It has long seemed to me unfortunate and I'm taking the global view here that such an important experiment in social organization was left to the Russians when the British would have managed it so much better. All those things that are necessary to the successful implementation of a rigorous socialist system are, after all, second nature to the British. For a start, they like going without. They are great at pulling together, particularly in the face of adversity, for a perceived common good. They will queue patiently for indefinite periods and accept with rare fortitude the imposition of rationing, bland diets and sudden inconvenient shortages of staple goods, as anyone who has ever looked for bread at a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon will know. They are comfortable with faceless bureaucracies and, as Mrs Thatcher proved, tolerant of dictatorships. They will wait uncomplainingly for years for an operation or the delivery of a household appliance. They have a natural gift for making excellent jokes about authority without seriously challenging it, and they derive universal satisfaction from the sight of the rich and powerful brought low. Most of those above the age of twentyfive already dress like East Germans. The conditions, in a word, are right.
Please understand I'm not saying that Britain would have been a happier, better place under Communism, merely that the British would have done it properly. They would have taken it in their stride, with good heart, and without excessive cheating. In point of fact, until about 1970 it wouldn't have made the slightest discernible difference to most people's lives, and might at least have spared us Robert Maxwell.
I rose early the next day and attended to my morning hygiene in a state of small excitation because I had a big day ahead of me. I was going to walk across Windsor Great Park. It is the most splendid park I know. It stretches over forty enchanted square miles and
Incorporates into its ancient fabric every manner of sylvan charm: deep primeval woodlands, bosky dells, wandering footpaths and bridleways, formal and informal gardens and a long, deeply fetching lake. Scattered picturesquely about are farms, woodland images, forgotten statues, a whole village occupied by estate workers and things that the Queen has brought back from trips abroad and couldn't think of anywhere else to put obelisks and totem poles and other curious expressions of gratitude from distant outposts of the Commonwealth.
"The news had not yet come out that there was oil under the park and that it all soon might turn into a new Sullom Voe (but don't be Inarmed; the local authority will make them screen the derricks with shrubs), so I didn't realize that I ought to drink things in carefully in case the next time I came this way it looked like an Oklahoma oilfield. At this time, Windsor Great Park continued to enjoy a merciful obscurity, which I find mystifying in an open space so. glorious on the very edge of London. Only once could I remember any reference to the park in the newspapers, a couple of years before when Prince Philip had taken a curious disliking to an avenue of ancient trees and had instructed Her Majesty's TreeChoppers to remove them from the landscape. I expect their branches had imperilled the progress through the park of his horses and plusfour, or whatever it is you call those creaking contraptions he so likes to roam around in. You often see him and other members of the royal family in the park, speeding past in assorted vehicles on their way to polo matches or church services in the Queen Mother's private compound, the Royal lodge. Indeed, because the public aren't allowed to drive on the park roads, a significant portion of the little traffic that passes is generated by royals. Once, on Boxing Day when I was ambling along in a paternal fashion beside an offspring on a shiny new tricycle, I became aware with a kind of sixth sense that we were holding up the progress of a car and turned to find that it was being driven by Princess Diana. As I hastened myself and my child out of the way, she gave me a smile that melted my heart, and since that time I have never said a word against the dear sweet girl, however pressed by those who think that she is a bit off her head because she spends .28,000 a year on leotards and makes occasional crank phone calls to hunky military men. (And who among us hasn't? is my unanswerable reply.)
I strode along the aptly named Long Walk from the base ofWindsor Castle to the equestrian statue of George IE, known to locals as the Copper Horse, at the summit of Snow Hill, where I rested at the base and soaked up one of the most comely views in England: the majestic sprawl of Windsor Castle 3 miles away at the end of the Long Walk, with the town at its feet and, beyond, Eton, the misty Thames Valley and low Chiltern Hills. Deer grazed in picturesque herds in a clearing below and earlymorning strollers began to dot the long avenue framed by my splayed feet. I watched planes taking off from Heathrow and found on the horizon the faint but recognizable shapes of Battersea Power Station and the Post Office Tower. I can remember being very excited to discover that I could see London from way out here. It is, I believe, the only spot this far out where you can see it. Henry VIII rode to this summit to hear the cannons announce the execution of Anne Boleyn, though now all I could hear were the drones of airliners banking to land, and the startling yap of a large shaggy dog that appeared suddenly at my elbow, its owners following up a side hill, and offered me a large saliva specimen, which I declined.
I struck off through the park, past the grounds of the Royal Lodge, the pink Georgian house where the Queen and Princess Margaret spent their girlhoods, and through the surrounding woods and fields to my favourite corner of the park, Smith's Lawn. It must be the finest lawn in Britain, flat and flawlessly green and built on an heroic scale. There's almost never a soul up there, except when there's a polo match on. It took me the better part of an hour to cross it, though I went some distance out of my way to investigate a forlorn statue on the periphery, which turned out to be of Prince Albert, and another hour to find my way through the Valley Gardens and on to Virginia Water Lake, steaming softly in the cool morning air. It's a lovely piece of work, the lake, created by the Duke of Cumberland as a somewhat odd way of celebrating all those Scots he'd left inert or twitching on the battlefield of Culloden, and it is intensely picturesque and romantic in that way that only created landscapes can be, with sudden vistas perfectly framed by trees and a long decorative stone bridge. At the far end there is even a cluster of fake Roman ruins, opposite Fort Belvedere, the country home where Edward VIII made his famous abdication broadcast so that he could be free to go fishing with Goebbels and marry that sourfaced Simpson woman, who, with the best will in the world and bearing in mind my patriotic obligations to a fellow American, has always struck me as a frankly unlikely choice of shag.
I only mention this because the nation seemed to be embarking on a similar monarchical crisis at this time. I must say, I can't begin no understand the attitudes of the British nation towards the royal family. For years may I be candid here for a moment? I thought they were insupportably boring and only marginally more attractive than Wallis Simpson, but everybody in England adored them. Then when, by a small miracle, they finally started doing arresting and erratic things and making the News of the World on merit when, in a word, they finally became interesting the whole nation was suddenly saying, 'Shocking. Let's get rid of them.' Only that week, I had watched with open mouth an edition of Question Time in which one of the questions seriously discussed by the panel had been whether the nation should dispense with Prince Charles and leapfrog to little Prince William. Putting aside for the moment the question of the wisdom of investing a lot of faith in the unmatured genetic output of Charles and Diana, which I would charitably describe as touching, it seemed to me to miss the whole point. If you are going to have a system of hereditary privilege, then surely you have to take what comes your way no matter how ponderous the poor fellow may be or how curious his taste in mistresses.