Diary

Serota paints an uncertain picture

ADMIRERS of Nicholas Serota and his record as director of London's Tate Gallery are concerned by an interview he has given to this week's Country Life magazine in which he hesitates to link the gallery's future to his own. With attention already focused on the gallery's controversial Turner Prize contest, Serota's interview will do nothing to dampen speculation that after five years in the job he is broadening his horizons, perhaps as far as the US. His apparent reservations about the job include the phrases: 'if I'm still here' and 'I don't think it is inevitable that one person can go on running this growing institution'.

If he is interested in the States, it is fortuitous timing: call it coincidence, but the directorship of New York's Museum of Modern Art is vacant at the moment with the present head, Richard Oldenburg, due to retire next July. According to art buffs, no one is more suitable for the post than Serota, 47, who is credited with lifting the Tate's viewing figures from 1.4 million to 1.8 million in four years.

Diplomatically, the Tate will not countenance the possible defection. 'Mr Serota has plans for developing a Tate Gallery of Modern Art in this country,' it insists.

W H SMITH, Waterloo Station, has given its own verdict on Baroness Thatcher's The Downing Street Years. The memoirs can now be found in the 'True Crimes' section.

Brought to book

REVIEW copies of books have always been seen as a perk for those asked to review them, but the Inland Revenue is not so sure. The tax inspectors first scented a new source of cash when one of their number read a newspaper article that ended (jokingly) with the words: 'I must go and sell my review copies.' Writers in that official's patch were hounded mercilessly thereafter, and literary types have lived dangerously ever since.

The latest casualty, I hear, is the former Hawkwind singer-turned-prodigious science-fiction writer, Michael Moorcock. His pursuit by the Inland Revenue has been so relentless that he has decided to take his typewriter to Texas, where he is house-hunting. His purchasing power, I fear, has been greatly diminished. Having written 160-odd books, he is liable to a big tax bill on, among other things, foreign rights; and because he has already donated large sums to charity, he is having to pay in instalments.

This irritates him only mildly, however. What maddens him is the way his own tax inspector has made a habit of asking for money with one hand, while expectantly proffering copies of the author's books for signing with the other.

MY NOTE yesterday about the Hungarian judges who made a flying visit to England to observe our judicial system at Oxford Crown Court - and left none the wiser after the cases collapsed - caused some mirth among their lordships, partly because of what I omitted to mention. The Hungarians were apparently so disappointed at the lack of legal action that they opted for action of their own in some local hostelries. Their post-lunch vote of thanks to their English counterparts was delivered in a dialect unknown to central European scholars.

Well-timed tour

AMONG Labour MPs upset in the past by the antics of their colleague Ray Powell are Ron Davies - they fell out in the whips' office - and Ken Livingstone, who had to prowl the corridors for more than a year in search of a desk at Powell's instigation (he is responsible for allocating offices).

Relations are improving however. Powell was in fulsome mood as he escorted 30 Labour colleagues around the recently completed Commons office complex on Millbank on Monday. The tour was fortuitously timed, given the following day's election for the post of pairing whip, a job that Powell has held since 1987 (until now, he has simply been asked by the whips to carry on).

With a victory by 17 votes - 110 MPs voted against him - that tour (conducted as part of his normal responsibilities for accommodation, but no doubt welcome all the same) may just have saved his bacon.

A DAY LIKE THIS

5 November 1941 Adolf Hitler at dinner is recorded as observing: 'There is an interesting document, dating from the time of Caesar, which indicates that the soldiers of that time lived on a vegetarian diet. According to the same source, it was only in times of shortage that soldiers had recourse to meat. It's known that the ancient philosophers already regarded the change from black gruel to bread as a sign of decadence. The Vikings would not have undertaken their now legendary expeditions if they had depended on a meat diet, for they had no method of preserving meat. The purveyor of vitamins was the onion. It's probable that, in the old days, human beings lived longer than they do now.'