It was the Spectator’s Carol Concert last night, in the Fleet St church of St
Bride’s – and one of my favourite nights of the year. The choir is amazing: if you’re a sucker for John Rutter-style choral arrangements (which I very much am), then it was
heaven. The choir’s first piece was Harold Darke’s stunning arrangement of In The Bleak Midwinter, perhaps my
second-favourite piece of Christmas music.* I was up for the first reading, Isaiah Ch9,
predicting the birth of Christ. It was weirdly short, so I looked up the Good Book to see if I could beef it up a little – and it was one of those moments when you’re reminded just how
brutal the Old Testament can be. Just a few lines down from the words “Prince of Peace” are a few lines about just what the Lord would do to Israel: “By the wrath of the LORD
Almighty, the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; they will not spare one another.” And a merry Christmas, too.
Rod Liddle read that beautiful Betjeman poem, where you’re just waiting for the stunning sign-off (perhaps the best
two lines written about Christmas). Jeremy Clark, our peerless Low Life correspondent gave a reading. He’d brought along a suitcase with him, joking it was full of sex toys, and left early to
go see cowgirl (for details, read here, here and here). And perhaps my favourite
moment was when the minister said it was the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s assassination, so the choir would sing ‘war is over’. You could tell it was a fair-and-balanced audience,
because almost every pair of eyes in the room rolled. The Spectator commemorated Lennon’s anniversary with this piece, a while ago, and Peter Robins, our new production editor, gave it the headline “John Lennon,
idiot.”
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