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It’s a monstrous attack on Hazlitt!THAT old devil of a writer and historian, Paul Johnson, who is 82, slyly cocked his bushy eyebrows and with a faint smile made a remark about the great essayist William Hazlitt that he knew would shock his leftish and liberal audience. I could see he was loving the moment.
Ending his talk on Hazlitt at the Conway Hall, Bloomsbury, on Saturday, he wondered if he had lived in the tumultuous 20s and 30s of the last century he would have “fallen into sin”, suggesting presumably he may have become an admirer of Stalin and hard-left politics!
Johnson, once editor of the New Statesman, is now a columnist for the Tory weekly, the Spectator. In his eyes Hazlitt’s weakness was to worship one of the biggest “monsters” in history – Napoleon.
Hazlitt, said Johnson, who lives in Westbourne Grove, believed “ideas mattered more than people”, a pure intellectual. Those who espoused the wrong ideas were “disposable”. The belief that principles were more important than individuals led to the Terror in the French Revolution, and the concentration camps and gulags of today.
To many in the 250-strong audience – they had come in from different parts of the South-east – Hazlitt would be admired as a radical thinker and libertarian, a thorn in the side of the monarchy and the Establishment in the early part of the 19th century.
Knowing Johnson – an iconoclast who churlishly holds unrestrained right-wing views – the audience would have come expecting a bit of a knockabout.
And they weren’t disappointed.
Johnson’s talk was headed: Hazlitt, Sarah and Napoleon: A case of Sexual and Political Obsession.
But Johnson did recognise Hazlitt as one of our three greatest essayists with Francis Bacon and Charles Lamb – our first modern theatre critic, sports writer and art critic.
Apart from worshipping Napoleon, he had another fault – he pursued his sexual passions, married twice, and while living in Soho was caught up in an affair with Sarah Walker on a “truly heroic scale” that has been turned into a play, a TV drama and three novels!
And why, asked Johnson who had been brought up at the Jesuit school, Stonyhurst, and is a Roman Catholic? He wagged his fingers at the audience and thundered the answer.
Because Hazlitt had abandoned the Ten Commandments and believed he had the “right to give his strong sexual urges their liberty”.
But he obviously admired this “strange, tortured man, both noble and ignoble ... a self-destructive martyr”.
Johnson had been delivering the annual lecture organised by the William Hazlitt Society on the birthday of Hazlitt, who lived from 1778 to 1830 mainly in Soho.
Several bunches of flowers had been laid on his gravestone in the grounds of St Anne’s Church in Soho over the weekend in honour of the writer whose admirers include Michael Foot, president of the Society, cartoonist Martin Rowson and poet Tom Paulin. Among those listed as editorial members of the Society’s annual review – published this week – are Sir Geoffrey Bindman, philosopher AC Grayling and biographer Duncan Wu.
I have been infatuated with Hazlitt since my teens. But my enquiries show he is almost an extinct breed at local sixth-forms.
“I’d be quite surprised if anyone here does teach him,” confessed Jack Williams, an English teacher at City of London Boys. I drew a blank at St Paul’s School and doubts at Westminster School.
Only Highgate School proved the exception. “He’s quite popular with the teachers,” said Gordon Catherwood, head of English. “We teach Hazlitt to year 10s (14 to 15-year-olds) – there's not many schools that can say that.” They’re continuing the tradition Johnson was used to.
After his talk, Johnson told me he had started to read Hazlitt at Stonyhurst at 14! Then came a big rascally smile from a man who obviously loved the great man, warts and all!
Will Observer press ahead with closure?
WILL the world’s oldest Sunday paper, the Observer, be saved?
Nearly 300 journalists – most of them from the Observer and its sister paper, the Guardian – packed a hall at Friends House, Euston, on Monday evening, all hoping that the 218-year-old publication won’t be closed down.
Rumours of closure have been recently sweeping through the Observer fed by whispers about plans by the Guardian Group suffering from the downturn in advertising.
Before the meeting the Group – based in Kings Place, King’s Cross – apparently, stated that the Sunday paper wouldn’t be closed despite an annual loss of £10million.
Although relieved, the journalists still feared that redundancies will follow in the coming weeks.
Veteran film critic Barry Norman expressed his “gratitude” to the Guardian which took him on after leaving the Daily Mail. “I had a wife, two daughters, a pig and a mortgage, and I needed a job,” he said.
Passionate speeches about the great liberal tradition of the Observer echoed throughout the meeting.
A member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) warned how the Guardian Group had savagely cut the number of reporters on the Manchester Evening News to a mere 10.
The Evening News was once one of Britain’s great provincial papers.
An NUJ representative at the Guardian Group, Brian Williams, warned that if compulsory redundancies were announced, a ballot would be held for industrial action.
Many journalists probably left the meeting feeling that a battle still lies ahead.
Gunners get big kick out of paintings
Arsenal’s sublime passing game is often likened to a work of art – now paintings by some of the club’s most famous players are going on display at the Catto Gallery in Hampstead.
Works created by the superstar footballers kicking balls at canvases will be up for grabs for between £750 and £3,000.
Winger Theo Walcott, Dutch maestro Dennis Bergkamp and greatest ever striker Thierry Henry – who used to live in Hampstead – are taking part in the fund-raiser for the Willow Foundation charity, which organises “morale-boosting” days out for young adults with chronic health problems.
Mr Walcott, 20, said: “Having seen the work they do first hand, I was delighted to get involved with this art exhibition.”
For more information visit www.willowfoundation.org.uk
More bargains on sale at local shops
COMEDIAN Alexei Sayle finds shopping in the big supermarkets “soul destroying”.
“They’re more expensive than your local family run shop and dispiriting – I can’t think of anything worse,” he told me. His favourite place? Leather Lane market in Holborn. He likes the fruit and flower stalls – and a trader with a unique line.
“I like the stall that sells not quite-past-their-sell-by-date – you can get six bars of chocolate for £1 and a box of cheese for £2,” he said.
Sayle, who lives in Bloomsbury, was lending his weight to the new Town Hall campaign to persuade us to use our local shops.
He was joined by restaurant critic Giles Coren, who was full of praise for his local shopping parade in Kentish Town Road.
He revealed he is a regular at Earth Natural Foods and eats at the Italian Pane Vino, but whispered a confession: “When I come home late at night, I happily stop off at McDonald’s.” |
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