Julian Jebb
A. N. Wilson writes: Once, when Julian Jebb was staying in our house, I approached the kitchen door and was amazed to overhear what sounded like a Cornish pirate discussing Proust with my. wife. Then, quite arbitrarily and in mid- sentence, the Cornishman became an American tourist laboriously trying to de- fend a film called ET. Then a pause. Then a gale of manic laughter. I shall miss those voices and that laughter very acutely. Like all Julian's friends, I was shocked by the news that he had died (on 31 October aged 50). I got to know him because I was writing the life of his grandfather, Hilaire Belloc, with whom, long after the old boy's death, he continued a furious love-hate relationship. Julian had grown up at Kings Land, and while he retained an uncompli- cated devotion to Belloc's family and friends he came to abominate the Catholic Thing. Being sent to King's, Cambridge after Downside was a revelation. He was one of those undergraduates who never did much work, but who knew everybody and had an enormous range of talents as an actor, writer, connoisseur of music and paintings, and above all as a friend. He continued to be exactly like an under- graduate for the rest of his life, never really settling to anything. Cambridge was fol- lowed by a lot of abroad, when I suppose Julian felt the world was at his feet. He was simply spoilt for choice: should he be the greatest film producer since Eisenstein, or the greatest dramatist since Chekhov, or the greatest novelist since Stendhal? In- stead he came home and worked for the BBC, where he made a number of the best literary documentaries ever shown on Brit- ish television. The one which always stays in everyone's memory is his profile of Virginia Woolf, but there are many other memorable ones about Betjeman or the Mitford sisters. Julian could be madden- ing, in many ways. He had his ' grand- father's habit of asserting his own whims as matters of absolute fact. And he could be selfish about arrangements. More than once in his company I echoed his grand, father's obsessive remark to any guest at Kings Land, 'My child, I must know your plans.' It is painful to recall that now. It is also painful to remember an evening once spent with him at an appalling concert. At the interval we went to the bar and drank a couple of glasses of vodka. Although we both. agreed that the concert was bad. I made to return to my seat for the second half. Julian said, 'My dear, I am a great believer in leavings things early' • a remark which prompted us to recite in unison.
And then without returning to the play On with my coat and out into the night.
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