The Times’s internal guide to writing its obituaries has fallen into my hands. It adds new terrors to death. Questing after interest (‘the quirkier the better’), it invites obituarists to ask unusual questions about the dead: ‘Were they cold-hearted bastards in the workplace?’ ‘Did they enjoy baiting their neighbour’s dog and teaching their grandchildren to smoke?’ It also advocates ‘the gentle saying of the opposite of what is meant… If, for example, we say that the wife of XXXXX [here it names a well-known politician] “definitely was not once a high-class prostitute”, British readers would assume she definitely was’. The most entertaining obituaries ‘treat their subjects as if they were fictional characters’, we are told. There follows a long list of recommended euphemisms to describe various faults and foibles. These include ‘He had an uncompromisingly direct way with the opposite sex (flasher)’ , ‘She believed in hands-on mentoring (affairs with junior colleagues etc), ‘He believed in old world values (wanted to bring back the birch, especially for members of the LGBT community)’, ‘She was active in local affairs (busybody)’ etc. Relations of the deceased are a nuisance, apparently, because they want ‘to protect the family’s narrative’, but worth talking to because ‘the telling details can be teased out of spouses and children too’.
The Times guide’s advice is not all wrong; but the subjects of this arch joshing are not fictional characters. They are real people who have just died. Surely the full accurate facts of the person’s life, fairly assessed, must come first, in the interests of record. Nowhere in the Times guide are these insisted on. I am biased, of course, but if your distinguished loved one is on the way out, I suggest you avoid the Times extracting ‘telling details’ from your children for its merciless merriment, and tip off the kindly obituaries desk of the Daily Telegraph instead.
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