In Thought for the Day, of all places, the weird bitterness behind much Scottish nationalism was revealed. On Wednesday, John Bell of the Iona Community complained of the suffering of the Scots and asked people in the south-east of England how they would like it if their history books had been ‘written in Aberdeen’. We should not have minded a bit. Indeed, though I cannot immediately recall a schoolbook from Aberdeen, the quantity of excellent British educational material coming out of Scotland — think of Collins in Glasgow — always far exceeded the relative proportions of the UK population. So did the writers — Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle (in his historical novels) — who made vivid our island story. Lord Reith (born in Stonehaven) created, through the BBC in its early days, a Scottish version of Britishness which dominated the south-east just as much as anywhere else. John Bell thinks that the Bible insists that the Scots must be ‘a distinct people in a distinct land’. Would the BBC give airtime to a Thought for the Day which claimed that God is an Englishman?
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The other day, I bumped into John (Selwyn) Gummer at a dinner and we began, as many do just now, to talk about the film The Iron Lady. He is a great admirer of Meryl Streep, who plays Margaret Thatcher, for all the usual reasons, but also because Ms Streep is Mrs Gummer. She is married to Don Gummer, an American, and, according to John Selwyn, all Gummers are of the same ilk. In 2010, John took the title of Lord Deben, when he was made a peer. His brother Peter has long been Lord Chadlington. Ms Streep, who has been married to Don since 1978, obstinately sticks by her uneuphonious maiden name.
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