Bearing witness

Even the great Alan Bennett sounded out of synch with the times as he read from his new short story ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’ for this week’s Book at Bedtime (Radio 4).

Even the great Alan Bennett sounded out of synch with the times as he read from his new short story ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’ for this week’s Book at Bedtime (Radio 4). His peculiarly English brand of wit, mordant, slightly sinister, a touch supercilious, grated on the nerves. No one else on radio can put together a character with such economy and yet such excruciating vividness. But in the light of the events of last week his characters sounded a bit jaded, a little worn out, too caricatured to gather us in as listeners.

What we needed instead, perhaps, was something more bracing and unexpected. Not 15 minutes in the company of the comforting but too knowing Bennett, but a new voice, coming straight from the heart of the communities most affected by what has happened.

Such an extraordinary shift has occurred in the social contract that it’s impossible to make valid immediate comment. All that can be done at the moment is to observe, to bear witness. But of course the panel on Any Questions (Radio 4) is deliberately primed to comment, opine, provoke. Perhaps when the programme began, more than 50 years ago, to comment was also to illumine. It’s possible. Politicians may then have had a broader understanding of their rightful place in the big scheme of things. No such luck now when so few of them have ever done anything else except breed political aspirations and dispense their own particular brand of socio-political wisdom.

Friday night’s programme gave us the worst kind of panel, chaired as always by Jonathan Dimbleby.