Eliot’s anti-Semitism
Sir: I yield to none in my love of T.S. Eliot’s work, and have even managed to defend to myself the iffy passages about Jews in his poetry. But the letters that Craig Raine quotes in his review (Books, 14 November) are so blatantly, even honestly, anti-Semitic that they leave no room for doubt; except, it seems, at Faber & Faber. Mr Raine’s attempts to argue the anti-Semitism away present a hilarious and painful spectacle. For example, Eliot writes that Jews are inclined to Bolshevism — a classic Nazi belief. Mr Raine asserts, desperately, that this is a tribute to Jewish iconoclasm. It isn’t; it’s racism. The question is, why does Mr Raine go through such contortions to protect his hero when the evidence is so plain? Eliot was a great man with a rotten prejudice. We may not like it, but we have to admit it, as he does, or risk its shadow falling on us.
Thomas Adès
London WC1
Judgments of hindsight
Sir: I was interested to read Pavel Stroilov’s article (‘Reaching through the Iron Curtain’, 7 November) about Labour party contacts with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. There is, of course, another side to that coin. No doubt sitting quietly in an archive or an attic in Pretoria is a diary by one of Anatoly Chernyaev’s counterparts in South African intelligence, recording their contacts with members of the Conservative party over the same period. Without stretching this notoriously elastic term too far, it is clear that a number of prominent Conservatives, some of them conspicuously close to the Tory party leadership, acted as ‘agents of influence’ for the South African government. If they did not receive wads of used notes from their contacts, many of them benefited financially from business links with South Africa.
This is not to indulge in crude, party-political point-scoring. Rather, it is to suggest that the complex subject of political allegiances in the Cold War deserves a more nuanced approach than the ‘Witchfinder General’ one adopted by your contributor.
For some members of the Labour and Conservative parties, the ideological ‘family resemblances’ they identified with some fairly repulsive regimes convinced them that these states were, at the very least, ‘wrong in the right way’. The notion that the Stalinist systems imposed on Eastern Europe after 1945 might eventually have transformed themselves into ‘true socialism’ has little currency today outside the columns of Seamus Milne. But before the events of 1989, it was widely entertained on the left. Likewise, many on the right who would have claimed to abhor apartheid genuinely believed that ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa was the best means of ensuring peaceful reform.
Although Chernyaev’s diaries may prove a valuable resource for historians of the Cold War, they will need to be read in a context that does not impose the easy moral judgments of hindsight on the actions of an earlier generation of politicians.
Professor Philip Murphy
Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, London WC1
Sir: Michael Foot may well have received expensive gifts on the orders of Brezhnev. But as someone who was present when they met in the Kremlin in 1981, I can affirm that the Labour leader received nothing like a warm welcome from the General Secretary. In fact when old Footie opened proceedings by saying how much he liked Russian vodka, Brezhnev slapped him down with a curt ‘Now is not the time to talk of vodka.’
Alan Cochrane
Edinburgh
Gender agenda
Sir: I enjoyed Rod Liddle’s article about Jeanie the Devon County Council youth equalities worker (Liddle Britain, 7 November). By coincidence, on the same day, I received an email from the Solicitors Regulation Authority of England and Wales inviting me to complete their ‘Diversity Census Questionnaire’, question 5 of which was (and remember this is to be completed by lawyers) ‘is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned [emphasis added] at birth?’ Is it me or is this the most ridiculously worded and preposterous question ever addressed to a member of the legal profession?
James Connell
Via email
Playing the fool
Sir: In his most interesting review of Melissa Katsoulis’s history of literary hoaxes (Books, 14 November), perhaps Ian Thomson had not the space to mention the fictional island of San Serriffe, which was featured in a Guardian supplement on April Fool’s Day 1977. The Henry Root Letters came later but were equally mischievous and enjoyable.
Some time after that, I learnt the possible repercussions from such japes. The proposed redevelopment of a shopping area next to Salisbury Playhouse, which was staging a Shakespearian play at the time, led me to construct recently discovered fragments of the Bard’s first folio.
Employing an italicised font on thin brown paper, I merely singed the edges on my Aga hotplate to make it look convincing before sending it in to the local newspaper. They cheerfully accepted its ‘authenticity’ in the spirit of the game, and accordingly printed it. The hoax was, however, quickly exposed when the Bodleian Library became interested. The thing did look jolly convincing, though.
Robert Vincent
Wildhern, Hampshire
Whisky slip
Sir: May I hopefully be the first whisky bore to point out a bit of a howler in Jeremy Clarke’s article on a Scotch Malt Whisky Society tasting (Life, 14 November). As a member for 20 years, I think you will find that 4.131 is Highland Park and not an Islay whisky as stated. I hope it was the excellence of the evening that led to the slip. I can say from experience that Society tastings can lead to some confusion!
Lewis Moonie
House of Lords, London SW1
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