GENERAL

the union’s ‘dirty work’. I saw the letter which Donald Trelford wrote to the unions telling them to accept the new technology or leave the paper. In the scandal of the fake Hitler diaries in 1983, everyone comes off badly. Hugh Trevor-Roper, who attested to the diaries’ authenticity, didn’t have good enough German to make such a judgement, especially after only a brief look. The only person who emerges with credit is the detestable David Irving, who thought the diaries were bogus. The story is one of stupidity, ignorance, greed, and incompetence, from the editor, Charles Douglas-Home, and proprietor down; I am astounded that elsewhere Stewart is able to praise those who lowered themselves into the Hitler quagmire. Did it never occur to anyone to ask if a Hitler diary, even if authentic, would be worth millions of pounds? The issue is ably discussed in Bruce Page’s The Murdoch Archipelago, listed in Stewart’s bibliography but not cited in his footnotes. Another big set piece is Stewart’s account of The Times’s campaign in 1999 to expose the Tories’ treasurer, Michael Ashcroft, as a crook – a witch-hunt that failed. Peter Stothard, the editor, imagined that ‘kicking the [Tory] party when it was down was the best way to restore it to its feet’. Two Labour supporters drove the hunt. Stothard denied that The Times had paid someone to hack into the Tory bank account. Stewart drily observes, ‘This was, technically, true’: the paper had hired private detectives ‘and had not chosen to get involved in the methods by which they obtained results’. This ‘gave the impression that the hunt was being pursued with gleeful expectation’. More damningly still, ‘Information has been shared between Tom Baldwin [one of the lead reporters on the story] and Government and parliamentary sources in a manner that made The Times look as if it were in cahoots with a Labour conspiracy against a Tory treasurer.’ By now, after dozens of stories, The Timeswas facing a gigantic libel suit. And here we discover that Stewart’s oft-repeated assurance, supported by past editors Simon Jenkins and Peter Stothard, that Rupert Murdoch did not interfere in the running of The Times, does not stand up. Alarmed at the prospect of a multimillion-pound libel penalty, Murdoch – understandably – met Ashcroft. A front-page ‘Correction’ stated that: ‘The Times is pleased to confirm that it has no evidence that Mr Ashcroft or any of his companies has ever been suspected of money laundering or drug-related crimes.’ Some time later Stothard was named ‘Editor of the Year’. The citation included praise for the Ashcroft campaign: ‘having got the story, The Times just wouldn’t shut up’. If The Times had gone to court and lost many millions of pounds in damages and costs, Stewart contends, it would have ‘ensured not only the abrupt termination of Stothard’s editorship but, more importantly, it would

have inflicted a wound to his paper’s integrity’. Furthermore, ‘Had The Times lost in the High Court, this [Stothard’s] courage would have been decried as criminal.’ The Times’s proprietor dismissed the entire event as ‘a black eye’. Actually, Murdoch had saved Stothard’s and the paper’s bacon – by decisively interfering in an editorial matter. No one on the paper suffered for the Ashcroft neardebacle; as with the Hitler diaries scandal, there were no resignations, no sackings – except that in the Ashcroft affair, it seems, the long-experienced deputy editor, John Bryant, who disliked this campaign, was possibly dropped because his views ‘may have rankled with Stothard’. With perhaps only one exception Stewart speaks admiringly, occasionally absurdly so, of all the editors, managers and journalists in the Murdoch years. He is equally admiring of Rupert Murdoch, who once claimed that his greatest achievement as a ‘patron of the popular arts’ was to save The Times. This is the first time I have heard The Timesdescribed as a ‘popular art’. The Times’s story is told well here, though there are plenty of details that many might dispute. Graham Stewart, who interviewed me at length, gives me my say over almost ten pages. He only partially accepts it, which is his right. To say he is fair may sound tepid. Actually it is high praise. To order this book at £24, see order form on page 78

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LITERARY REVIEW Dec 2005 / Jan 2006