Man of parts
George Gale
Nicholas Tomalin Reporting. With an introduction by Ron Hall (Andre Deutsch £4.95) Nicholas Tomalin was killed in the Golan Heights on October 17, 1973, reporting the brief Yom Kippur war for the Sunday Times and it is quite true, as Ron Hall writes in his perceptive introduction to this posthumous selection of Tomalin's reporting, that his death "produced more genuine grief than is usual at the death of a journalist, not only among his colleagues but throughout the newspaper world and in a wide hinterland beyond." I do not suppose that, had he lived, we would have seen this collection published. It stands up as a memorial, in a way which it would scarcely do as an anthology, of almost twenty years reporting. Journalism seldom translates well into hard covers and, undoubtedly, in an autobiographical account of his life and times Tomalin would have had more to say for himself than does this selection.
Nick Tomalin's journalism, surprisingly in a way, was extremely self-effacing. He himself was not. His shyness did not stop him seeking attention. He was in many ways not only trendy but flashy, and yet at the same time he was very serious. He was strange, too, in the distances he kept, holding himself at arm's length from friendly acquaintances and, I think, also from himself-as-journalist. Although I am certain that he knew himself pretty well, I do not think he ever knew exactly what he was: journalist, critic, trend-setter, socialist, man of compassion?
All this gave him a very strong air of detachment from his milieu and his role in it. It also characterised his journalism, which was neither passionate nor intellectual but which was nevertheless extremely effective. There was a great deal of emotion inside him and perhaps because of its very quantity and volatility he kept it pretty well 'bottled up' as far as the professional side of his life went. His passions were most private and his convictions most subdued. The world, observing him observing it, saw a man standing to one side, his head (thanks to a lazy eye) usually tilted sideways, and his words emerging half-suffo cated through his nose. He was an excellent companion and very much the sort of colleague one was glad to be on a story with, even if it meant (as it well could) that the competition would be severe.
None of this, however, really explains why it was that his death "produced more genuine grief than is usual at the death of a journalist"; and I am not sure that I know the reason.. But it may be that Tomalin was as highly considered as he was among his fellow journalists because he had been far more outspoken than they as a critic of journalism. Easily his best known remark is that which introduced an article on the press written for the Sunday Times magazine: "The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability."
Like most good journalism truth and hyperbole Are included here; but he was getting very near to the bone. So he was when, in a piece for the Listener, he noted, about the morality and
tactics of war reporting, that "an immense amount of lying, cheating and subterfuge is
nearly always necessary to get to the point where one can honestly reveal the truth." A couple of years later he was writing in Punch, "Perhaps I should make it clear that I think the cheating and subterfuge used in getting a story is always in my own case, at least a fully morally justifiable sin." Eliding the theological question begged by the notion of a sin fully and morally justified, one sees what he is saying, and recognises that there is much truth in it and that it is not, nevertheless, a statement easily made, for all its jauntiness of tone. There is also an absence of cant, and this may have caused him to avoid naming two other qualities essential for real success in journalism, both of
which he sufficiently possessed:. courage and
toughness. His toughness he demonstrated in his investigations, his courage not only in his death that, I suppose, could have been construed as foolhardiness but also in his nature and his writing. He was never a bought man, although there was a time when, as a young man clambering his way up, he saw a great deal of Lord Beaverbrook in New York; and he was endorsed by Beaverbrook when Charles Wintour picked him for the key position of editor of the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary.
He was the best of the post-war gossip columnists, starting off on the Hickey column, going to the States for the 'This is America' column, also for the Express, then to the Standard "He was the most successful editor of the Londoner's Diary I have known" Wintour wrote and eventually to the Sunday Times where, writes Ron Hall, who should know, "He was undoubtedly the best Atticus there has been, before or since." It is a most impressive track record. It is not, however, one which would much have impressed Nick Tomalin, who said himself, of his Hickey period (which, Ron Hall reminds us, was also the time of The World of Paul Slickey),-It was absolutely terrible. There I was, with Gaitskellite pretensions and with terribly high principles and guilt about the integrity of journalism, going along to lunch after lunch to talk to corrupt little dollies who whipped out their notebooks to tell me the news of the latest divorces in high places. They sold their friends for a free lunch and anything for a few quid. . . Very nasty."
So he would not choose to be remembered as a gossip columnist, but then few journalists, not excluding gossip columnists, would. He broke away most successfully and in this collection we have some of his best, and best-known pieces, in which "The General goes zapping Charlie Cong" is pre-eminent. He was very good on Vietnam. On the day he was killed he was preparing a large story on the Yom Kippur for the next issue of the Sunday Times and one of the reasons why journalists and others were genuinely grieved at his death is that that they wanted to read what he had to report and it is this, in the final analysis, which puts him into the top rank. "A journalist's required talent," he once wrote, "is the creation of interest." This book is a better memorial than a festschrift and Ron Hall is to be thanked for his introductory memoir. It is a pity that the publishers have not told us who picked the pieces and put the book together.
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