Vol. 7 No. 3 · 21 February 1985
pages 3-5 | 4103 words
Newspapers of the Consensus
Neal Ascherson
- The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Vol. II: The 20th Century by Stephen Koss
Hamilton, 718 pp, £25.00, March 1984, ISBN 0 241 11181 1
- Lies, Damned Lies and Some Exclusives by Henry Porter
Chatto, 211 pp, £9.95, October 1984, ISBN 0 7011 2841 0
- Garvin of the ‘Observer’ by David Ayerst
Croom Helm, 314 pp, £25.00, January 1985, ISBN 0 7099 0560 2
- The Beaverbrook I Knew edited by Logan Gourlay
Quartet, 272 pp, £11.95, September 1984, ISBN 0 7043 2331 1
Readers who had encountered its first volume would have known that Stephen Koss’s work on the British political press was monumental. Now it has become his monument in another, brutally unexpected sense, for Stephen Koss died suddenly soon after the completion of the second volume. The outrage felt by everyone who had known or read him had something to do with his youth, but more to do with the cutting-off of his gifts. These included an almost superhuman capacity for tracking, retrieving, devouring and assimilating information in less time and from more sources than was previously thought possible. Koss was the archive-cruncher of his age. But he had another gift, which was to make the imparting of densely-packed information stylish, readable, often mockingly witty. Because of this, Koss is always present in his own work, an energetic, high-spirited, sceptical presence who gives off pulses of his own enjoyment. The old cliché about authors living on in their books is freshened up here: Koss bounces about this second volume like a cowboy, suddenly coming into view to crack a whip or wave a hat or whoop whenever the slow-moving herd of facts threatens to come to a halt.
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 7 No. 6 · 4 April 1985
From Roy MacGregor-Hastie
SIR: I think Neal Ascherson (LRB, Vol. 7, No 3) was rather unkind to the Beaver. I don’t think he encouraged stupidity, delusion and complacency. He may not have always got it right, but he really believed that people should read books, and not books for the stupid, the deluded or the complacent. I hope some of the Angry Young Men Beaver-brook encouraged will come to his defence. I must say I always found him kindness itself. He not only serialised my first four books in the Sunday Express (he always took a personal interest in the Sunday, which he founded) but took time to write to me in his own hand a criticism of two of them. I may have put a few thousand copies onto the Irish edition with my lives of the Popes (what other Presbyterian would have published this series by a Catholic?), but he owed me really nothing. He was quirky, would fire people for just saying nice things about Nasser or the Germans, but we all have our prejudices and not all of us go out of our way to help the novice in our own business.
The story told against him which the Beaver liked best was about Sefton (Tom) Delmer. One day Tom turned up at the black glass palace in Fleet Street to find his typewriter missing. He motioned to his secretary, who was sitting hard by Terry Lancaster, and asked her where it was. She said it had been taken away, and that she was no longer his secretary. In fact, he was no longer on the staff. Upset at this communiqué from a slip of a girl, Tom stormed into the office of Pickering (Managing Editor then, if I remember rightly) and asked for an explanation. Pickering mumbled something, then handed over a cheque, the ‘golden handshake’. Nonplussed for a moment, Tom soon recovered his usual poise. ‘Just like that, Pickering, after thirty years?’ ‘Just like that,’ said Pickering. ‘Well, you can tell the Beaver that if I’d known the job was temporary, I’d never have taken it.’
Roy MacGregor-Hastie
Tuenno, Italy
From Editor, ‘London Review of Books’
We are not surprised to learn that this was Lord Beaverbrook’s favourite story against himself.
Editor, ‘London Review of Books’
