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Book
Reviews
What’s that you say, Mr. Robinson?
The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, by Stephen Robinson.
London: Little, Brown, 2008. 480 pp.
£20. Reviewed by Donat Gallagher, James Cook University.
Stephen Robinson’s The Remarkable Lives of W. F. Deedes is a sound
biography, indispensable for anyone interested in Bill Deedes—journalist,
soldier, parliamentarian, editor, cabinet minister, peer and amazingly
long-lived roving reporter. It also sheds interesting light on
twentieth-century newspaper history, the earliest use of television for
political purposes and post-war Conservative Party politics. Two
weak chapters irrelevantly pillory Evelyn Waugh.
Born in 1913, W. F. (Bill) Lord Deedes was still
working when he died in 2007, aged 94. By then he was a household
name, widely admired as the epitome of a good journalist, a secular saint
working with the likes of Princess Diana on anti-landmines crusades.
Robinson declares his book The Authorised Biography, but it offers
much personal information that tempers the public myth. Deedes
emerges as spectacularly averse from normal contact with his wife and
children, a shallow thinker with a Vicar-of-Bray-like capacity for
emerging on the winning side following newspaper closures and hostile
takeovers—his “subaltern’s mind” making him respectful of even the most
repellent authority. Deedes and Waugh shared some traits, such as
dressing well and keeping their English reserve; both were proud of their
“trade,” whether as “working journalist” or “writer,” but in most respects
they were opposites.
Deedes was born into an old aristocratic family in the
last stages of financial ruin. His father, virtually deranged by
service in the Boer War and bullied by his mother, squandered a large sum
re-installing the family, with its “numerous old retainers and
dependants,” in the ancestral castle; and some facets of life in that
dilapidated pile, as Robinson points out, might have provided material for
Boot Magna in Scoop. Deedes went to Harrow, then plagued by
homosexual and heterosexual scandals among both students and staff.
(Is this why Grimes is an Old Harrovian?) After his father lost the
last of the family money on the stock exchange, Deedes had to leave
school, and an uncle secured him a job on the Morning Post.
Four years later, in 1935, Deedes travelled to Abyssinia as a war
correspondent, where he shared quarters with Waugh. Later, when the
Morning Post was absorbed by the Daily Telegraph, Deedes
emerged with his job intact; and, with the exception of the war years when
he served with distinction in the King’s Royal Rifles, he stayed with the
paper until death. Having entered parliament as a member for the family
seat of Ashford, Deedes became a junior minister under Macmillan (starring
in the earliest political television broadcasts) and later an
undistinguished member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, from which he was
allowed to “resign” and take up a peerage. Famously, Bill’s
friendship with Denis Thatcher led to the Private Eye spoof, in
which an outrageously silly Denis writes to “Dear Bill.” Robinson
makes clear the somewhat ignominious way in which Deedes, who was a Tory
“wet,” accommodated himself to the “dry” Thatcher regime and his
“culpable” role in forcing the resignation of a colleague, Thomas
Galbraith, who had been falsely accused of complicity with the spy John
Vassal. Despite promises, Robinson has little to say about “the
great events of the twentieth century” that Deedes’s “career spanned”; he
is at his best with incidents such as the Profumo scandal and with
Deedes’s private relationships. His two Waugh chapters are baffling.
In so far as Chapter 4, “Out of Town Job,” deals with
Deedes’s coverage of the war in Abyssinia, it is good. Robinson’s
professional assessment of his despatches identifies some that were coups
and many that merely repeated press releases and were “fairly witless
propaganda.” Though an innocent 22-year-old, Deedes shared quarters
with Evelyn Waugh, then 32 and a fashionable novelist with significant
experience of Africa. The mountain of luggage Deedes brought to
Addis Ababa, which contrasted with Waugh’s single suitcase, has led to
speculation that Deedes was Waugh’s model for William Boot. Robinson
sensibly points out that in 1935 Deedes was not a naïve cub reporter,
having already had four years' experience on the Morning Post.
One might add that no “model” was needed for William Boot, because he
is a figure of fantasy, a Candide, to whom the simplest journalistic
conventions have to be explained, and through whose eyes the folly of the
conventions becomes evident.
Since Deedes lived and travelled with Waugh, their
joint activities and personal relationship were obvious matter for the
biographer. But unhappily Robinson abandons his true subject and
gratuitously launches into several pages of personal abuse of Waugh.
Do readers of this book really want to know whether Evelyn Waugh “fucked”
Penelope Betjeman? However, one point that Robinson repeatedly
makes—that Waugh wrote Scoop to “revenge” himself on Sir Percival
Phillips—does raise issues worth discussing.
Notoriously, a mysterious Francis Rickett travelled to
Addis Ababa with Waugh; and Waugh, suspicious of his reasons for visiting
Abyssinia, began enquiries. But, unable to wait for a development,
Waugh went to Harar in pursuit of another lead, and when he was away the
biggest story of the war broke: Rickett turned out to be a financier
representing the African Exploitation and Development Corporation who had
secured oil and mineral concessions over a large part of Ethiopia.
This gave the British and American governments a reason to warn off Italy;
instead, they repudiated Rickett.
The name of Waugh stirs Robinson, like so many British
journalists, into a moral fervour of dredging up, exaggerating and
denouncing faults that, even when real, would go unnoticed in another
writer. It would not occur to Robinson to blame his idol, George
Steer of The Times, for travelling to the Ogaden and missing the
Rickett scoop. But he can find “no excuse” for an “insufficiently
assiduous” Waugh who “failed” to get the story. Robinson also
contrasts Waugh’s imagined lack of zeal with the “dogged work” of Sir
Percival Phillips, the doyen of the press corps, who “picked up scraps” of
information, joined the dots and scooped his rivals. This is most
improbable.
Phillips had covered the coronation of Haile Selassie
in 1930 as the Emperor’s “guest,” and the Emperor had entrusted to him
alone a “special message for the people of the British Empire,” later
complimenting him “for the fullest and most accurate descriptions of the
coronation.” In 1935, Phillips was in Addis Ababa representing the
Daily Telegraph, a paper that fully supported Abyssinia. It
seems altogether likely, therefore, that when the Emperor and his advisers
struck their financial-propaganda deal with Rickett, they ensured maximum publicity by giving
the story to Phillips (his reports hint that he
witnessed the signing). Why would they give it as an “exclusive” to
Waugh, who represented the hostile Daily Mail? Or to George
Steer who, though personally friendly, represented The Times, which
was sceptical? Only Phillips had the stature and the connections to make
the Abyssinia-Rickett deal an immediate world-wide sensation. I can
therefore see no merit in Robinson’s repeated assertion that a “resentful”
Waugh wrote Scoop to “revenge” himself on Phillips. More
importantly, attributing Scoop to a personal motive deguts this
funny but serious exposé of
journalistic practice.
Waugh’s interest in invented news began with the 1930
coronation of Haile Selassie. Phillips’s coronation cable (which was
in a stratosphere above anyone else’s) appeared in the Daily
Telegraph on Tuesday under the rubric “Delayed in transmission.”
That was because the coronation took place on a Sunday, when the cable
office was closed. No genuine coronation stories could, therefore,
appear in Europe or the USA before Tuesday. Waugh’s cable for The
Times was also “Delayed in transmission.” On the strength of his
having worked with Waugh in 1935, Deedes appointed himself the expert on
Waugh at the 1930 coronation, and he published some appalling nonsense
(much of which is corrected in At Waugh with Waugh: The True Story of
Scoop). Unaware of the delay to all cables, Deedes created a
fantasy of The Times editors anxiously awaiting the coronation
despatch that their joke correspondent had failed to send in time.
In reality, The Times was very pleased with Waugh’s work, but
Deedes’s fantasy has nevertheless been widely believed.
I recall this minor matter because, in the absence of
genuine reports, many editors splashed wildly fictitious and nonsensical
“news” stories about the coronation in Monday’s papers. This
prompted Waugh in Remote People to analyse the philosophy of news
and the harm done by a press which preferred to be “first with the news
and the pictures” rather than factual or even interesting. Robinson
professes respect for Philip Knightley’s The First Casualty, which
describes Scoop, not as a “parody” of the antics of the journalists
in Addis Ababa, but as “straight reportage, thinly disguised as a novel.”
But Robinson seems inclined to condone the brazen inventions and
dishonesties of the journalists, apparently on the grounds that their job
required them to send something to their papers, and that they
belonged to a “privileged calling” that it was disloyal to criticize.
Unwilling or perhaps unable, therefore, to comprehend that Waugh was in
earnest about his criticisms of the press in Waugh in Abyssinia and
Scoop, Robinson attributes them to "snobbery," or “contempt for
journalists,” or “jealousy” of rivals. But even if Waugh was
“snobbish” about the “grunts” of the press corps—Robinson hugely
exaggerates this: Waugh enjoyed a lively news story—it would be a
peripheral issue, far outweighed by the importance of what he had to say.
Throughout his life Waugh argued that the consequences of irresponsible
journalism—and of publishing and broadcasting as well—were the corruption
of communication and a restless public opinion, lurching from extreme to
extreme, that undermined the possibility of effective government.
In Chapter Five, “At War with Waugh,” Robinson attacks
the one area of Waugh in Abyssinia that is not vulnerable and, in
an oddly obsessive passage, features Deedes’s “real” opinion of Waugh.
Many readers find Waugh in Abyssinia too shrill,
too partisan, too fulsome (in the closing chapter) or simply on the
morally wrong side. But even on this level of justifiable
reservation, some balance is needed. While Waugh angrily describes
the Abyssinian rulers of their conquered territories as “dirty, idle and
domineering, burning the timber, devouring the crops,” it might be
remembered that the reports of the British Consul who lived among the
Gallas and witnessed Abyssinian imperial rule firsthand described the
“despotic Tafari regime” in language more forceful than Waugh’s.
Moreover, George Steer, whom Robinson idolizes, on a single page describes
Italian soldiers as “great Wops … fat
mutton-headed runaways … bullies and
thieves … the surfacing scum of modern
Italy.” At the other extreme, Robinson gushes about Ethiopia as a
“blameless and primitive native culture,” when in fact it was a complex of
subject peoples ruthlessly exploited by the four Abyssinian kingdoms.
Incidentally, Waugh did not object to Abyssinia’s “primitive culture”: he
disliked the large body of Europeanized young men surrounding the Emperor,
the “civil servants” charged with destroying the old and creating the new
Ethiopia.
Despite all the scholarly work of recent years,
Robinson is still stuck at the level of Rose Macaulay’s 1946 description
of Waugh in Abyssinia as a “Fascist tract.” Not only does he
adopt as axiomatic the arguable point that Mussolini’s defiance of the
League of Nations paved the way for Spain and World War II, but he also
makes the astonishing claim that “In none of his writing—fiction or
non-fiction—is there any evidence that Waugh understood the wider moral or
strategic significance of Abyssinia.” Robinson goes on, “If Waugh
appreciated that Mussolini’s aggression in Africa would eventually have
consequences for the security of Europe, he chose not to convey this
insight.” This reverses the truth. In fact, the “moral and
strategic consequences” of the war are central to Waugh’s long opening
chapter in Waugh in Abyssinia and to his many related articles,
letters to editors and reviews.
In 1935 Italy was still thought formidable—no one could
then foresee that the Italian fleet would be sunk on its first engagement
in World War II, or that the Italian Army would disintegrate so quickly in
North Africa—and Britain and France were anxious to preserve their
Great-War alliance with her. At the time, Mussolini was perceived,
not as an ally of Hitler, who was still emerging, but as a counterweight.
Austria in particular trusted Mussolini to guarantee its independence
against Germany. Moreover, in 1924 Britain had indicated that it
regarded Abyssinia as within Italy’s “sphere of influence” and encouraged
her ally’s “legitimate aspirations.” But when in 1935 Russia did an
about-face and joined the League of Nations, the Popular Front very
successfully aroused public opinion against Italy. Britain and the
League then responded to public opinion and, though they delivered not one
jot of material assistance, conveyed the impression that they would help
Abyssinia resist Italian aggression.
From Waugh’s perspective the false impression created
by Britain and the League, coupled with sanctions, encouraged Abyssinia to
fight a war it could not win and drove Italy to mount a cruelly
destructive invasion at a cost beyond any benefit to be gained. He
blamed the inconsistent policies of Britain for escalating the conflict
and for the avoidable "slaughter and terror on one side, the crippling
expenditure on the other"; and he warned—despite Robinson’s denial—that
“the ultimate consequences would be of world wide effect”: Mussolini would
be driven into the arms of Hitler, creating a fatal shift in the balance
of power. Thus Robinson’s assertion that Waugh failed to understand
“the strategic significance of Abyssinia …
for the security of Europe” could not be more wrong.
Robinson (as do many others) damns Waugh as
“pro-Italian and pro-Fascist” and can, of course, cite passages to support
the claim. But the totality of evidence shows that Waugh’s primary
focus was to attack the opposition to Italy—which is not the same
as saying Mussolini was right. For a time, in George Bernard Shaw
mode, Waugh enjoyed the furore created by defying the massive anti-war
majority. The euphoria quickly evaporated after Italy became
Goliath.
Returning to Deedes and Waugh, The Remarkable Lives
of Bill Deedes contains perhaps the oddest personal attack on Waugh
yet published. For reasons that can only be guessed at, Robinson was
determined to worm out of Deedes—who had already written intelligently
about Waugh in At Waugh with Waugh and in his autobiography,
Dear Bill—what he “really” thought of Evelyn Waugh. He persisted until
the old man “eventually conceded”:
Waugh was a natural shit. It is true that I never wrote of his deep inner
contempt for everyone. Scoop shows his contempt for journalism and for
the lower classes. He knew he was a pig, he knew of his awfulness, which is why
he clung to his Roman Catholicism as if it was something he hoped would redeem
him.
Now for a student of Deedes, it must be interesting to know that Deedes
published one thing about Waugh while privately thinking another.
But at this point Robinson’s focus is not Deedes but Waugh, and he
presents Deedes’s effusion about Waugh as though it were a revelation.
At Waugh with Waugh is a good book precisely
because Deedes, a good reporter, confined himself to what he saw and heard
and to the conclusions flowing from his observations. Thus the book,
though no paean of praise for Waugh, is permanently important because it
relates words and actions and indicates what they reveal, for example,
about Waugh’s leadership qualities or habit of listening closely to what
people said in conversation. Deedes understood the basics of his
trade, one of which is that motives are unknowable and therefore, while
amusing to chat or correspond about, not matter for print. Robinson
belongs to a newer school that freely attributes motives, no matter how
improbable. Thus, for one of many glaring examples of attributing
motives without a hint of evidence, he damns Waugh, not for disputing
George Steer’s politics and writings, but for being “jealous” of Steer
because Steer went to Winchester and Christ Church, while Waugh went to
the “minor” Lancing and Hertford. Waugh was also supposedly
“jealous” because Steer was “working for The Times
… which was the sort of paper his
[Waugh’s] friends read,” and because Deedes was working for the Morning
Post, “the paper for the upper classes,” which paid a “good salary
with good expenses.” Waugh had a Johnsonian attitude to writing, and we
may be confident that, despite differences in Abyssinia, he preferred
working for the then immensely rich Daily Mail because it paid far
more than did the stingy Times or the cash-strapped Morning Post.
Robinson’s notion that Waugh longed to be employed by the tweedy
Morning Post shows how far he is out of touch with Waugh’s world.
Waugh and his contemporaries had a love-hate relationship with the
“popular” press, viz. the Daily Express and Daily Mail,
feeling free to chastise it (as in Scoop) while welcoming the huge
rewards it offered in pay and publicity.
The statement extorted from Deedes—on the evidence of
his book, Robinson will not get this—is part nonsense, part rehashed
gossip. Deedes could not possibly have known that Waugh “had a deep
inner contempt for everyone,” and it was a foolish thing to say because
Waugh often showed a capacity for very generous admiration. Even
Waugh in Abyssinia, his most cantankerous book, contains a glowing
tribute to the British Consul at Harar (Chapman Andrews) who,
incidentally, was staunchly pro-Emperor. Nor could Deedes personally
know that Waugh was “a pig, [who] knew of his awfulness [and] clung to his
Roman Catholicism [to] redeem him.” While this claim distantly
reflects some things Waugh said about himself, Deedes is merely repeating
gossip-column pabulum. So why feature the passage so prominently in
the book and use it as the teaser in the Telegraph and online?
Waugh was always polite to and about Deedes—“we were
very civil, never a cross word [in] three months together,” says Deedes;
and Waugh made no funny or disparaging remarks about Deedes in anything he
published, presumably because he liked and respected the agreeable young
man, so personal hurt cannot be the motive. That Waugh was not
“anti-Fascist” (code for a cluster of then left-wing opinions), and that,
being excluded from news sources and shocked by the conventions governing
news, he resorted to the old trick of making the media the story may
explain something. Robinson accepts the anti-Fascist line on the war
as axiomatic, feels journalism to be a “privileged calling” and resents
the attack on journalists in Scoop. Moreover,
he blames Waugh for failing to be “part of the gang.” But none of
this accounts for Robinson’s mind-boggling attempt to tar Waugh and stick
on him every scrap of malicious gossip he can remember. Not only was
Waugh a “shit” and a “pig” and a “snob” and “jealous,” but he was also
“crypto Fascist,” “ridiculous and grotesque,” “shriekingly vulgar,”
“preposterous,” a “conspicuous failure,” “common,” “never at ease with
people posher than him” [sic], a “silly little suburban sod,” “not
truthful,” and a loud-mouth who “noisily aired his pro-Italian,
pro-Fascist views at the breakfast table.” And to cap it all, so
lacking in “openness” to his fellow journalists was Waugh, that, even when
drunk, he failed “to discuss” with young Deedes the pending “annulment of
[Waugh’s] marriage to his unfaithful first wife.” Words fail me. |
