Colin Wilson on Isherwood, James Morris on Australia, Reviews by Kenneth Minogue and John Casey

Auberon Waugh on Cecil King

To anyone who has ever worked for him, Cecil King will always hold a certain fascination which can best be measured by those who read what he has published since losing the Chairmanship of the International Publishing Corporation. Such People will be in a position to realise that anY fascination which can survive this Particular course of reading must be a very strong fascination indeed. Mr King is not a good journalist and his best friends could not reasonably claim that he was. I do not even suppose that he is under any illusions On that score himself. He lacks the necessary humility — call it unscrupulous oPportunism — or what you will — to accept that the first function of journalism IS to attract and hold the readers' attention. To this end, clarity, logic, truth, beauty and everything else must always be subordinate, although, of course, one always does one's best.

, Perhaps it is in part his failure as a Journalist which accounts for the failure of ,•,'4s Philosophy to inspire and excite, but I iu0 not think that it accounts for a very 'arge part. His conclusions will be familiar 4

anyone who has ever attended a

onservative Party Conference or read a feader in the Daily Telegraph. I do not doubt for a moment that Mr King reached "is conclusions in splendid 'isolation, but this does not of itself make them more interesting. He believes that there is a sickness in our society which derives in large part from the collapse of discipline.

doubt this is completely true; not °I.Iginal or stimulating, but true. The only seful purpose in repeating it would be if, °Y repeating it, he was gOing to change it. °bviously, Mr King carried greater authority than a mere journalist like 1111,Yself who must try to interest and sciMulate people as well as presenting tllein with unalterable truths. But I am afraid that not even Mr King's stern Warning is going to make parents order their children to take their hands out of their pockets and cut their hair. With discipline has vanished the whole Concept of leadership — as Mr King regretfully observes. He sees a need for a new national leader, and it may even be the case (although there is no support for 'this belief in what he has actually written) that he sees himself in such a role. If so, there is no need for those who are not afflict9.d by this particular delusion to

sneer at him for it. It is no less widespread among intelligent men of a certain age than sciatica or prostate, and no less distressing to their friends.

If my attitude to Mr King seems unreasonably friendly, almost obsequious, in view of this appalling book,* I should explain that my feelings of affection, gratitude and admiration for him, and for the whole Daily Mirror organisation which his benign, aloof presence sustained, are well founded in soeid benefits received. I would be less than honest if I pretended that my judgment of Mr King's importance was not influenced by his organisation's unfailing kindness and generosity to me, at an awkWard time of my life when I had no other means of support. In Daily Mirror time, and on Daily Mirror bounty, I wrote two novels and bred two children. Feelings of gratitude are not a useful or desirable part of any journalist's equipment. For instance, by selective quotation from Mr King's latest book, one could give the impression that in his old age the writer resembles some grotesque parody of a Colonel Blimp.

Such an impression would be both entertaining and true. At one point, he seems to mourn the passing of the dunce's cap, corporal punishment, breadand-water diets in school, flogging in prisons, stocks and gallows — all in the same paragraph—while regretting efforts at improving the lot of prisoners. Epigrams abound: "Too much discipline is far better than too little " . . . and he was deeply shocked by what he saw on returning to Winchester:

Now the discipline seems to have been altogether removed, and I was horrified not long ago to be assured that the slovenly characters slouching about the school grounds were not intruders but members of the school. If the public schools do not maintain their tradition of service, of discipline, and of hard work, one wonders what role they can play in the future.

" Discipline," he tells us, " should begin at birth: not only is the baby happier with a set routine, but it makes life much easier for the mother."

Earlier in his treatise on discipline, he gives us a Mao-style recantation of earlier errors:

The unpleasant fact has to be faced by anyone like me who has been a liberal all his life, that so many liberal ideas are not working. (1) We believed that the more humane treatment of criminals in prison and the greater affluence of society would lead to a decline in crime. But the opposite has occurred. (2) We also believed that with self-government the world colonies would find a happier and more stable way of life. But not so: just look at India or Tanzania or Algiers. One wonders whether a secret ballot would not indicate a wish by the ordinary citizen to return to good government rather than self-government. (3) Finally, we thought that if we abolished Dotheboys Hall and the rigours and sadism of the Victorian school, the child would grow into a more cultured and perceptive human being than under the old regime. But is this true? Have we not thereby damaged or destroyed the cultural leadership of the' middle classes while putting in it its place the Beatles, McLuhan and all that?

Of course he has. I could have told him he was being a terrible booby all along. Everything he now says is completely true,

but it is only part of the truth. The Blimp's error is that by concentrating on the areas of death and decay in our modern society and ignoring the areas of vitality, he misses the central fact that society will continue somehow and a jolly good time will continue to be had by a jolly lot of people as it always has been, while the rest will get along as best they can.

Poor Mr King has only moved from one vast system of error — the system of the reformer, the busybody, the optimist — to another system of error, the system of the conservative, the pessimist, the Blimp.

I would not like to give the impression that I condemn Mr King for being a Blimp. Some of my best friends are Blimps, just as some are liberal boobies. One must take the world as one finds it, I say, and others are entitled to their own opinions. What makes Mr King worse than a Blimp and something dangerously approaching a bore, at any rate in his role as a pundit and belle-lettriste, is his apparent unread'iness to acquaint himself with the alternative case. It is not just that he has obviously never read Private Eye. Nobody who had could write about holding "full and frank discussions" with President Kennedy, nor, in a serious piece of polemic, write about "this once-great country of ours." There are certain clichés which can now have only satirical uses.

Much worse than this 'is the evidence that in his anxiety to reach a conclusion he seldom bothers to enquire by what process other people have reached a different conclusion. Nowhere is this more painfully apparent than in his chapter on the Nigerian Civil war. One would expect him, of course, to take the authoritarian point of view. In addition to authoritarian inclinations, he has had extensive dealings With the Lagos business community and spent much time there. But in twelve months researching for a book on the political origins of the Nigerian civil war, I never once met anyone who had combined such an uncritical acceptance of whatever might favour the Nigerian cause, plus the more outrageous lies put out by the Commonwealth Relations Office, with a complete ignorance of the Biafran case. It leads him into various glaring errors, not least being his supposition that lit was Ojukwu, rather than Gowon, who repudiated the Abuni agreement.

This failing, an intellectual laziness which seems to me to destroy at a stroke any claim he may have to be taken seriously as a pundit, effectively kills interest in the book's arguments, just as its lack of humour and almost spectacular lack of originality, kill any sympathy. But here, I am afraid, the great dead weight of my affection, gratitude, admiration, etc, must come in. It may well be both true and entertaining — at any rate, I find it entertaining — to describe the author of Without Fear or Favour as a boring old Blimp. He is boring, lie is old, and he is a Blimp. But that description only tells a part of the truth and, like the part of the truth contained in Mr King's moans about

the decline of discipline, integrity, mod" esty etc, in our society, I think it is the least important part of the truth.

The greater truth about Mr King is that he is an extremely interesting man. He luts, had a profound and (I think) beneficial effect on English society, moulding the political and economic attitudes of the British working class for at least seventeen years of our recent history. it would be kind to pretend that wild', emerges from Without Fear or Favour Is no more than a sad footnote to a brilliant and influential career. It would be kind, but not scholarly. The true King-ologlst must take into account that these boring and misleading ideas were .probablY churning round in his head long before he fell victim to the distressing illness whiell overtook so many of one's friends at that time — an obsessive suspicion and hatred of Harold Wilson. Nevertheless, the central. fact about Mr Cecil King, of which thl,s, volume gives no hint, is that through ell the loneliness and shyness, the gaucheness and boastfulness, the occasional blind, patches of ignorance and obstinacy and wrongheadedness, through what is worst of all, his irredeemably dirigiste outloelt, he remained an essentially kind man. Not generous, but kind. He wishes the world well, and probably continues to wisn it well in his new persona. The partnershlP between Mr Cudlipp and Mr King was one of those amazing partnerships — Gilbert and Sullivan, Antony and Cleopatra. Rubinstein and Nash — where we must, suppose that the virtues and failings each perfectly complimented those of the other. I only saw them together once or twice, and we shall probably never knal exactly how they managed. I genuinely sad when I learned that Cudlipp had put the knife in. King5 mistake was probably to include the, Labour Party in his general anathema Wilson, but nevertheless, as a Mirror' watcher, I was surprised. It seemed to 111! that both of them had had so man,' opportunities to stab the other in the WIC" — King could surely have won Sir john Ellerman's approval for stabbing Cudl/PP over the latter's emotionalism etc at one stage, if he had wanted to — that the tvird would probably stick together. Shortly after the knifing, I ceased to be a Mirror-watcher, cancelling my order afte! a particularly ignorant and disgustine leader on the Nigerian civil war. Thlainl,Y,' many others agreed with me, because It' circulation, at that moment, went into thet flat spin from which it has not Ye, recovered. In assessing Mr King — not 9' a journalist, heaven knows, nor as ° philosopher, intellectual or pundit, hu„ purely for the influence he has had 01I his time — I think it fair to say tii!, England would be a less pleasant place live in if he and Cudlipp had not beeop there. With the arrival of television 110 newspaper will ever again have such opportunity to influence the nation', working class. Between them the .lonq shy, pigheaded Wykehamist and the WII; tub-thumping Welshman generated , certain soft-heartedness and quiet b e. evolence throughout the nation for whic we might as well thank our lucky stars.