Graham Stewart - The History of the Times - The Murdoch Years

Max Hastings of the Evening Standard had proved to be the most successful reporter of the conflict, a reality that created enmity from some of the other reporters who felt he had been given preferential treatment on account of his being au fait with Army ways. Journalists’ squabbling over who got the best coverage appeared petty to soldiers and sailors whose every thought and action had been directed towards a team effort and a common purpose. Three of the journalists, including the representative from the Guardian , so hated the experience of covering the war that they quit and had to be brought home before the campaign was over. Witherow had stuck it out. Right at the very last moment, he was almost rewarded with the scoop he had been so long seeking. Having surrendered to General Moore, General Menendez, the Argentine commander-in-chief, was being held in a cabin on HMS Fearless . With Patrick Bishop, Witherow managed to sneak into the cabin and began interviewing the defeated general. Unfortunately, the inquisition had not advanced far when a naval officer walked in, discovered what was afoot and bundled the two reporters out. [391] Hudson and Stanier, War and the Media , p. 178.

The strident jingoism of the Sun and the less patriotic ‘even-handedness’ of the BBC generated the two shouting matches within the media. The Times gave little space to the first issue but it refused to join what it termed the ‘shrill chorus of complaint’ heard from the Sun and right-wing Tories who perceived the BBC’s attempts to present both sides of the argument as tantamount to treason. The MoD’s inability to speed the supply of copy from the South Atlantic inevitably ensured news services turned to other sources – including Argentine ones – to find out what was going on. What else could they do but cite ‘Argentine claims’ against ‘British claims’? However, the Panorama presenter Robert Kee had taken the unusual step of writing a letter to The Times criticizing the one-sided anti-war tone of one of the offending reports on his own programme. [392] Robert Kee, letters to the editor, The Times , 14 May 1982. This ensured the end of Kee’s Panorama career but it was noticeable that The Times did not share the Sun ’s view that there were ‘traitors in our midst’, especially in the Corporation.

The boost in national newspaper circulation during the conflict was scarcely perceptible. By the end of hostilities, the increase was below 1 per cent. This tended to support the analysts’ claim that the tabloid market had long been at saturation point. But if people were not buying more newspapers, it did not mean they were not above switching titles. Looked at over a slightly broader period, comparing the same March to September period of the previous year, The Times circulation had risen 13,000 to 303,300. This compared to a 66,000 fall in the Telegraph to 1,313,000 while the war-sceptic Guardian had risen by over 8 per cent (33,500) to 421,700, increasing the margin of its lead over The Times . [393] Taylor, Changing Faces , p. 237. In sales figures, it was the Guardian that, ironically, had the best war.

The stalwart position adopted by the new editor came as no surprise to those who knew him. Among those who did not, there was an easy temptation to portray Charlie Douglas-Home as a placeman of the Establishment. He had gone to Eton and Sandhurst but not to university. His middle name was Cospatrick. His uncle, Sir Alec, had succeeded Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister and his defeat in the subsequent 1964 general election was widely interpreted as victory for British meritocracy. His mother moved in Court circles. His cousin, Lady Diana Spencer, was still in the first year of her marriage to Prince Charles. As the Princess of Wales she carried the hopes not only of a dynasty but also of much of the nation. Even without this connection, Douglas-Home had been a close friend of the Prince of Wales since the 1970s, the two men having been brought together by Laurens van der Post.

Charlie Douglas-Home certainly had the self-confident attributes of one used to privileged surroundings and high-achieving company. In particular, he had a quick and natural wit that put those he met at their ease. But his background also contained its fair share of family problems, dysfunctional relationships and alcoholism. His brother, Robin, was an accomplished pianist (he was regularly engaged entertaining the members of the Clermont Club in Berkeley Square) and a great lover of beautiful women. Married in 1960 to Sandra Paul, the model and future wife of the Tory leader Michael Howard, he subsequently had affairs with Jackie Kennedy, Princess Margaretha of Sweden and, ultimately, Princess Margaret. After he lost the affections of the Queen’s sister to Peter Sellers, he committed suicide in 1968, aged thirty-six. Following the funeral, Charlie came across a manuscript for a novel that was thinly disguised as an account of his brother’s affair with Princess Margaret. He lit a fire and placed it on it.

Three novels (and a biography of Frank Sinatra) by Robin Douglas-Home had already been published in his brief lifetime. One, entitled Hot for Certainties , ruthlessly parodied his parents although he was saved from parental wrath primarily because each recognized the cruel portrait of their spouse but not of themselves. Both Robin and Charlie had developed a love for playing the piano from their mother, a concert pianist and close friend of Ruth, Lady Fermoy, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting. Margaret Douglas-Home was also a fantasist whose tall stories gave Charlie an early training in the journalist’s requirement not to take statements at face value but rather to interview many people and ask searching questions in order to get a true picture. At Ludgrove, his prep school, he had been one of only two boys considered to have intellectual potential. The other was the boy he befriended and sat next to, the future left-wing writer Paul Foot (despite their subsequent political differences, they remained on good terms). At Eton, where he was a scholar, Douglas-Home’s favourite subject had been history and he had been accepted to go up to Oxford. His college, Christ Church, got as far as putting his name on his door, but he never arrived – at the last minute he discovered that his mother had squandered the money that would have sustained him there.

Instead, he took a commission in the Royal Scots Greys and went out to Kenya as the ADC to the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring. This proved an important early grounding in political decision taking and the tasks of government. He later wrote Baring’s biography which he subtitled The Last Proconsul . When he returned to Britain, Douglas-Home determined upon becoming a journalist. He began as a crime reporter at the Scottish Daily Express . It was a rough but useful training in reporting from the sharp end, with the young recruit catapulted not only into the seamy side of low life in the Gorbals but also into the hard-drinking culture prevalent in the Glasgow offices of Beaverbrook’s paper. His great break came first in moving down to London in 1961 as the Express ’s defence correspondent and then in covering the same portfolio at The Times four years later.

By then he had shown himself to be not only fearless in the ganglands of Glasgow but also in pursuit of the country fox. Hunting was a passion he pursued with a physical recklessness that appeared to know few bounds. He parted from his horse regularly, although never for long. His friend since school days, Edward Cazalet, noted that he used to regard it as ‘a military exercise on a grand scale: the terrain, the plan, the tactics were invariably analysed to the full. I know of no-one who got more thrill from riding flat out over fences despite the falls he took.’ More traditional members of the hunting fraternity were less impressed. They admonished Douglas-Home for wearing his father’s pink hunting coat and black cap, which they believed he was not entitled to wear. Never one to put great store by appearance, he merely dyed the coat blue and sewed on his own regimental buttons. The effect was not entirely harmonious. Unfortunately, a senior officer in the regiment witnessed him in this costume and reported him to the colonel, writing along the lines of, ‘Whenever in this dreadful coat a button happened by chance to coincide with a button hole, I saw, to my horror, the Regimental Crest.’ Douglas-Home was ordered to remove the offending item. He refused. The matter went higher. Still he refused. Finally, a general was brought in to settle matters. At this point Douglas-Home won the argument by observing that if the regimental crest was deemed worthy to grace beer mugs and place mats, it was surely not out of place amid the risks and dangers of the hunting field. [394] Address by Edward Cazalet at Charles Douglas-Home’s Memorial Service, 25 November 1985.