Free The Light's on at Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser Page B

too clearly. Fortunately, thus far New Labour has resisted the Liberal Democrat demand; the danger is that if ever they suffer a reduced majority they may bring it in to ensure the survival of Left-wing government—and its probable continuance until the day when Scotland becomes fully independent, and England, spared the presence of the Clydeside rabble at Westminster, will get the conservative (I emphasise the small “c”) English government it wants.
    * Admittedly, Commons tradition militates against this. Bad manners is deeply ingrained, as we see from the constant heckling, childish braying, waving of papers, and general kindergarten behaviour for which the Chamber is noted. If anything, M.P.s seem to be quite proud of this, and defend it as part of the parliamentary system. Indeed it is nothing new, but what was an unwelcome novelty was the playground “nyah-nyah-nyah” technique lately employed by party leaders who mistook stridence for oratory and insult for wit.
    * The much vaunted “democracy” of ancient Greece was not a democracy in any sense. About 5 per cent only of the population were entitled to vote, and women were excluded altogether. More than 60 per cent of the population were slaves.

INTERLUDE

Orcs and Goblins
    W ITH THE FIRST FILM OF The Lord of the Rings trilogy having rekindled the controversies about allegories and symbolism which broke out after the books’ publication more than forty years ago, and new disputes about where Tolkein got his inspiration (the Warwickshire countryside? the Ribble Valley? the Western Front?) it is highly satisfactory to be able to settle absolutely one minor question in the great panorama of Tolkeinery. Namely, are the goblins of The Hobbit the same creatures as the orcs of the Ring stories, or are they of different species?
    This debate divided the canteen of The Glasgow Herald in the 1960s, so I wrote to Tolkein for a ruling and received a courteous and detailed reply, written in the famous spidery hand so familiar to students of his works. Yes, orcs and goblins were identical, and he added the fascinating information that they had been inspired by his childhood reading of The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie , eerie spellbinders which had helped to freshen my own infant nightmares. Their author was a Scottish minister named George MacDonald (I was about to say “no relation” until I discovered that he was descended from a survivor of the Massacre of Glencoe, and therefore kin to my paternal grandmother).
    That is my tiny contribution to Tolkein scholarship. His orcs and goblins are George MacDonald’s, but as to other inspirations, who knows? It is a common mistake to think that one can spotwith certainty the wellsprings of an author’s imagination, as I know only too well, having had a critic state flatly that I was plainly much influenced by Conrad—of whom I had not read a single word at that time. I will not enrage Tolkein admirers by noting that Conan the Barbarian preceded the Ring books by many years in the field of sword-and-sorcery, since I would bet heavily that Tolkein never even heard of Conan, but I have wondered if he ever encountered that remarkable fantasy of E. R. Eddison’s, The Worm Ouroboros , which has been casting its spell for more than seventy years. Probably not, but I’m fairly certain that Tolkein enthusiasts would find Eddison to their taste.

SHOOTING SCRIPT 3

Gene Hackman Should Have Blown up Vesuvius
    S OMETIME AFTER the Musketeer movies had been released, Pierre Spengler asked if I was interested in doing Superman, which Ilya Salkind was determined to bring to the screen. I had my doubts but said ‘yes’ on principle; however, later Pierre phoned me to say that they thought an American writer would be more appropriate, and I couldn’t argue with that; in fact, I was rather relieved.
    After that nothing happened until the scripts of Superman I and II were written by David and Leslie Newman, and