Lord Longford revised

Contemporary Review, May, 2004 by Jonathan Doering

The Outcast's Outcast: Lord Longford. Peter Stanford. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. 512 pages. ISBN 0-7509-3248-1.

Peter Stanford's 1994 authorized life was considered by at least one associate to be 'so well-balanced that it may be little to Longford's taste'. This time round, we are warned, 'Some may even feel I have been tougher ... than before', reminding us that Longford himself never avoided 'saying the unsayable'. Confusingly, one could class little here as 'unsayable'. One's pulse will remain steady for most of this book. What is offered is a solid reworking of the life, mostly already addressed in Longford's own Avowed Intent. We read of Longford's father's death at Gallipoli, of his mother's emotional frigidity, and of how young Frank performed to attract affection. On it runs, through a chequered career at Eton, academic honours at Oxford, and his love match with Elizabeth, onto his flirtation with careers in the media, the Conservative Party, the Civil Service and academia, before ennoblement and a place in Attlee's reforming government.

Time and again, one sensed an ocean of facts here, smothered in oil. Why did Longford choose to abandon a safe Labour seat in Birmingham for the dubious electoral opportunities in a new 1945 Oxford constituency? In the event, Quintin Hogg brushed aside all comers as in 1938. Could it have been that Longford suspected that he was guaranteed either seat or peerage, so gave up the electoral rat race? We then hear of his alternately desperate and desultory efforts within government and party. A peer with a first in PPE would surely have realised how unlikely a major post was. Yet we are told that he later chafed at missing major appointments. There is a fascinating debate to be had here regarding reforming Labour's use of peers as ministers. Frustratingly, Mr. Stanford does not tackle this head on.

We relive Longford's journey from hearty Anglicanism to fervent Roman Catholicism. The author conjures Longford's complex personality, incandescent with intelligence and spiritual need, desperately needing to belong, yet constantly forging an individual path. However, we are told here that Longford's need to believe led him to override his reservations over church orthodoxy, drowning cool doubt with a wave of molten faith. Are we being told that Longford was capable of a sort of spiritual doublethink, persuading himself of the religious truth through his desire to believe?

The book's title derives from Longford's sense of torment over his perceived failure during World War Two. Enlisting as a private, he soon grew to hate military life, and was quietly discharged before his regiment left Britain. Descended from a proud marshal dynasty, with an ardent childhood interest in the military, it is understandable that Longford enlisted. It is also no great shock to learn that the military life did not suit a left-wing intellectual. But one found oneself wondering aloud what would have been the response to this attitude being expressed by the men destined to perish in Northern France.

Few would deny that Lord Longford worked hard to show kindness, but Peter Stanford offers an imbalanced view, silent on central issues, with a wealth of detail on uncontroversial topics. However the epilogue offers a glimpse of the more engaging book that could have been. We hear of the friends' dinners in a Polish cafe, of 'inedible food' and 'paint stripper wine'. These tart asides lend rare spice; on the following page, we are told that, in Heaven, Longford is probably applying 'for a transfer down below, to continue the good work'. In the face of this near-continual moral beatification, frustration gave way to exhaustion. The only time one laughed out loud whilst reading this book was when Osbert Lancaster commented on Longford's planned book on Jesus, 'Not another autobiography, surely'.