Diary

Wednesday, 17th February 2010

Matthew Parris opens his diary

And I thought (after one of these ‘Should we be sorry we said Sorry?’ ceremonies this week), ‘Poor Australians. They keep agonising about this. Meanwhile we British, who were actually in charge when most of the Aboriginal land was taken away, never talk about it at all, are not remotely troubled by it, and wouldn’t dream of saying Sorry to anyone. In fact we’ve virtually forgotten it happened. Nothing to do with us, mate.’ Britain, I think, is a kind of amnesiac Dorian Gray. We’ve left portraits of ourselves in attics all across the planet. Aden (aka Yemen); Mesopotamia (aka Iraq); Palestine (aka Israel); Northern Ireland; Cyprus; Southern Rhodesia (aka Zimbabwe) … the list goes on. Then we slip away. And forget. And thereafter all the agonising is done for us, by others, our conscience left marvellously unwrinkled.

On the plane back to Britain, I read the book Richard Glover wrote about his lifetime project. It’s called The Mud House – Four friends, one block of land, no power tools, and I read it in one happy, journey-swallowing sitting. It’s like a long letter home from a friend who’s a particularly gifted correspondent: sometimes chatty or funny, sometimes confessional, never forced or overwritten; and, most of all, telling a story, a fireside tale. I recommend it.

Matthew Parris, a former British Conservative MP, is a columnist with the Times and The Spectator in London.