Anthony Howard

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a journalist and broadcaster. In a career lasting more than 40 years, he's become one of our most respected commentators, wise, authoritative, and ubiquitous. He's worked in a senior capacity for most of our country's quality newspapers and edited a couple of its better-known weeklies, The New Statesman and The Listener. His encyclopedic knowledge of politics and world affairs has also been put to good use on Radio 4's The World Tonight and BBC Two's Newsnight. He was President of the Oxford Union and might have ended up as a lawyer or a politician, but good writing claimed him instead. The effect on British journalism has only been for the better. He is Anthony Howard. Someone has to be the one with the pea shooter, you once said, Tony, although you fired more effective ammo than peas in your time. Is that one of the reasons you chose journalism?

Anthony Howard1:20

Yes, I think what journalism gives you is the priceless gift of independence and also the opportunity for irreverence.

Presenter1:29

Exactly. You have a natural enjoyment of debunking, really, isn't it? Is it making mischief? Wasn't it Beaverbrook who told you you should make mischief as a journalist?

Anthony Howard1:38

Yes, when I was very young I was summoned to see Lord Beaverbrook in Arlington House and the first remark he made to me rather appealed to me. He sort of walked up and down. I was sitting in a chair and he was behind my back, the kind of thing people do when they're playing at sort of being grand. And he fired out of the corner of his mouth, he said, Do you want to make mischief? And I said, yes, sir, I do want to make mischief. He said, come and make mischief on my papers. And at the time I was quite beguiled, and I thought that the kind of mischief he had in mind was basically only at the expense of the Labour Party. And so in the end, I turned down his invitation.

Presenter2:10

I suppose that uh that really is the interesting thing about your position, that it's always been known that you are were of the left. I mean, you you were and are a member of the Labour Party, I think. And yet you managed to penetrate the inner sanctums of the right. You wrote Rabb Butler's biography, for example. How did you do that?

Anthony Howard2:24

Rav was extremely kind to me, and I did know him when I was sort of writing a weekly column, and used to go and see him once or twice when he was, I think, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons. But I think my real education came from Ian MacLeod. When I started out writing a political column, I wrote to Ian MacLeod and I said

Anthony Howard2:44

Might I come and see you? Because I am really know nothing whatever about the Conservative Party and I'd like to learn better. And he wrote back me a sweet note in his own hand saying, No one who wrote the column you did last week can possibly claim to know nothing about the Conservative Party. And a kind of friendship was based on that and I see quite a lot of him. And he was my introduction, as it were, to people like Reggie Maudling and Edward Boyle and that generation of Conservatives.

Presenter3:09

And now you're writing Michael Heseltine's memoirs for him, I gather.

Anthony Howard3:13

Well, I'm not really writing them for him at all. No, I'm uh lending a hand to uh Michael in composing his memoirs for. You're ghosting them, are you? That's the word we try to avoid. No, really, we

Presenter3:19

It'll go short.

Presenter3:23

Now will will your name appear on the front of the book?

Anthony Howard3:26

No, I am very much determined that it does not do. This is Michael's book. It's got to be in his tone of voice. It's uh silly if everyone says that doesn't sound like Michael Hesseldine, so it has to be his tone of voice.

Presenter3:36

Why does he need you, then?

Anthony Howard3:38

I had to find a way of preserving it. I think organisation possibly of you know, the way you plan the scheme of campaign or how the book is drafted and put together. Also, to be absolutely frank, I suppose, if you won't take offence, to get rid of the odd dead metaphor here and there.

Presenter3:54

What do you think, i looking across it all, Tony, has been your major motivation in your career? Is it the story, or is it the writing which you've just been talking about, or has it been the money?

Anthony Howard4:05

It's never been the money. No, no, it's certainly never been the money. We don't get rich in, I suppose, what we call, what do we call, sort of highbrow journalism. We don't get rich, we may get rich in the tabloid press. I think, frankly, it's been the writing. I think I take more pleasure in a well-written piece than I do in anything else. I mean, I get very excited by a good story, but I'm not an investigative journalist, and I've never claimed to be that. I think a piece that is elegantly and persuasively written is what I'm probably most attracted to.

Presenter4:35

Tell me about your first record.

Anthony Howard4:36

My first record is Beethoven's Fifth, which because I'm a child of the war really sort of punctuated my childhood. It was the call sign, I think, for the European service, didder didder, which I think was V sign or V for victory, which was in Morse code, and so it had a double thing. But we did have very few records at home, and this one we did have wasn't a musical household, but it was sort of considered patriotic to have it going on.

Presenter5:56

The opening of Beethoven's Fifth, played by the Queen's Hall Orchestra, conducted by Henry Wood, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty five, and memories of Antony Hard's wartime childhood in London, because you weren't evacuated, Tony. Your father was a parson. Are we talking here about impoverished, draughty vicarages, or was it posher than that?

Anthony Howard6:15

Well, he'd done, I think, five years as a curate in Stepney, so he did the sort of East End bit. But then he was rewarded by being made, I think it was priest-in-charge, they called it, of a church in Kensington called Christchurch Victoria Road. I don't remember it because we moved from there when I was, I think, two. But it was the last flowering, I'm told, by my mother of Edward in England, you know, sort of eleven course dinner parties, tremendously grand servants who were called always by their surnames, and that'll be enough, Smith, you know, this kind of thing. And it had all vanished sort of the moment the war came, and it never came back.

Presenter6:51

And after that you moved to Highgate.

Anthony Howard6:52

They were in real target, yeah.

Presenter6:53

Yeah. So Karl Marx must have made an early impression on you.

Anthony Howard6:56

Yes, my father's chaplain of Haggett Cemetery, so I did know, and he used to go down and sort of he'd sort of take me for a walk down there, so I saw that at a very early age.

Presenter7:03

And you went to to hear your father preach every Sunday, I take it?

Anthony Howard7:07

Well, he was a very good preacher.

Presenter7:09

What was it like as a child to to sit there in the congregation and see your father really going for it in the pulpit?

Anthony Howard7:16

Well, I think it does cause problems. They were mostly caused, I think, by visiting preachers who would come and they'd sort of stand up in the pulpit and they'd say, you know, the love of God, the compassion of Christ and all the rest of it. Then they'd come back to lunch in the vicarage and some man's name would come up who was sort of fellow cleric and they'd say, That man would boil potatoes in a widow's tears. This kind of thing. The lack of charity across the vicarage table compared with what you listen to in the pulpit. I never really managed to solve that, the level of that contrast.

Presenter7:48

But was there an inspiration there for you, do you think?'Cause I know y you wanted to be a lawyer, you wanted to go to the bar. I mean, d were you inspired by what you heard as a child?

Anthony Howard7:52

Boom.

Anthony Howard7:56

I think that you do learn quite a lot. You learn the rhythms of the Bible, which nowadays is unfashionable, but they formed, after all, the whole basis of, say, Malcolm Muggeridge's writing. But more than that, it was like going to a lecture once a week. And I used to embarrass him, actually. I'd say that bit at the end, you know, where you had that sob in the throat, that catch in the voice. Marvellous, I'd say, marvellous. And I think I did look upon it rather as a sort of performance. But he was a very good performer.

Presenter8:23

Yeah.

Presenter8:24

And obviously, you've inherited that. The gift of the gab is inherited. Is that what we're saying?

Anthony Howard8:29

Well, I wouldn't want to claim that at all. He's a much, much better uh speaker than ever I'll be. But um I w if I can do it at all, if I find speaking is I odd do do oddly easier than writing, it's partly because of that, I think.

Presenter8:40

Where was the political influence in your boyhood? Because your parents were Tory voters, I think, but you joined the Labour Party at age seventeen.

Anthony Howard8:46

Yes, um they were Liberal Tories. My father always sort of was against capital punishment and that kind of thing. I think honestly it came from school. That when I was at school one of the boys in the same dormitory was called Charles Straitshey and his father was Minister of Food in the Attlee government and he was frankly treated appallingly and teased and bullied and all the rest of it and I thought you know this was totally unfair and unjust and I became quite a friend of Charles's and it converted me from being which I think I'd been an orthodox little boy, sort of pictures of Churchill in my bedroom this kind of thing to suddenly deciding about the age of 14 that I didn't want to shop on that side of the street anymore and I wanted to go on to the sunnier side of the street the left-hand side.

Anthony Howard9:28

Second record.

Anthony Howard9:30

Second record is really about my school days a bit. It's Zadok the Priest, and it's from the coronation, I think.

Presenter10:37

Part of Handel's Zadok the Priest from the coronation service of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, recorded at Westminster Abbey in nineteen fifty three. Um, up to Oxford then, Anthony Howard, on an exhibition. Did you set your heart on becoming President of the Union from the outset?

Anthony Howard10:52

I think oddly enough I did, partly because there'd been another boy at school, at Westminster, where I was, who had quite an influence on me. And he was Oleg Kerensky, who was the grandson of the famous Alexander Kerensky. And he had become librarian of the union and had failed to become president. And I think I did make up my mind. I said, you know, this is a test. See if you can do it. I didn't say.

Presenter11:13

But you you failed the first time.

Anthony Howard11:15

I failed the first time I lost to Jeremy Isaacs, who was a great friend. Then I got it the second time I tried in my last term, which meant I'm afraid that my tutor said to me, you know, if you do that, you will not get as good a degree as you ought to, and I didn't. I got a second in law.

Presenter11:29

But apparently the not getting it the first time really brought you quite low.

Anthony Howard11:33

It did, I think. I think I behaved appallingly, sort of melodramatically and ridiculously. It was a great disappointment because I think I really thought that this is the thing I wanted most and I thought, you know, they don't come back whether like boxing champions and therefore if I lost this one somebody else would be in office and they'd win it the next term. Luckily I proved to be wrong about that.

Presenter11:53

But it must give a young man delusions of grandeur, you know, being called Sir and having a staff.

Anthony Howard11:58

Extraordinary. I mean, all the dressing up, the white tie, which I had to buy, you know, and it's perfectly true that there was a very, very nice steward of the union called Leslie Craut, and you were there as a pipsqueak of twenty-one, sort of giving orders to this mature man of fifty-two or whatever he was, and he'd call you sir. It was ridiculous. And no, I th I think it could be very spoiling, and I think a lot of people's careers never recovered from it.

Presenter12:22

You went more or less straight from Oxford, with bar finals briefly in between,'cause you knocked them off quite quickly. You went to Suez,'cause it was nineteen fifty six and you had to do your national service. You were subaltern in the Royal Fusiliers, aged twenty two, and reluctant to go. Didn't you try to jump ship, or consider jumping ship?

Anthony Howard12:37

I was very reluctant, and I should always be grateful to the adjutant of the First Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, who seen me one night in the Mediterranean standing by myself looking out at the

Anthony Howard12:49

Back of the ship, ploughing its way through the seas, and he came up beside me and he said, You don't agree with a word of this, do you? and I said, No, I don't.

Anthony Howard12:56

And he said, well, the rest of us have our doubts, but if you were to do anything foolish, we'd hush it up for you. But if they heard about your platoon and they made any trouble, they'd go and serve seven years in Colchester, he said, which was the military correction establishment. And I don't think I was absolutely on the balance of sort of doing anything silly, but it was very wise advice, and I took it. And I'm always glad I did, because actually the whole thing in the stories was just really a sort of farce.

Presenter13:23

But you did, I think, uh for a couple of reasons risk court martial, not least because you blabbed to a journalist uh while you were out there about the Egyptian casualties.

Anthony Howard13:31

That's right. When we were up at El Cap, which was the front line, I think two journalists came around and they started asking about casualties. I said, if you want to find out the casualties, go to the football ground in Portside, because that's where they're all buried. And suddenly the company commander went all tense and he said, Gentlemen, I think you must leave.

Anthony Howard13:51

Then he turned it on me and said, Consider yourself under arrest

Anthony Howard13:54

I said, Lavel, what is male?

Anthony Howard13:56

He said, You committed treason.

Anthony Howard13:58

I said, sorry, I was not quite with you. But he took terribly seriously that I had drawn attention to the fact that there were Egyptians killed in Port Side in quite large numbers, as later revealed. There was only like a thousand Egyptians killed against, I think, British and French who were about 35 together. But of course, where I could have got court-martialed was that all the time I was in the army, I was writing, first of all, for now a long-defunct publication called Truth magazine. And then after I'd become Commissioner of the World Fusiliers, I wrote, I think, six or seven pieces for New Statesman about what the army was like. Wonderful raw material.

Presenter14:35

Anonymously.

Anthony Howard14:35

Anonymously, always signed by a national serviceman. And, well, had titles like Court-Martial, Band Night, The New Unemployables. Foolishly, when I finished, I did write an article in the New Statesman. I suppose I thought if I'd written all these articles, no one knows who's written them. Why shouldn't I tell them? So the article was called A National Serviceman's Postscript, and it had the byline on it of Anthony Howard. And I'm afraid they went bananas. And there was a lot of talk of summoning me back. I still have the reserve, you see, who'd done two years, to be court-martialed. And fortunately, the brigade commander said, Don't be silly, that's just what he wants. Meaning that I wanted the notoriety. I'm not sure I did, but I blundered into it. But anyway, he put a stop to it. Next record.

Anthony Howard15:19

My next choices are now in Bevan, making a speech at the great anti Surreys Rally in Trafalgar Square on, I think, November the fourth, nineteen fifty six. I wasn't, of course, there. I was on a troop ship ploughing through the the Mediterranean, but I've heard it since, and it's, I think, a marvellous piece of uh matador oratry, and it still makes me smile.

Speaker 215:38

Sir Anthony Eden has been pretending.

Speaker 215:42

That he has is now invading Egypt in order to strengthen the United Nations.

Speaker 215:52

Uh every every um every burglar of course could say the same thing.

Speaker 215:58

He could argue that he was entering the house in order to train the police.

Speaker 216:03

So if Mr. Andy Sir Anthony E. is sincere in what he is saying.

Speaker 216:09

Andy, maybe.

Speaker 216:14

He may be.

Speaker 316:14

Maybe.

Speaker 216:16

Then, if he is sincere in what he is saying, then he is too stupid to be a Prime Minister.

Presenter16:22

And Iron Bevan speaking in nineteen fifty six at the anti Suez rally in Trafalgar Square. Was your father disappointed, Tony, that you chose journalism instead of the law? Wouldn't he have preferred his brilliant young son to have had a proper job?

Anthony Howard16:37

I think he probably would. He never put it as forcefully to me as my headmaster did, who said, Now, boy, I can tell you what your trouble is. Your trouble is that you're always a bit unreliable. Now, if you follow my advice, you'll go to the law, he said. And I said, well, thank you, sir. And he said, if not, you'll end up as something dreadful, like a journalist.

Presenter16:57

But you might have ended up, like something others might consider dreadful, a politician, because you were a prospective candidate, weren't you? Fresh.

Anthony Howard17:03

I was a respected candidate for the most hopeless seat almost in the whole of the South of England. Not quite, but Epsom in Surrey. And I had to give it up because when I went to work for the then Manchester Guardian in 1959, the editor quite rightly said to me, look, I can't have you writing about politics if you're a Labour candidate. I did desperately want, in a sense, to be a Member of Parliament, but I think it would have turned to ashes in my mouth very, very quickly.

Presenter17:29

Unless you're in power, and unless you're in the cabinet.

Anthony Howard17:31

Yes, I think that if you are at that level of the trade, you suddenly feel you're quite different from all those people, your supporters on the back benches. And of course being a minister is a job. Not necessarily a cabinet minister, being even an undersecretary is a job. Being an MP is not a job. It's a kind of hobby.

Presenter17:47

Anyway, you started in journalism in the fifties at Reynolds News, a a Sunday paper owned by the Co-op. I I doubt it was particularly inspiring, was it?

Anthony Howard17:56

No, I was very lucky to get the job in that they came to me when I was in the army and they said we can't pay very much. And I said, well, how much? I nearly fell off the chair. They said, £1,500 a year. I was earning, I think, £5 a year as a second lieutenant in the army, so the vision of £1,500 was riches beyond the dreams of avarice. And I went to work there, and they were very nice to me, but there was something very depressing about it, that every Saturday afternoon you'd hear this kind of terrible chorus in the background, oh, it's Reynolds News here. No, no, no, not the Empire news, Reynolds news. And it suddenly got me down. And so, frankly, when Lord Beaverbrook sort of unsettled me by taking me up to the top of the hill, the shame of the cities of the earth, I then decided I had to leave. And I wrote to the editor of the Guardian, Alastair Hetherington, sending him cuttings and saying, Could I come and work for you? And eventually they took me on. Record number four. Record number four is, well, it really takes me back, I think, that no one remembers.

Anthony Howard19:01

I believe quite how drab Britain was even in the mid-50s, that the age of austerity went on for a long time. And one of the things that most cheered me up was sort of hearing records of American musicals that came across from Broadway. And I remember when I first heard the one from Westside Story, I really felt that there was a new world out there, and perhaps it whetted my appetite for America.

Speaker 219:26

D

Presenter19:28

Yeah.

Speaker 219:28

Kindly sergeant.

Presenter19:28

Krubke, you gotta understand It's just our bringing up gee that gets us outta hand Our mothers all our junkies, our fathers all our drunks Golly Moses, naturally we're punks Gee, Officer Krubkey, we're very upset We never had the love that every child oughta get

Speaker 219:48

Uh

Presenter19:48

Uh No delinquents were misunderstood. Deep down inside us, there is good. There is good. Eddie Roll, Groverdale and the Jets, singing G Officer Krupke from the original 1957 Broadway production of Westside Story. Tell me about being the Whitehall correspondent of the Sunday Times, which you were in the mid-60s. This was A. Hard, the fearless journalist, who was going to crack the system, expose the truth, but nobody in Whitehall would talk to you, is that right?

Anthony Howard20:15

Well, nobody in Whitehall would talk to me because the permanent head of the civil service and the prime minister both sent out minutes saying on no account was anyone to uh converse in any way or have any contact with uh Tony Howard, who'd be appointed in his new job.

Presenter20:27

Quiet what?

Anthony Howard20:29

I think that Wilson saw it as some kind of threat to the Constitution. I mean, the basic deal between politicians and civil servants is to the politician, you'll have all the glory, you'll have all the credit, but you and I will know that I actually not only do the work, but I make most of the important decisions. I know about it. I'm expert in the field. I've been here 20 years in this department. You're just a bird of passage. That's the basic, squalid deal, in my view, on which British government is based. But of course, if somebody's going to write about civil servants, they might give away the secret that civil servants actually quite often determine policy.

Presenter21:06

But it's it's the trade that goes on still today with the lobby system, doesn't it?

Anthony Howard21:10

Oh yes, it does. And I think I was almost one of the first people to criticise the lobby system. Now it's become quite fashionable to do it and papers withdrew from the lobby not so long ago in the 1980s. But when I did a criticism of it in, I think it was 1960, it was fairly sort of revolutionary.

Presenter21:30

But however much criticism is is made of it, and there has been a lot and as has been a lot, and as you say, the Independent tried to bust it in the eighties and failed, it goes on. It means that spin doctors like Alastair Campbell at number ten are dictating the political news agenda.

Anthony Howard21:45

I fear I think it does. I have a great respect for those journalists who hold out against it. But, you know, you don't fare very easily if you hold out against it. And I think it is a serious criticism. I think the White House, oddly enough, is better that there the briefings are normally done in public. All journalists around by the White House press secretary, televised even. And I think that's better than the system we have, which is really a system of covert feeding time at the zoo.

Presenter22:14

And it's only going to be cracked if all journalists agree as one, but it's never going to happen.

Anthony Howard22:18

It's never going to happen. I mean, there are technical problems, you see, and this is where I think the lobby was able to win. Because if you withdraw from it, you can't have the perks. And that means that if the Prime Minister goes to Rhodesia or wherever it may be, he won't take on the plane anyone who's not a member of the lobby, and therefore you have to make your own way, and it becomes very difficult. There's also the whole business of white papers. All government documents are sent out in advance to journalists or to the lobby under a thing of final revise. Otherwise, they wouldn't get covered in the papers. There wouldn't be time for them to all be read. But if you're outside the system, you don't get these government documentation. And so it's very hard to plow a lonely furrow outside the comfort, cosy briefings at number 10. Record number five.

Anthony Howard23:05

This is something I think that I heard when I first went to America in 1960, and it was that extraordinary Harvard academic, Tom Lehrer, who had a wonderful kind of line in really sending things up. And it cheered me up, because I'd always thought the Americans were a bit earnest, but then I suddenly found there were people almost as reverent as I was.

Speaker 323:25

Since I still appreciate you, let's find love while we may.

Speaker 323:34

Because I know I'll hate you when you are old.

Presenter23:39

Old and grey.

Speaker 323:40

So say you love me here and now, I'll make the most of that.

Speaker 323:48

Say you love and trust me, for I know you'll disgust me when you're old and getting

Presenter23:55

Tom Lehrer and When You're Old and Grey. Um after you were Washington correspondent of The Observer in the sixties at Tony Hard, you came back onto the News Statesman under Dick Crossman. He was sacked. You saw your chance and you were editor for the next six years. Do you see that as the high point of your career?

Anthony Howard24:12

I think it was the toughest job I ever had, and I think I got most satisfaction out of it. Um to run a kind of small, in those days I hope efficient outfit was um oddly satisfying. I think I was getting a bit bored with simply writing articles.

Presenter24:27

But you've also got to be across all of it all of the time. You've got to read every word that goes into your weekly, haven't you?

Anthony Howard24:32

Absolutely. I mean nowadays there's no way in which any editor could read the whole of a Sunday paper. It's just physically impossible. I used to read every word that appeared in The Statesman, taking the sort of book review pages and the arts pages home with me on Tuesday night and then going to the printers all day Wednesday for about a thirteen hour day and simply sitting there in some rather horrible room in the printer's factory sort of reading and marking and correcting. But it was, it was a tough job because the difficulty was that people thought the new statesman was old hat and you had this tremendous sort of difficulty in trying to convince people that you didn't belong to a world that had gone. And it was an uphill struggle and I think we produced the best paper we could and I'm very proud of the people who worked with me, from ranging from what, Martin Amis to James Fenton to Julian Barnes to Claire Tomalin. And I even, I think, published for the first time in the grown-up press Tina Brown, the great editor of The New Yorker who was. So I was very lucky in the people I had working alongside me.

Presenter25:30

But in the end you you you gave it up, you gave it up voluntarily. I I mean, it strikes me in all of this'cause you've moved around an awful lot and we can't mention half of the things you've done, but y isn't it the fact that you've just got a very low boredom threshold?

Anthony Howard25:43

I think that's probably true. I think I think that's the only thing.

Presenter25:46

Is that is that a euphemism for, say, for accusing you, perhaps, of being a bit of a dilettante?

Anthony Howard25:52

I think that people might say that, and perhaps with some justice. My father used to suggest that. So you never stick at anything, he'd say. So I think there must be some truth in it. It's partly boredom. It's partly that once you get something, somehow it no longer is as satisfying as it looked far off. There's a wonderful line in Webster, isn't there? Glories like glowworms from far off shine bright, but looked at near have neither heat nor light. That's always stuck in my mind.

Anthony Howard26:19

Number six.

Presenter26:20

Uh

Anthony Howard26:20

I didn't really know anything about opera till I got married. I'd never been near, and my wife and indeed her mother were very keen opera goers, and I really sort of slightly fell for it. They wouldn't claim I'm an opera buff even today, but it did open a new dimension for me.

Speaker 326:37

Ya Molibiya Ji Kena Saint Yora and a Fut Jam.

Speaker 226:40

Ah he

Speaker 326:49

Save for us in the brief of a Lord.

Speaker 226:54

Live your little teeth lady.

Speaker 326:55

Your little turkey

Speaker 326:59

Yeah.

Speaker 227:01

Oh, I heard I love your head.

Speaker 227:13

BOOMIS

Speaker 327:13

Yeah.

Speaker 327:17

Ah he won't.

Presenter27:27

Frank Lepardo as Alfredo and Angela Georgiou as Violetta with the orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House, singing part of the Brindisi, the toasting song from Act One of Verde's La Traviata. Of all your many jobs, Tony, you spent the longest period of your career as deputy editor of The Observer, which strikes me as strange, first for two reasons really, but first of all because you were deputy. You were number two. I mean it was in in fact to Donald Trulford, but just being number two must have been very frustrating for you after everything you'd done before.

Anthony Howard27:58

Yes, one of my friends said when they heard I'd taken the job, oh, he won't like that. He won't like being second violin, they said. I didn't mind it, actually. Donald and I got on very well to start with, anyway. And I was very lucky in that our interests were different. He was very keen on sport, and he knew quite a lot about layout and this kind of thing. But he let me do sort of the leader pages, the review section, all the kind of arts side. And I think for a time it the tandem worked okay.

Presenter28:25

But you imply it began to fall apart.

Anthony Howard28:27

It did begin to fall apart, yes.

Presenter28:28

Why, because you didn't like not being able to make the major decisions, to be simple.

Anthony Howard28:32

No. It fell apart because I'm afraid um I came to the view that the paper was being corrupted by its ownership, Lonro. And I w should have gone before I did, because it was perfectly clear that Tiny Rowland, who owned Lonro and was uh the uh

Anthony Howard28:47

Really fairly active proprietor wasn't going to be content unless the paper was turned into an instrument of his vendetta with Mohammed Al-Fayyid.

Presenter28:56

So Trelford was willing to make more compromises than you, was he?

Anthony Howard28:59

That's my view, he would say different, no doubt.

Presenter29:01

But you did both of you agree, didn't you, to give over the business section, as it were, to Tiny Roland, to put to have him put his man in?

Anthony Howard29:08

Yes, neither of us behaved heroically. We took the view that the business section was a necessary Danegelt that we paid to the invading kind of Norsemen who'd come in. And I think that was probably not a very wise thing to do, because a business section of a paper matters. But it was really when it started creeping into the main news section of the paper that I thought the battle was over. He didn't frankly come into the office all that much. I think I only saw him in the office twice in the seven years I was there.

Presenter29:36

But his influence increased over the years.

Anthony Howard29:37

It's increased over the years. Yes, and always what happens with newspapers is it's not the direct orders that come out, it is the effort of people there on the paper to anticipate the wishes of the proprietor. That's where the lot starts.

Presenter29:51

It's the second guessing that they feel duty bound to do.

Anthony Howard29:52

that they feel duty bound to do.

Presenter29:54

And what about then on the times with Rupert Murdoch, then, uh where you've been latterly?

Anthony Howard30:00

Well, all the times I was lucky in that I had an independent fiefdom which was dealing with the Stiffs, the Obits page, Stiffs page as they call it in the business, and frankly there was no interference at the time.

Presenter30:00

Well that was

Presenter30:10

But you'd have heard the gossip on the paper as to whether Rupert had been on the phone or not that day.

Anthony Howard30:15

Not on the phone. I think I knew if Rupert was about.

Presenter30:18

But let me ask the question straight. Do you believe that he has an undue influence over what goes in the paper?

Anthony Howard30:24

I think he has

Anthony Howard30:25

A very different attitude to the Times and the Sunday Times from that which he has to the sun and the news of the world.

Anthony Howard30:32

Oddly enough, I think he's a little bit intimidated by those independent directors, in the case of The Times anyway, that he was forced to have, and the Sunday Times too, I think. And he doesn't. I mean, the very fact that he let Andrew Neill come out and say that Michael Hesseltine should be Prime Minister when all the rest of the papers were saying we must save Mrs. Snatcher his papers. So he doesn't, I think, interfered as directly in the sort of quality papers as he does in the mass circulation ones. Number seven.

Anthony Howard31:01

is another American record and it goes by sort of harking back to my years in America which I've spent quite a lot of my life there one way or another sometimes on flying visits sometimes as in the 1960s for one year and then for three years and it's Joan Baez singing We Shall Overcome which I shall always associate with that ghastly Democratic Convention at Chicago in 1968.

Speaker 231:31

We shall work on.

Speaker 231:36

We shall the far so

Speaker 331:40

Om La Holy Uh

Speaker 331:51

Bye.

Speaker 231:51

Why do you

Presenter31:55

Joan Byers singing We Shall Overcome. It's said that as some obituary's editor of the Times you raised the game, you know, made it much more of an art form. You've compared it to looking after an orchard.

Anthony Howard32:07

Yes, that's only because you uproot trees that you take out of stock notices that have been written for some years and finally the person croaks, so you pull them out.

Anthony Howard32:16

But if you do that, you must at the same time plant another tree to take the place, because Times carries five thousand, I think, stock obits.

Presenter32:25

A lot of competition for good, hopefully.

Anthony Howard32:26

Amazingly. I mean the Times enjoyed the brute power of monopoly, as I think Lord Reith called it about broadcasting, until about 1986 when the Telegraph suddenly, having made its preparations, launched a really very good Obits page under a man called Hugh Montgomery Massingbird. And about the same time, or a year later, the Independent started and they made Obits into one of their main attractions, giving a lot of space, marvellous pictures, and suddenly it became from being a kind of Siberia of journalism, it became the kind of fashionable place to be.

Presenter33:01

You retired aged sixty five from the Murdoch kingdom,'cause that's the rule, although Murdoch himself is somewhat older than that. Um did you make sure your own um was planted in the orchard before you left?

Anthony Howard33:11

No, I'm afraid I didn't. I was rather disappointed when I got there to find that it wasn't already there. I thought the one consolation to this job was you'd be one of the few people who could read your own obit in advance. But I must have been overconceited. No one had ever thought that I was worth having in the stock at all, I think.

Presenter33:26

Will your obit then be required as a result of being cast away, or are you going to survive on this desert island?

Anthony Howard33:32

Well, I'm not sure I'll be very good at it, because I'm absolutely hopeless. You know, I can't uh sort of light a fire, I can't uh fish we wouldn't have anything to shoot with except a bow and arrow, I expect, but I certainly would miss any little furry creature that I was trying to get for my supper, so I think I might not surmise.

Presenter33:50

But you'll pray for rescue in the meantime, and as you sit there and wait for this boat to come along, will you sit and dream of the editorship you never got? And if you did, which one would it be?

Anthony Howard34:01

Oh, I think I've got over that. Um I would have loved to have been editor of the Guardian. I think being an editor of a daily paper is much more fun than being editor of a Sunday paper. And I do regret it, but you get over these things. You mustn't let them sort of eat into your soul. I don't think I'd sit there pining over that. No, I don't think I would at all.

Presenter34:17

Next record.

Anthony Howard34:18

My last record, and perhaps in my more melancholy moments I might play it on the Desert Island, is um a hymn. I spent a lot of my ho life, my early life anyway, was spent with hymns. It's the Day Thou Gavest, Lord is Ended.

Presenter34:54

Don't step back.

Presenter34:57

My praise of son devour.

Speaker 335:12

God I shall just sleep.

Speaker 335:18

Everything is the Lord we

Presenter35:27

Choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral singing The Day Thou Gavest Lord is ended, directed by John Scott and accompanied by Christopher Dernley. Which of those eight records, if you could only take one, Tony, would it be?

Anthony Howard35:38

Well, I think I would need cheering up, and so I rather think it would be the toasting song from Traviata.

Presenter35:45

And um what about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Presenter35:49

What I'd like

Anthony Howard35:50

To have if I was allowed, and you may say it, but I'll tell you why I think I should be allowed, is to have the Dictionary of National Biography. Now it's true that the main thing is in about fourteen volumes or more, but there is this compact one which also brings you a magnifying glass, which I might find useful for catching the sun or something and giving out signals. But that would be

Presenter36:07

No, no, no, no, no. You can't do the practical bit. You'll merely use it to read.

Anthony Howard36:10

Yeah.

Anthony Howard36:11

Well, I'll use it just for keeping it for reading. But I think that might keep me amused for a bit. You know, this is a way of great red rise and all that.

Presenter36:14

Yeah.

Anthony Howard36:19

And your luxury. I've got a horror of creepy crawlies. I've got a horror of bugs and this kind of thing. I remember when I was in the army that I was allowed to have, when we were at Suez,

Anthony Howard36:31

Camp bed officers for the use of. And I think I'd much prefer that to sleeping on the ground or even in any kind of trench or anything like that.

Presenter36:40

Anthony Howard, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 336:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.