Far from a buccaneer

Spectator, The, Apr 11, 1998 by Watkins, Alan

THE RELUCTANT PRESS LORD: ESMOND ROTHERMERE AND THE DAILY MAIL by S. J. Taylor

Weidenfeld, 25, pp, 240

The reading public owes a good deal to the industry of American scholars writing about British subjects: Herbert Davis on Swift, Frederick Pottle on Boswell, Richard Ellman on Joyce and Wilde, Alfred Gollin and the late Stephen Koss on the high (or, rather, the low) politics of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. S. J. - the 'S' stands for Sally - Taylor belongs to this tradition. She differs, however, from her predecessors in several respects. Though she is mostly accurate enough, she makes no great parade of scholarship, and her books are readable and reasonably short. Her speciality is the British press, in particular the cheaper end of the market. Her previous production was about Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere and the Daily Mail. Her latest is about Esmond, the second Viscount, and the same paper.

We should be wary of criticising any author for choice of subject. Nevertheless Miss Taylor's difficulty can be stated simply. Northcliffe and the first Viscount were buccaneering characters, the former a genius who went mad. They created a paper which led popular journalism until the advent of Lord Beaverbrook's (and Arthur Christiansen's) Daily Express and Hugh Cudlipp's Daily Mirror. The second Viscount was as far from being a buccaneer as it is possible to imagine.

He was cold and remote, though Miss Taylor emphasises his formal good manners. She attributes his failings to a neglect and a depreciation of himself verging on cruelty on the part of his mother, and to a consequent feeling of inadequacy to bear the burden of his inheritance. Like Beaverbrook, he possessed all the appurtenances of the rich man; unlike Beaverbrook, he was profoundly conventional. Miss Taylor has several stories of his servants unpacking the luggage of his humbler guests and of the sub-Jeevesian difficulties to which this sometimes gave rise.

It is a pity that she does not tell the story of Mike Randall and the country suit. Randall was the editor who succeeded William Hardcastle, so prompting Rothermere to say at the Beefsteak Club that, having tried the short, fat one without much success, he was now going to give a go to the tall, thin one. Accordingly Randall was invited to Rothermere's country house for the weekend. One of his minions said interrogatively, `Of course, Mr Randall has a country suit?' It appeared that Mr Randall had several suits, but none that really fitted the required specification. This produced an fi. M. Bateman response: the man who tried to visit Lord Rothermere without a country suit. If he intended to make the proposed trip, it was indicated to him, he had better acquire the garment in question in double-quick time; as, after some vicissitudes, he did.

There is a certain resemblance here to Max Aitken, who was similarly exigent about clothes, as his father was not. Beaverbrook's customary attire, in town or country, was a navy-blue suit, a white shirt with buttoned cuffs (he could not be bothered with cufflinks), a black tie and, often, brown shoes. There are other resemblances to young Max as well. Both were forced into jobs for which they were unsuitable, in which they were uncomfortable, which they did not really want. And both were attractive to and enjoyed numerous affairs with women.

Here Rothermere seems to have drawn the shorter straw. He was having an affair with Ann O'Neill (born Charteris) while her husband was away in the war. When Lord O'Neill was conveniently killed, they duly married. But Ann had already begun a liaison with Ian Fleming which continued after her marriage to Rothermere. The latter was nevertheless a considerable sexual performer. This what Miss Taylor tells us, though I do not see how she can possibly know. But compared to Fleming's furious fast bowling, what Rothermere had to offer was medium-paced, up-and-downthe-wicket stuff, accurate enough but not very exciting. Fleming was a sadist with a taste for flagellation. Mrs Fleming, as she became after her divorce from Rothermere, was a masochist, whether through natural inclination or through conversion by Fleming is not wholly clear. Even so, the union of sadist and masochist should have been ideally happy. Of course it was nothing of the kind. They fought constantly like a couple of tomcats. The best one can say is that they deserved each other.

Ann was tiresome in a more damaging way. Though a woman of deep ignorance, she was forever interfering in the affairs of the Mail: suggesting that so-and-so should be dismissed and that a job might be found for her friend such-and-such. People tended to think that Pamela Berry behaved in the same way over the Daily Telegraph. It is doubtful whether she did. If so, she enjoyed no success, for her husband Michael, later Lord Hartwell, was a dedicated though limited journalist - one of nature's news editors - who knew his own mind as Max Aitken and Esmond Rothermere did not.

Faced with the difficulty of writing about a dull dog, Miss Taylor more or less alternates chapters on Rothermere with chapters on the Mail. Perhaps inevitably there is an emphasis on the exponents of journalistic derring-do such as Noel Barber, Rhona Churchill and Ralph Izzard. Walter Terry, one of the last of the authentic political scoop merchants, receives only one mention, Don Iddon, the United States correspondent, none at all. Miss Taylor sticks to the period 1940-78, from Rothermere's succession to his death. For most of this time the Express had the superior performers: Sefton Delmer, Rene McColl, Nancy Spain, Osbert Lancaster and Beachcomber (whom Beaverbrook did not find funny but was prepared to tolerate).