A.N. Wilson has been at it again. The prolific English novelist, television reviewer, former literary editor, columnist, biographer of Jesus and the House of Windsor (not the same book), chronicler of London, purveyor of private tittle-tattle from the Queen Mum's dinner table, self-styled grouch, alleged racist, youngish fogey, agent provocateur, former Catholic, ex-seminarian, former Church of England member, current agnostic and all-round high-status 49-year-old twice-married hack has this time selected as his target our own Seamus Heaney.
In a recent column in the Sunday Telegraph, the poet incurred the formidable wrath of Wilson for his temerity in walking off with the Whitbread Prize. The judges who awarded Heaney the prize for his translation of Beowulf came in for criticism too, having failed to see that "Heaney, like the Beowulf poet, is a minor talent, grossly over-praised for political reasons. His talents as a poet wouldn't, in a sane world, have taken him further than the parish magazine, but he is hailed as a Nobel Prize winner because he's - Glory Be to the Father - a Catholic from Northern Ireland."
There was a lot more along these lines. For example: "We are all meant to love Ulster Catholics, just as we are all meant to love the Lawrence family and the Albanian bandits of Kosovo."
Never mind, Seamus: Wilson once said that A.S. Byatt looked like a "blue balloon" and dismissed Marina Warner as a "bore", yet nobody took a blind bit of notice.
Regular readers of A.N. Wilson, even those who rate Heaney highly, will have enjoyed this particular column mightily. For they know that, above all, Wilson is that sine qua non of every worthwhile newspaper, the professional controversialist. Whatever can be said about him, and most things have been, he is always a good read. Mr Wilson, as Hunter Davies so memorably pointed out, has always specialised in glorious generalisation based on the slimmest of information: "That is why his journalism is so enjoyable and his biographies so readable."
For those who would like to get in on the game, and hone their skills at the wheel of a master, this column of Wilson's is an excellent example of the genre. It parades the usual personal insults, already mentioned. Just in case some readers already dislike Heaney's poetry, and may not therefore be outraged, the late Ted Hughes and Andrew Motion are also derided as "non-poets".
The net is widened to an alarming degree: in comes the gratuitous implied racist insult to the Lawrence family, and the wild, all-encompassing ethnic swipe at the Albanian "bandits" of Kosovo.
Old battles are rejoined. Whitbread judge Anthony Holden is, with expert dismissiveness, "the expert on poker, and the man who keeps writing books on the Prince of Wales." The straightforward sneer has its place: "Famous" Heaney. The sly implication is useful too: we are told it is no accident that Heaney was "discovered" (Wilson's parentheses) "by a guilt-ridden Ulster Protestant editor at Faber, the bachelor Charles Monteith..." Note well the modern implication of "bachelor".
In this kind of column, you must intensify personal rivalries rather than settle them (Wilson's ongoing and fully reciprocated antagonism to Bernard Levin is famous). You must be irritated easily and frequently. You harbour grudges like love tokens, for ever. You spray insults widely, just in case your prime target does not take offence. You evaluate your success by the volume of outraged response. What you least need is the reader who agrees with you. In fact, you don't even have to agree with yourself, as it is quite acceptable to reverse your opinion on any issue once a decent interval has elapsed.
This would all be fine if the whole thing were not a perfectly maintained pose. Some cruel folk aver that, in the case of A.N. Wilson, it is. He has been accused of "faux naivete" in the fogeyish manner some writer-journalists affect of not knowing, for example, who David Beckham is. He is suspected of hiding a deep streak of sentimentalism. His TV reviewer persona has been described as rather touching: "Who", a correspondent to the Telegraph once asked, "could resist the solitary figure in pyjamas (wincyette, no doubt) clutching his mug of Ovaltine before the TV?"
Who, indeed? But as a kicker-up of stink in the print media, Wilson has few equals. He practically invented the job, and now has it down to a fine art. He could be, and usually is, outraged for England. That is why, nonsensical and outrageous as his views often are, he deserves to be cherished, and is.
