AND ANOTHER THING
PAUL JOHNSON
The saponaceous opera of newspaper dynasties and villainies
As a historian I am fascinated by dynastic rows, and as a journalist I am particularly devoted to the shattering disputes which poison the lives of press barons, pitting father against son and brothers against each other (and cousins). Rupert Murdoch’s disagreement with his older offspring, which has now come out into the open, promises to be particularly tasty, and will run and run. I used to like Murdoch, whom I saw as a useful freebooter, likely to settle the hash of the domineering print unions (as he did). I even had him to my house. But then he threw away the fruits of victory over the print unions by committing the Times to a costly price war with the Telegraph, which effectively ruined both papers and has now ended quality journalism in London. He is a classic example of a man corrupted by power.
He is also an example of the dangers of lust in the elderly. Having disposed of his delightful second wife in an offhand manner, he then met his match in the dragon lady, Wendi Deng. The current Mrs Murdoch reminds me of Evelyn Waugh’s explanation, during the abdication crisis, of what constituted the hold of Mrs Simpson (a ‘Baltimore Chinese’) over the infatuated Edward VIII. He said, ‘Oriental tricks, old boy.’ As Murdoch ages, Wendi will increasingly call the shots, unless the two sons (and daughter) stage a putsch. In any event, it will be a saponaceous opera worth watching, though my guess is that the far-flung empire will not long survive the old man’s departure for warmer climes.
Such family quarrels are usually destructive of the property in the long run. Take the case of the Berrys, the wily and industrious Welsh clan which invaded London a century and a half ago, then bifurcated. One branch, the Kemsleys, owned the Sunday Times, the other, the Camroses, the Telegraph. These papers were made to go together. But when Lord Kemsley decided to sell his Sunday, instead of offering it to the Camroses, he sold it without warning to Roy Thomson. The Camroses were furious, none more so than Lady Pamela Berry, the incandescent daughter of the great Earl of Birkenhead. Her eloquent descant on Kemsley’s treachery was worth hearing. The direct result was the founding of the Sunday Telegraph by Michael Berry (later Lord Hartwell), leading to investment in a vast new printing plant, financed out of family borrowings. If Michael, a nice and honourable but stupid and obstinate man, had had a proper sense of dynastic pride, he would have given the running of the business to his brilliant younger son Nicky. Had he done so, it would still be in the hands of the Berrys, and flourishing. As it was, Michael got deeper and deeper into debt and eventually sold a controlling interest to Conrad Black. Personally, as she was a beloved friend of mine, I am glad Lady Pamela did not live to see these appalling events. Her son Nicky was thus the great newspaper magnate who never was, though he has done well on his own account.
The great merit of the Rothermere branch of the Harmsworth family has been reasonably harmonious relations between fathers and sons. The founding father and head of the dynasty, who became Lord Northcliffe, was a journalist and proprietor of genius, who created the Daily Mail and much else from nothing. But he did not give his empire a sound financial structure, and produced no heir. After his death his brother Harold, first Lord Rothermere, a financier of extraordinary ability, got the bulk of the Harmsworth properties, including the Mail, diversified into other areas and thus laid the foundations of what has become perhaps the soundest publishing fortune in the world. His son Esmond, and his grandson Vere (always called by my friend Carla Powell ‘Very’) inherited in due course, and Vere vastly improved the empire by founding the Mail on Sunday, persisting in his investment despite heavy losses, until it became immensely profitable. He might be alive today had he not ignored Hilaire Belloc’s sound advice: ‘It is the duty of the wealthy man, To give employment to the artisan.’ Anxious to beautify the French château he had bought to delight his Korean mistress now following the death of his wife ‘Bubbles’ promoted to Lady Rothermere — he engaged in some heavy furniture-moving and had a fatal attack the next day. So the fourth Lord Rothermere, Jonathan, took over, and when he learns to control his editors more closely and provided he listens to his intelligent and sensible wife, he will do very well.
Of all the newspaper proprietors I have known, I liked Beaverbrook the best. He was wicked, to be sure, but also funny, ingenious, a good historian, generous (if he liked you) especially with his superb vintage champagne — and also, in his own weird Calvinist way, deeply religious. So we got on well, and I learned to mimic him: my imitations were the delight of Esmond Rothermere in his old age, at the Beafsteak Club. In his heyday Beaverbrook made the Express the best newspaper I have ever read, and unique in being both popular and highly sophisticated. He also turned the Evening Standard into a twilight thrill. But he invested all his profits in his newspapers, and his much-loved son, with whom he often quarrelled, never got the knack of running a newspaper. So after the Beaver’s death the business went downhill fast, and soon disintegrated. The Standard went to Rothermere, and the Express is now in the hands of a pornographer who, to give the devil his due, is a financial operator of the calibre of Harold Harmsworth. What would Beaverbrook have said? He once remarked to me, ‘Aw, Mistah Johnson, all governments are born to die, and so are newspapers.’ Northcliffe’s heir, in so far as he had one, was his gigantic nephew Cecil Harmsworth King, who eventually got control of the Daily Mirror, made it the biggest-selling daily in Britain, and used it as the plinth on which to erect the world’s largest publishing empire. But King never held much of the equity, and never trained his son to bolster him on the business side. Hence, when he began to exhibit signs of the paranoid egomania which had afflicted his uncle, King was easy meat for a boardroom coup masterminded by his editorial chief, Hugh Cudlipp. Old Hugh was a feisty journalist but no good at running an empire. Among other idiocies, he sold the Sun for a song to Murdoch, who turned it into Britain’s best-selling daily. King’s empire fell apart, and the Mirror Group dropped into the greedy paws of Cap’n Bob Maxwell, who looted it (including its once munificent pension fund) unmercifully. Britain’s newspaper tycoons continue to contribute dramatic episodes to the soap opera. ‘The Twilight of Murdoch’ promises to be an entertaining one.
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