Booknotes

Mr. PETER HITCHENS, AUTHOR, "THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN": Because it's important for two reasons: one, because Britain is a fantastically important country in the history of the world and in the history of democracy and liberty; and secondly, because here in the United States I think people ought to be aware of the dangers to their own culture and politics, which are apparent here but have not gone anything like as far as they have in Britain but which can overturn in a surprisingly short period of time what looks like an established and settled civilization. What a lot of people don't realize is just how unlike Britain Britain now is and how completely transformed it has been by a cultural revolution over the past 30 and 40 years.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, what I mean there--and some people in Britain have wrongly accused me of anti-Americanism, which anybody who knows me knows is--is not the case--is that we took from America some of the bad things and not enough of the good things. Therefore, we tended to take the culture of a--of a very big and a very unsettled country, particularly during the Second World War when we had a huge American presence in our midst. And that simply wasn't s--wasn't fitted for our much smaller, more intimate and more settled, more restrained culture, and it hasn't worked.

And it's--it's really one of--one of the great shames, that by closer association with an--an ally from whom we could learn a great deal, we've actually succeeded in learning all the wrong things. And in--instead of looking, for instance, at--at our constitution and saying, `Well, perhaps, there are important ways in which we could defend our liberties in the future,' we've done stupid things, like begin to get rid of the jury system, for instance--amazing for the country which invented it--and to reduce the powers of Parliament and increase the powers of the lawyers. But at the same time, from--from--from--from A--A--America we've taken cultural things which are all to do with straightforward materialism and to do with a--a Hollywood series of morals which don't--don't really fit in our, as I say, much more intimate, more old-fashioned society.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, that's because my brother Christopher, with whom I disagree on practically everything, but--and I'm really touched by this--by the--by this recommendation. I--I just put it down to the fact that the one thing we both have, even if it has completely different results, is independence of mind. It doesn't make you like the same thing generally, but it certainly does make you dislike the same things: humbug, phonies. And I think he spotted what a lot of--a lot of other people have now begun to spot in our prime minister, Mr. Blair, that dreadful phoniness, which is one of the very important developments of modern politics, an--an emp...

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, first of all, it's all baby talk and propaganda and no substance. There--th--there is a true purpose in the new British government but it's not that new now, it's had three years, which is quite a serious purpose which is to absorb Britain, United Kingdom, into the European Union and effectively end it as an independent nation, but they never say that. They never talk about that. They just make noisy sloganizing attacks on opposition parties for--for sleaze as they call it. They themselves are not immune from it. And they shout about the improvements they're going to make in health care and schooling which they don't make. And the whole tone of political debate is--is lowered and it's in--in--become incredibly televisual and sound bite dominated in a way which British politics certainly wasn't until very recently.

Mr. HITCHENS: My main one, during the last election. I--I--I've had a few, but it was a particular moment when I--I put to him that his own manifesto was being profoundly misleading about education. He claimed that he wanted for everybody else what he wanted for his own children. It just so happened that what he had arranged for his own children was, first of all, not available to most British people, and secondly, would be less available to them under the plans that he--he was proposing. He got very, very upset and told me to sit down and stop being bad. He didn't take any more questions from me after that.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, there--there is a--there has been in the past, I think, more separation between press and government, press and political parties. I have to say another thing that the Blair government has fostered has been this incredible closeness between White House press corps and White House. And the--there is an attempt to turn British political journalism into an adjunct of number 10 Downing Street and of the government, which is really quite startling and to me rather creepy. And it is changing. But I think we have been a little bit more adversarial most of the time and a little bit more disrespectful, and we tend to think that we can be disrespectful to our politicians because we have a monarchy and we don't need to be respectful to them. We can--we can revere our head of state without getting involved in politics.

Mr. HITCHENS: I work for the London Daily Express newspaper as a--a weekly columnist. And that's--that's--that's my main activity. I also write for other British publications, The Spectator and Prospect particularly, but that's--that's my main activity.

Mr. HITCHENS: Only two; two very intense years which I still look back on with enormous affection and I long to come back, but you can't--you can only choose where--where and when you live and it's--it made a huge impression upon me, and--as did my two and a half years in the Soviet Union before that, and probably made the faults in my own country much clearer to me than they would otherwise have been.

Mr. HITCHENS: We're about just under 60 million.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, most of them, I should think. It's really quite small. You could certainly get it easily into California and--and easily into--into Alaska. And, in fact, California, by comparison, is probably rather a bigger country. But I think that we have, because of our history and because of our particular island position, we've developed a--a separate civilization which has got very little to do with size and a lot more to do with culture and civilization.

Mr. HITCHENS: Nothing. A few--a few small windswept and damp islands, I suppose, such as the Falklands you could--you could claim and--and I think St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha and other little dots on--on the map, but nothing. It's gone. It's not--it no longer exists. We got rid of it with amazing speed, and there is this thing called the commonwealth which is really just a cloud of people who pretend that they still have something in common but don't. It's amazing how quickly it's vanished from sight.

Mr. HITCHENS: No, I was actually born in the empire. I was born on the island of Malta in the middle--in the middle of the Mediterranean, which was then the--the great British naval base in--in the Mediterranean. And now, of course, it hasn't seen a British warship for years. It's--it's an independent country.

Mr. HITCHENS: I grew up all--all over the place. Because--because of my father's career in the navy, we were--we--we were in the naval bases in--some of them in the south of England, in Portsmouth and Plymouth, once in Scotland. And that was--that--those are my earliest memories of these rather strange places full of great gray warships and very serious people and often quite badly bomb damaged by what was then a recent war.

Mr. HITCHENS: I think it probably adds up to about 600 miles if you--if--if you do it from--from Land's End to John o'Groat's. I've--I've never done it quite like that, but it's--it's small. You could do it if you really tried, I think, probably in just over a day. But you'd see an immense variety while you were doing it.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, there are--for a start, there--there are four different nations in the British Isles: the--the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh and the English. And they are--they're all to be found on the--on the--the English half of the--of--of the two islands, whereas in--in Ireland itself, the division is--is actually more between Irish and Scots, although people tend to forget that. And they mingle a great deal. They mingle more probably in England than anywhere else. Scotland is more Scottish, Welsh more Welsh, England much more of a mixture. And then we've had successive waves of immigration. The whole country is an immigrant country from--from its earliest years because a lot of the--a lot of the population really comes from the--the north German plains, anyway. But then you've had French Huguenots and eastern European Jews and Hungarians and all kinds of other people coming in. And then in the recent--What?--40, 50 years, quite a large number of people from the old empire, from--either from the West Indies or from the Indian subcontinent.

Mr. HITCHENS: He's older.

Mr. HITCHENS: No.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I suppose part of it must be that if there's two of you, you--you're bound to assert your individ--individuality by being different from one another. But apart from that, I don't--I don't actually think that if you really looked at it, our views are that divergent. What we both do is look critically and independently at the world and reach different conclusions, but those conclusions do come from--from--from a similar, I believe, regard for the truth and for justice and for a number of other things which simply lead us to different conclusions. You can't expect everyone to come to the same conclusion about how an objective should be reached, but I think it's--it's quite reasonable to assume that they have the same motives.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, he hates it and wants to get rid of it. I think it's an essential part of a balanced constitution in much the same way that the king is an essential part of the game of chess. He doesn't actually do very much, but by occupying his square, he prevents others from occupying it. I think the history of most countries, not all but most countries which haven't had monarchies or which have gotten rid of monarchies, suggest that once they've gone and politicians start seeking the kind of loyalty and love which monarchs enjoy, you get very serious political problems, and often you get an end to democracy. And I think it's--it would be extremely dangerous to get rid of it. I think there are many criticisms that you can make of the people who've occupied the throne. They're not perfect. They're not supposed to be. It's--that's not the point. They--the whole point about them it doesn't really matter who they are, provided they behave themselves within the constitution.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, he's a--as far as I--anything else go, a--a pretty militant atheist. I'm a member of the Anglican Church but a very dissident member because it's--it's modernized itself almost out of existence, much as the Episcopal Church, its cousin, has in--in the United States. It's simply decided that it's--it--it's going to adopt a social gospel and to be politically and culturally--I'm sure it would use progressive.

It's also thrown away its greatest treasure, which is its language. The--the absolutely extraordinarily beautiful language of the King James Bible and of Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer have been abandoned, although they haven't got rid in--in England of the most amazing assembly of beautiful buildings which they've inherited. You often think that maybe if they could get the chance, they would knock them all down and replace them with concrete shopping mall-type cathedrals and churches because they have absolutely no apparent respect for the--for the past and no understanding that they owe anything to the past or that there is anything eternal and out of normal time about religion. They seem to want to adapt it to the--to the current times. I can't see how that can be religious.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, did you know I've never asked him about that. I should imagine he disapproves of them in--in his 18th-century revolutionary way. But my view is that they're--they're important in the British constitution because they're independent or they were independent. And when the Labor government came to replace them, it's--it did it in the name of democracy but replaced these people who'd inherited their titles with appointed peers who were, as it were, appointed senators who are certainly not any more democratic than hereditary peers and are undoubtedly a lot less independent because they owe their appointments to the existing government.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, I'm--I'm sorry I'm not up on the--on--on the details. I--there are several hundred of them. This--th...

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, the--but quite a lot of those are--are--are life peers who have been created by governments for their lives, although there--there were two different kinds. There were the hereditary peers, who simply inherited their titles, often titles which had been granted back in--in the Middle Ages or in some cases as recently as 60 or 70 years ago, but--but they simply inherited their titles and there was no merit in it, no selection, no control. If you--if you inherited your title, it didn't matter who you were; if you were a bus driver or an ex-convict, you could sit in the House of Lords as a right.

Then there were the life peers who were appointed by the government for the--for the term of life who didn't hand down their titles. And the idea was that these would--generally would balance the conservative nature of the hereditary peers, even though the hereditaries weren't by any means all supporters of the Conservative Party. Many of them were cross-benchers, which is to say they were independent politically and could vote whichever way they liked.

Then what happened was that the--the new Labor government decided that it was going to get rid of all the inherited titles so that it--it didn't matter if you were the duke of whatever; you could no longer sit in the House of Lords. You could no--no longer play any part in--in lawmaking. And there was a compromise in which a small number of them were retained. It--it's one of those things that's probably not worth going into at any length, but that compromise means there are still a few hereditaries. But most of the--of the peers are now people who have been appointed by past governments or, indeed, appointed by the existing one.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, I d--I--I am just so distressed by the way that people abandon their children to television, and I don't think that the--the--I don't think television is a--is a fit child minder. I think it destroys the imagination. It destroys the...

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, a Teletubby--I--I th--I thought they--I thought they'd inflicted them on you, too, but as...

Mr. HITCHENS: ...as--as far as--as far as I've ever seen, it's a sort of round, furry, squeaky thing which makes half-formed human--humanlike noises and also has a television screen inserted in its stomach on which programs are occasionally shown in the middle of the television program in which the Teletubbies appear. And I--that's--that's the nearest I can get to describing it. You'd have to see it if you hadn't to believe it. But it's--the interesting thing about it, it's the first children's television program which actually refers to television as--as its main purpose. It's a television program about television for children.

Mr. HITCHENS: Could you get much worse?

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Because it was a warning. At about that time, television was a m--minority--a--a minority activity in Britain. Very few people had television sets. Most people listened to what they call the wireless, the radio. And there wasn't very much in the way of programming. A lot of the time, even when the BBC was transmitting television, a lot of time, there wasn't anything on. It was just a--a--a test guide or a blank screen. So it--it was still in the early stages of development, whereas in the United States, by 1950, it was pretty well-established. And Eliot who was one of the few people in Britain who obviously being American by birth knew and understood the United States, had seen what was going on and was very disturbed. And he wrote this letter to try and warn people against the development of television in Britain. And I honestly believe that it was--it was a--a--a warning which should have been heeded and has--was ignored and was ignored at great cost.

The damage that television has done to people's imaginations and individuality and the way in which it's--it acts as a conformist force on children is really quite frightening. Adults who've already learned to read and have a culture can cope with it. But children who are--who are exposed to television, especially modern color television, at an early age lose the opportunity to develop their own in--individuality and--and can become quite alarmingly, I think, decultured and--How should I say?--mass-produced as a result of--of being left in front of it as the--the third parent, the constant child minder.

Mr. HITCHENS: Not much. In fact, a lot of children's television that we have is imported from the United States, cartoons and--and other programs. There's more--I think a little bit more in the way of commercials in US television now, but not all that much. I mean, we do have a--the non-commercial BBC channel, but it's--it--it has several commercial rivals, so you--you'd--you'd be pretty unlikely to escape commercials if you were watching television all the time.

Mr. HITCHENS: I think if you believe in democracy, you have to choose. And in a country that has a party system, you have choose. I think I would choose the Republican Party, not because I accept everything that it stands for by any matter of means--I--I'd be as critical of it as I am of the British Conservative Party--but because I think if you--if you believe that you ought to have some influence and you believe that democracy is the way to do it, then party membership is--is actually a duty for anyone who's serious about the country they live in.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I would pick the Conservative Party with--with the same reservations because it is--it's a party which has failed in--in--to conserve a lot of things and which even now has many policies which I deeply disapprove. But as long as there a democratic resistance, then that's the only one there is. And again, it's--it's a matter of duty, and it's--you can't choose a political party on--on pure moral grounds because politics is a--is a matter of temporal compromises. It's not--it's not like religion. It's not--it's not something that you just--you--you just do because it's entirely good. You make a compromise by getting involved at all, and as long as I believe it--it will make a difference, then I have to make that compromise.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, I--you don't really know what other people's families are like, do you, 'cause you only live in your own. It was fairly noisy and...

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, just the four of us, Christopher and--and I and our parents. That was it.

Mr. HITCHENS: What was she like? I--that--that is--that is a question I have never been asked before. What was she like? She was very effervescent and--and very--very--al--always--always en--enthusiastic about--about things. And it came from a--s--seemed--seemed to come from a--that rather almost--almost aggressively cheerful attitude which people formed during the--the--the--the Second World War to--to try and--to--to try and overcome the--the gloom around. Didn't need--always said that she--for instance, didn't--didn't need any--any gin in her gin and tonic to--to make her feel cheerful. It was--it was unnecessary.

Mr. HITCHENS: She died in 1974.

Mr. HITCHENS: She was 50.

Mr. HITCHENS: She killed herself.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: He died in 1987 when he was--no, it was '78. I have to--I have to work these things out, so both quite a long time ago.

Mr. HITCHENS: Not during my teen-age years, no. We had...

Mr. HITCHENS: I was--I was a dreadful, awful teen-ager. I misbehaved myself.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, stupid rows over clothes and hair and appearance and--and ev--everything you can imagine, total 1960s teen-ager vs. parents clash.

Mr. HITCHENS: I--do you know the thing that I remember much more than The Beatles was The Rolling Stones, who I think had--had more of an impact, particularly when there was a case when Mick Jagger was accused of drug possession. And there was an enormous row about this in--in Britain when I was in school in, I think, 1967. And after a great deal of fuss, the charges were withdrawn, the conviction quashed, and he was released. And I think the signal that an awful lot of people of my age took was that authority lost its nerve in dealing with--in dealing with the rock generation, that they'd actually decided that--that they were going to give in. And that--that made a huge impact. The Beatles, I didn't really care about, never have, still don't--still don't.

Mr. HITCHENS: I'm 49.

Mr. HITCHENS: Two and a half.

Mr. HITCHENS: I--it--it's--it's a terrible thing. You can't...

Mr. HITCHENS: It was to me, yes. And I--the--the--being un--unhappy episodes in the months beforehand. And sh--she--she had--she had left my father. But I had no idea that--that this was going to happen. It was a complete surprise.

Mr. HITCHENS: Wait a minute. I--I--again, I--I would have been, I think, twen--22 or 23. I'm sorry. It's--it's--I--I--I honestly can't remember, but it's either 22 or 23.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Seventeen, 11 and 18 months.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, your children always laugh at you, and mine are no exception. And they tease me about it. And--but I--I--that's--that's their privilege. They--they know me better than anybody else. They know exactly what I'm like. They're not fooled. And I don't--I don't try to fool them. I--I hope--look, they--they didn't grow up when I did. They didn't see the end of what I thought was a valued civilization. A lot of what I say is--is always going to be hearsay to them. They can't conceivably take it as seriously as I can. What I do know, though, is that--that at least they've--I--I--I leave behind in this book some sort of clue to them as to why I--I--I think as I do and behave as I do.

Mr. HITCHENS: What do I want back? Mainly civility and mainly the--the--the--the--the strength of the--the married family, which I think has been--has been thrown away. I'd also quite like back some sort of rigor in--in education available to everybody. At the moment in Great Britain, you can buy a good education in two ways. One, you can pay school fees. The other is you can live in an area where the public school provision is reasonably good. Otherwise, if you're poor, it's hopeless. And that system is really quite recent--was introduced oddly enough by a socialist government supposedly campaigning for the less privileged. They destroyed the schools which were open to everybody if they could pass an examination and replaced them with comprehensive high schools which everybody can go to but the trouble is they are--they select simply on--on catchment area and if you live in the wrong area, then you get a really rotten education. Those are some of the things I'd bring back. I'd bring back a serious criminal justice system. I'd restore the death penalty, which--without which it seems to me that no criminal justice system can work, because if you don't discriminate between life and property, then you've lost a vital part of any criminal justice system.

Mr. HITCHENS: Technically, I think it still exists for--for--for treason, but it's not--it's--it's--it's a dead letter. It--it was abolished in 1965, and there is currently no chance of it being restored. The results of being--of abolishing it has been--has been quite interesting in that one of--one of the things people used to marvel at about Britain was that we have an unarmed police force. The reason they could go about unarmed was because if you killed a policeman, then the chances were very strong that you would be hanged by the neck until dead. Since abolition, the amount of armed crime in Britain has grown quite considerably, and the police are gradually--without any public debate or--or act of parliament, gradually becoming an armed force. In fact, it's--one of the last sights I saw on--on--when I began my journey from Oxford to here was two policemen standing outside a courthouse in Oxford with submachine guns slung around their--slung around their necks. That's a sight that you would never see in my--in--in my childhood or even my teens. It's a very big change, and it's coming gradually, and as I say, without debate and without--without a change in the law, but as a direct result, I think, of this--of this abolition of the death penalty.

Mr. HITCHENS: There are growing numbers of them. And, of course, they're associated, as they almost always are, with drug dealing. It's--it's said to be possible to buy them quite cheaply, illegally. There are elaborate legal control on guns, but as I think everybody knows that the only people who are affected by legal controls on guns are law-abiding people. Criminals ignore them.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I hope that people will look at our experiment and see that it hasn't worked. It's become a--a tremendous sacred cow in Britain that you can't criticize the--the national health service now without being accused of wanting to destroy it. There are obvious things that it's good for, dealing with catastrophic illness and the long-term--long-term care of--of people who are old; the sort of people who insurance companies dump need some kind of backup provision. But the problem is that there is no--there--there is no consideration in Britain of how on Earth you're--you're going to deal with all the other problems which are actually much better dealt with, particularly in continental Europe, by private insurance for--for other things. And it--it--it's a sensible mix of the two seems to me to be--to be the only way of actually ensuring that everybody gets health care.

I personally think this obsession with--with health care is a very peculiar political thing. It oughtn't really to be at the center of politics. Everybody's going to die in the end. And to some extent, their--their health ought to be their own responsibility, not--not that of government. But what I'm concerned about is that if people, particularly the old or children and the helpless, are left without any--with--without any means of support when they're--when they're ill, that somebody will step in and help them.

Mr. HITCHENS: No. I--statistics, unless I've been--been prepping like a presidential candidate, are not my strong points. But the--the numbers of--of people going to university, which is not--or certainly wasn't until recently the--the--the equivalent of college, have been rising very sharply in Britain, and the government wants them to rise to 50 percent. And I think in the end, we'd probably like everybody to do it. I think the cynical reason is both parties have expanded higher education, because it mops up youth unemployment and keeps it out of--out of the figures and also because it employs more people in the public sector to--to teach them. The result has been a very serious drop in--in quality, but that's--that's already been--been begun by the--the poorer quality of teaching in the school.

Mr. HITCHENS: The two--the--the crucial chapter and--and really the--the point around which the whole book revolves is the one which compares the two funerals of Winston Churchill in 1965 and--and Princess Diana. And the difference between them seems to me to sum up very eloquently the way in which the country has changed, the--the difference in the--the self-discipline of the people and their attitudes, the way in which the--the way in which the two things were …..It's obviously two very different kinds of people, but here were two funerals in London of revered and much-loved figures. And they were utterly different, as if they'd taken place in different countries, and, in fact, they had taken place in different countries. The Britain of Princess Diana was an utterly foreign place to the Britain of Winston Churchill. And it seemed to me to be a good starting point.

This actually came to me during the bizarre weeks after Princess Diana's death, when voicing any kind of criticism of the hysteria was pretty much taboo. And I--I did a sort of--the--the sort of thing that Chinese dissidents used to do in the days of Mao Tse-tung. If they wanted to write about a political controversy, they'd actually write about one that had taken place in some dynasty 3,000 or 4,000 years before which they felt paralleled it. And I wrote about Winston Churchill's funeral to--to make the points that--that--that it had been so different. And everybody got the message.

Mr. HITCHENS: The differences are in--first of all, in--in the--the open showing of emotion. Now some people might say let it all hang out, show exactly what you feel. The trouble is that, in--in the case of British people, if they let it all hang out, quite a lot of what they let hang out isn't very nice. We are a pretty bloodthirsty and violent lot, especially when we get outside out own borders and start misbehaving. And we need to restrain ourselves. And one of the reasons we've been so peaceful for so long is that we have. That was very much in evidence at the Churchill funeral and very much less in evidence at the Diana funeral when people applauded, for heaven's sake, at a funeral, which is--which is completely un-English, whereas in--in Churchill's time, people--people queueing up to file past his coffin might occasionally dash a tear away from an eye and consider that to be slightly embarrassing. That's--that's one difference.

And the other--the other differences were really in--in--in--in the whole shape and face of the country. Britain in--in 1965 was still a serious country, still scarred by what was seen by most people as a recent war, still very much a country living in the--in--in the afterglow of--of imperial greatness, also quite a lot poorer and, in some ways, the better for it in that the--the self-indulgence which comes with affluence hadn't really begun to take hold. And this--this whole feeling of a country self-disciplined for a serious purpose as opposed to a frivolous country weeping and wailing about a--a princess who was really a glorified film star with a--with a--with a crown on her head.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, people are often very stupid about the United States and Britain. There's still a tendency to be snobbish and to say, `Well, it--it's--it's a Hicksville. Nobody--there's no culture. There's no--there's--there's no history. There's--there's--there's nothing but violence and crime.' They take it com--completely naively of what's fed to them through--through television and the movies about what America is like. Now I'm constantly faced with the task of saying, `Look, actually where I lived in the United States in Bethesda, Maryland, was far more peaceful and less crime-ridden than the--the--than the city of Oxford, where I--I live in Britain, that Americans are not uncultured, that this is--is a country with a--with a culture and a history, and also that, in--in many ways, it retains aspects of Britain which we've thrown away.'

The idea, as I think I said earlier, that--that we, the--the country which invented jury trials, should now be getting rid of it. The--the ridiculous way in which we're--we're abandoning quite important parts of our culture to--and, indeed, our--our politics, to the European Union is really quite startling to me. There's a--there's a--there's a strange way of illustrating this, which I think may strike a chord with--with some Americans. We are now being forced in Britain to adopt the metric system of--of measurements. And--and when I say `forced,' I mean that shopkeepers are actually being taken to court for continuing to sell vegetables in pounds and ounces. I--I think, first of all, the idea of someone being taken to court for that and that being turned into a criminal offense is--is absurd in the English-British-American tradition of liberty.

Secondly, there's something interesting about this, that the--the imperial weights and measures, the pounds, the ounces, the--the miles, the feet, have developed, like the English common law, out of hundreds of years of use and tradition. They're familiar. They have a human scale. They're known and understood. The metric system was invented by some scientists who actually got the circumference of the Earth wrong and then based everything else on that and was imposed from outside. None of its measurements have any bearing on any kind of human scale. They don't--they--they're simply imposed from above, just like continental ideas, where you--you always check to see whether an idea works in theory bef--long before you check to see whether it works in practice.

And we're taking that direction, whereas in the United States still, I think, people take the pragmatic English-British view that if it works in practice and it's rooted in history and the past and people are familiar with it, you keep it. And in--in a lot of ways, I find America, when I come here, more British than Britain.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I'm distressed, because at the end of the Cold War, people seemed to lose a certain purpose. And a lot of things were protected by the Cold War which were good. And the problem was that when the Cold War ended, they--they were then questioned. Two of them strike me. One is that as long as Britain was the principal ally of the United States against the Soviet Union, the idea that the United States should intervene on the side of the Irish Republican Army in Ireland was taboo, wasn't mentioned, wasn't thought of. Now what's called the peace process in Northern Ireland, which has been a series of concessions, in--in--in my view, to criminal terror has been largely driven by American political pressure.

Then there's a--there's a similar but not the same comparison with what's going on in the Middle East. As long as Israel was the vital ally of the West in the Middle East and the--the Arab foes of Israel were the clients of the Soviet Union, there was no question in--in the United States about support for Israel. Now ever since the end of the Cold War, the--the Dennis Ross policy of seeking wh--what I call appeasement and what everyone else calls land for peace, some kind of compromise and accommodation, has been pursued. And it's--in both cases, I have to say, these--these peace processes have led to probably more slaughter and mayhem and more instability than before.

In some ways, I yearn for the Cold War because it made these things simpler. And I--I--I wish that the United States still had that--that clear-cut understanding of who are its friends and who are its enemies. There now seems to be an attempt to withdraw and to leave behind, much as the British did, actually, when they--when they dumped their empire--to leave behind structures which give--give cover during a decent interval, which everybody probably knows will collapse once the--once--once they're out of the way.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I think I--I used to--I used to churn out daily newspapers on a typewriter in the--in the attic when I was about 10 or 11. Ever since then, I suppose.

Mr. HITCHENS: I'm not quite sure. I--I just remember possibly I--I--I liked doing it at school, and then I found out I liked doing it at home. I--I--I--I just--I just loved the business of--of reading newspapers and--and the i--the idea of producing them. And it's gone...

Mr. HITCHENS: I don't think he did that. I think he was--he was--he was always more of a--of a--of a writer. Journalism and writing shouldn't be confused, especially in Britain. Journalism in Britain is--is reporting. It's just getting to a telephone and telling people what's happened very quickly. It's--it's--it's often rather inelegant and perhaps, from the--from the writerly point of view, lack--lacking in thought, though it does impose a certain discipline on you in terms of choosing brief, punchy, effective words. Christopher's always been--been more of a--of--of a writer, and I don't think it's--I mean, he's done reporting, but I think he's approached it from a different--a different direction in life.

Mr. HITCHENS: Not particularly well, no.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, when we--when we run across each other, we do, but we don't run across each other all that often.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, we see each other from time to time. I mean, you know, we're--we're--we--the moment we meet, we have a huge amount of--of things in common and knowledge in common, which makes it easy to have a conversation. You sink into it, as you sink into an old armchair, without any difficulty. But we don't--we're very different people with different tastes in practically anything you'd care to name. And we--we--we probably wouldn't seek each other's company if we weren't brothers. So I--it'd be a bit much to be constantly badgering each other for--for dinner dates if--just because we are.

Mr. HITCHENS: What was my father like? My father was--again, the--the war, I think, looms very heavy in all this. By the time--by the time we were born--by the time Christopher was born, my--my father was almost 40 and, again, by--by the time I--I was born, two and a half years older than that, which is late. And his whole life had been, as so many other people--had been interrupted by this six years of--of really quite frightening and unpleasant events. And he was--he hadn't grown up--he hadn't grown up in an able family. His--his father was a--was a schoolteacher and a school headmaster. His father had been one of the people who'd built Portsmouth Dockyard. He'd been an agricultural laborer who'd--who'd walked a couple hundred miles to go and build it. We didn't--don't come from any kind of even upper middle-class origins. So he was the first of his--his generation.

And the--the navy was a very--was one of the--one of those mechanisms, as--as, I think, the--the armed services operate here, in which it, in some way, takes over from your family and--and--and--and becomes a family of itself. So we saw him. I have first memories of him coming home in--in British naval uniform, which is a pretty startling thing to see. He was very--very quiet, very restrained, kept--kept his temper under almost all--all provocation, very, I think, I s--I, first of all, sensed and later on discovered I'd been right to sense, a great discontent felt by most of his generation about the world for which they'd gone to war gradually crumbling around them.

Mr. HITCHENS: I first thought about doing it during a--a--a long drive around New Hampshire following Newt Gingrich as--as he went hunting for moose in--it would have been the early--early summer of 1995, I think, if I have that right. And I was with a--a British friend who--who's also a correspondent here and who was thinking of writing about his experiences. We had a long conversation, and it came to me during that. But both he and I have totally different--reached totally different conclusions about our time here, and we should think about writing a book. But I was reluctant to do it. Books steal an enormous part of your life. You have to devote a great deal of time to them, and I wasn't sure whether, with--with then two young children, I was ever going to be able to do it. So it took some time. It also was very difficult, once I decided to do it, to get anybody to publish it, because the British publishing industry is--is wholly dominated by the cultural left and wasn't very sympathetic, to put it mildly, to--to my ideas.

Mr. HITCHENS: A company called Quartet.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I--I--I--I didn't get them to do it in the end. The fir--what happened was that the first agent I approached to ask him to see if he could find me a publisher, because I knew nothing of this, of the whole area of publishing, simply refused to handle the book, because he disagreed with it. I said, `I don't care whether you disagree with it or not. Why can't you actually find me a publisher?' He said, `I--I will not. I think--I think the book is wrong.' So then eventually I found another agent who went from publisher to publisher to publisher, having initially said, `Oh, I'll find you somebody in no time at all.' He went from publisher to publisher, and--and there was rejection after rejection, some of them on openly political grounds, until eventually he found Quartet, which is a small firm but which was willing to actually take the risk.

Mr. HITCHENS: It was first published in October of 19--I'm sorry, August of 1999 and then--and then went into--went into--into soft covers in April of this year.

Mr. HITCHENS: It did pretty well, given that it was up against, first of all, a publishing industry that didn't want it, published by a small publisher, and who--who couldn't really afford to do much in the way of promotion. I--it--it s--it's sold--by now, it's sold more than 20,000 in Britain, which in the British book market is pretty good going.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, do you know, I've never been--we just got a call from out of the blue saying they'd heard it--heard of--heard about it and could they publish it. And we were absolutely delighted. I had always treasured a hope that it would--that it would be published here, because I think there are a large number of--of American conservative Anglophiles who hold in their heads an--an idea of Britain and would be disturbed and alarmed to see what had happened to the country which they--which they quite liked and in some cases rather admired and looked on as a--as a--first of all, as a--as the origin of a lot of very good American ideas and also as a reliable ally. I think, in both cases, it's--it's--it is trampling on its origins and it's becoming a less reliable ally. And they'd be interested to know in detail how this has happened.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes. I think she was terribly diverted during her time by two things--one, her battle against--against trade union power, and the other by the Cold War--and didn't see the enormous importance of culture and education and history and morality. And also, I think that she was so concerned with unleashing the market--now the market's a perfectly good thing in the right circumstances--that she forgot that market force without any kind of restraint is not necessarily a conservative thing and can actually be thoroughly radical in--in the destruction of institutions and communities, which it did. And I think it's essential for anyone who's serious about conservativism to recognize that Margaret Thatcher was not, by any means, perfect. She did a lot of good things, but many of the left's criticisms of her hold water.

And part of the purpose of the book was also to appeal to those on the political and cultural left in Britain to recognize that they, too, had made mistakes. And I thought you can't ask other people to recognize that they've made mistakes unless you're prepared to say that your side has done so, too.

Mr. HITCHENS: Her biggest impact was on the economy and on releasing it. Britain is now immensely healthier economically than it was when she took over. And that's a...

Mr. HITCHENS: Not much, because the--the state sector simply shifted. It used to be a matter of coal mines and steel industry and telephones and monopolies like that. Now it's the enormous National Health Service, which used to be the biggest employer in Europe after the Red Army. And now the Red Army has been seriously downsized. The National Health Service--the British National Health Service is--is bigger than the Red Army ever was.

Mr. HITCHENS: It's private.

Mr. HITCHENS: They're private.

Mr. HITCHENS: It's private.

Mr. HITCHENS: Private.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, but these are--actually, in those days, the state owns things which made things, and at least you could actually measure whether it was doing it well or not. Now what the state owns is an enormous--enormous health-care sector, which is in--increasingly inefficient at delivering the goods, and a vast army of local government and what we call--what we call quango organizations, which are government agencies which employ people and regulate things, which--which actually dominate public employment and--and--and cost an enormous amount of--of tax and don't make anything. So we've swapped a productive and efficient nationalized sector for an unproductive and inefficient nationalized sector. But the state is still enormous in our economy. And the amount of--the amount of money which is taken out of people's pockets to pay for it is huge.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, that's fine.

Mr. HITCHENS: I know. Well, that's--that's--that's--that's Britain for you. If we can pronounce it differently from the way it's written down, we will.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, the story is about this--this satirical revue, "Beyond the Fringe," which attacks all the assumptions and indeed a lot of the--a lot of the--the household gods of postwar Britain, particularly, I have to say, the--the--the semi-religion which we've made of the Second World War in the battle of Britain, by laughing at it and began a process of mockery of--of establishment figures and institutions, which has now become almost universal and which undermined their authority, because authority doesn't--doesn't rest on the power to thump somebody over the head. It does rest, to some extent, on--on respect and on a little bit of reverence. And people thought it was funny and easy and cost-free to get rid of these things, even--even to the extent of--of--of--of attacking the monarchy, which, as I said, I think is--is valuable for--for preventing the degeneration of democracy quite possibly into dictatorship, not, I think, realizing what they were doing.

The interesting thing about that evening was that the establishment which was being attacked also didn't realize how important the attack was and thought that it was quite reasonable to go along and laugh at the attack being made upon itself. Now there's a way in which this is rather good. Here is a society where the--the pinnacle of--of--of--of the state, the pinnacle of respectability goes to a performance where she and everything she stands for are laughed at. How very democratic and--and open. But there's also a certain amount of feebleness about it, a certain amount of saying, `Oh, well, perhaps we are funny after all,' a loss of confidence, which is very symptomatic of the whole of Britain.

After the bankruptcy which followed the Second World War, after our failure at Suez to hold on to our influence in the Middle East, after the collapse of our empire, an awful lot of our political governing class have lost their nerve, simply no longer believed in anything. And that's one of the reasons why the--the collapse has happened so quickly.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, she--she--she ju--she ju--she just went along as a--as a private citizen, having--having, you know, arranged to have a ticket, and--and sat there.

Mr. HITCHENS: They--very quickly. Once the lights went up, she was recognized. But there was no--there was no grand entrance. Normally, if--if royalty goes to a--to a play or a--or a film premiere, they arrive amid flashbulbs and ceremony. They're escorted by--by--by equerries in naval uniform and lanyards, and there's a big fuss. They do try quite a lot to do things privately, to live the lives of normal people, to just to--so that they can keep their feet on the ground, but if they're doing it in a public place, it's difficult, because as soon as you're recognized, everybody starts looking and pointing. Of course, that's what happens on this occasion.

Mr. HITCHENS: It's quite hard to get it on the electronic media. The BBC is, in my view, almost entirely dominated by the left. The rest of the channels, where they bother with current affairs and politics at all, tend to take what I believe to be some lazy left-wing attitudes on both domestic and international politics and cultural issues. In terms of--in...

Mr. HITCHENS: The universities, pa--particularly since expansion, have been very much dominated by the left.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yeah, I mean, it is. It is, the theater. Even--even the--the Royal Shakespeare Company is--is full of people who believe in reinterpreting the bard of Avon in--in--in politically progressive ways. Most--most London theater, where it is political, is theater of the left. There isn't much conservative drama about.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes. Well, that was a--that--that was very much linked to "Beyond the Fringe," the revue we were discussing earlier. It was from the same strain. And that was--that was--that was--that was radical and of the cultural left.

Mr. HITCHENS: It was a--it was a weekly television program on Saturday nights which, again, ruthlessly and cruelly mocks in--in--in personal terms, conservative government ministers, members of the establishment, religion, all the--all the features of--of the conservative British establishment, as it was then known, which were, even as this program was--was being transmitted, fading away and losing their grip. And it was--it was really quite savage. And there were--there were fears among the ministers in the then conservative government that it was doing them serious damage, but they didn't dare protest, because it would have made them look stupid. Only dictatorships can take satire seriously. Democratic governments are utterly vulnerable to it, because the moment they start taking it seriously, they--they--they look like dictators.

Mr. HITCHENS: Yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, remember that when--when this program was being transmitted, the standard British broadcasting voice was something which I think I can probably still just about do. People talked like this in a very clipped and almost military accent, and they spoke as--as if they came from a--from a--an--an elite class. David Frost didn't have any of that. He spoke with an accent I won't try to imitate. He was completely from without the--the class system. And also his attitude towards such people was disrespectful, mocking and, in a--in a quite serious way, revolutionary. And the fact that he was one of the main linchpins, anchormen, if you like, with this program, was considered to be very significant. Because in--in Britain, voice is code. Accent is code. It's been said that no Englishman can open his mouth without offending another Englishman, and that's perfectly true. All these things have--have an immense coded impact. And talking as he did was, in itself, an affront to the old establishment.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, people would say, quite rightly, that I had what we call a public school education, which is a private school education. And they would--they would recognize that I--that I came from a--an area of what you might call the lower upper-middle class. It--they could pin it down within inches as to what part of the social scale I came from without any difficulty at all.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, yes.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I--I--I don't because I can't--I--I can't do imitations. I--all I can tell you is that the voice that I have is not the voice that I would have had with this upbringing 30 or 40 years ago. I've--I've actually toned it down. You could actually get mocked in public places for speaking as I do, and--and I do. It's--it's one of--you know, one of the things you get in England.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, anybody. You'll be in a--in a--in a movie theater, and you'll be asking for a ticket, and you'll hear someone making a--making a mock of your la-de-da voice in--in the background. It's happened. And it--it's just--it's just a feature of England. Everybody spots, in a--in a--in a voice like mine, a particular set of attitudes and a particular type of upbringing, which a lot of people don't like. We're still a very class-ridden society. It goes back to the Norman conquest.

Mr. HITCHENS: Well, I didn't go to Oxford.

Mr. HITCHENS: Oh, I live there now. That's where I live. I didn't go to--oh, you mean where--where did I live in the beginning.

Mr. HITCHENS: I got my education in boarding schools, one on--on--on the edge of Dartmoor, a beautiful part of southern England which readers of Sherlock Holmes will be familiar from from "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and then for a short while in a school in Cambridge, then in the--in the north of England in Yorkshire, and then mainly in London, before going abroad. So quite a lot of different places, more--more than most British people get. Most British people are still pretty wedded to a--to a place.

Mr. HITCHENS: Possibly. I'm thinking of writing a thriller, actually, which would be the fictional version of this. It--it's based on a--based on a--a revelation. When all the details of the Soviet espionage operation against Britain were coming out, it was revealed there hadn't just been a Cambridge group, the famous traitors, Philby, Burgess and MacLean, who--who sold all our secrets--gave all our secrets to the Russians for ideological reasons; there also apparently had been an Oxford group who'd been instructed not to spy but to become generals, government ministers, bishops, newspaper editors and to destroy the country from within. I don't actually believe this happened, but I have to say that if a lot of these people hadn't been working for the Soviet Union, they couldn't have made much better a job of--of--of sabotaging the country from within than the people who did get those jobs.

Mr. HITCHENS: Thank you very much.