Max Hastings

Diary – 10 December 2005

I am already past a sensible age to edit a big newspaper

The avalanche of words on last week’s Adair pensions report seemed to miss one significant point. Retirement is likely to be delayed to 67 or even later. Yet there is no realistic possibility that most people can sustain, at such an age, the jobs they held at 47 or 57. Even in an era when we are bursting with expensive health, few workers performing functions that require physical exertion or creative imagination can meet such demands late into their seventh decade. Commercial life will become moribund, if senior executives are given a right to stay at the helm into their late sixties, keeping big salaries and perks, even if exceptional individuals can justify them. Approaching 60, I know that I am already past a sensible age to edit a big newspaper, even if someone were rash enough to want me to. We need to start getting used to the idea that, in our last years before formal retirement, most of us will have to do humbler jobs than we have been used to, for more modest rewards. The rows about persuading people to accept this notion will be at least as fierce as those about a higher pensionable age.

We saw a delightful Manon at the Royal Opera House last week. One of my earlier appearances in the ROH audience caused Frank Johnson to exclaim with mingled disbelief and derision, ‘Why, if it isn’t that well-known balletomane, Max Hastings!’ Condescension will get him nowhere, the creature. Ballet meant nothing to me, like many men, until I was 45, but now delights. It is a just criticism of journalists that we write eagerly about institutions when they are struggling, and not at all when they prosper. A decade or two ago the ROH was seldom out of the news, as it staggered from one crisis to the next.

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