Anyway, here are two examples of the virtuosity on display.
After lunch we took Fiona, who had not visited Durham before, to the cathedral. The building rose up before us with black wings of stone. As we crossed the broad apron of grass in front of the cathedral, I reflected that the monks and masons who built it so long ago could not have foreseen a time when many or most of its visitors did not believe in God. Yet perhaps they did foresee that time: for what was the purpose of this sheer enormity except as a kind of insurance against the scepticism of futurity? Here we were, unbelievers at the end of the twentieth century, still bowing our heads before its size, and throughout Europe were these great flying buildings which had lasted longer than God, flying like the flags of countries that had disappeared.
... and at three the television, briefly put on for the Queen's Christmas Address to the Nation. Yes, she was the same as usual, sitting in a bosomy room in Buckingham Palace. She was really no beauty, the queen: that broad lion-mouth, which she got from her father, with wide littoral of upper lip, was now giving her a royal-animal look, as if through sheer longevity she were becoming one of the heraldic beasts on her own crest. To read, she wore enormous square spectacles, each lens like a little television screen. Her baked hair had an unnatural streetlamp tinge. She spoke in a high voice about the Commonwealth, about a visit to India, about goodwill to all men, and wished "people of all faiths" a very happy Christmas – which struck me as illogical. The national anthem played, while an overhead shot tempted the masses with a vision of the mottled rooftops of the palace. You see what a rotter he is? Who is he to criticize the Queen's physical appearance? I'm sure the Queen looks a million times better at age 83 than this (young) fictional character can ever hope to do. No wonder he loses all his friends and his wife kicks him out and his father dies.