17 FEBRUARY 2008
Tim's blog has been a regular feature since May 2003...
I wanted nothing more than to have half a pork pie on my own . . .
I HAD A VERY BUSY beginning to last week which I enjoyed even though I
wouldn’t want to live every day like that. Sounds sybaritic too but
even enjoyment can get wearing. I’m more sympathetic than most to
members of the royal family who spend so much time having lunch. Lunch
can become tiresome even when it’s with amusing and interesting
people. On successive days I had lunch with the former presidents of
the Sherborne School Old Boys (sitting between General Sir John Wilsey
and the former headmaster, Peter Lapping); at the House of Lords
nibbling cocktail sausages and other canapés after Ian Gilmour’s
memorial service at St. Margaret’s; and with Christopher
Sinclair-Stevenson, publisher, agent, man of letters and all-round
fascinating man. But by Thursday I wanted nothing more than to have
half a pork pie on my own. Life’s like that…all play is as enervating
as all work and sometimes the two merge in a surprising way.
There has been much debate about the nature of print journalism prompted by a new book by Nick Davies. I noticed my contemporary, Simon Jenkins, entering a spirited defence of the modern Main Stream Media which I disagreed with even though our experience covers a similar period. I’d like to offer one anecdote in defence of the “old” journalism which has, I think, virtually disappeared.
Once in the mid-sixties, when I was working as a young novice on the Atticus column at the
Sunday Times, Nick Tomalin, the boss, came back from lunch at
Private Eye with a very funny story about Lord Longford, then a member of Harold Wilson’s government taking some cabinet papers into the loo at a party conference in Blackpool where he inadvertently flushed them away. After Hunter Davies – my senior colleague – and I had laughed at this, Nick smiled at me and said ‘Check it.”. I protested feebly but Nick said that if I was going to be a proper journalist I would have to learn to do such things. He gave me the phone number and I called Longford who was at first flattered (when I said I was calling from the
Sunday Times) and then furious (when I told him why). After threatening me with intervention from my editor, Denis Hamilton, and my proprietor, Lord Thomson, both of whom were, he claimed, close friends, he protested: “There’s absolutely no truth in the story. And in any case they weren’t cabinet papers.”
We ran the story in full, including Longford’s quote. I don’t think that would happen today.
NB No more blogs this month as my web master is out of action.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were London days regularly punctuated by
the Londoners’ knee-jerk response of “But I thought you were in
Cornwall” as if once one moved to the other side of the River Tamar
one never crossed it again. I have learned to smile blithely but it is
odd how the Cornish think of London as really quite close whereas
Londoners think of Cornwall as a faraway place of which they know
nothing.
If only for this reason it seemed useful to turn up to the Sherborne
lunch – hosted by our new President, Charles Collingwood, aka Brian
Aldridge of the Archers,. It was fun as well. So was the Orion
“Authors’ Party”, though one couldn’t help musing to the effect that
lavish parties full of publishers and agents weren’t necessarily the
most tactful way of cosying up to authors. This one was in the Paul
Hamlyn Room at the Royal Opera House. Its predecessors were at the
Wallace Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
I ran into all sorts of interesting people including Anne de Courcey,
whose biography of Snowdon is out in June, and Matthew Dennison with
whom I’d appeared at Cheltenham. I met Matthew in cloaks and never saw
him again. That’s a hazard of this sort of party. Oh, and Richard
Davenport-Hines, and Jane Turnbull, and Brian McArthur and Sophia
McDougall and we had lots of natter and chatter and it was all amusing
and useful. I even had interesting and enthusiastic feedback on the
blog.
Gilmour’s memorial was at St. Margaret’s Westminster where my father’s
took place thirty five years ago. 1972. That’s become a historical
date. I found it solemn and moving and all the better for being
essentially conservative with Mozart and recognisable hymns, Chaucer
and Burns though also a wonderful poem by Brian Patten (b 1946) read
by one of the sons. It was a very true reflection of Gilmour himself,
essentially conservative but with just the occasional modern tweak to
keep you on your toes. I was particularly pleased to run across Denis
Oliver who was the lead figure in the Gilmour-orchestrated campaign to
protest about David Gower’s disgraceful omission from the England
cricket touring team to India in 1991. I particularly remember a lunch
at Rules. As, indeed, did Denis!
One of the TV interviews was with CBS at their studios in Chiswick and
the other with a company called Indigo.in the Soho hotel just round
the corner from the Groucho where I had lunch with Christopher
Sinclair-Stevenson who is the literary agent for the estate of Richard
Cobb, whose letters I’m editing. Both interviews were about Prince
Philip and were long – well over an hour each. I was forcibly struck
by one truth which is seldom observed and that is that the person
interviewed at this sort of length simply has no idea of precisely
what he or she has said. I know what I wouldn’t say but I’m far too
busy trying to be articulate and authoritative to actually commit my
words to memory. This becomes relevant whenever people insist they
were “misquoted”. I submit that they seldom know what they said
whereas the interviewer who is well prepared, experienced and probably
taking a note too. I was impressed by the professionalism of both
outfits. Indigo seems to be based on Aberdeen and CBS are now in
Chiswick. Chiswick struck me as a nightmare for a TV station. Far too
far from the action and it took an hour to drive there from St. James’
Square. Aberdeen seemed perfectly sensible for an independent
production company.
And so back to Cornwall, via my 87 year old mother in Wiltshire, who
is causing my brother and myself some concern even though she is well
supported by friends and neighbours. As she points out, even now, 87
is quite an age. Since I got back I have been catching up, sorting out
and yes, eating offal: delicious hearts. Also some well-hung pheasant
legs!
This week we catch the ferry to France where I am scheduled to talk to
a Breton bookshop about the Royal Family, courtesy of our former
neighbours Michael and Maggie Campbell-Culver. Brittany Ferries have
rescheduled the return voyage as the advertised ferry will be in dry
dock. I hope the replacement, a much speedier but presumably less
seaworthy, Jetfoil, works OK. I don’t detect much in the way of
apology for the inconvenience, but this now seems to be par for the
course when it comes to public transport.
Now as I type this I am watching a Sky TV film on this year’s
Sydney-Hobart Yacht race. One of the stars is my old schoolmate and
neighbour Michael Slade who owns one of the favourite yachts. He
hosted a dinner of Old Sherborne Quantity Surveyors at which I was a
guest speaker a year or so ago. The boy done well! However I don’t
think I can wait for the end as I have to drive to St. Austell to meet
Penny’s train and find out how she got on at her Chinese New Year
lunch.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
Tim Heald
