Richard Fry's century
THE Guardian's City editor looked at me sternly: 'I have a very serious question to ask: can you type?' I could, but he still didn't give me the job. Richard Fry had high standards, and in earlier days had turned down Harold Wilson. Events, so he thought, were to bear out his judg- ment: 'An astute politician, but a child when it came to finance.' Now I rejoice to mark his hundredth birthday, and could wish that I had a job to offer him. Born in Berlin, he was of age to be called up for the Kaiser's war, became a foreign corre- spondent, and was serving in London when Hitler came to power. As a liberal Jewish journalist he had three strikes against him, was on the SS's black list, and found himself sacked overnight. He stayed put, made his way to the Man- chester Guardian (which in those days did not disdain its first name) and ran its financial pages for 25 years, knowing his way round central banks and finance min- istries all over Europe, and happy to see the City come to life again. He has never stopped writing, of course, and I pass on his latest verdict: 'I am no Eurosceptic, but the current experiment with European monetary union, given the huge dispari- ties in economics and politics between the countries concerned, can only be doomed.' I dare say he can type, too.
Previous page
