DIARY
AUBERON WAUGH few weeks ago, a friend on Private Eye told me that a journalist on the Inde- pendent on Sunday, with whose name I was not familiar, had been asking a lot of ques- tions about the circumstances of my departure from the Eye 14 years ago. Had there been a great row between me and Ingrams? he asked. Was I now persona non grata in Carlisle Street? Having more or less lost my memory, I had no idea of why I left the Eye, beyond a suspicion that it was probably for money, and I am almost certain I never quarrelled with lngrams, whom I see quite often. The friend said he received the impression that the Independent on Sunday was preparing a hatchet job on me. Perhaps they have produced it but nobody has told me so. I no longer read the newspaper concerned, and, although some people obviously do, I suspect that none of my friends reads it either. When it first appeared we were all quite excited by the thought of a new national newspaper, wondering how it could be different from the splendid choice already available. The idea of Ignoring the monarchy was quite interest- ing, but a somewhat negative quality at best; and in every other way it was just another newspaper, with the same collec- tion of show-offs posing as free thinkers Within the margins allowed. Above all, it was impossible to be excited — let alone alarmed — by the thought of a hatchet Job. As someone who, in 40 years of jour- nalism, has occasionally wielded a hatchet himself, I am more than usually aware of how little effect hatchets have, how people read the newspapers in a state of half- belief, forgetting it all next day in any case. The only way to give longer life and greater verisimilitude to libels and slan- ders about oneself is to publish a reply or, better still, issue a writ. Then everybody Will assume that the libel is accurate; if it goes to court, it will become part of remembered history as God's own truth, Whichever side wins. After a moment's thought, I decided it was unlikely that the Independent on Sunday was planning a hatchet job on a hack from another paper; the journalist concerned was probably Composing an obituary. I have lost some weight recently. Various acquaintances have asked me in a friendly way if I am dying. They seldom listen to the answer, and In any case, as a journalist, one would not expect to be believed.
However much people may despise the journalistic profession, I do not think they should deny us our obituaries. B.lographies are an absurdity, as are auto- biographies and anthologies of collected journalism, although I have been guilty of the last two with no fewer than seven vol- umes of what. publishers are pleased to call 'essays' from Tatter, Private Eye, the New Statesman and the London Evening Standard, as well as the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. In fact the series only came to an end when new whizz-kid accountants on the Telegraph started demanding royalties, but it is obviously a silly idea to encourage journalists to sup- pose that their ephemeral scribbles can somehow achieve immortality between hard covers. After a few days they are incomprehensible, if not completely mean- ingless. Even so, as I say, it would be wrong to deny journalists their one moment of recognition, preferably written in two hours flat, with as many inaccura- cies as ever appeared in their gossip account of some party given by David Frost or Zoe Ball. That is the best monu- ment to a life spent trying to divert the masses from their daily preoccupations. A proper writer will either survive through his writing, or he won't. If he is not going to survive, it is best that he should be for- gotten, since we all have far too many things to remember in life. The idea of erecting a marble bust in the entrance hall of The Spectator or the Daily Telegraph is surely the silliest of all, but then I never find occasion to visit newspaper offices nowadays. I have never seen such a monu- ment. If ever I did, I would laugh and laugh and laugh.
Journalistic anthologies may be a com- plete waste of time, as I maintain, but poetry anthologies have proved the brightest and least acknowledged torches of English literature, allowing generation after generation to discover the delights of English poetry for themselves. Starting at the age of 12, with the Dragon Book of Verse, compiled by W.A.C. and N.H. Wilkinson in 1935, and after a few years progressing to the Oxford Book of English Verse, chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1900, I find I have stuck with the OBEV ever since. Apart from Betjeman, the 20th century has very little to offer. I occasionally glance at Belloc, seldom at Chesterton, practically never at Brooke, Auden or Hughes, let alone Eliot or the amiable Stephen Spender. It defies belief that the English have simply lost the ability to write decent poetry. For the last ten years or so, I have been running a lonely campaign from the pages of the Literary Review, offering quite substantial prizes for the best poems which rhyme, scan and make sense on a different set subject every month. These prizes are mostly provided by the Mail on Sunday, the only tabloid Sunday with anything of interest to say, and its handsome sister publication, Night and Day. Every few years we bring out an anthology of the better poems printed, and we hope to bring out another before Christmas, from Robson Books, under the somewhat grandiloquent title Poetry 2000. I hope as many people as possible will buy it for Christmas presents at the proposed price of £6.50. It would be a wonderful thing if the idea caught on, and people returned to writing proper poetry in place of all the meaningless, government-subsidised driv- el which pours out of the Poetry Society. Any other publication is free to adopt the idea without acknowledgment or payment of any sort. This is not a money-making scheme. It is a holy crusade, by which at least one scribbler hopes to justify his space on earth.
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