HOW KNIGHT FORKED HIMSELF

Julia Langdon assesses the

career and character of her former landlord, Mr Andrew Knight

THE EDITORIAL conference at the Sun- day Times on Tuesday this week may well have been extremely interesting for anyone at all concerned about the future of the present executive chairman of News Inter- national, Andrew Knight; including, quite possibly, Andrew Knight himself.

It seems highly likely that there was some questioning of Mr Knight's role in

the matter of the Prince and Princess of Wales' marriage and the press coverage thereof, specifically in the Sunday Times. But then it is not only in the fortress at Wapping that such questions are being raised. There are a number of people around town asking exactly what Mr Knight is up to.

Few will have been surprised to learn that Knight had a small but important part to play in the tangled web of conspiracy and confusion that has begun to emerge about the press and the royal couple last summer. Knight likes to be involved in important goings-on and it was he who informed Lord McGregor, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, that the Princess of Wales was apparently assisting the tabloid press in its dramatic coverage of her marriage problems and thus invading her own privacy.

There are those who actually question whether she did take such an active role, but it was nevertheless Mr Knight who wit' tingly or not made trouble for the Princess. This is curious because he is a man who has portrayed himself as a friend of the Wale' ses. ('You've never met them?' he said to Max Hastings once. 'I'll take you round one evening.') What makes it even more

odd is that at the same time, last summer, Knight attempted to make contact with the

Princess through a mutual friend, Angela Serota, to ask if he could help at all with her problems with the press — perhaPs with drafting statements.

Yet maybe this is not so odd from a mail who has always tried to keep in with even' body — everybody that matters, that is and whose extraordinary success to dare has hinged upon his well-honed skills in doing so. Now we have the strange development' which no doubt featured in the discussions at the Sunday Times on Tuesday, that Mr Knight has had second thoughts about last summer's decision by that newspaper t° serialise Andrew Morton's book Diana: Het True Story. In an interview with the SundaY Telegraph last weekend, he disclosed that with hindsight he was concerned that this, publication represented 'an invasion 0' Prince Charles's privacy'. He had apparent' ly had second thoughts since his justifies' tion of it in an article in The Spectator (`Murdoch the monarchist', 4 July). This will not have gone down at all we with the editor of the Sunday Titge,st' Andrew Neil, and it won't help Knig" much when it becomes known that he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Sunday Telegraph to drop that quote. Knight has always carefully cultivated his public rela- tions and has readily given several inter- views in the last week. When he realised, rather late in the day, that News Interna- tional might not be altogether delighted by the public revelation of his hindsight he telephoned Charles Moore, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph. As the reporter con- cerned had, ironically, a tape recording of the interview in question, Moore refused to budge.

Insiders believe that Knight is really rather frightened of Neil, a man who is unquestionably a formidable operator and who has a certitude about his views of poli- tics and society. Knight's problem is that he has always been so anxious to keep in with everyone that he no longer knows what he thinks about anything.

This is the tragic irony about Knight's life and career, for although he has achieved the jobs and the material posses- sions that are the hallmarks of achieve- ment beyond the dreams of ordinary journalists, he has done so at the cost of his personal happiness. He now presents a rootless, lonely figure.

What he always wanted more than any- thing was to be an acknowledged member of the establishment. He became editor of the Economist at 34, which was a very good step along the path. He went to all the right parties. He was famed as a practition- er of the cocktail party swivel, by which the upwardly mobile always manage to be seen talking to the most distinguished person in the room. He knew all the right people.

When he became an early victim of the sort of telephone taps he now condones and the menu of one of his Hampstead dinner parties was published in 1978, he wrote in the Economist: 'Can the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong or Sir Howard Smith now be

invited to dinner without a good chance they will know in advance what they will get to eat (and how much better Mr Nor- man St John Stevas, Mr Healey and the Governor of the Bank of England ate at the editor's table last month)?' It was assumed he was joking, but only a bit.

It was through his friendship with Con- rad Black that he became chief executive of the Telegraph group in 1985; he is thought to have been somewhat cowardly there in not standing up to Black's unfor- tunate attempt to turn the Telegraph into a seven-day operation, but it was merely that he continued to display his skill at smoothing paths and trying to keep in with all sides. All sides subsequently included Mr Rupert Murdoch when, in 1990, Knight was bought up, lock, stock and stock options by the ex-Australian Ameri- can. It was especially bad luck for Knight that he joined a company run by a man who has since suffered a declining reputa- tion with anyone who is anyone in the establishment.

In successive interviews recently Knight has portrayed himself as an anti-establish- ment figure — having little choice in the matter — as someone who disdains hon- ours and even believes that electronic bug- ging might be defended in certain circumstances.

Knight is now described most unflatter- ingly among the establishment. 'He has this almost repulsive coldness,' says one of that number. 'He is singularly unconvivial.' Part of his tragedy is that the people he would like to respect him now mostly feel sorry for him, question what he does for a living at Wapping and, knowing his sensi- tivity to personal criticism, are even con- cerned for him in his present uncomfortably exposed situation.

At the Telegraph there is still some bit- terness at Knight's flight to Wapping, although Conrad Black, his former friend — and the godfather of one of his children

— is a forgiving man.

'It was Andrew who first indicated to me that the Telegraph might be available as an investment and I am grateful to him for that,' Black says. 'He encouraged innova- tive thinking and I am grateful to him for that too, and he made some outstanding personnel recommendations — Max Hast- ings in particular.

'I do not begrudge him the money he made and I certainly don't begrudge him going to work for Rupert Murdoch. But I do begrudge him the fact that he was in prolonged negotiations with Rupert Mur- doch and persistently denied it to me. He was, to say the least, disingenuous with me. I think both I and the Telegraph deserved better. But life goes on. Relations are per- fectly civil, but we only meet accidentally from time to time.'

Knight has lost a great deal: respect, social status and perhaps even his peace of mind. He has money, however. Famously he made £14 million from realising his Telegraph share options with the help of Mr Murdoch and he has lately put some of it into acquiring a suitable home in the coun- try.

It was a surprise to many that he made so much money, so easily. I was not among them. Nearly 25 years ago, I rented his London home while he was Washington correspondent of the Economist. I was a model tenant, forwarded the mail, wrote chatty letters, got the roof repaired, made a preliminary approach for Knight to buy the house next door. When he returned, he demanded three times the deposit I had initially given him as security, on the grounds of wear and tear. His calculations included one shilling and ninepence, for the Polyfilla to fill a dent made by the bath- room door handle. I told him he could keep the deposit and sing for the rest, but he tried to sue me instead and pursued me with lawyers' letters for about two years. I ignored them. Silly me.