Memoirs
William Rees-Mogg is one of the pivotal figures of post-war Britain. In this brilliantly entertaining memoir he recounts the story of a colourful life, and reflects on the key figures and events of his time.As editor of The Times (his glory years), journalist, commentator, Chairman of the Arts Council, and, later, Chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council (when he was accused of censorship), William Rees-Mogg has spent his life at the centre of events in politics and journalism.Often controversial and never dull, he has always had the courage to hold strong, fiercely defended opinions which go to the heart of the problems of the day. From his famous defence of Mick Jagger on a charge of possessing cannabis when he attacked the ‘primitive’ impulse to ‘break a butterfly on a wheel’, to his recent criticism of the morality behind the war in Kosovo and defence of monetarism, his writing has demanded attention, to the point of becoming newsworthy in itself.He knew and knows most of the anybodies who were anybody, from royalty to prime ministers, presidents, business magnates and religious leaders, and uses his unique insider perspective to great effect, with perceptive, sometimes provocative, recollections of people such as Rab Butler, Margaret Thatcher, Anthony Eden, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, Robin Day, Rupert Murdoch and many more.From an early age his life was filled with incident – among the many anecdotes are the stories of Noel Coward’s goldfish, his failure to inherit £30,000, his near-shooting at Trinity College, Oxford, an eventful stay at Chequers with Harold Wilson, conspiring with Shirley Williams against the Communists, his doomed attempts to enter politics and dinner with Ronald Reagan and Harold Macmillan.
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WILLIAM REES-MOGG
Memoirs
Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Chapter One - The Young Actress
Chapter Two - The Young Officer
Chapter Three - A House Built on a Hill
Chapter Four - A Peak in Darien
Chapter Five - But we’ll do more, Sempronius
Chapter Six - Everyone Wants to Be Attorney General
Chapter Seven - ‘A University Extension Course’
Chapter Eight - Thank you very much for … the Sunday Times
Chapter Nine - Sadat’s Viennese Ideal
Chapter Ten - Rivers of Blood
Chapter Eleven - ‘The future of Europe is not a matter of the price of butter’
Chapter Twelve - Palladio on Mendip
Chapter Thirteen - The Times ’ Lost Year
Chapter Fourteen - My Life as a Quangocrat
Chapter Fifteen - The Best of Business
Chapter Sixteen - My Road to Bibliomania
Chapter Seventeen - R. v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, ex parte Rees-Mogg
Chapter Eighteen - ‘ An Humbler Heaven ’
Index
Acknowledgements
Picture Section
Copyright
List of Illustrations
William, c. 1936 (Private Collection)
Cholwell, 1936 (Private Collection)
Fletcher, Beatrice, Aunty Molly, William and Andy, 1936 (Private Collection)
William, c. 1946 (Private Collection)
William as President of the Oxford Union, 1951 (Private Collection)
William reading the Evening Standard (Photograph by Otto Karminski © Times Newspapers)
The Rees-Mogg family at Ston Easton (Photograph by Anne Rees-Mogg)
Iverach McDonald being presented with a salver by William, 1973 (© Times Newspapers)
Roy Jenkins and William, 1978 (Private Collection)
Harold Wilson, William and Marcia Williams, 1963 (Photograph by Kelvin Brodie © Times Newspapers)
William addressing editorial staff, 1980 (Photograph by Bill Warhurst © Times Newspapers)
Press conference in London to announce the sale of the Times Newspapers Ltd to Rupert Murdoch (© Times Newspapers)
William with Margaret Thatcher, 1999 (Private Collection)
Pope John Paul II and William (Private Collection)
William with Alfonoso de Zulueta and Shirley Williams, 1966 (Photograph by Stanley Devon)
William photographed in 1982 (Photograph by Bill Warhurst © Times Newspapers)
William’s eightieth birthday (Private Collection)
Portrait of Alexander Pope (Photograph by Maud Craigie)
The Mogg family, painted by Richard Phelps c. 1731 (Photograph by Magnus Dennis)
Portrait of John Locke (Photograph by Maud Craigie)
Self portrait by Joshua Reynolds (Photograph by Maud Craigie)
William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, by Richard Brompton, 1773 (Photograph by Maud Craigie)
Foreword
In January 1977, my senior editorial colleagues gave a dinner at the Garrick Club to celebrate my tenth anniversary as Editor of The Times. It was a very pleasant evening for me, among people whom I regarded as both colleagues and friends. Charles Douglas-Home, himself due to become a distinguished Editor, had chosen a case of Château Lynch Bages as a present; I have only recently consumed the last bottle. I cannot recall the whole guest list. Louis Heren was in the chair, as Deputy Editor. Naturally we talked about The Times, with a good deal of confidence, despite the recurring problems with the print unions. We had no idea of the militant trade union crisis that was to come. Our proprietor, Roy Thomson, had died a couple of years before, but his son, Ken, had taken his place in an atmosphere of goodwill on both sides. Ken followed Roy’s principle of avoiding interference with the editorial side of the paper.
I remember, at the end of the evening, walking down the front steps of the club; Peter Jay was next to me. When we were about halfway down the steps, a thought passed through my mind. This surely was going to be as good as it would get, at least in personal or career terms. Would it not have been a better conclusion to my editorship if I had taken my colleagues by surprise and announced my intention to resign in my brief speech of thanks at the dinner?
I put the idea out of my mind, even if it was ever wholly present. I could hardly wheel round on the steps of the club and ask everyone to go back to the table, so that I could make a little announcement. In any case, I knew Ken Thomson better than any alternative Editor; I could hardly leave the paper until he was completely settled in. The moment passed before it had even fully formed. Nevertheless, the intention had entered my mind, and if I had had time to think it through I would have seen that there were strong reasons for following the advice of my subconscious mind. The next four years, with the closure and then the sale of The Times, was a difficult period. A contrast to the mood of the dinner I was just leaving.
If I had resigned at that dinner I would have been spared the worst crisis that The Times faced in the twentieth century, the one-year stoppage, and I would have had another four years to develop the next stage of my life.
Ex-Editors do find it difficult to establish a second half to their careers. I remember my first Editor, Gordon Newton, of the Financial Times, saying of his own retirement, ‘there is nothing so dead as a dead lion’. Some Editors have had successful careers in business. There is a phrase for the strategy of moving from a single big job with major executive responsibility, to the non-executive jobs which are more likely to be available. It is said that these personages have gone ‘multiple’. At any rate I went multiple, and have had geological layers of different forms of employment in the period since I made a final retirement from editing
