The phantoms of the opera

No doubt Mr Blair will soon be at work on his memoirs; or perhaps his ghost will. Ghosts play a necessary role in the publishing business. Indeed all those firms who rely for their profits on the autobiographies — and even occasionally the novels — of celebrities might collapse without the work of these industrious spectres. Till quite recently their existence was veiled in obscurity and the pretence was maintained that politicians, actors, singers and sportspersons were indeed the authors of the books which appeared under their name. This make-believe is no longer sustainable. Too many so-called authors have casually remarked in interviews that they haven’t actually read their own book. (No politician has yet been honest enough to make this admission. ‘What’s new?’ you say.) Now ghosts are recognised. We all know that Hunter Davies has been slaving away at the five-volume autobiography of Wayne Roon- ey. Uphill work, indeed; Churchill’s War Memoirs ran to six volumes with some ghostly assistance, but his was a rather fuller life than the young Manchester United striker’s.

There is nothing new in the use of ghosts. Dumas for instance employed them to make drafts of novels or write those passages that bored him. In 19th-century France ghosts were known as nègres; suitably enough, since negritude then still connoted slavery. I doubt if the term is now permissible, though such is the admirable conservatism of France that it may yet be employed, if only surreptitiously. Dumas used ghosts to save time and enable him to meet all his commitments. Other novelists have done so, reluctantly, because their talent was exhausted. Francis King revealed in his autobiography, Yesterday Came Suddenly, that he had ghosted substantial parts of some of L. P. Hartley’s last books.