The other day I went into the National Portrait Gallery gift shop to buy a postcard of George Orwell. There wasn’t one. I then looked for Anthony Powell. Again, no luck. V.S. Naipaul wasn’t there either. In the course of my search, however, I couldn’t help noticing that there were two versions of Helena Bonham-Carter and two of Michael Caine.
Britain has again become a two-nation state. It is divided between those who watched Big Brother and those who didn’t. But this split is not between the elite and the masses, or between the more and the less intellectual (some of my most intellectual friends watched), or between those with good taste and those without. The difference, it seems to me, is rather between the high-minded and the low-minded, between the squeamish and the unsqueamish. In any event, I belong to the wrong side of this divide. But I’d like to say a few things in defence of watching this horrible and uncivilised show.
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