Northern Trip 2023 Gallery
On Monday 7th of November, we once again enjoyed an excellent beef supper at the Carlton Club on St. James’ street. We were fortunate enough to be joined by Revd. Dr Jamie Hawkey, chaplain to HM The King who gave an uplifting speech, which can be read below.
Ladies and gentlemen, I begin, I must bring you greetings from Westminster Abbey, the Coronation Church, where I know a number of you had an enjoyable visit led by my colleague Dr Susan Jenkins, our curator, of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries earlier this year. I was due to have hosted that myself, were it not for an atrociously embarrassing diary clash, as I was also supposed to be going to France that evening to marry a former student – I speak in sacramental terms, bigamy not being exactly the done thing even in the Church of England… But I was genuinely sorry to miss the occasion, and am delighted to be with you this evening. If it’s any consolation the wedding was hosted by a champagne family just outside Rheims, but having just recovered from COVID I couldn’t taste a thing! Thank you, Rob and Alastair, for your invitation tonight.
We all have moments in our lives when threads come together at surprising moments – one of those for me, was when I was invited to give the Litlington Lectures at Eton College, and I found myself in Lord Waldegrave’s spare bed reading the late, great Sir Roger Scruton’s How to be a conservative. You may know it – and I certainly wish that many of our political masters did. Despite the beauty of his prose and the depth of his observation, Scruton is clear that this book, first published in 2014, is less a lament for a passing age than an agenda for action. In fact, in mentioning Scruton, I don’t seek to make a party political point – it strikes me that some of the conservatisms he explores could be held by people of many different political persuasions. At its heart is the sense that the past is something worth treasuring, that evolution is almost always better than revolution, and that stewardship of our society, our history, our countryside is a series of truly ethical commitments, which tells you something about our character.
Scruton associates himself with the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, making the case for a society in-part shaped from below, by traditions which have grown from our natural need to associate. We might highlight eating together, hunting, story telling, laughter… The social traditions which support these things – the dinner party, the Meet, the Remembrance Day parade – are not arbitrary, but rather tell us a bit about who we are, and why that matters. Scruton celebrates what he calls oikophobia – the love of home – locality, local custom, culture and practice; the beauty of our local landscapes, the integrity of communities, not in a way that keeps people out, but which allows identity to be shared and cultures to be exchanged. Working ‘in harmony with nature’s economy’, as our new King put it, is an extension of this love-of-home, realising the beauty of what we have been given on this earth.
Ladies and gentlemen,as I begin, I must bring you greetings from Westminster Abbey, the Coronation Church, where I know a number of you had an enjoyable visit led by my colleague Dr Susan Jenkins, our curator, of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries earlier this year. I was due to have hosted that myself, were it not for an atrociously embarrassing diary clash, as I was also supposed to be going to France that evening to marry a former student – I speak in sacramental terms, bigamy not being exactly the done thing even in the Church of England… But I was genuinely sorry to miss the occasion, and am delighted to be with you this evening. If it’s any consolation the wedding was hosted by a champagne family just outside Rheims, but having just recovered from COVID I couldn’t taste a thing! Thank you, Rob and Alastair, for your invitation tonight.
We all have moments in our lives when threads come together at surprising moments – one of those for me, was when I was invited to give the Litlington Lectures at Eton College, and I found myself in Lord Waldegrave’s spare bed reading the late, great Sir Roger Scruton’s How to be a conservative. You may know it – and I certainly wish that many of our political masters did. Despite the beauty of his prose and the depth of his observation, Scruton is clear that this book, first published in 2014, is less a lament for a passing age than an agenda for action. In fact, in mentioning Scruton, I don’t seek to make a party political point – it strikes me that some of the conservatisms he explores could be held by people of many different political persuasions. At its heart is the sense that the past is something worth treasuring, that evolution is almost always better than revolution, and that stewardship of our society, our history, our countryside is a series of truly ethical commitments, which tells you something about our character.
Scruton associates himself with the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, making the case for a society in-part shaped from below, by traditions which have grown from our natural need to associate. We might highlight eating together, hunting, story telling, laughter… The social traditions which support these things – the dinner party, the Meet, the Remembrance Day parade – are not arbitrary, but rather tell us a bit about who we are, and why that matters. Scruton celebrates what he calls oikophobia – the love of home – locality, local custom, culture and practice; the beauty of our local landscapes, the integrity of communities, not in a way that keeps people out, but which allows identity to be shared and cultures to be exchanged. Working ‘in harmony with nature’s economy’, as our new King put it, is an extension of this love-of-home, realising the beauty of what we have been given on this earth.
Well, forgive me if all this sounds a bit romantic. But why not? Our society could do with a bit more romance at the moment. Localism isn’t an excuse to ignore the bigger picture: as Scruton puts it, “feel locally, act nationally” is a slogan worth repeating. A good foes of romanticism wouldn’t do us any harm at all. We don’t just ‘know things’ through journalists, political commentators and economists; but through engaging with poets, farmers, musicians, painters, mystics. The polymath John Ruskin, very hard to pigeon hole politically, famously wrote of the natural world, ‘Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.’ But we, so often, are imprisoned in the tyranny of ‘now’, with scarce regard for what has got us here, and without the imagination to think long term about what truly matters and why. Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin believed that the world would be saved by beauty, and he might not yet be wrong. The beauty of a single flower, or the flow of a pack of hounds, of camaraderie which encourages the less-able to participate in something they never thought they could do. Frankly, the beauty of a side-splitting laugh between friends over something ridiculous.
Sermon over!! Many of you will be grateful. I jest. All this matters, and I think it can be celebrated by your society in specific ways that might not always present themselves as the social seasoning that they truly are. Firstly, story telling. From the beginning of human culture, societies have been bound together by stories and narratives. Fiction is as important as fact, poetry and prose. The careful observation of culture, as Surtees offers of the countryside, its personalities and some of the more hilarious aspects of human character and caricature: that is a really important quality to develop. We need to value our storytellers, not just the commentators, but the storytellers, who hint that the detail of life is worth recording and worth interrogating. We need people who can stitch together the fragments of a dislocated cultural narrative, and writers who can be ambassadors for worlds which are strange to others. We need people who are unafraid to introduce – or reintroduce – vocabulary and imagery which has been lost. A quick scan of Surtees’ vocab, ‘Twang’, ‘Deduced’, ‘Yoiking’, not to mention that ‘blooming ladies and light-footed beaux’, spelt of course with an ‘x’ at the end. In short, we need folk who can expand our vision and make us a little more human.
We need humour. How very humourless our society has become. We trade in mockery, but not in much more. Novelists like Surtees introduce us to a world which is their own, of social commentary, local customs, intrepid characters, and a certain amount of self-deprecation and the absurd. These are characteristics which might act as an antidote to the banal tedium of so much 21st century culture. As Peter Hennessy, the magnificent cultural historian, put it to me recently, “too much plumbing, not enough poetry!” Apologies to any plumbers here, but it’s a good line…
I once asked Sir Roy Strong how he had dared introduce Cecil Beaton’s photographic portraits as his first major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1968 – you may remember that although it became a blockbuster, it was highly controversial at the time, not least amongst the self-considered educated artistic classes who then frequented the gallery. ‘Oh it was quite simple’ Roy said, ‘my philosophy was simply this: give them what they never knew they wanted!’
‘Give them what they never knew they wanted.’ As a member of what is increasingly a rather niche organisation myself, I feel some confidence to offer an encouragement and a word of thanks to societies like yours which exist to share some of the less well-known treasures of our culture, which have within them the potential to make us all a bit more human, and a bit more appreciative of where we’ve come from.
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