Yes, of course, they should allow atheists on Thought for the Day. But isn’t it curious that those who affect to despise religion seem so desperate to copy what the religious do? Why stop, however, with allowing atheists to occupy the few minutes in any day when the dull calculus of utilitarianism is set aside and we’re invited to think of eternal things. Why not just give the Devil his due . . ?

“Good morning, John. Good morning, Sarah. And isn’t it a truly wonderful morning today? Swine flu. Recession. Revelations of state involvement in torture. And, to cap it all, my agents at Thames Water and Laing O’Rourke has once again brought the capital to a standstill. They’re single-handedly responsible for more people taking the Lord’s name in vain than any other organisation in recorded history. They’ve earned their special place in Hell. For creating a slice of it here on Earth.

“Now, for those of us pledged to the rule of eternal darkness, even these times bring challenges. There are still some pubs without music. At least one radio station plays whole symphonies without adverts. Many libraries still have books on open shelves and harbour all too few computer terminals. Meanwhile, whole market towns still survive without any mall development or branch of River Island.

“But for we vile homunculi dedicated to His Satanic Majesty’s rule, there are many signs of advance. Some still doubt the existence of Hell. But those of us in the Devil’s Party can still take pride in British Gas’s call-waiting system; the redevelopment works at King’s Cross station; Royal Mail’s delivery hours and its process for getting householders to recover mail too big for the letterbox; the vetting and barring system; the Turner Prize; Channel Four’s Embarrassing Bodies; Canary Wharf; the pricing structure for tickets on what used to be British Rail; Bacardi Breezers; Faliraki; the service stations on the M40; and, of course, the need for a different type of phone charger for every new mobile model that comes on the market. All of them eloquent proof that we are putting more and more people through Hell every day.

“So, John, so, Sarah, in a very real sense, Satanism is a creed that helps us put things in perspective. Yes, if you pledge your soul to Beelzebub, eternal torment in a sulphurous furnace anchored in the bowels of the earth awaits you. But how does that differ from the Northern Line? At least when you make the Prince of Darkness your master, he has the power to prolong your life on Earth and confound your enemies with stratagems so subtle no mortal mind can unpick them. As our Prime Minister has found to his benefit . . .”

North-south divide

Yes, travel has been on my mind this week, since you ask. And I’ve had the chance to put a friend’s theory to the test. One of my colleagues has long maintained that, however horrendous east-west routes may be in London, nothing compares with the misery of trying to go from north to south.

And he’s right. With the single exception of Park Lane, every north-south route in London slows traffic to the pace of a wounded gnat with pleurisy struggling with a squaddie’s backpack. While at least on the east-west routes you can get up to, on a good day, at least 7 miles per hour.

Why should this be so? And is our concentration on ever more east-west routes (Crossrail, etc, however welcome) a missing of the point? That there’s no access to the capital via its axis.

Outfoxed

Rather a sour review of Isaiah Berlin’s collected letters in the TLS from A. N. Wilson. Wilson finds Berlin too keen on gossip and backbiting for his taste, whereas I’m afraid I find such waspishness and bitching an addictive treat. You get so little of it in Westminster.

Wilson’s most serious assault, however, is mounted against Berlin’s great essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox, in which great writers are divided into hedgehogs, who know one big thing, and foxes, who know many things but fail to reach the profundity of the hedgehog. Typical hedgehogs are Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Proust. Famous foxes include Shakespeare, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac and Joyce.

Wilson says of the Berlin thesis: “If it is read slowly, it comes apart at the seams.” I beg to differ, thinking that it’s a uniquely useful filter, much more illuminating than the tired old roundhead/cavalier division. Blair is a fox and Brown a hedgehog; Thatcher a hedgehog and Macmillan a fox; Tim Burton a hedgehog and Robert Altman a fox.

And A. N. Wilson is the bushiest-tailed Reynard of the lot. A brilliant biographer of Iris Murdoch and Walter Scott; an hilarious novelist, whose early fiction stands comparison with that of Waugh; a columnist of Chestertonian range torn between orthodoxy and subversion, he is a uniquely well read and mischievous presence in a journalistic landscape growing blander by the day. Let us pray he has made sure his own dairies and letters have all the tang and savour of his published writing, with an extra dash of tartness . . .

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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