DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON Inever thought that Jeffrey Bernard would outlive me at The Spectator. When I became editor five and a half years ago, I believed that my most pressing problem would be how to replace the Low Life col- umn. The then chief sub-editor, a friend of Bernard, would regularly burst into my office and announce, 'I think this time Jeff's really had it.' But now, all these years later, the only part of Jeff not still with us is the bottom half of his right leg. And I will never reveal the name of The Spectator staff member who commented at the time of the amputation, adapting Evelyn Waugh on Randolph Churchill's tumour, 'Pity they removed one of the few bits of him that isn't malignant.'
There are absent friends, however, and none whose contributions I miss as much as those of John Osborne. When his Diary column copy came in, one scarcely needed to read it. The words seemed to leap from the page like notes of music from a score, That, of course, was the key to John's writ- ing, the language had the rhythm and cadence of sweet harmony. He composed in this space; the rest of us only write in it. John was also the bravest of writers. Like the actor he once was, he experienced ter- rific stage-fright before writing a Diary col- umn, frequently telling me, in all sincerity, how inadequate he felt for the task. Never was his fortitude and conscientiousness more evident than in his column for last year's Christmas double issue. The dead- line was Monday, 12 December. But on Sunday the 11th John was rushed to hospi- tal. Dictating from his bedside, he finished the copy just in time to meet the edition. He died in that same hospital bed on Christmas Eve, his 63rd birthday. John's remark in the opening paragraph of that final column: 'I am haunted by the thoughts of the things I may never do again' has haunted me in turn, and always will, It does seem to be the habit of great men to write their last published words in The Spectator. My stepfather, Freddie Ayer, did so while I was on the staff (`Refleetions on the French Revolution', 9 July 1989). Now Sir Kingsley Amis seems to have fol- lowed in the tradition, albeit in the form of a letter to the editor which we published last month. In case you have forgotten, Sir Kingsley took it upon himself to criticise Auberon Waugh's occasional use of 'don't' when 'haven't' was grammatically correct. Waugh's usage, said Amis, was 'easier for monoglot immigrants, though'. Brutal stuff, and it is characteristic of Bran's forgiving nature — which he tries so hard to hide in his columns — to have eulogised his late critic so unstintingly over the past few days.
There was one other great shock during my first few days as editor: Bron Waugh told me that he would not be continuing Another Voice, because he had too many other commitments. After a certain amount of grovelling on my part, he agreed to write it fortnightly, although for a while he insisted mysteriously that he would do this only on condition that his byline be changed to 'A.A. Waugh'. As it turned out, Auberon Waugh has been one of the mighty pillars of the 'old' Spectator — to make a distinction fashionable in party pol- itics — who have remained to support a range of 'new' Spectator columnists such as Theodore Dalrymple, Simon Jenkins, Nigel Nicolson, Boris Johnson and 'Dear' Mary Killen. When I took over as editor, I was given the results of a rather expensiVe piece of market research which claimed that 24 per cent of our readers thought that 'there is too much sport in The Spectator'. At that time we had no sport in the magazine what- soever. This taught me something about the value of market research, and also impelled me immediately to inaugurate the 'Spectator Sport' column.
Al these changes to the editorial action on set have been made against an identical backcloth. There has not been a single change to the design and layout of the magazine in the past five and a half years, while the rest of the newspaper and magazine world has experimented extrava- gantly. Actually, this is not quite true. There has been one very significant change in format, advocated — and possibly noticed — only by Mr Stephen Glover: the contents page is now arranged chronologi- cally.
hen my predecessor relinquished his editorship he wrote a very entertaining article in the Sunday Telegraph about The Spectator. At that time — although the cir- culation had risen consistently during the Charles Moore years — The Spectator was still losing about £250,000 a year, and the outgoing editor wrote, 'One cannot avoid being conscious of an apparently embar- rassing contradiction; a magazine which generally defends the operation of the free market could not survive for three months in that market unaided.' Charles added, with characteristic honesty, 'Actually this contradiction does not embarrass me.' It did embarrass me, actually. And I am prouder of the fact that The Spectator is now making a handsome profit, and paying a dividend to the parent company, than I am of the fact that the circulation has risen by two thirds since 1990. As Rupert Mur- doch has demonstrated, it is relatively easy to buy circulation by cutting the price. All it costs is money. But there is great virtue in a magazine or newspaper producing profits rather than losses. It means that no one can condescend towards you.
Iam now handing over in turn to Frank Johnson. He might not recall our first meeting, but I do. He had dropped in to my childhood home in Chelsea, to take my mother out to the opera. She introduced Frank to me, and explained that he was London's wittiest journalist. He still is. The readers of The Spectator are in for a treat.
Since last Wednesday, when I was appointed editor of the Sunday Telegraph, many people have congratulated me, most of them sincerely. Yet I have found it almost impossible to celebrate. The emo- tion I feel at leaving 56 Doughty Street, after eight idyllic years, is a profound sense of loss. And that, in turn, has told me what I never sufficiently appreciated during my time here: that The Spectator's staff and readers are delights to work with and for. Frank, you are in for a treat, too.
Previous page
