The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 9

THE OBSERVER SUNDAY 28 APRIL 1985 H' ii'mjinii NEAL ascherson Barbarous Europe tires thR6mans 111 MM ff EUROPE is dead! 'This, one hears, was'the opinion -expressed by a flight of Reaganite hawks who visited London the other.day One's first retort, from beyond the tomb, is that if there is no life in Europe, President Reagan's men should have been more discrimi- I a bib onlyjUghtlybimed. FraAoaght clevasating wiars Indochina and Algeria arid came close todvilwarmtheAlgerianaKieam.Po soaked AMca in blood. Britomismains one of the most pugnaqow aiidir world, whose forces have 'ib pst constantly actiori soraewhere ui the world since 1945. But barbarismunot just ajeratbfight. More often, ue-pbariah expresses bis vigour through duplicity.

Fice underthe Fqurth RepubhcahdmerideGaulleK partner for the Americans fas President Ceausescu of Romania has pejen for, flie $bviet Union. Mr Mikhail Gorbchov how: studies withdistearpwbf ruire Soviet surtportard Soviet fuelto power, but which will always ivaggle'; away from the path of virtue Jf. rhey can. The European NATO allies hyeshQwja -truly barbarous inconsistency by alternately squealing for more solid tokens of American ririlitary this week to our silent continent. Itseemsthat there are good bones and bad bones.

We lie. dead at Bitburg, and dead at Bergen-Belsen, but some Europeans are evidently more dead than others. The President's first itinerary assumed that the Wehrmacht and the SS would be. more responsive to him than the victims Of the concentration camps. This distinction has been hastlty abolished.

But there are still many armies ot bones who are hot reckoned worth talking to at all. When Chancellor Kohl went to Belsen last week, there was a separate ceremony which he did riot attend for the 50,000 Soviet prisoners-of-warwho perished there in numbers equal to those of the Jewish dead. President Reagan support, and then grousing ablaut tokens when they arrive in the and might preserve a word of respect for them without buckling the supports of Western Pershing missiles. Star Wars.wffl be thesame Alliance. But he probably won't.

story. As the Romans knewi the i real trouble with barbarian allies is not'so rnucfai thatthev Still, this is not me-s o.f ideadnes Presiderit's dimples rung abtl of western Europe suffering froma lack of ardour Which Wlieni offered nw -nie ukbSi of defence by an fievirQri in merely, whinei. When wed-that the Soviet: Union is hunched ov.a jgiaritcjins()le controll-ing urban terrorists coal miners and peace roarchers ina minutely planned campaign for their undoing, they-titter. They are flaccid, they are effete. European civilisation lives, with all its museums and palaces, its restaurants and pessimistic movies, but this is just the luminescence on the belly of an old mackerel if therawimtmctforself-preservationisextinct: This is a grand old point of view.

As.cliches go, it has enjoyed a long life. It therefore deserves to be promptly stood on its head The 'over-civilised' point, first. On 3 September 1939 delirious crowds stood outside the British and French embassies in Warsaw to celebrate their declaration of war oh behalf of Poland. Most people shouted 'Long Live. or Long Live England (the Polish for Great Britain being too much to expect on a hot autumn day) This was pathetic enough, as Alan Yentob: He'll bulldoze, he'll charge at something, he'll lump up and rebel as that mey aromcbnsciuerit.

As the Romans knew-, -t could it be that there is dviUsed. which the United States and even tiSoviet lnion possess and Europe doesnpt? Perhajps a musclebpundinnocencej aneiduring surprise jfliat their igood intiofts-; bfe is the ability to :stay.put in legion might spend generations' oh 'Hadrian's Wall. There are US banacks'ui Bavaria and Soviet barracks in Mecklenburg where young American aridRussiansoidieSs drill oh the same squares where their famersidh fejSiera' fathers, drilled before i mem 'J Hitler lost gaMible Books; pile up, deyobVtoiai the superpowers have done to Europe. There are volumes oM'SmdetisaiifM'fiasX the Americanisation of the West. But nobody, I notice, has asked what Europe has done, to the superpowers.

Let's remember, first of jail, that ft the EuropeanSfWho brought them into Europe and pitched them into confrontation. Adolf Hitler's lost gamble in 1941 brot Soviet power up to the Elbe. Ernie rmi aalyone else pde'rPdent Truman to leave said Bill Cotton, BBC-TV's managing director, raising his glass to Alan Yentob, ts new head of music and am, at least they can't say you're a They don't; thougn Yentob has been called plenty of other names in his time. These include and 'Bot-ney' (by Private Eye). Yentob's output reveals a personal pantheon of heroes of a similar sort, among them Tony Hancock, the subject of the first Omnibus to go out under his management (last Friday), and Orson Welles.

Yentob's own two-part profile of Welles (1982) will be shown again on BBC2 next Sunday and Monday (Welles's seventieth birthday), and will also open a month-long festival of 22 Welles films at the National Film Theatre on Friday. Orson Welles can remember the time when' his friend Huw Wheldon said over lunch at the old Caprice, The problem with you, Orson, it that you're out of fashion he ascribestoYenrobwetunungof that tide. Now Yentob has Wheldon's old job as well though he is a rather different sort of BBC chap. His taste in the arts, like his taste in clothes, is catholic and unorthodox his looks and aplomb are inherited from a family of Sephardic Jews displaced from Iraq, who made money in the Manchester textile industry. His twin brother Robert now runs the family business, which has shed its public companies, but retains a few private ones, including Dents Gloves.

Yentob's parents are now 'semi-retired' in Kensington; he and his girlfriend live in Ladbroke Grove. Within his family, and also in the BBC, he cultivates a measure of detachment; though Robert Yentob believes that in both, 'at the bottom line, he is part of it, and I don't think he could be out of it. Equally, he is very much a child of the in the view of one BBC even if he hasn't ever been properly Under the sweatshirt (he saves his Armani suits for parties) there is a commitment to public service broadcasting that proved more vigorous in the Corporation's defence during' the licence fee debate than that of most of its senior management. Like all its good children, Yentob (now 38) has been at the BBC man and boy. He was a general trainee in 1968, enjoying the year of revolution from a ringside position in Bush House just across the road from the LSE.

Before that he was educated at the cathedral school at Ely and Leeds University, where he read law but preferred drama (one of his productions won the Sunday Times VSUS competition). From Bush House (another family 'All those people thousands of miles from home, for whom it becomes home ') he went to Kensington House (where he remains), and began making arts films. A colleague recalls the departmental row after Yentob's film about David Bowie- (1973): Yentob says mildly that it was then rather unusual to make a serious film about a rock star but what had enraged some of his seniors was that Bowie was a drug addict as well When Humphrey Button dreamt up Arena in 1975 to look after the (contemporary) arts that 'Omnibus' did not reach, Yentob offered to run it. But I think they thought I was too dangerous, or lazy, or badly-dressed it took another three, or four years as a subversive producer-director before the editorship fell to him as if by gravity, plus a little harmless plotting with his colleague Leslie Megahey (now his deputy in the 150-strong department). The poacher became an exuberant gamekeeper.

Until that point, I would never have seen Alan running this department one recalls a colleague. 'But he clearly relished being in Yentob nurtured a trusted group of producer-directors in a strong esprit de corps that could look like cliquishness (an outsider's words). And through the quality of Arena's programmes he made his position at the BBC first respectable, and finally unassailable. Interventionist His success showednot only ih the attentton; audiences' and ratings that 4 Arena won, or its money Yentob prised in increasing quantities from co-producers and BBC Enterprises to support his projects. But he still smarts under the jibes of frivolity and trendiness born of Arena films like My Way' and TheSecretLifeof theFord Cortina' (he drives a Cortina himself), insisting that they have been outnumbered by classic profiles of the undis-putedly great (Bunuel, Orwell, Beckett, Chabrol, Boulez).

Now the adventurer embodies the new orthodoxy, which stirs concern both inside and outside the Is he going to do the hard stuff, which gets no Press, no plaudits, no kooky little diary columns said a critic. I'm afraid he might just go for the But Yentob's record as a programme-maker has earned him a groundswell of neither Britain nor France fired a. shot jto saye Poland frorii destructibrirButohe ahbriymous Bogged the European swamn, the untlumble r'touus of ffSaan- 'ii -'i4 4. eeu tne misr-wai emnranir rpmuPFvnr rni wnicn iouowea ms cry aemousnea tne term mik wJZTl-l-3StPi rinanyed S(thbuglwicir mere was some necessary cbmie Beethoven arid benevolence, bawemrMarivl60 tegnaahdmercllapsSasol mhii iir ihfi takes time to But in, his own time '(said another' friend), 'he backs into, the limelight. It seems to suit him.

'It's not an accident that he's become a great mate of Orson WeUes and Stanley Kubrick and Mel Brooks after doing films about said a colleague. It'sequallynotanactidentthai most authority, Establishment, and institution figures have taken decades to warm to him. and.they're still suspicious. Nevertheless, while the Con-naught and the. cutting room, may behispreferredhabitatejhe not do badly offices and pohticslbf tbes BBC.

'He's a great reflected one of his bosses. Everytime I'd decide it was time to go home, I'd find. this shy, diffident character waiting outside my room with a point to In his last job, Yentob won the ear and trust of the people he needed the two Controllers and the Director of Programmes and used them shanuessly to manipulate the schedules to serve his programmes. Another departmental head observed He's had years of pushing the system, and he knows how to lean on bits of it to make things He can be canny and diplomatic he can use other methods as well. He's never been afraid of going to shout at a Controller for five minutes to get his said a colleague.

He'll bulldoze, he'll charge at something, 'he'll jump up and down he'll make life a misery for people until he gets what he He is going to need these skills. 'That job is all about getting slots and said an outsider. 'For that you need experience, clout, and to be close chinking companions with Reiner Moritz '(the leading co-producer in. the the field). Another observer noted that much, 6i bis "work will be nothing to do with the pro-grammes -just getting the wherewithal to bring- them about; He'll be righting a lot of toughies in a lot of other departments for money and resources the BBC hasn't (Last year the music and arts department put out about 250 hours of programmes Yentob's basic budget this year is about 13 million.) sourness, can creep into the voices of colleagues and critics for whom Yentob has still to prove his breadth, or depth, or gravitas or his tolerance for admin.

Yethealsoinspireshope and goodwill. Even the sceptics feel he is basically sound and committed', a good lad with his heart in the arts, and enough energy and entxepre-neurship to keep it pounding He's a fighter, and he knows the odds from the said one Jeremiah cheerily. 'Even if he doesn't succeed, he won't A fan put it more strongly. 'When the boys throwing bricks through the windows, put the bricks down, come in through the door, it's a springtime: and everybody gains from said Orson Welles. support his department and among people who haveleft it to go freelance in its last traumatic few years, when what one Kensington House producer called a regime of stormtroopers was imported from Current Affairs to sort out the departmental overstaffing and overspending.

'And blood The storm-troopers were finally routed by the, force of their own unpopularity, and the crown almost thrust upon Yentob (though he. said he wasn't sure he wanted it). Kensijigton House inmates nqw tMt you can feel the buz minute you walk in the Yentob is good at ihakuig noise. He is also a workahplicC alwaysonthe saidafriend), fuelled by passion add enthusiasm (about other people's films as well as his own). He is a meticulous, interventionist, and some would say rainless and obsessive editor, ready to spend all night or weekend, or month in the cutting room to get something right, expecting everyone elsetodothesame.

On the other harid, an unfinished film of his own about Heinrich Boll has become 'a seasonal joke' (a colleague's words) and he turned down an offer by Mel Brooks, one of the biggest indepedent producers in Hollywood, to finance any film he wanted to make, in order to take on this job. Yentob sells his ideas, programmes and people harder than himself. Even to an admirer, he 'seemed at first a small, shapeless figure Alan ZZr'stry with'leecnSft What nsvedone to 40 years in Eurppei', tlie''ew Soviet'Mah has lost his deari.jaw-Uneahldbecomesq Americari boy who, so long ago, rode die jeep with the white starof liberatioii has srown'grey and moodily kicks' the Nicaraguancat. It is the Romans who have aged so terribly, and Europe which has grown barbarously young again. E.

P. Thompson says; that Europe is meditating now a declaration of independence. 'But who is really dependent on whom, 40 years on My friend Francis Hope used tosay: When the child is grown-up, it's time the parents learned to stand on their own Neal Ascherson takes over this wsekfrom Kaihariru Whitehorn, who mil be miiing regularly in the Weekend Section. Her new column' appears today on page 45. when, kings, and deslipiiyeyer, cruel iand" stupid intiieir, penswerealso.flierwtrohs' ofhighcuitiire.

It supposed mat something rubbed off. Auschwitz corrected tnat For Europe is not a civilised place, a region which is polished but rather lifeless. It is a barbaric continent, heaving with a crude vigour which is now beginning to crack apart the marble slabs of imperial order laid across it by the post-war settlement 40 years ago. There is a lot wrong with that order, but it has at least restrained the Europeans from slaughtering oneariother for an unprecedented span of time. Squashed under the enormous weight of Soviet domination, the Eastern nations of Europe have had no opportunity to display, savagery.

But in the West, conflicts waged outside Europe have shown what ferocity lies 1 POLITICAL DIARY ALAN WATKINS The Cabinet isn't working either THE GLASS OF FASHION THE CURRENT TASTE AMONG WOMEN for whisky is not merely an expression of equal opportunity. Indeed, most of the increase in whisky sales is not to be found among the sharper, more rugged-tasting blends. No. The fact is, women with their often keener 8ensbry perceptions have sniffed out the delights of The Macallan Single Malt. Matured in sherry-casks, victor of innumerable 'blind' tasting ludorums, The Macallan has now emerged from select obscurity to a prime position in the top-selling-malt league.

After dinner, especially, it seems that ladies have made for The Macallan as an alternative to brandy or liqueurs, being less hectic than the one and finer-textured than the others. And where previously a man might have bought The Macallan for his own private enjoyment, he will now find his wife helping him inch down the bottle in a spirit of mutual embrocation. reshuffle in the summer. The persuasion may still be going on. The crucial change, whether it occurs in summer or autumn, is Mr Norman Tebbit to the chairmanship of the party, with a seat in the Cabinet but no departmental responsibilities.

The consequential changes are Mr George Younger to Trade and Industry, Mr Malcolm Rifkind to the Scottish Office and Mr Gummer to the Foreign Office. Or that seems to be the plan. It would perhaps be more sensible, as well as more humane, to put Mr. Patrick Jerikin out of his misery not by sacking him outright, which really would be unfair, "but by shifting him to Trade and Industry and giving his job to one of the two Kenneths, Baker or Clarke. A Minister who has seemed less miserable lately is Sir Keith Joseph.

By his own exacting standards of gloom and self-doubt he has seemed a positive ray of sunshine. But, there is no question about it, Sir Keith's continuing presence does gum up the works. We are told-that he can keep his job for as long as he likes not any job he fancies, mind you, but one carrying a seat in the Cabinet, as a gesture of gratitude on Mrs Thatcher's part for his standing aside to allow her to become leader 10 years ago. If this is so, as it seems to be, he could conveniently be asked to carry on as Minister for Important Thoughts. One of Mrs Thatcher's good qualities is that she sees no merit in reshuffles for their own sake, as devices to make Cabinets appear less frowsty.

She may use them to dispose of awkward persons, a Pym here, a Gilmour there, a St John-Stevas somewhere else. (Mr St John-Stevas is puzzling some of his former colleagues with his frequent admiring and affectionate references to the Prime Minister. She did, after all, brutally sack him. What's he after, what's his game, eh?) But she does not think these changes solve problems. It is analogous to her less soundly based belief that institutional changes do not solve problems either.

Yet it is evident 'that the Cabinet is not working specially well at the moment. Moving a few bodies around here and there may be better than not doing anything at all. RETURNED from holiday in South-west France, I find that everyone is obsessed by Princess Michael of Kent. It has been going on now for almost a fortnight. What on earth is the matter with us? Certainly our politicians do not provide much entertainment, though the self-regarding Dr David Owen and the terrifying Ms Clare Short did their best to divert us last week.

We are going through a period of mild mid-term depression, with the Government committed to a succession of measures which few really want, least of all from among its own supporters. The lack of a certain competence what used to be called ability in the dispatch of business that has been evident since the election shows no sign of being remedied. If anything, it is the other way about, as last week's failed coup by Mr Nigel Lawson against Mr Norman Fowler demonstrated. Most governments go through periods of this kind. They usually happen in mid-term.

This period is exceptional in that it started straightaway after the election. Or, rather, it is exceptional when compared to pre-1979 administrations. Mrs Margaret Thatcher's first Government went through a similar initial period of self-doubt. Then, with the Falklands campaign, everything was changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Since then, it has been down hill all the way, though till recently this was scarcely reflected in the opinion polls.

The questions which all politicians, but particularly Conservative politicians, now ask endlessly are whether Mrs Thatcher, and what she was taken to represent, luckily matched a public mood in both 1979 and 1983? And has the mood (or, what amounts to the same thing, the luck) now changed? Is Mrs Thatcher, in other words, now turning into an electoral liability for the Conservatives The public, these Conservatives concede, is as fickle as a fashion-plate and as unfair as any ayatollah. It wills the end but does not like the means. (The phrase about willing ends and Brittan as its Home Secretary or a party that has Mr Gummer as its chairman. That is partly advancing years, because I have my troubles, my moments of not quite believing it, over a Labour Party led by Mr Neil Kinnock as well. But it is not entirely my middle age.

Observers and participants of all ages agree that there is a certain lack of solidity in the Cabinet. The conventional explanation among Conservatives is that, for a variety of reasons, those who now find themselves at the top are a pretty uninspiring lot, whereas there is a superior, younger crew coming up behind. There usually is said to be a better lot coming up behind. (One exception seems to be the Labour Party today, where the Shadow Cabinet is almost certainly the best that could be assembled from the talent currently available.) Anyway, those Conservatives who are worried by Mrs Thatcher's appeal, or lack of it, are now urging an accelerated reshuffle. I do not normally like reading reshuffle stories, still less writing them, because one wrong prediction, one misleading piece of information, can throw the whole thing out.

But these stories have a following among the politicians themselves. So here are a few words. The former intention was for a fresh collection of Ministers to be paraded before our admiring eyes at the party conference: same chaps, roughly speaking, but in different jobs. The worried persons, both in No. 10 and in Central Office, then decided that this would be leaving things too late for the good of the party.

So Mrs Thatcher was urged to have her means, by the way, which remains a firm favourite of politicians and commentators of all classes, originates from a 1950s report on railwaymen's pay.) No other politician would have resisted Mr Arthur ScargUl and his union as Mrs Thatcher did. The public recognises this, respects and admires it, but does not really like it. Admittedly Mrs Thatcher appeared firmer than she really was because Mr Scargill was more obdurate than he needed to be, having been in a position effectively to win the strike on several occasions but this does not matter. It is all most unfair. Some say it is unfair also to blame Mrs Thatcher all the time, when her Cabinet hardly consists of persuasive advocates or commanding presences.

Surely her colleagues should accept their share of any opprobrium that may be flying around But it is wholly fair to hold Mrs Thatcher responsible on this account, because she has placed herself in a position of preeminence. Things tend to go wrong, she tells us, when she is on holiday. Nor has she encouraged the growth of any substantial figures among Ministers. I am, I confess, ambivalent about her Cabinet-making. One side of me admires a Prime Minister who can have Mr Lawson as her Chancellor, Mr Leon Brittan as her Home Secretary and Mr J.

S. Gummer as her party chairman. It requires some courage to appoint senior Ministers who are not only comparatively young but both young and disliked at the same time. Another side of me cannot take seriously a government that has Mr THE MACALLAN. THE MALT..