Another blessed Waugh memorial

Auberon Waugh was happy to admit that most journalism is merely tomorrow’s chip paper but, of all the journalists of his generation, his penny-a-line hackery seems most likely to endure.

What made him so special? Like all great writers, it was a combination of style and substance. He had a lovely way with words — he could write a shopping list and make you want to read it — and his libertarian diatribes were wonderfully unorthodox, lambasting pompous humbugs on the left and on the right. Yes, he could be outrageous (and often gloriously rude), but even his most outlandish opinions contained a grain of truth. Above all, he was funny. His humour was absurd but it was underpinned by logic, and his savage assaults on the not-so-great and not-so-good were redeemed by some excellent jokes at his own expense.

In 2010, I compiled an anthology of Waugh’s writing (still available in some good bookshops — and quite a lot of bad ones) and was pleasantly surprised by how well it sold, and how widely it was reviewed. Sure, a lot of his fans were journalists, but his appeal extended far beyond Fleet Street. His Tory anarchism belongs to a rich literary tradition that stretches back to Swift and Dr Johnson. His death, in 2001, aged 61, was front-page news.

I never knew Waugh personally (I interviewed him once, which doesn’t really count, and said hello to him once or twice at Literary Review), and when I sat down to compile that anthology I was mindful thatI had no right to call him Bron, as his many friends did. Yet reading Naim Attallah’s new anthology, I wonder whether this was actually an asset. Attallah was a close friend of Waugh’s, and his boss and patron during Waugh’s long stint as editor of Literary Review.