It being Sunday, this story is particularly resonant - and also demanding of forgiveness. But the news that a junior British civil servant in the Foreign Office prepared an official memo planning for the Pope's autumn visit - a memo distributed widely to politicians and officials, and called a serious brainstorming document - which recommended the Pope variously open an abortion clinic, and start a new brand of condoms - seems willfully disrespectful, even sacrilegious. People who wish to suggest I take a chill pill, and see the humour of the document may miss the point: visiting world leaders shouldn't ever be treated to such official government mockery, no matter how ludicrous their beliefs may be. When their beliefs are a religion practiced by more than 20% of the world, and by a significant minority of one's own nation, even less reason is given for such a Monty Python treatment. Of course, in pubs and private, let the Protestant (and secular) people of Britain mock the Catholic leader. But to have derision generated at the higher levels of government reveals an inconvenient truth: Britain's elite ruling class is now, more or less, godless. Godless, irreverent, and even, it might be said, cynical to the point of boring nihilism.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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People forget that Civil Servants are, first and foremost, people - and quite as capable of doing stupid stuff behind closed doors as the next person. Even in such 'august institutions' as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Anyway I would rather live in a society where everything can be mocked in safety than where nothing can be. We have comedy vicars, comedy priests, comedy rabbis - now if only we had comedy ayatollahs, rather than people who take them in dead earnest, maybe the world would be a safer place.