By Reg Green
In my first years at the Daily Telegraph in London I was taking an undergraduate course in history at
Birkbeck College, the evening college of London University. Many students were there from all over the fast-fading British Empire. One evening standing in line in the cheerless refectory for a hurried meal before class I picked one of the standard dishes: spaghetti, white beans and cauliflower.
Birkbeck College, the evening college of London University. Many students were there from all over the fast-fading British Empire. One evening standing in line in the cheerless refectory for a hurried meal before class I picked one of the standard dishes: spaghetti, white beans and cauliflower. “It’s their version of keeping Britain white,” I said to an African student standing next to me. “Be careful,” he said. “I’m taking a law degree and might be Minister of Justice if you come to write an article about us.” We laughed.– you could in those days —
but, sure enough, some of those students standing in line with their plastic trays and pitiful dinners did become leaders of their newly-independent homelands where a bachelor’s degree from London was a precious qualification.
Those nights flashed before my eyes when i read a Christopher Hitchens essay last week about England as a safe haven in the post-war years for even the topmost people in societies undergoing upheaval. As he tells it Hitchens didn’t catch the name of a man he was introduced to at a party. “Paul from Roumania, did you say?” he asked politely as they shook hands. He felt a slight stiffening of the other’s grip. “Paul of Roumania,” his new acquaintance corrected him.
I suppose that’s how Bashar Assad feels right now.
- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
2 Responses
He’s got to be in great spirits — he’s alive!
The 80s sitcom Night Court did an episode in which Judge Stone had to swear in a mismatched collection of new US citizens, one of which was a black man in a white tropical suit. This medium will not allow transmission of the actor’s haughty take on a Caribbean accent, but the man when asked his former occupation said, “I was President of my country. My full title was President for Life, Protector of the Realm, and Defender of the Constitution.” When asked what he did now, he answered, “Night manager of a 7/11.”
Later when the judge got to the part of the oath in which the citizen forswears all allegiance to any foreign prince or potentate, the man’s voice from the crowd cries out, “That was meeee!”.