Diary

Funding a journal for Thatcherism

UNTIL a few weeks ago, 10 Downing Street was one of the few houses in London - if not the only one - that didn't have a lock on its front door. It never needed one because the door is always opened by someone on the inside. Two weeks ago, however, the security people fitted a lock as an anti-terrorism precaution, a sensible decision given the IRA's two attempts to bomb Downing Street since John Major moved in. What perhaps is not so sensible is the habit, highlighted in the photograph above, of leaving the keys dangling on the railings (on the right of the photograph) for any old terrorist to pick up on his way through town.

JOHN O'SULLIVAN, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, has flown back to America after a brief visit to London, the purpose of which will bring little consolation to John Major and his government.

Only hours after Norman Lamont's speech in the Commons last Wednesday, O'Sullivan and 14 other members of the Thatcherite rump gathered at the Reform Club as guests of Lord Parkinson to discuss bringing the right-wing US magazine the National Review to Britain.

O'Sullivan, who edits the magazine, was sounding out possible investors in a British journal. He could not have chosen a better time to assess the demand for a truly Thatcherite voice in the media. Sipping coffee and mineral water in Sloane Square, he told me there had been an animated discussion about the speech and its repercussions. 'There was a general feeling that things have gone awry. There needs to be a reasonable, intelligent rethink of the way things are going.'

Although no decision has been made on the magazine's format, the launch is likely to be in January. By that time Mr Major will either have ridden the political storm - he may even have enjoyed a successful Tory conference - or become a lame- duck prime minister with sights set merely on choosing a successor.

Whichever is the case, the National Review will be here to comment, although not necessarily gain financially from Mr Major's misfortunes. The American magazine does not make a profit, surviving through private donations. 'We did pretty well in the Reagan years, but only pretty well,' said O'Sullivan, a former domestic policy adviser to Thatcher. 'When Bush abandoned the tax pledge, we saw a real surge in circulation, and then when Clinton got in and started outraging them even more . . . It is undoubtedly the case that opposition magazines thrive when their opponents are in government, and do pretty well when their own party is in office but not in power.' That last line sounds familiar, doesn't it?

THE DIARY has on at least two occasions been less than flattering about Ulysses, so in the interests of fairness, rather than any volte-face on my part, I think you should all know that the James Joyce epic has just been released on audio cassette. I'm persuaded to give the cassette some publicity because the author of the press release seems a man after my own heart (and that of my brother, who preferred to gaze out of a bus window for three days in South America rather than read one more page). The PR man says: 'I found the biggest problem with Ulysses is sticking with it beyond the third chapter . . . the tape helps to get over this hurdle.'

Up the spout

WESSEX Water, I gather, is inviting the public to visit 65 sewage treatment plants in the West Country as part of Sewage Week. The Grand National doesn't start, hotels fall into the sea, and now this. Have we nothing better to do with our time?

A DAY LIKE THIS

15 June 1952 Jean Cocteau, sailing in the Greek islands, writes in his diary: 'Ruins make me sad. They are the grave of the beautiful. But Spetsai is alive. Is it possible such an island exists? It is almost incredible. On this island, ugliness has never set foot. It is so beautiful that ugliness detests it and keeps away. So elegant that vulgarity perishes on contact. Everywhere at sea the soft whistle of the buoys. Under a sky where the stars form a block, a hard rock into which our own world is integrated. You would like to live in each house, sit in each square, open to the soul's depths. If France were to become unendurable, I know that Spetsai exists and that you could grow old here in one of these little white houses, and no longer see ridiculous shapes around you. PS. I was wrong. In the morning, I discovered that ugliness had set foot on the island in the form of a hotel - Istanbul-style.'

(Photograph omitted)