4 MARCH 1995, Page 26

AND ANOTHER THING

A man of many epiphanies to remind us what England was once about

PAUL JOHNSON

Last week I attended a dinner party to mark the 80th birthday of one of the most notable men of our times. It was a charac- teristically discreet occasion. John Freeman is an outstanding example of a type of rul- ing-class Englishman now almost extinct, a private celebrity. He is not exactly secretive — indeed in conversation among intimates he can be delightfully indiscreet — but he is, shall we say, exceptionally hard of access, and I count it a privilege that I have known him quite well (hardly anyone knows him really well) for 40 years.

In a long and varied life, Freeman has walked a delicate tight-rope between extreme conformity and creative eccentrici- ty. In the best sense of the word, he is egre- gious, indeed sui generis. This quality is inherited. His father was senior partner in a distinguished firm of Chancery solicitors, who spent the closing years of his life devis- ing what he termed 'a Will to fox the Chancery Bar'. The formula he eventually hit upon was: 'I wish to bequeath my prop- erty as though I had died intestate' — which indeed caused much wagging of wigs until a hard-faced judge spoilt it all by ruling: `Then treat him as intestate.'

Freeman was captain of his house at Westminster, that great seminary of states- men, before going to Brasenose, 'the sol- diers' college'. Then followed a spell in advertising — in those days a Berkeley Square world not disdained by witty gentle- men, or even by Dorothy L. Sayers — until the war came. In the Rifle Brigade, a regi- ment famous for its dash and intelligence, Freeman was in his element. Monty called him 'the best brigade-major in the Eighth Army', and a fellow-combatant once told me, 'To listen to John directing armour and artillery hour after hour on the brigade radio was a marvellous lesson in coolness under stress.' The summer of 1945 found him elected MP for Watford in the Labour landslide, and Clem Attlee, who had a sharp eye for effect, chose him to second the King's Speech. He did so, in uniform, with his customary skill and elegance, and Churchill, sitting opposite, wept at the sight of the tall, slim warrior and muttered, `They now have all the best young men on their side.'

Within a year Freeman was in govern- ment, first at the War Office, then at the Ministry of Supply. During the decay of the Attlee regime, 1950-51, supply was a key ministry. The Americans, assisted by the intemperate Chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell, were hustling Britain into an over-ambi- tious rearmament programme to fight the Korean war. Freeman judged that industry would not meet the targets set and that the only result would be inflation. Harold Wil- son was also uneasy at the drift in govern- ment and so was Aneurin Bevan, though his grievance was that Gaitskell imposed charges on false teeth and spectacles. The three men resigned together but it was Freeman who produced a comprehensive rationale for their departure. As he put it to me once, 'Harold and I had to teach Nye the principles of Bevanism.' On the eve of the crisis, Herbert Morrison, who was in charge of the government (Attlee was ill), tried to split up the trio: significantly, it was Freeman whom he thought it most impor- tant to keep, and he offered him a senior post in the Cabinet. Freeman rejected the invitation with the peculiar scorn he reserves for those who try to get him to diverge from what he judges right conduct.

When Labour left office Freeman con- sidered his political career at an end and gave up his seat in 1955. He likes fresh challenges and is not a man to linger over what is past. An old friend put it to me thus: 'He has spent his life moving through a series of rooms, always shutting the door firmly behind him and never looking back.' He now turned to journalism, on the New Statesman, and to the new monster marvel, television. At the NS he quietly and effi- ciently flourished and was the natural suc- cessor as editor when Kingsley Martin finally quit the chair in 1960. But it was on the box that Freeman became a national phenomenon. His series of long interviews with the great, ranging from Jung to Evelyn Waugh, which the BBC entitled Face to Face, was precisely that: the subject faced the cameras and Freeman was shown only in back view, almost out of shot. It accord- ed beautifully with his passion for privacy, but the programmes were dominated by his I don't like it, sergeant, it's too quiet.' matchless voice, ultra-polite, devastatingly persistent. The results, enormously popular at the time, are still constantly shown and professionally revered as models of how to conduct serious interviews. Kingsley Mar- tin, who was jealous of Freeman's fame, snorted, 'John is the only person who has ever made himself celebrated by turning his arse on the public.'

When Harold Wilson took power in 1964, he was anxious to recruit Freeman's services and eventually persuaded him to go to India as High Commissioner, as preparation for the British embassy in Washington. There, Freeman was famous for a number of things: his easy mastery of the United States establishment, the extraordinary rapport he struck up with Richard Nixon, his taste in claret, which made Roy Jenkins's seem jejune, and his ability to overawe the excitable George Brown, calm the suspicious Wilson, and even make the two behave civilly to each other. But in due course he shut the door firmly on diplomacy too, and responded to a new challenge — a desperate appeal from London Weekend Television, which was in danger of losing its franchise, to take over as chairman and save them from ruin. This he did, with silent and conspicuous success, running the company for 14 years and turn- ing it into a well-regarded money-spinner. That door, again, was shut and Freeman went off to California for his last odyssey: as Professor of International Relations at Davis, one of the most beautiful and anti- PC campuses in America. I spent a week there myself, giving lectures, and found Freeman universally revered, by staff and students alike, as a fount of wisdom, a genial host and a model of everything an English gentleman and scholar should be. Now, back home at last, he has become Bowls Champion of the South of England.

There are still other sides to Freeman. There have been four wives; he was the only officer in Monty's army to have a girl waiting for him when they took Tunis; and he is the hero of a celebrated Edna O'Brien story. But what strikes those who have dealings with him in all his many epipha- nies is his absolute integrity. In an age when standards are collapsing everywhere, when Cabinet ministers look like corner- boys, and MPs and journalists alike are held in contempt, he is a living reminder of what England once stood for. Long may he be around to keep the flame burning.