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Charles Moore

Wednesday, 19th September 2007

For ten years, it has been said that Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England.

Part of the condition of most women in the Mitfords’ generation was a lack of formal education, and it was certainly the condition of the sisters. (Pamela, the least bookish of the six, spells ‘psychiatrists’ as ‘sechiatrises’.) This bred deep resentment in Nancy and Jessica. But one cannot help feeling that a university education might have knocked out of the Mitfords their unique, fearless way of looking at things. Instances: Diana describes some attitude as ‘typically Christian and foul’. Debo exclaims, ‘Oh Proust. Shall I try it now or is it too late? I do hope it’s too late.’ Diana sees Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and says, ‘it is all about Muv and us’. The girls’ lack of schooling set most of them reading and writing; and their strong, strange, happy/

sad family life with its games and private languages grew their imaginations much more than any schoolroom would have done, making them almost upper-class Brontës. In varying degrees, all had literary gifts. In Scotland, aged 20, Debo climbs to a cave and hears ‘the most terrifying sound just like a hermit tearing calico’. Nancy, managing without her cook, produces scrambled eggs for her lunch ‘with a strong taste of marmalade smiling through’. Out come aphorisms, the better for not having been over-savoured by their authors: ‘So difficult to die, like so difficult to be born’ (Debo); ‘one knows communists can never pull any strings’ (Diana); ‘It is much cleverer to do than just to think’ (Diana).

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A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.