Obituaries of Paul Johnson, who died last week, have captured his prodigious gifts of exposition, wide range of knowledge and formidable power of attack. All true, but there are good things to be added, which I saw as his editor at this paper in the 1980s, and as a friend. Despite his reputation for uncertain temper – Jonathan Miller said he ‘looked like an explosion in a pubic hair factory’ – Paul was a most reliable and easy contributor. His copy was self-starting, to length, on time. It hardly needed editing (except that he was, like Evelyn Waugh, surprisingly bad at spelling). Given that he lived entirely on what he wrote, I was touched that he never once complained about The Spectator’s fee for his weekly contribution, which was tiny (£90, I think). At that time, his column was about the press. It was, of course, fearless, and made trouble for many mighty media moguls but, for us in the office, Paul made no trouble at all. He was also very funny. In conversation, he was good at guying his own grand manner. ‘I get on very well with the Pope,’ he would say, laughing. ‘He reads my books and I read his encyclicals.’ He knew how to turn his gift for exaggeration to comic effect. He talked boldly to the great, sometimes affecting not to know who they were, sometimes genuinely not knowing. On one occasion, Paul was holding forth to a knot of admirers about modern Greece. A young man at the edge of the group ventured to disagree. ‘Young man,’ said Paul, with the mock disdain in which he specialised. ‘What do you know about Greece?’ ‘I am the King of Greece,’ said Constantine II (who, as it happens, also died last week). Paul was unabashed: I suspect he had known this all along.
Certainly Paul could be alarming. A friend of mine, aged about 20, attended one of the Johnson family parties. Paul was writing a book about ancient Egypt. My friend made polite inquiries about it. ‘Look,’ said Paul, ‘are you really interested?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Come on then.’ He dragged the young man off to his study, left him alone with a pile of books about pharaohs, and went back to the party. Yet at parties, Paul was usually extremely genial. That, chiefly, is the milieu in which I remember him with the indomitable, cheerful Marigold (the latter still, happily, with us), content to be teased and challenged, emanating astonishing energy in his search for gossip, trouble and fun.
What was Paul’s importance as a writer? Much of it rested in his qualities as an old-fashioned preacher and equally old-fashioned man of letters. His well-stocked mind could turn to almost any subject and see where the high emotion and chief interest lay. He then rendered what he had found into strong, clear prose which one could read with excitement and engagement. This made him, deeply English though he was, extremely popular in the United States, where there is a great appetite for synoptic historical narrative combined with trenchant views. But although he loved to preach a line, Paul was much too independent-minded to be held to one. His greatest political impact was in his move from left to right in the 1970s, much of it expressed in these pages. His switch from the New Statesman to The Spectator was part of something much wider, but uniquely well expressed. Paul was always good at the romance of politics and had been the great romantic leftist of his journalistic generation. In Britain, the romance of the left had perished in the dreariness of polytechnics and the misery of strikes. Paul found and expressed the new romance of resurgent conservatism. Hard to discern a second Paul Johnson on the horizon now, though the time badly needs one.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill (GRR), now the subject of a Section 35 order from the UK government, contains an interesting precedent. Under the GRR’s provisions, a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) by self-identification alone is available not only to anyone living in Scotland, but also to anyone born in Scotland but living elsewhere. This contrasts with the rules for the 2014 Scottish independence referendum which, controversially, excluded Scottish-born absentees from voting. If we ever have Indyref2, I hope the GRR practice will be followed. If those born in Scotland but living away are able to change their sex under a Scottish law, why should they be forbidden to vote on the future of their native land?
It is a benefit of wokery that it prompts one to look anew. I was always slightly ashamed that I had never read a novel by Walter Scott. Over Christmas, however, it was reported that Warwick University’s English department had issued trigger warnings to students against ‘offensive’ passages in Ivanhoe about ‘people of colour’ and the attribution to Muslims of anti-Semitic sentiments. I blew the dust off my Victorian edition and read it. Almost needless to say, the warning makes no allowance for the fact that the novel is set in the Middle Ages and fictionalises the attitudes of that time, rather than merely reflecting Scott’s own views. But the much more important point is that the most gripping part of the narrative is its vivid assault on anti-Semitism, personified in the superb character of Rebecca, daughter of the usurer, Isaac of York – sexy, brave, strong yet modest, loving a Gentile (I won’t tell you who), but faithful to her Judaism. I have rarely read a more truly anti-racist novel. Of this, the Warwick woke wardens make no mention.
As in past years, the editor has kindly allowed me to publicise the AGM of the Rectory Society, which I chair. It is to be held at 6 for 6.30 p.m. on Monday 6 February at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. Our guest speaker is Sir Michael Palin, ex-Python, televisual traveller and now vice-president of the National Churches Trust. Tickets cost £20 for non-members. Please apply to the secretary, Alison Everington, ali@everington.net.
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