The Magnanimity of City Walks

This week John Cleese observed that London “is no longer an English city”. For reasons both good and bad, he’s partly right and partly wrong. London never was entirely English (the Romans and the Normans, remember them?), but having enjoyed previous spells as the psychological “capital of the world” in the late nineteenth century, during the Second World War, and in the 1960s, London has again become the de facto World City. That is something of which we, as a nation, can be proud. That so many of the world’s peoples should, for a myriad reasons - admirable or otherwise - want to make it their home, and that so many more should want to visit it, implies a destination of unusual quality. World Central. London thus occupies a role different from any other British city and most other urban hubs around the globe  - Paris, New York and Los Angeles being obvious rival contenders. It is an English city, but it is both more and less than that.

Be that as it may, today’s London is not the same metropolis that Cleese first encountered, when first up from Weston-super-Mare via Bristol and Cambridge, and if it were otherwise, it would be a dead city, ossified and stagnant. Vital cities change constantly, though not necessarily, and not always, for the better. Some decline (Florence, Istanbul) or go through rough patches (Berlin, Glasgow). While it is Cleese’s observation of the markedly changed demographics of London that has drawn the hysteria of those congenitally hypersensitive to such matters there is much else that makes the city different from how it used to be, the architecture and the sheer busyness to be encountered almost everywhere being two of the most significant factors.

Cleese gets berated for talking about Englishness. Nigel Farage, who probably  knows better than most what it is like to be routinely and mindlessly slandered by the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness, wrote in his 2011 autobiographical ‘Flying Free’ - “Freedom of speech and belief is not subject to approval by a transitory authority. It is absolute or it is nothing.” That’s almost a definition of Englishness itself. Cleese’s generation (and mine, a decade later) flowered at a time when that sentiment was still true and completely unobjectionable. At the same time, Cleese himself was one of the two gigantic Johns (he was taller than the other one, and had better eyesight) who played a huge role in defining key aspects of English culture – comedy and music – in the mid-twentieth century, right across the English-speaking world, and beyond. So I believe he is more than entitled, as indeed we all are, for whatever reason or for no good reason at all, to like and to dislike what and who he chooses to. That’s called freedom. No ifs and buts.

Cleese’s later career has – perhaps inevitably - been less amusing than his earlier one, and because he’s 79 and has lived for many years outside the UK he makes himself an easy target for holier-than-thou finger-waggers. However, the key point he is getting at, and one with which I agree absolutely (and it is not unrelated to the fact of getting older) is that we are a less tolerant society than we used to be. This is ironic, because the more that attempts are made to enforce tolerance, the worse matters become. Fear of saying the wrong thing takes precedence over personal conviction; Cleese has dared to speak his mind, and good for him.

Compared to the mid-twentieth century what we have here today is a society in which everything has to be just-so, algorithmic, pre-defined, budgeted, quantified, formulaic, procedural, box-ticked, programmed, legalistic, deliberate, unironic, simplistic, shallow, sanitised, unimaginative, assertive-aggressive, angry, loud, unsubtle, inflexible, humourless, self-righteous, devoid of initiative, tediously literal, and often profoundly dim and depressing. Oh yes, and of course, smart. Smart is very important.

Seen from the perspective of older age, that’s the nation we have become, the kind of people we have become. Not, it has to be said, what we traditionally think of as English. I think that is really what John Cleese is getting at. Our traditional good-humoured fondness for self-deprecation has been turned round and weaponised by those who don’t appreciate such traits. We’re expected to be very left-brained, as befits a gadget-obsessed, money-fixated, quantitative-minded, secular society. In other words, half-brained. Not all of us, of course, but more than enough. Not much future for Basil or for the Ministry of Silly Walks. Not much future in being old, decent, sensitive, imaginative, or honest. Not much future in being silly.

Cleese’s last TV series “Hold the sunset” unfortunately lacked the focused scripts or hilarity of “Python” or “Fawlty”. Conventionally, perhaps, comedically, it was not a great success, but for me, Cleese limping laconically round the dog-emptying leafy avenues of Richmond was a delight – I was just waiting for him to erupt into some venomous outburst – but even though that never quite happened, his persona seemed spot on for a man of his age and past achievements. I felt I could read his thoughts: now that’s acting for you. What that gentle suburban setting emphasised for me, though, with my peculiar psychogeographical predilections and all that, was the difficulty in finding the kind of London that so many of us grew up to love; it was there in the programme, and it certainly still exists in small pockets, but you have to seek it out. This isn’t about simplistic observations of ethnicity or class, but rather more about the intangibles of subjectivity and atmosphere, of architecture and environment and way of life. England, London, as it used to be.

Nostalgia gets ridiculed, unfairly, but a sense of place and permanence contributes to psychological well-being. That’s a big part of Englishness (or any other national identity) – the streets and houses, not necessarily who lives in them. The trees, the horizons, the sky. Take away your origins, and don’t be surprised by subsequent unhappiness. When you’re getting on, you appreciate the comforts of familiarity, and you don’t always need edginess or change. If you’re younger you do need them, you need to live in the present and in the future, and you’ll reject much of what John Cleese (or I) have to say.

Not everyone will be entranced by Richmond, of course, so you have to wander around the vast and varied city and find what grabs you. Dalston or Catford, perhaps. You need to be generous and open minded, magnanimous (that Churchillian word) towards what you don’t personally get, adopting the attitude of the expectant flâneur (if you can put up with such pompous terminology) - because those moments of revelation that this is London can occur in unexpected locations.  Just round the next corner. Wow !

 
Whatever else it implies, Englishness has a lot to do with a sense of place and belonging, even more so with a sense of respect and love and longing, and – as Cleese has noted - with quietness, good manners, humour, and politeness. An attitude, a way of life, a shared past, a togetherness, a commonality. And – it would be nice to think – a common future goal. Qualities easy to mock as old-fashioned, elitist, reactionary, inefficient, boring and … old.  But, why ever not? They served us fine for long enough. For my money, Cleese is someone who has given me many hours of side-splitting pleasure, and for that I’m immensely grateful. He’s a national treasure and is to be hugely respected. Perhaps he should retire to Weston-super-Mare or to a small hotel in Torquay.