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laughed political correctness to scorn (had our society been weak and stupid enough to let it exist); they daren’t. We had available to us an education system, public and private, which was the envy of the world; we had little reason to fear being mugged or raped (killed in war, maybe, but that was an acceptable hazard); our children could play in street and country in safety; we had not been brainwashed into displays of bogus grief in the face of tragedy, or into a compensation culture that insists on scapegoats and huge pay-outs for non-existent wrongs; we had few problems with bullies because society knew how to deal with bullying, and was not afraid to punish it in ways which would send today’s progressives into hysterics; we did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment determined to impose its views, and more and more beginning to resemble Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.
    And we didn’t know what an Ecstasy tablet was. God, we were lucky. But above all, perhaps, we knew who we were, and we lived in the knowledge that certain values and standards held true, and that our country, with all its faults and need for reforms, was sound at heart.
    Not any more, and we wonder where it went wrong. Speaking from a fairish knowledge of British history and governance, I find it difficult to identify a time when the country was as badly governed as it has been in the last fifty years. I know about Addington and the Cabal and Aberdeen and North but they really look a pretty decent and competent lot when compared with the trash that has infested Westminster since 1945. Of course there have been honourable exceptions; I speak of the generality, and I am almost as disenchanted with Conservative as I am with Labour. Between them they have produced the two worst Prime Ministers in our history (andwhat bad luck it has been that they have both fallen within the last thirty years). They are, of course, Heath and Blair. The harm that these two have done to Britain is incalculable, and almost certainly irreparable.
    Whether the public can be blamed for letting them pursue their ruinous policies is debatable; short of assassination there is little that people can do when their political masters have forgotten the true meaning of the democracy of which they are forever prating, are determined to have their way at all costs, and hold public opinion in contempt.
    Does it matter whether today’s and future generations know what the overwhelming majority of their parents and grandparents believed and valued? Probably not; it is a fact of life that after a certain age no one is taken seriously, and an era in which the official wisdom is that history is bunk is not going to pay much heed to a reactionary eccentric like me. But I’ve written it anyway, for the reason that I’ve written all my books: simply because I want to. It’s the best of reasons. Dr Johnson, who said many wise things, could talk tripe with the best of them on occasion, as when he said that no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
    What follows is not one long die-hard bellyache, however. It contains some autobiography of one who has been a newspaperman, soldier, encyclopedia salesman (briefly), novelist, and historian, and because, as I said earlier, I know the fascination the film world exerts, my reminiscences of almost thirty years, on and off, as a writer in the movie business. These last will not be sensational or denigratory; I liked, almost without exception, the great ones of the cinema whom I met and worked with, actors, actresses, directors, producers, moguls, and that great legion of technicians, experts, and fixers without whom films wouldn’t get made.
    But if I have no exposés, no juicy scandals, it may be that film buffs will still find some interest in Rex Harrison’s enthusiasm for lemonade, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s technique with head-waiters,Federico Fellini’s inability to master his office burglar alarm, Burt Lancaster’s