George MacDonald Fraser - The Light’s On At Signpost

But much has deteriorated. To one of my generation, who remembers pre-war, war-time, and post-war (as most of the present population and their governors do not) and who has travelled widely and now lives, in a real sense, overseas, the United Kingdom begins to look more and more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, running down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic. My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, the law itself, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British – oh, how blimpish this must sound to modern ears, how out of date, how blind to the “need for change” in the new millennium!

Well, perhaps it is. We elderly pessimists may be wrong. God knows, if we had a pound for every mistake we’ve made, you could keep the pension. But, if we are old, we are experienced, we have been about, and seen things, and perhaps learned lessons that our juniors do not know … yet. In comparing past and present we have an advantage denied the young: we were there then , and we are here now .

Certainly we tend to be resistant to change, on the whole, but that is because we have learned the hard way that change for its own sake is not a good idea, *and that if something works more or less satisfactorily, it is best not to alter it without long and careful thought. Above all, we have learned Cromwell’s wisdom:

“In the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Oh, we were young once, and just as cocksure and clueless as younger people today – but we were luckier then than they are now because the means of self-destruction in our time were much more limited, and we laboured under fewer disadvantages.

It follows that I am sorry for the present generation, with their permissive society, their anything-goes philosophy, and their generally laid-back, in-yer-face attitude (sorry, attichood). They regard themselves as a completely liberated society, when the fact is that they are less free than any generation before them since the Middle Ages. Indeed, there may never have been such an enslaved generation, in thrall to hang-ups, taboos, restrictions, and oppressions unknown to their ancestors. (To say nothing of being neck-deep in debt, thanks to a money-lenders’ economy.)

They won’t believe, of course, that they don’t know what freedom is, and that we were freer by far fifty years ago – yes, with conscription, censorship, direction of labour, rationing, and shortages of practically everything that nowadays is regarded as essential to enjoyment, we still had a liberty beyond modern understanding. How so? Because we had other freedoms, the really important ones, that are denied the youth of today.

We could say what we liked; they can’t. We were not subject to the aggressive pressure of special-interest minority groups; they are. We had no worries about race or sexual orientation; they have (boy, do they ever!) We could, and did, differ from fashionable opinion with impunity, and would have laughed political correctness to scorn (had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist); they daren’t. We had available to us an education system, public and private, which was the envy of the world; we had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard); our children could play in street and country in safety; we had not been brainwashed into displays of bogus grief in the face of tragedy, or into a compensation culture that insists on scapegoats and huge pay-outs for non-existent wrongs; we had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying, and was not afraid to punish it in ways which would send today’s progressives into hysterics; we did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment determined to impose its views, and more and more beginning to resemble Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

And we didn’t know what an Ecstasy tablet was. God, we were lucky. But above all, perhaps, we knew who we were, and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.

Not any more, and we wonder where it went wrong. Speaking from a fairish knowledge of British history and governance, I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the last fifty years. I know about Addington and the Cabal and Aberdeen and North but they really look a pretty decent and competent lot when compared with the trash that has infested Westminster since 1945. Of course there have been honourable exceptions; I speak of the generality, and I am almost as disenchanted with Conservative as I am with Labour. Between them they have produced the two worst Prime Ministers in our history (and what bad luck it has been that they have both fallen within the last thirty years). They are, of course, Heath and Blair. The harm that these two have done to Britain is incalculable, and almost certainly irreparable.

Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable; short of assassination there is little that people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their way at all costs, and hold public opinion in contempt.

Does it matter whether today’s and future generations know what the overwhelming majority of their parents and grandparents believed and valued? Probably not; it is a fact of life that after a certain age no one is taken seriously, and an era in which the official wisdom is that history is bunk is not going to pay much heed to a reactionary eccentric like me. But I’ve written it anyway, for the reason that I’ve written all my books: simply because I want to. It’s the best of reasons. Dr Johnson, who said many wise things, could talk tripe with the best of them on occasion, as when he said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

What follows is not one long die-hard bellyache, however. It contains some autobiography of one who has been a newspaperman, soldier, encyclopedia salesman (briefly), novelist, and historian, and because, as I said earlier, I know the fascination the film world exerts, my reminiscences of almost thirty years, on and off, as a writer in the movie business. These last will not be sensational or denigratory; I liked, almost without exception, the great ones of the cinema whom I met and worked with, actors, actresses, directors, producers, moguls, and that great legion of technicians, experts, and fixers without whom films wouldn’t get made.

But if I have no exposés, no juicy scandals, it may be that film buffs will still find some interest in Rex Harrison’s enthusiasm for lemonade, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s technique with head-waiters, Federico Fellini’s inability to master his office burglar alarm, Burt Lancaster’s knack of losing car keys (and his possible descent from John of Gaunt), Guy Hamilton’s system for assessing the rough-cut of a picture, Alex Salkind’s consideration of Muhammad Ali for the role of Superman (it’s a fact, I was there), and Oliver Reed’s unique method of crossing the Danube – as well as his thoughts on Steve McQueen, and vice versa.

And other phenomena and personalities. Looking back on Hollywood, Pinewood, Cinecittà, and various other studios and locations from Culver City to the mountaintops of Yugoslavia, I find some of it hard to believe, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

That, then, is the purport of this book, some of which was written as long as twenty-odd years ago, and has been waiting until I had time to finish it and arrange it in some sort of order; it’s fairly random and haphazard, but at least it’s true. It won’t please everyone, I know, but those of ultra-liberal views can console themselves with the thought that my kind won’t be around much longer, and then they can get on with wrecking civilisation in peace; in the meantime (assuming they’ve read this far) they should stick this volume back on the bookshop shelves and turn to recipes about aubergines or shrub cultivation or political memoirs.