THE PRESS
Masks off
BILL GRUNDY
When I was at university there used to be a splendid Professor of Music called, most magically, Humphrey Procter-Gregg. It was a name so exactly right, so full of euphony, so sounding with the music of the spheres, that it seized my imagination. The result was that whenever I read the opera reviews in the then Manchester Guardian and saw that they appeared over the initials P H-W, I assumed automatically that the man's name was Pumphrey Hocter-Wegg. I know better now, of course, and I send my apologies to Mr Hope-Wallace for having got him wrong.
But the incident raises one or two points about newspaper by-lines, which are those jealously-sought name-attributions which most journalists have as big a thing about as television people have about closing credits.
Why used the Guardian to use only Mr Hope-Wallace's initials? Why was Neville Cardus sometimes given his full name, and other times was merely rqc? And of course it wasn't just the Manchester Guardian. All papers do it. Why is the music critic of the Times William Mann one minute and wm the next? It's very confusing for laymen like us who have to go hunting through the paper if we wish to find out exactly who has written the review we liked so much or so little.
Of course, another way of confusing us is not to use initials, but a pseudonym: William Hickey, Charles Greville (or Grovel, as Bernard Levin once unforgettably put it), Ephraim Hardcastle, Henry Fielding and the like. Apart from showing how well up the lads are when it comes to the names of diarists long gone (and far more interesting), these fancy titles do nothing except conceal the fact that they're not usually one man at all, but a team of trivia diggers whose powerful prose packs a punch that wouldn't palpitate a pigeon, to coin a phrase I once ac- tually caught a boxing correspondent us- ing.
But I'd better not object to the practice of the pseudonym. After all, this journal uses it too, following precedents established a cen- tury or more ago. We've got Crabro, we used to have Taper, Strix pops up from time to time, and of course we get occasional letters from Mercurius Oxoniensis.
. Our Mercurius has made others curious. Who might he be? they ask. And last Mon- day se'en-night, as e'er was, the Tunes decided that the Times was ripe for un- masking the identity of the SPECTATOR'S Ox- ford correspondent. Their diarist, PHs, revealed it all in a carefully composed imita- tion of Mercurius's style—and, as it happens, got it wrong. But the incident got me in- terested in who the mysterious PHS is. I have always imagined that the initials stood for Printing House Square, that being not only the address of the Times but also their diarist's own modest description of himself in the light of his lack of any enthusiasm for the modes and manners of the modern world. But now I began to ask myself who he really is? What manner of man is he? And what is the fellow called?
So I got my spies to work. Within hours they had come up with the horrendous in- formation that, though he writes in the first person, PHS is divided into five parts. Oh monstrous! Five buckram men grown out of one! And who are they? Well, if you're interested their names are Ion Trewin, son of J. C. Trewin, who is the diary editor; and then his four assistants in alphabetical order, Nicholas Ashford, Derrick Griggs, Stewart Weir, and Robin Young. And just in-,case you've forgotten, Taper was Bernard Levin, Henry Fielding was Allan Hall, William Hickey was once a Mr Driberg, and Ephraim Hardcastle was always a mistake. As to the present denizens of the world of Paul Slickey, a stamped addressed envelope and a decent-sized offering will bring you the full list. As if you cared.
A paragraph in Private Eye for last Friday says 'The next editor of the Economist will be Brian Beedham, presently the paper's foreign editor. He will succeed Alistair Burnett immediately after the general elec- tion'. Which surprised me, so I scratched around a bit. Someone who ought to know says that, apart from being unable to spell his name (Alastair with a middle 'a'. Burnet with one 't' please) Private Eye has almost got it right. Mr Burnet will indeed leave the Economist after the general election, whenever that is. But the nomination of Mr Beedham as his successor is really jumping the gun, since the matter has not yet been given any consideration at all. And if you want a bonus. I can tell you quite definitely that wherever Mr Burnet is going, he is not going to the Independent Television Authority.
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