean little mouse bred on cheese rind and broken biscuit and the nutritionless, platitudinous parings of a grocer’s mind’. Much later, admired novelists would write stories fantasising about her violent murder set around the time of her attempted assassination in Brighton, a time when (as everyone concedes) she behaved with notable bravery.

    This is not to complain about this sorry and often childish catalogue of insults, which some readers will think richly deserved, while others will hold that opprobrium is only to be expected by a politician proposing radical change, whether Thatcher or Corbyn. But it isn’t correct to suggest that the opprobrium Corbyn undoubtedly experienced and clearly thought unjust was unprecedented. If there was a popular West End musical with a song looking forward to celebrating Corbyn’s death, as Billy Elliot gleefully anticipated and, in the event, celebrated Thatcher’s, I missed it.

    Philip Hensher
    London SW8

    Vol. 42 No. 5 · 5 March 2020

    In his novel The Northern Clemency (2008), Philip Hensher described the Sheffield neighbourhood in which I lived at the time (Letters, 20 February). It was in the least affluent corner of the city’s most affluent constituency, Sheffield Hallam. The people there lived secretive lives, as Hensher saw it, and were narrow-minded and selfish. That wasn’t my experience. And in December’s election, Sheffield Hallam returned Olivia Blake as its MP – for Labour.

    Hensher will see what he chooses to see, and he is unlikely ever to see things the way I do, even if we did walk the same streets. He takes issue with James Butler’s claim that Jeremy Corbyn received a level of opprobrium almost unprecedented in public life, contrasting the abuse Corbyn received with the treatment Margaret Thatcher got when in office. But Hensher could at least recognise that where Thatcher was a prime minister vilified for what she did in power, Corbyn was a man who never became prime minister vilified for fear that he might one day hold power.

    Danny Dorling
    Oxford

    All the abusive remarks about Margaret Thatcher cited by Philip Hensher were made by individuals who suffered from her policies, or by people speaking on their behalf. Abuse of Corbyn came mostly from large corporations, including many media outlets, and concerned not the results of actions already taken but the potential effects of reforms we were supposed to be scared of.

    Paul Eustice
    Worthing, West Sussex

    Perhaps Philip Hensher is right that the vilification of Corbyn was mild in comparison with the treatment of Margaret Thatcher. However, as far as I know, the Parachute Regiment never used a photo of Mrs Thatcher for target practice.

    Anthony Moore
    Norwich

    Vol. 42 No. 6 · 19 March 2020

    Danny Dorling describes my novel The Northern Clemency as depicting people in Sheffield living ‘secretive lives … narrowminded and selfish’ (Letters, 5 March). That wasn’t my intention, and I don’t believe it’s a rational reading of the book. What’s more, if Dorling wants to demonstrate the generosity of spirit of the electors of Sheffield Hallam, he perhaps shouldn’t use the example of their having chosen a Labour MP in 2019. If he lived in the constituency during the period my book is set, 1974-94, as he says he did, he will know that Sheffield Hallam returned a Conservative MP for all but two years between the creation of the seat in 1885 and 1997. A Labour MP was first elected in June 2017, but since he only lasted until October 2017 before having the Labour whip withdrawn for making obscene remarks online about women and gay men, I don’t think Dorling would be wise to cite that as evidence of anything much.

    Philip Hensher
    London SW8

    Message Thread: