Who's Afraid of the Fourth Man?

[f4f3]

This isn't what I was expecting to be blogging about tonight. I expected to be talking about my Caledonian odyssey this weekend (Drumna-fucking-drochit?) or the kicking we gave the Bastard English or possibly the Guardian giving page one space to a racist and religious diatribe from one of our greatest living postcard illustrators, and probably I will, but I read yesterday's Guardian Review over dinner, and something caught my eye.
In the Guardian Book club column, John Banville writes entertainlingly about his decision to write a novel based on Antony Blunt. At one point he writes:
"Like so many of my generation I have been, and indeed, still am, fascinated by the Cambridge spies."
And I stopped, and crinkled up my brow. I'm not fascinated by the Cambridge spies. I'm not vaguely interested by the Cambridge spies. I don't, if truth be told, really give a shit about the Cambridge spies. Nobody I know gives a shit about the Cambridge spies, and nobody I've ever spoken to seems to give a shit either. I've always thought I was immune from the Oxbridge chip on my shoulder. I didn't go there, nobody else I know did either, and it never seemed even an option to worry about from my point of view. But I do wonder that somone could say that "So many of his generation" did care. I tend to regard myself as pretty mundane, in that my interests and fascinations are pretty reflective of everyone else's, but I seem to have a blind spot here.
So, knowing that some of my F's out there did go to Oxbridge, is anyone out there fascinated by this? Am I in this particular way less than mundane? Or is it an example of the lensing affect caused by so many of our opinion formers coming from such a closeted background?

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I'm not fascinated by the Cambridge spies, although I adore the play / film Another Country.

Like you, however, I was enraged by the Hockney piece.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

i'm not sure that I was enraged - I was annoyed, certainly. For him to whine like a baby when it's dragged off the teat isn't unexpected, and even his likening the curtailment of his right to inflict his addiction on whoever he likes to prohibition and the death of freedom is melodramatic but not actualy offensive, but when he takes it on himself to make potshots at someone based on their religion and race, and when the dear old Grunaid gives him their front page to do it...

well, ok, maybe I was enraged after all.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

What did Hockney say?