FROM THE PULPIT

BRENDAMADDOX The Pernicious Editor

others filmed that day, or that the one question to which I alone knew the answer (was it planted just for me because I had written a book on the subject?) had to be repeated and refilmed. ‘Could you say “DNA” once more, Brenda?’ asked St Jeremy. ‘The cameras didn’t get a clear view

A PHOTOGRAPHOF the robed and crowned Queen to which the words ‘flouncing out’ were appended was able to make headlines, especially when coupled with a mistake in judgement by the beleaguered BBC. Her Majesty, it was later explained, was not walking out of a photographic session in anger, but peacefully walking in. That ‘before’ and ‘after’ should have been transposed was an editorial error by the private producer of the programme, compounded by the BBC’s foolish mistake in boasting of the fake sequence as one of its forthcoming attractions. But too much blame has been heaped on the BBC for an editorial exercise in which any broadcaster, producer, or writer for that matter, engages. All editing is lying. That is, it takes a sequence of words or pictures and tidies them up to make the intended meaning clearer. The most outrageous comment I heard in recent weeks was the irate Muslim cleric who claimed that his reported statement that homosexual men were an abomination and should be thrown off a mountain was quoted ‘out of context’. In what context would those vivid words be benign? Any quotation is, by definition, out of context. To tweezer a few significant words out of the mass of verbiage in which they were issued is the job of any editor or producer or speech writer. To call this practice dishonest can only mean that the accuser has never worked with words, never tried to get the essence of a statement, a speech or a letter into a small space where it stands a chance of catching the reader’s or viewer’s attention. There can be no doubt that television is guilty of distorting reality more than the print media. Time is shorter; costs are greater. The question to ask is when the viewer should be informed that some lines were spoken by actors or some of the words omitted in the interests of brevity. Some of the fault lies in the credulity of the viewer, who tends to believe that a picture cannot lie. A couple of years ago I had the heady experience of appearing on University Challenge, on a team fronted by the Royal Society of Literature. When I got to the Granada Studios in Manchester, I was surprised to see that the gifted Jeremy Paxman does not do only one of these shows at a time – he always looked so spontaneous and keyed-up for the event – but records several in a single day. Different teams, different audiences, repeated trips to ‘make-up’ yield a slew of programmes which BBC2 later broadcasts in its own arranged sequence. Our team performed clumsily and flubbed many of the literary questions which seemed chosen just for us. Many weeks later, when the programme finally went out, a friend told me he was surprised that our team had got ‘the Jane Austen question’ wrong. ‘Which Jane Austen question?’ I asked him. There had been several. ‘You mean that the programme was edited?’ he gasped in shock–horror. He was more shaken when I told him of the several

of you saying it.’ (Or words to that effect.) Would that repeating and rephrasing be disallowed by purists who want nothing out of context? For that matter, should every schoolchild be taught about ‘the noddies’? The standard practice after a television interview is to have the subject smile and nod for the camera to give a series of shots that can be interposed to make the onscreen interview seem brighter. But it is not television alone that is guilty. Every biographer who uses a tape recorder accumulates hours of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and ‘let-me-put-that-another-ways’, out of which only one or two quotes are extracted for the final text. To be sure, editing involves more than cutting. It can include rewording and substituting the editor’s preferred words for the writer’s. I have had some apoplectic moments when dealing with American editors of my biographies written and published in Britain. They are deeply suspicious of English touches, especially in text written by subversives like myself who have crossed the Atlantic and pledged foreign allegiance. When the American editor of my 1994 biography of D H Lawrence looked at the text already published (and edited) by Sinclair-Stevenson, she spotted a terrible error. In a passage referring to the author Norman Douglas’s 1917 arrest for child molestation in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, she pencilled fiercely in the margin: ‘The Natural History Museum is not in South Kensington. It is in Brompton.’ She had never been to London but had a reliable guidebook for her fact-checking. Lawrence himself was almost too much for her. When I quoted the description of the bullfight that opens The Plumed Serpent, ‘the bull once more lowered his head and pushed his sharp, flourishing horns in the horse’s belly, working them up and down inside there with a sort of vague satisfaction’, she threw away her blue pencil in outrage. ‘The author will have to be responsible for this editing herself’, she said. ‘I don’t have to read this.’ However, moving on in my text, she took exception to a phrase in which I referred to a ‘passive homosexual’. Her marginal comment was that she did not think that homosexuals would agree that there was any such thing as a ‘passive homosexual’. ‘I believe that the buggeree is also the fellator,’ she wrote knowledgeably. To which I could only respond in the margin, ‘I don’t have to read this!’ and the offensive phrase survived. So, all editing is suspect. The only guard against its follies is eternal vigilance. The creator of prose or pictures must be ready to fight and fight again to protect the original intent.

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LITERARY REVIEW September 2007 CONTENTS

THIS MONTH’S PULPITis written by Brenda Maddox, whose many biographies include Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, winner of the Marsh Biography Award 2003. Her latest book, Freud’s Wizard: The Enigma of Ernest Jones, is published by John Murray.

RICHARDOVERY’s The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia was awarded the Wolfson Prize for History 2005 and is available in paperback from Penguin.

SARAHWISEis the author of The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London(Pimlico). Her investigation of late nineteenth-century East London poverty, The Blackest Streets, will be published next year.

LESLIEMITCHELLis Emeritus Fellow of University College, Oxford. His most recent publications include a life of Bulwer-Lytton and a study of the Whig Party entitled The Whig World.

GILLIANTINDALL’s books include Celestine, Voices from a French Village (Vintage) and The Journey of Martin Nadaud(Pimlico).

DOUGLASMURRAYis an author and the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion.

JOHNTHIEME edits The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. His latest book, R K Narayan, is published by Manchester University Press in September.

JESSICAMANN’s The Mystery Writer is published in paperback this month by Allison & Busby.

JOHN ADAMSON is a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. His new book, The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the New Year.

PULPIT

BIOGRAPHY

HISTORY

VSNAIPAUL

WANDERLUST

LITERARY LIVES

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BRENDAMADDOX

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77

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1100 1122 1133

LESLIEMITCHELL The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby Angus Hawkins JANE RIDLEY Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother Anne Sebba GRAHAMSTEWART Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency Nigel Hamilton SIMONHEFFER The Wagner Clan Jonathan Carr Winnie & Wolf A N Wilson FRANKMCLYNN Billy the Kid Michael Wallis MARYKENNY Dorothy Macardle: A Life Nadia Clare Smith DAVIDCESARANI Plutocrats: A Rothschild Inheritance George Ireland

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RAYMONDSEITZ Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century David Reynolds JOHNADAMSON Cavalier: A Tale of Chivalry, Passion and Great Houses Lucy Worsley NIGELJONES The Line Upon a Wind Noel Mostert Storm and Conquest Stephen Taylor Cochrane the Dauntless David Cordingly SARAHWISE The Tichborne Claimant Rohan McWilliam WILLIAMANTHONYHAY The First Day of the Blitz Peter Stansky RICHARDOVERY Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophes Robert Gellately JONATHANMIRSKY The First Emperor of China Frances Wood The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army (Ed) Jane Portal

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Extract from ‘A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling’

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RONALDBLYTHE The Wild Places Robert MacFarlane CHRISTOPHERHART The Thames: Sacred River Peter Ackroyd GILLIANTINDALL The Discovery of France Graham Robb

3355 3366 3388

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KATHERINEDUNCAN-JONES Shakespeare’s Wife Germaine Greer ALEXANDERWAUGH The Mitford Letters (Ed) Charlotte Mosley ALLANMASSIE Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes AndrewLycett Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters Daniel Stashower WILLIAMPALMER Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life Philip Davis

Editor: NANCYSLADEK Deputy Editor: TOMFLEMING Editor-at-Large: JEREMYLEWIS Assistant Editor: PHILIPWOMACK General Assistant: CASSIEBROWNE

Contributing Editors: ALANRAFFERTY, SEBASTIANSHAKESPEARE Advertising Manager: TERRYFINNEGAN Classified Advertising: DAVIDSTURGE Founding Editor: DRANNESMITH Founding Father: AUBERONWAUGH Cover illustration by Chris Riddell Issue no. 347

LITERARY REVIEW September 2007

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