The Royal Event

Office of the editor of the Midnight Sun, Roger Riddle. He is instructing his chief photographer, Pete Porter, on covering a royal event.

"This is a GREAT occasion, my lad. Something artistic, that's what I want." He paused to light a cigar, blew a perfect smoke ring, and grinned when Porter failed to resist the impulse to draw back and show his distaste. "Something ARTISTIC - especially when this guy's mistress turns up. Don't forget, this is a PRINCE we're talking about here. It IS a royal engagement. And we don't want the bastards at the miserable bloody Moon to beat us to it."

Office of the editor of the Morning Moon, Cyril Service. He is instructing his chief photographer, Archie Apple, on covering a royal event. He lights a cheroot, and uses it for emphasis as he talks.

"By the way, Archie, have you heard any more from the Sun- that bloody silly job Riddle came up with, trying to tempt you away, just to spite me ?"

Office of the principal press officer to the Prince, Percival White, who is instructing Lucia, a young woman assistant, on her first serious assignment.

"It's those bloody tabloids we've got to watch - especially the photographers." (Writer A. Total 204 wds)

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 WiP No. 2 - At The Margin: Fifty Years of Hackery, by James Brennan.

London, 1946. At the War Office, awaiting Demob Day. It was five minutes from the House of Commons, where the war coalition had reverted to peacetime mode, with a strong government committed to planning a better Britain than we had known before 1939. I had been based there for a year or so on secondment from the Parachute Regiment, chairborne after several years of moving about a lot, and now like a fish out of water. Like thousands of others in the services, I was awaiting my demobilisation date, in July. What interested me most in those days was the proximity of Fleet Street, where I hoped to find a job in the near but uncertain future. It was a short walk to my first objective. Up St Martin's Lane and on to Long Acre, to the offices of the two national Labour papers, the Daily Herald and its Sunday companion, the People.

I was to be interviewed by the editor of the latter, Harry Ainsworth, about a reporting job when I was demobilised in July. We agreed on a starting date, but meanwhile he took me on as a Saturday casual, as all the Sundays did then to cover their busiest day of the week. The pay was two guineas the day, cash in hand.

For these weekly stints I went there in uniform (against King's Regulations, of course), and found an American major, Bill Richardson, also in uniform, doing the same thing. I was then a sergeant, but as always with the Americans I met he was relaxed about the differences in rank. He told a lot of stories based on his remarkable resemblance to Orson Welles. Within an hour of our arrival on the first day we were listening to a monologue by Hannen Swaffer, a popular show business and political columnist. He and the editor seemed to be down-to-earth Labourites, and it was a surprise to find they were also spiritualists and attended seances together (perhaps in search of scoops, the American suggested). Swaffer's only book at that time, My Greatest Story, explained that he set out to expose fake mediums and became a believer. His next book (still in my media collection), was Northcliffe's Return, in which the late proprietor of the Daily Mail group appeared at seances to inquire how the paper was getting on....

I started at the People as a fulltime reporter on 12 guineas a week, and for months was almost intoxicated, after those years of what seemed to be wasted time (1939-46), by the new, heady atmosphere of London journalism. It was a pleasure to meet some of the people I had been reading about during those boring years: James Cameron, Ted Castle (and through him Tom Hopkinson), Eric Blair (George Orwell), J.B. Priestley and others - mainly on the political left but, as I found, of independent spirit. Listening to them, occasionally bold enough to put in my pennyworth and even pay for a round, was always a stimulating experience. I was on a steep learning curve.

One of my early jobs was to deputise for the paper's diplomatic correspondent, Vivien Meik, to cover the first London meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations. For the first time I was mixing with an international media crowd, journalists from many parts of the world, some of them wellknown.

After a press briefing on the first day I was approached by a man who said he had, like me, just left "the Services" and was making contacts as a freelance journalist. I saw him again at other meetings of important bodies. He also turned up at the wellknown pub near the BBC where James Cameron introduced me to Orwell. Jim told me later: "He still works for the government, in either MI5 or 6 - undercover as a journalist, genuine NUJ card. Guard your tongue, laddie." I saw him again, but more of that when I find more of my old diaries.

James Cameron did a lot of travelling and writing, and became a star of documentary television. He also had poor health, and recently I came across a letter I had tucked away inside one of his books on my shelves. In my quarterly journal, The Media Reporter, I had given a plug to the reissue of one of his books, and sent him a note. We had not met for a few months, and the plan was to have a pub lunch in Fleet Street. But now he was between hospitals, and replied (handwritten) in September 1984 from his London home, 3 Eton College Road, NW3:

"Dear Jim, Thanks for cheery letter. Sorry I missed you. I got out of Guy's Hospital about a week ago, thought things were going well - then, bingo. They've discovered I've got this bloody thing in another place, too - the groin. So now I've got it in the throat and the crutch. I've already had more than 5 months in one hospital, now a new session in the Royal Free - which at least isn't too far away. It is really pretty disheartening. I could have done without this new chapter - already I've been on the unemployed since April: do I ever get to work again. Very best - Jim."

His books are on one of the shelves above my computer, with Tom Hopkinson and Tom Paine and Priestley and Russell and others. When frustrated and held up by some computerish foible I take one down and re-read a page or two. Jim died a few months after that letter, and my file includes a note from his widow, Moni, dated February 15, 1985, in response to my condolences.

 Fast Forward. Probably influenced by Jim Cameron's fine foreign correspondence, but as a possessor of itchy feet since childhood, I hankered after reporting from abroad. By then I had worked on the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and provincial papers, and was freelancing. It was on the plane home from Beijing, after my second visit, that I met an old colleague, Norman Cattanach, who was running the Thomson Foundation courses and had been checking progress in China. I agreed to join his team of contract lecturers, and as a result returned a few months later for my longest period in China, at the Foundation's expense.

It was there that, having lots of time before Mary came out to join me, I began a novel, Towards the Dark, and decided to do a Dickens - selling it by instalments as I went along. The idea was to be free of the freelance chores which, though plentiful for a time, rarely brought in enough to compare with a decent staff job.

Financially that idea was a dead loss. I gave up the attempt to do a Dickens. I had failed in my aim of writing my way out of freelance hackery, and sent embarrassed thanks and apologies to those two friendly people. I certainly should have remembered at the outset that journalists are used to getting their reading matter for nothing... But I could, perhaps, do something in publishing, on a small scale, as a one-man publisher and editor, maybe even on the internet. I had already launched the quarterly professional journal, The Media Reporter, and now decided on a newsletter, China Contact.

Back to the Sixties. After working at the People, and on evening papers outside London, I had got rid of the doubts about making it in hackery following those six wasted years in the army. Occasionally I had bridled at some bumptious senior hack who had climbed the career ladder on the basis of preferment or exemption from military service, but that feeling had disappeared after a year or two. When I started work as a sub-editor (Home news) at the Times, in Printing House Square....