The BBC's founding father
Christopher Sykes
Only the Wind Will Listen: a biography of Lord Reith Andrew Boyle (Hutchinson £4.50)
Was Reith a great man or not? He had the appearance or rather the mannerisms of one. Leading men of action often do. He achieved a great work in the BBC which, Without his force and will, would probably have turned into something second-rate, wholly lacking the value and authority which it was seen to have (after Reith's departure in 1938) during the war. Yet the Opposition to the Reithian development of the corporation was not merely captious, Philistine or interested. The feeling that there was something meretricious and even plain silly about this masterful figure who Put his impress on the BBC at its most impressionable age was not wayward. He had deplorable faults of character. In the end they destroyed him — but not his work. He was a tremendous half-success. He was half-great.
This book is well researched, well balanced, candid and convincing. If it were well written also it would be distinguished. Unhappily Mr Boyle has a taste for the slushiest journalese, and this gives a cheap character to his whole performance. When he attempts evocation he slides into the worst of ' colour-writing ' and he never seems to use his dictionary or any other Work of general reference. We are told about the " scurrilous facts" of the Abdication crisis, and Destiny is described as a messianic force." King Canute makes a familiar appearance as a half-wit who believed he could control the tides. The book, however, is consistent and the reader, even if he has some feeling for our language, SOON becomes punch-drunkenly insensitive to the atrocities of the style because they are so all-pervasive. This admittedly enables him, after the first fifty pages or so, to appreciate the remarkable story which Mr Boyle has to tell.
Much of it is well known through Lord Reith's essays in autobiography, but what has been hitherto unknown about his career and character is fascinating, and occasionally shocking. Perhaps the most surprising and shocking is the story, as told here, of Reith's first introduction to the broadcasting business. He would probably not have been made managing director of the company which preceded the corporation without the help of Sir William Bull. Reith never made any public or private allusion to Bull's help and never gave the faintest indication of gratitude. Mr Boyle believes, rightly it seems, that this was because Reith preferred to ascribe the great appointment of his life to Destiny alone. He could be as silly as that.
Where the book is likely to arouse controversy and disagreement is in the author's uncompromising opinion that in 1931 Reith should have resigned as Director-General of the BBC. An exactly opposite point of view, with regrets that Reith did not remain in charge throughout the war, has recently been expressed in the Listener by Rend Cutforth. There is a strong case for both arguments but most people will probably prefer Mr Cutforth's. Whether or not he would have been a valuable chief in the war, it is certain that his work as the first Director-General was lasting and to it the BBC still owes much. He himself never again enjoyed a comparable success except for a year before D-Day when, as Director of Combined Operations Material, he made a considerable contribution to victory. This however he did anoymously so far as the general public was concerned, and this austere puritan loved the limelight. His sense of failure was not assuaged; indeed it became obsessional.
It was often said by himself and his admirers that the war-time Government of Winston Churchill culpably neglected to use his great abilities. This is not true. Reith was a failure as a Minister; surprisingly so. He can escape blame perhaps for his lack of success as Minister of Information when he had an impossible task, but his subsequent failure, first as Minister of Transport and then as Minister of Works, both posts offering great opportunities in the war to an ambitious politician, shows how he lost his touch after leaving Broadcasting House.
Mr Boyle lays stress on Churchill's alleged dislike of him, originating in a long
enduring embitterment because in 1930 and 1931 Reith had not given him more broadcasting time to diffuse his opinions on India. If the report is correct it does more credit to Reith's political sense than to Churchill's. But no irrefutable evidence of it is produced in this book, only hearsay, except for a quotation from the diaries of Lord Moran who is not a model of reliability. The report (to express a personal opinion) is probably true, but, if so, it indicates a minor influence on Reith's life.
He never forgave Churchill. In this he seems to have used Churchill as a scapegoat for his own limitations. He could not face them. He could reorganise British broadcasting brilliantly, but to revitalise a Ministry was beyond him. To admit as much wounded his vanity which was his abiding fault and kept his misjudgement, silliness and unreal ambitions alive. He wanted to be British ambassador to the US or Viceroy of India. More disastrous appointments can hardly be imagined. He remained pathetically avid for honours, and tried in his last years to obtain pointless promotion from Baron to Viscount. After 1938 he was too self-pityingly proccupied with his personal interests to give all his strength to his duties, except in that one period before D-Day.
Hag-ridden by his diseased temperament, his private life became as miserable as his public one. Mr Boyle shows him as a neglectful husband, a cruel father, and a perplexed old man who, in reaction against the repressions of his young days, became laughably amorous in his later ones. On the latter subject Mr Boyle is ambivalent. It is difficult to tell from his account whether or not Reith enjoyed a succession of mistresses drawn from his female clerks and chauffeurettes, or whether (as he claimed) he mildly flirted with them. Mildness was not in his line and the obvious conclusion may be the right one. He ended up, not only in the belief that he had utterly failed in life, but that he was irrevocably damned. To the end he was vengeful and angry.
This is a warts-and-all picture if ever there was one. A ghastly man, the reader may exclaim at the end of it, and Mr Harman Grisewood's description of his own first interview may add force to any sense of revulsion. But Reith was made of more than warts, and when it has been admitted that his faults were extreme, his virtues should be remembered.
His dictatorial attitude had the merits, besides the vices, of masterful character. He was more than a martinet; he could respect masterfulness in others, a fact which accounts for Val Gielgud's promotion to the headship of the radio drama department, a very beneficial appointment. He was a lifelong opponent of "the century of the common man," a fact which explains much of his BBC achievement. He could recognise high quality quite alien to his own. David Low perfectly delineated Reith the Ogre, but Max Beerbohm drew him (for Lady Colefax who detested him) as an ethereal soul lost in poetic dreams. As far as I remember, Max gave it the caption "As I always see him." Reith instantly recognised Max's superb talent and gave him the chance to apply it to a new field. Mutual esteem as unlikely as this usually does credit to both sides.
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