To keep what is worth keeping

Those who know Winston Churchill only from his dogged wartime leadership when Germany attacked his country and have read only a few excerpts from his wartime speeches are aghast when they decipher his ugly elitism, racism and sheer blimpish stodginess, when they take pains to read his memoirs, reports of his contemporaries and his exchanges with President Roosevelt.

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But nothing to my mind illustrates his boorishness so well as his decision to burn, yes burn, his brilliant painting by the great British painter Graham Sutherland, given him as a loving gift by parliamentarians when he retired from the House of Commons. The sole reason: he didn't like it (I, like many others, thought it magnificent).

I remembered this shameful episode when I read of the recent controversy regarding Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last novel. Marquez was unquestionably one of the greatest writers of our generation. His One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are elegant classics, with their remarkable use of what is now called magical realism.

When Marquez was writing his last book, he was 86 and was beginning to feel the effects of his memory loss and dementia.