Beast of a Nation 

Andrew O’Hagan

In Westminster Abbey a couple of years ago, I stood for over an hour talking to Neal Ascherson. It was one of those freezing January evenings – cold stone, long shadows – and we adopted our BBC faces in Poets’ Corner, looking at the memorials and marble busts on the walls. I noticed Ascherson was taking his time over an inscription to the poet Thomas Campbell, and some words of Campbell’s began to echo somewhere in my head, two lines from The Pleasures of Hope.

‘Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Not good lines, but they seemed good enough as I watched Ascherson watching. He gave the impression there was something new to be said about Campbell.

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