The Spectator - 29.02.2020

the spectator | 29 february 2020 | http://www.spectator.co.uk 37

Anglo-Chinese misunderstanding: an Oxford don visits 1960s Beijing

Leonardo (fine by me), the next putting

him down. For example, he presents him

as fey and indecisive about religion; but I

asked Warhol outright: ‘Do you believe in

God?’ ‘Yeah, I do.’ ‘Do you believe in life

after death?’ ‘In an abstract way.’ Very clear

answers. Gopnik makes much of the ‘camp’

in Warhol; but for me, camp does not char-

acterise his art at all, which was, in the first

instance, bewildering and shocking: he was

the greatest taboo-breaker of the 20th cen-

tury. And where Gopnik sees detachment

or ruthlessness, I see generosity: Warhol

gave many people the space (and money)

to explore themselves.

Gopnik’s task has been enormous and,

despite my reservations, all this hard work

is immensely valuable. But the result can-

not be definitive. I missed, for instance,

Andy’s remark: ‘Once you stop wanting

something, you get it’; and any mention of

that sombre Sunday at home in the 1980s

when the impossible happened — Andy’s

phone didn’t once ring. People today for-

get that by 1983 Warhol was unfashionable.

When I wrote up my meeting at the Fac-

tory, nobody in London wanted the piece.

It was only published after his death four

years later, when interest in him started

to revive.

Looking again at Warhol’s pictures,

I notice that works which once seemed

so explosive now strike me as creations

of classical self-possession and elegance.

What an amazing man.

Andy Warhol, a major retrospective

at Tate Modern, will run from 12 March

to 6 September.

Not a party person

Mike Cormack

The China Journals: Ideology and

Intrigue in the 1960s

by Hugh Trevor-Roper,

edited by Richard Davenport-Hines

Bloomsbury Academic, £25, pp. 296

This book is a rather startling depiction of

Hugh Trevor-Roper’s involvement with the

Society for Anglo-Chinese Understand-

ing (SACU), his sponsored visit to China in

October 1965 (just months before the Cul-

tural Revolution got under way) and his

efforts to find out who actually controlled

and funded SACU.

Having been induced to be a sponsor of

the society on legitimate grounds of interest

in China and its history, Trevor-Roper was

a last-minute addition to a delegation vis-

iting Beijing and Xian. He was promised

freedom of movement and access, though

the reality turned out quite differently. The

China Journals thus comprises four sections:

Trevor-Roper’s diary of his three-week visit;

his diary of his time in Oxford and London

two months later, when he tries to get to the

bottom of SACU; his suppressed Encoun-

ter article on the episode; and a diary of

a later visit to Taiwan and Cambodia. This

last is tangential to the purpose of the book,

but presumably included for balance on

Trevor-Roper’s feelings about China. (He

uses phrases such as ‘the worthless Chinese’

and others even less complimentary.)

The first section is the most interesting.

Trevor-Roper is lumped with three other

fellow travellers: Mary Adams, a stereo-

typical upper-middle-class committee-

joiner and do-gooder; Ernie Roberts, assis-

tant secretary-general of the Amalgamated

Engineering Union, a bon vivant and claim-

er of proletarian virtue; and Robert Bolt,

the playwright. He is soon exasperated by

the vanities and stupidities of Adams and

Roberts, and the diary is littered with amus-

ingly poisonous portraits of them.

But, more seriously, the promises of free

access and movement turn out to be worth-

less. The group is forced to remain together,

every visit choreographed and monitored

by interpreters and political minders, every

question and request for information

treated with the utmost suspicion, every

interaction guarded. (The one time Trevor-

Roper does get to meet Chinese historians

they remain almost silent, visibly frustrated

at being minded by their voluble professor,

a party hack.)

Political discourse is also sterile. (Roland

Barthes, during his own tour of China in

1974, called the outpourings of tedious

ideological rhetoric ‘bricks’: visitors then

were subjected to enough to build a house.)

War threatens between India and Paki-

stan during the tour; Pakistan is an ally of

China, India a rival, so the conflict can only

be framed in a Manichean manner — or, as

the guides put it, by reference to ‘objective

facts’. Bolt dares to suggest that the truth

isn’t so clear cut, only to be battered by

more verbal bricks.

Less seriously, or more entertainingly,

their guides behave like every incompe-

tent low-scale Chinese authority — which

will be familiar to anyone who has endured

peremptory but bungling hotel or station

staff there. Trevor-Roper and Bolt give

them nicknames, such as Cement-head,

Duck-bottom and Smooth-face.

But it’s not all contempt. Trevor-Roper

manages to abscond a few times, and throbs

with pleasure at old Beijing:

There were imposing hollow facades, fron-

tispieces of exquisitely carved stone, carved

wood reliefs, armigerous gateways leading

into alleyways or courtyards, and stylised

flora and fauna at every point; toad-like lions

squatting on cottage doorsteps, proud, ram-

pant lions on balustraded roofs, here a stone

stork on a cottage chimney, there a capari-

soned elephant in relief over a cottage door,

festoons of fruit and flowers carved in relief

over doors and windows.

He also relishes Chinese opera, the Tem-

ple of Heaven and the Forbidden City —

though he abhors the ‘totalitarian megalithic

style’ of the Great Hall of the People — as

well as the vivacity of the ordinary Chinese.

The subsequent sections concern his

efforts to expose SACU as a communist

front. He writes that, as a sponsor of the

society, he feels obliged not to resign but to

attempt to restore it to its proper purpose.

This is rather patrician of him, but you sense

he also enjoys the conflict, as well as despis-

ing the bad faith, lies and double-dealing

that go with communist parties (and what

he calls the communisant). The Encounter

article concerns not his visit but the story of

SACU and is a fine example of his journal-

ism, with its wit and insight.

The China Journals is not perhaps an

important book. SACU is a mere pim-

ple on Anglo-Chinese relations, and the

behaviours of communist fronts are tedi-

ously familiar. But it is enjoyable for

the human comedy and high quality of

Trevor-Roper’s prose. It is, however, rath-

er eccentrically edited. The introduction is

unfathomably long, around 50 pages, and

grindingly detailed. The footnotes are also

stuffed with extraneous information. But

you can skip all that and simply savour

Trevor-Roper’s moral outrage, aesthetic

feeling, keen political antennae and judi-

cious penmanship.

Books_29 Feb 2020_The Spectator 37 25/02/2020 14:39