DRAWN TO THE BRIGHT LIGHTS
Profile: Mark Boxer,
cartoonist to the powerful and editor of the Tatler
AS Mark Boxer hurried upwards to collect his award as editor of the year from the Periodical Publishers' Association — a little too quickly perhaps — one mustn't bore them with delay, one mustn't still be arriving as the applause falters and stops he tripped and it seemed that he would fall. In a moment, however, he had recovered and was producing suitable smiles of grati- tude to the disparate audience of yacht enthusiasts and pet-fanciers. He personi- fied his magazine, the Tatler, almost too well, so stylish, elegant, assured; the grey in his hair seemed improbable, so that the scene was reminiscent of the opening of a film, which is going to give way to a long flashback recounting the heartaches and sacrifices that led to this triumphant mo- ment, the same actor, now with raven locks, playing the hero when young. In fact Boxer really is 55, and though it is hard to credit, it seems a kindness to reveal it; otherwise his Peter Pan youthfulness will become exaggerated, Dorian Gray will be mentioned and he will be darkly rumoured to be much, much more. 'You're only middle-aged once,' he has said but there seems no reason why you should not continue being so indefinitely. Cartoonist of the Year in 1972, he appeared in the Times for more than a decade, to less advantage in the Guardian for a bit and is now in the Daily Telegraph four times a week, while his caricatures, once in the New Statesman are now regularly in the Observer. All of which observing of the social scene adds up to a lot of work and an income twice that of a cabinet minister. It also gives him a measure of independence from any one employer.
The Tatler was enormously successful before the war. Since then it has faltered, recovered, declined and was in a bad way when Tina Brown took it over in 1979. She transformed it. In place of complacent dullness, she put sharpness and originality. She was glad to describe it as 'the magazine that bites the hand that reads it' and did just that, plucking from obscurity, say, some 'eligible bachelor' and then mocking him, building up tiny heroes before gleefu- ly smacking them down again.
It was amusing — and unpleasant. Peo- ple talked about it but were ashamed to be caught reading it. The circulation climbed from 12,000 to 35,000. Miss Brown went off to do something similar to Vanity Fair in America and after a wild aberration (called Libby Purves) Boxer Was appointed, in 1983. To build circulation, he began attracting different groups; for inst- ance, the young already bought it. So did their parents to see what they were up to. Boxer went after those in between. The bridge column he introduced does not concern international experts at some dis- tant tournament but social figures who Marc by Marc make gross errors and are even admitted to have an occasional drink. He had long ago noted that the serious back pages of Private Eye enabled the buyers to enjoy Grovel without guilt and he imported Elizabeth David to be a similar excuse. International nescafe society is out, an old favourite of his, lists, are in, the features are more serious and solid, about the powerful as much as the glamorous. It is still sharp, can hardly escape being snobbish in that there must always be a steady flow of the Tatter's choice of Top People and their parties, but the nasty after-taste has gone. The circula- tion continues to climb beyond 50,000.
When he first worked for the Tatler, a few drawings at the dawn of the 1950s, Boxer and the magazine were somewhat different. He had just been rusticated from Cambridge for publishing a (mildly) blas- phemous poem in Granta. There had been a mock wake with a coffin, a hearse and a funeral oration from Hugh (now professor, not to mention Lord) Thomas. Kenneth Tynan had done something similar at Ox- ford not long before — plus get change, plus c'est la meme pose. But it was in the style of the future too, a sort of student protest that left the authorities bewildered. Now it might be seen as an astute career move; then it was a nasty jolt.
Boxer had flourished at Cambridge, as youths do in novels by Compton Macken- zie and E. M. Forster (who was about). Berkhamsted, for which his father, deco- rated in the first war and a lieutenant- colonel in the second and a car dealer otherwise, had had to struggle to pay, left little trace; Peter Jay described Boxer as `the nicest of any of the Etonians I know'. He had only 'come alive' playing St Joan at the age of 14. Acting continued for a time at Cambridge (Polonius!). The great theatre stars would come down at weekends and turned out on closer inspec- tion to be extremely dull. He turned to cartoons and sees three connections be- tween them: 'Presentation, a life off-stage, the proscenium arch'. Also to editing and so Exit Left.
Jobs in London were easy to come by. Few Englishmen have visual sense as well as journalistic flare. Christopher Booker — not a friend — has said 'About all he can do is crop a picture' but he does allow him that. The flare consists largely of not being boring, reversing the formula. For instance when everyone was counting the grand people who were coming to London for the Coronation, Boxer made a list of those who could not face it and were leaving. He instinctively chose the glossies, was soon art director of Jocelyn Stevens's very suc- cessful new Queen. In 1956 he married Lady Arabella Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Moray and they became an attractive smart young couple. She tired of social life (he never was) and greeted him one even- ing with a doleful expression: 'Dreadful news. The Astors have asked us to stay.' He had already joined the Sunday Times, with which he was to stay for 15 years too long. Later he had a party piece which was to recite the jobs that he had held there, which sounded like a splendid career until he revealed that he had reversed the order. Certainly he started with a triumph. His Colour Magazine was patronised and reviled, until the circulation put on 250,000 and a poll revealed that it was the most read bit of the paper.
Then came the stumble, the Tatler again. The Sixties (1962-73) had arrived. Bliss, you might have thought, was it for Mark Boxer in that dawn to be alive, and to be young was very risky; not at all. Formed by the post-war years, he greeted them with open-eyed suspicion rather than interest. `We had P. J. Proby in the magazine, never the Beatles. I didn't really notice them for a bit.' He has never been close to Private Eye and rarely drawn for it. Though he dresses elegantly, Boxer is not fashionable in the sense of being in the latest style; he wears double-breasted grey suits. Then his hair was only grown a little longer. Never- theless he seemed the man to turn the Tat- ter overnight into a trendy up-market list- ings magazine, renamed London Life. With hindsight, it looks as if the mistake was 'overnight% anyway it was a spectacu- lar flop and soon disappeared. The Tatter resurfaced without him.
Boxer thought his career was over at 35. 'I had my mid-life crisis early.' The Sunday Times could not think quite what to do with him. Though different jobs went well enough, he found himself advising the magazine he had created. Meanwhile Karl Miller, then editor of the Listener, now a professor and editor of the London Review of Books, had got him drawing again. Mil- ler had — has? — an extraordinary moral authority over that Cambridge generation; his approval was much sought, his frown feared. Boxer drew a strip cartoon for him based round a fashionable pair, the String- alongs of NW1. It was an excellent way of not liking the Sixties; they are an odious, bogus couple, entirely of their time — he says good-bye to them in his latest collec- tion — and a way of identifying, skewer- ing, the new behaviour, attitudes, dress. Boxer is inevitably but reasonably de- scribed as the successor to Osbert Lancas- ter (who else could have done the jackets for Anthony Powell's Music of Time?) but one of the main differences is that Lancas- ter liked his characters to the point of in- dulgence. The strip and also gave Boxer an outlet he could manage and enjoy. Marc had rescued Mark. In a similar spirit of self-discovery he went to social gatherings of all sorts and had a series of romantic attachments. If no hearts or marriages were broken, it was a dangerous time and his own were damaged. Boxer sees himself as a loner in search of a set, but he admits that he cannot be by himself for long. When he met Anna Ford, at the height of her fame and glamour, there was a lot of mostly unpleasant publicity. Now he is a respectable married man once more and became a father and a grandfather almost simultaneously. After a few years pub- lishing with Lord Weidenfeld, returning to edit the Tatler was also like coming home again. He is both highly successful and where he was 25 years ago.
One friend sees his as the perfect career — a man who saw the agreeable social and professional worlds he wanted and had the accurately gauged talents to attain them. Another thinks he is wasted and dis- appointed, that he should have found time to conquer other worlds — theatre design, television, America. Boxer might agree with either at different moments. He is not really so much ambitious as restless. The moment something is working he wants to move on. Well, the Tatler seems to be going nicely. .
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