The Politics of Dancing

 2020  LOOKING BACK   2021 LOOKING FORWARD AJP Taylor once said that either a policy of appeasement or one of standing up to German aggression, could have worked if the former had been taken to its logical conclusion and allowed Germany a free hand in Central and Eastern Europe to dominate that region, whilst the latter could, indeed would have succeeded had Chamberlain acted firmly and blocked German revanchism from the outset. What was most calculated to fail was a policy of dithering between both approaches. I thought of this the other night when Boris Johnson completed yet another U-turn and placed London and the South East in a lockdown, despite previous statements insisting that Christmas would be exempted. Indeed, as recently as previous Prime Minister’s Questions he had taunted Kier Starmer with wanting to “cancel Christmas.” Such inept dithering, from allowing pubs to stay open and racing festivals to go ahead, long after it was clear that this would lead ...

  There was Christmas before Dickens, of course, but not much of one. Christmas was an important day, but not, - if you read Pepys, - as important as 12th night, or as Hogmanay north of the border. Then came Dickens and the modern Christmas was born, a healthy baby it grew as strong as a Trafalgar Square Christmas tree and as fat as a stuffed Turkey. And at the heart of this newly created drama was the figure of Ebenezer Scrooge. Like Hamlet, Lear or Churchill playing Scrooge is a role offered only to the truly gifted. For it is that most difficult of all parts a journey to conversion. Scrooge is truly vile, rarely has mean spirited, miserly misanthropic squalor been better portrayed. This is what makes the part so difficult to play. The greater the emphasis on moral squalor the harder it is to make the conversion convincing, the weaker the depiction of moral squalor the less spectacular the conversion. In my, admittedly old school, opinion, only Alistair Sim has ever pulled this...