One on One. Craig Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ Street on a balmy Sunday afternoon’.

      During the Labour Party dinner, the Shadow Minister of Supply, George Brown, puffs away on his pipe, dutifully listening to a welcoming speech by the Chairman of the Labour Party, then to a speech by Bulganin. Before long, a few of his more left-wing colleagues, keen to demonstrate their friendliness towards the Soviet Union, start thumping the table and chanting, ‘We – want – Khrush-chev,’ over and over again.

      Never short of things to say, Khrushchev leaps up with a great beam on his face to deliver an impromptu speech. The way Brown remembers it, Khrushchev ‘just went on and on. He delivered a great denunciation of Germany, put in a lot of stuff about the beginning of the war, and followed this with a particularly offensive passage about Britain’s role in the war – how we had thrown the blood-thirsty Germans at the throat of the nice Russians, and so on.’

      For Brown, enough is enough. He remembers muttering, ‘May God forgive you,’ but to his fellow guests the mutter emerges as more of a bark. Khrushchev stops speaking. He turns to Brown and asks him to repeat what he has just said. Brown does not reply, and those around him urge him to stay silent. But Khrushchev is spoiling for a fight, and announces to the room that Brown is clearly too afraid to repeat his remark.

      Brown isn’t going to take this lying down. ‘I will gladly repeat my remark!’ he announces. ‘I said, “May God forgive you!” … What I meant was that it was you who signed the treaty with Ribbentrop, not us, and that if you hadn’t signed your treaty with Ribbentrop, we wouldn’t have been at war for a whole year before you even got started, that a lot of my comrades wouldn’t now be dead, and that a lot of brave Poles wouldn’t now be dead!’

      At this, pandemonium breaks out, with Khrushchev launching a tirade against democratic socialists, against Britain, and, in Brown’s words, against ‘pretty well everybody’. Neither man is prepared to back down. Whenever Khrushchev pauses for breath, Brown puts his oar in, voicing his support for the Eastern European political prisoners whom the Labour Party has solemnly agreed, in a pre-dinner arrangement, not to mention. For good measure, he adds that Khrushchev’s son Sergei, who is there at the meal, dares not disagree with his father. Khrushchev replies with a lengthy speech, delivered, thinks the mild-mannered Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, ‘with vehemence, even brutality’, and ends by telling his hosts they should make an alliance with the Russians, because if not, they will be swatted ‘off the face of the earth like a dirty old black beetle’.

      At this point, the Welsh firebrand Aneurin Bevan leaps to Brown’s aid, wagging his finger and repeating, ‘But this is ridiculous, Mr Khrushchev, but this is ridiculous.’ Gaitskell attempts a conciliatory speech, ending with a toast ‘to our next meeting’.

      ‘Not for me!’ shouts Brown. ^*

      In Brown’s memoir, he insists that ‘I don’t want to leave an impression that the events of this Khrushchev dinner were all either ludicrous, or bad-tempered, or bitchy … It was not just a boorish evening with the hosts being discourteous to the guests.’ He then rather ruins the impression of composure by adding a coda that might best be summarised as ‘He started it’: ‘Khrushchev asked for what he got by the way he spoke to us – and it is just as important that a guest should not be rude to a host as that the host should be courteous to a guest.’^*

      The next day, the Speaker throws a lunch for the Soviet visitors at the House of Commons. Brown is once again invited. He decides to adopt a low profile, ‘so when the drinks were being handed round before lunch I stayed in a corner with one or two of my own cronies and didn’t go anywhere near where the Russians were being made much of by people who seemed to me a bit over-anxious to mollify their feelings’.

      All goes fine until after they have finished eating. They are sipping coffee, ‘when who should approach me but Bulganin. He looked closely at me with those lovely blue eyes and said something in Russian which clearly meant something like, “So you are the naughty fellow from last night!” … and I said, “Oh yes.”’

      Bulganin invites Brown to come and see Russia for himself. Brown says he would be delighted. At this point, Khrushchev strides over to the two of them, and asks the interpreter what is going on. Brown doesn’t want to get involved. ‘I wished him a pleasant journey and said that I looked forward to seeing him in Moscow when I was able to take up Bulganin’s invitation.’

      Brown holds out his hand. Khrushchev refuses to shake it – ‘Nyet, nyet!’ – and moves away. Brown leaves for his constituency. The Conservative politician and diarist Harold Nicolson is told all about it by a Labour contact. ‘My friend told me that in a long experience of unsuccessful banquets, that will live in his memory as the most acid failure that he has ever witnessed.’

      Khrushchev subsequently remarks that if he were British he would vote Conservative.^*

      Brown’s invitation to Moscow fails to arrive.

      GEORGE BROWN

      BERATES

      ELI WALLACH

      Rediffusion TV Studios, Kingsway, London WC2

       November 22nd 1963

      Neither his temper nor his love of alcohol prevent George Brown from becoming deputy leader of the Labour Party.^* This evening, he has been enjoying one or two drinks – a few at the Lebanese Embassy, followed by a few more at a mayoral reception at Shoreditch Town Hall – when he is called to the phone. It is Milton Shulman, from Rediffusion Television, with the news that President Kennedy has been shot. Will Brown come and appear on a special Kennedy Assassination edition of the current-affairs programme This Week? Realising he is already the worse for wear, Brown’s wife attempts to dissuade him.

      ‘George, you mustn’t.’

      ‘I must!’ he replies.

      Minutes later, Brown is driven from Shoreditch to the TV studios in Kingsway. He is a little early, so he helps himself to a couple more drinks in the green room. Before long, he is joined by two of the other guests – the historian Professor Sir Denis Brogan and John Crosby of the New York Times. Over another glass or two, he begins to hold forth about his close friendship with the late President and the future of the United States of America.

      A third guest now puts his head round the door. It is the actor Eli Wallach, still clearly upset by the news of the assassination. Wallach is introduced to Brown, who tells him how much he admires his work. Wallach accepts Brown’s compliments gracefully, but he is an unassuming man, so tries to steer the conversation away from himself.

      Brown misinterprets his modesty. ‘Why are American actors so conceited?’ he asks loudly, adding, ‘Someone like you always carries a newspaper sticking out of his pocket with his name in the headlines!’ Wallach attempts to defend himself, saying that, on the contrary, he is always bumping into people who can’t put a name to his face.

      ‘Have you ever been in a play by Ted Willis?’ asks Brown, randomly.

      ‘No,’ replies Wallach. ‘Who’s Ted Willis?’

      ‘You’ve never heard of Ted Willis?!’ exclaims Brown, as though this is further proof of Wallach’s vanity.

      Wallach moves away, and finds himself a place on a sofa, but Brown follows him, sits down nearby, and continues to make noisy remarks about the conceit of American actors. Suddenly, Wallach loses his temper, СКАЧАТЬ