Take Stock

Four hours of television to fill on Sunday evening. Hamlet it is, then. On BBC One, anyway. ITV1 will be offering an alternative in the form of Der Rosenkavalier. For 60 years, it has been widely believed in Latin America, from which next to no one would have travelled to England in those days, that the 1966 World Cup had been fixed to ensure a lucrative final between the hosts and nearby West Germany. More widely, that suggestion has always been decried as outrageous. But these days, it is just taken as a given that FIFA made the arrangements necessary for the quarter-finalists to be its own four highest seeded teams, three of them from wealthy Western Europe.

Although it is the fourth that is entirely white. In 1800, more than a third of people in Argentina were black. Among other things, they invented the tango. But by 1875, they no longer even appeared as a category in the census. There are now a lot of Saint Helenians on the Falkland Islands, but they are never shown on television over here. The people who decide these things think that they know their audience. At the 2022 Festival of Remembrance, there were teenagers from the Falklands who were studying in Britain. They were all white. That was not an accurate reflection. But it was assumed to be a politic one. As Margaret Thatcher said, "They are of British stock." Yet that was 44 years ago, and she would now have been 100 years old. Look at the England football team. Either a trick is being missed, or a long game is being played for a real audience that is in Argentina.