ANOTHER VOICE

On the perils of becoming an editor

AUBERON WAUGH

If it is true, as Napoleon remarked, that every private soldier carries a field- marshal's baton in his knapsack, I suppose it must be true that every journalist carries an editor's green eyeshade somewhere among the half-eaten sandwiches and other unspeakable things in his briefcase. But it came as something of a surprise, after 25 years in the front line, to discover myself occupying the important and influential post of editor of the Literary Review. True, my elegant offices in Beak Street extend to only one and a half rooms. I have a total staff of two, with no secretary, but the important difference is that I now spend three days a week soliciting copy from other people, correcting it and preparing it for press, rather than scribbling my own stuff.

My first great mistake, as editor, was to advertise in the Spectator for young gradu- ates prepared to write for the Literary Review at a starvation wage, in order to offset the larger sums demanded by profes- sional reviewers. I soon learned that the greater part of the Spectator's readership wants nothing more than to write book reviews, many of them for nothing. It will take at least a year to sort through all the letters.

Perhaps I might take this opportunity to thank all those who have written and assure them that their letters are receiving attention, if slowly — as well as thanking the 700-odd Spectator readers who answered my appeal to take out a subscrip- tion (at £10 for a year's supply, from 51 Beak Street, London W1R 3LF) in the first five days of last week. If Private Eye readers respond in the same way to a full-page advertisement next week, we might have the beginnings of a viable circulation. It is a truly wonderful publica- tion, as all who have seen it will testify.

The future of the Literary Review seems fairly rosy, and I hope the same can be said for the two other newspapers which appointed journalistic colleagues to the editorial chair at the same time — the Daily Telegraph (in some ways an even more influential publication than the Liter- ary Review) and the Sunday Telegraph, which became a very good read, I thought, under the editorship of the Spectator's former deputy editor, John Thompson.

It is the appointment of Mr Peregrine Worsthorne as editor of the Sunday Tele- graph which is bound to arouse the keenest interest on this page. Peregrine has made many appearances here. For the past 25 years he has been writing one article a week on his newspaper's leader page, with few interruptions and only very occasional spells of more strenuous activity. How, one wonders, will it affect the outlook and character of this saintly man suddenly to become its editor?

The picture slowly emerges. His most radical step to date appears to be the elevation of the weekly column which has been delighting and inspiring us all for 25 years to a position at the top of the newspaper, across all six columns, under the newspaper's banner, in the form of a signed leader. His opinions, cherished for their delightful eccentricity as much as for their underlying saintliness, are now those of the newspaper for which he works. Le Sunday Telegraph, c'est moi, he proudly proclaims.

This is something I would never dare do on the Literary Review, where my deputy editor, and only other member of the editorial staff, Miss Kathy O'Shaughnessy, soon tragically departing, has her own opinions on subjects which range from Japanese novelists to the Labour Party and the Libyan bombings. Our shared view, I hope, has been that it really does not matter what opinions other people express, so long as they are clearly stated, intel- ligently written and not offensively com- monplace.

Peregrine's column has never — well, hardly ever — offended against any of these canons. What remains to be seen is whether its elevation from the humble but satisfying role of Another Voice — once rudely described, in my own case, as Another Fart in the Wind — to a collective statement will affect its essential character.

The signs at present are ambivalent. Sunday's manifesto 'Why Reagan should give Britain a New Deal' was not, perhaps, entirely typical of the Peregrine we have known and loved this last quarter of a century. Other eyes than mine spotted an apparent access of warmth towards Mrs Thatcher and Thatcherism generally in the two weeks before our hero's appointment as editor was announced. Against this, one observes a continued awareness — one might almost say obsession — with the Love Object's humble origins: 'In spite of being a grocer's daughter, Mrs Thatcher is not at all commercially-minded,' he started. 'In fact she is as romantic as they come.'

There follows a tirade against her notion of honour and chivalry in neglecting t° charge a high price for her 'vastly valuable permission to fly the F-ills to Libya from Bntish bases': 'Here was a marvellous opportunity to wring great sums of money from the Americans for scientific research; sums of money which would have proved a great fillip for resources-starved British universities.'

Or we might have demanded great sums for battered wives' refuges in Newcastle, or a hundred other good causes. 'Mr and Mrs Average Briton. . . are much less charmed by President Reagan than she is. Not to mince words, it is time the Uniteld States came up with a New Deal for Britain, one that makes it clear to ordinarY people that this country gets something solid and valuable in return for the hell) tr, gives the United States in times or need . . . . Defence contracts, trade con" cessions — these are what ordinary people want to see forthcoming.' It might seem that in the violence of his conversion to the Thatcherist populism .01 1979 he has become more of a Thatchente than the Grantham grocerene herself. 'Market forces, so to speak, did not get s° much as a look-in,' he complains. The market force to which he refers is presurn- ably the beggar's argument that if you d° not give him money, he will not be Your friend. The only indication that this is the. same Peregrine we have known and loved all these years is to be found in his .01,". session with Mrs Thatcher's humble origins'

How unfortunate that Mrs Thatcher, usually so contemptuous of aristocratic disdain ft:1'

filthy lucre, should in this matter of Angl!):

,

American relations show herself as unreal tically sentimental as any hereditary. r man who has never had to earn his living. I am not sure I have ever heard Thatcher express her contempt for aristocracy in this way, and although 0; know many hereditary noblemen, I 63.11 „ think that disdain for filthy lucre is common characteristic among them.is grocer who stands a man a cheese . e probably less rare, nowadays, than al_ nobleman who neglects an opportunity t.' ° turn a beauty spot into a caravan park. ft.le all balls, but there is something gnu_ refreshing in the idea that these are 110,7 the official views of the Sunday Telegrar'