MEDIA STUDIES
The Thunderer brought low; the Bradford book is a vulgarity too far, even for today's Times
STEPHEN GLOVER
Ihad thought to write about Max Hast- ings, the new editor of the Evening Stan- dard, but he can wait a bit. The Times is the issue, and its serialisation of Sarah Brad- ford's forthcoming biography of the Queen.
According to the newspaper, this `acclaimed' author was allowed access to private correspondence and memoirs, as well as to 'the Queen's inner circle'. I was nonetheless taken aback to read in the extract what purported to be an authorita- tive account of the early sex life of the Queen and her consort: 'In the beginning the marriage was a success on every level; physically, mentally and temperamentally the couple were compatible. Elizabeth was physically passionate and very much in love with her husband. Philip found her sexually attractive and was equally, though perhaps more coolly, in love.'
I can still barely believe that I read these words in the Times, even the debased, Mur- doch-owned Times. I can't see how any liv- ing person, other than the Queen and Prince Philip, and possibly not even they, is in a position to supply an expert history of their early sex life. Did one of the famous `inner circle' offer a view? Did some elderly, bewhiskered toady confide in his cups to Mrs Bradford, aka Viscountess Bangor, that the royal couple were known to be exceptionally energetic in their younger days? It does not seem very likely. I rather think that the Vis- countess made it up, or at any rate relied very heavily on her imagination.
Viscountess or not, it was plainly crazy to allow such a person within a thousand miles of any personal correspondence or memoirs. But the Queen's naivety does not get the Times off the hook. One might expect that this of all newspapers, even in what is nearly the 16th year of Rupert Mur- doch's proprietorship, would not publish matters which should be kept private between any living couple on this earth. There might be a journalistic case to be made if Mrs Bradford had produced the goods, however tasteless they might be. That was the defence of Andrew Morton, whose revelations about the Princess of Wales were widely pooh-poohed when they were first published by the Sunday Times. Mr Morton is a very good journalist. But Mrs Bradford is not a very good historian and she is no kind of journalist at all. She approaches the question of Prince Philip's alleged infidelities in a leering sort of way without offering new information. It took the Daily Mirror to go the whole hog last Monday, 'splashing' on its front page with the headline: 'Philip's 27 Trysts With Beauty'.
Why did Peter Stothard, the editor of the Times, agree to publish this tosh? Many people assume that Mr Stothard is a typi- cally hard-boiled Murdoch editor, a sort of re-tread of Charlie Wilson, editor of the Times in the dark years of 1986 to 1990, who now bizarrely reigns at the Independent. It is not so at all. I have known Mr Stothard a long time, and can vouch for his being the most sensitive of souls. There was a time when a volume of Latin poetry was rarely very far from his side. He would never normally discuss the sex lives of his married friends in a lip- smacking way, any more than I could be prevailed upon to divulge the early sexual adventures of Mr Stothard or his delightful wife, the romantic novelist Sally Emerson. Why then does he think it right to publish tittle-tattle about the sex lives of the Queen and Prince Philip in the years almost before he was born?
One explanation is that he had no option. He was ordered to do it. If it was not Mr Murdoch himself who picked up the telephone and told him to publish, then it was some senior executive with a face like a tombstone whose instructions could not be gainsaid. Such a version of events is very difficult to believe. Mr Stothard is more completely his own man than any editor of the Times since Harry Evans. This is because he has been so successful. The newspaper price war has undoubtedly dam- aged several national newspapers but it has been a boon to the Times, the instigator of it all, which has almost doubled its circula- tion. Mr Stothard, who almost alone with Mr Murdoch was a zealous proponent of the price war when other senior executives `Tell me the story about the Prince and you in the club in Soho, Grandma.' had their misgivings, has enhanced his rep- utation within the Murdoch empire.
It may be that although no one tele- phoned Mr Stothard he perfectly anticipat- ed his master's wishes. I even doubt this. Mr Stothard serialised Sarah Bradford's book because he truly believes it to be good stuff, and he thought that it would benefit the circulation of the Times. His recipe for the newspaper is to combine rather high- minded and distinguished columnists such as dear old William Rees-Mogg and Ana- tole Kaletsky with regular excursions into the vulgar and banal. And, with a lot of help from the price war, it has worked for him because sales have soared. But for old Times readers it is an infuriating mix. The paper's former voice, discernible in the leaders, letters, columnists and obituaries, co-exists unhappily with the sexual perverts, dysfunctional royals, models drugged up to their eyeballs, and high-rolling footballers who inhabit the tabloid-like news pages.
It is difficult not to sympathise with Mr Stothard. All broadsheet editors grapple with these dilemmas and most of them suc- cumb in different ways. But what, in the end, is the point of the Times? It is because Mr Stothard is essentially not a vulgarian that one looks to him, hoping against hope, to restore his newspaper to some of its for- mer dignity.
The question is whether his publication of Sarah Bradford's biography is one vul- garity too far. It is an odd state of affairs when the supposedly mid-market Daily Mail gets on its high horse, as it did last Monday, and lectures the Times from its leader column. There was more to this than the sour grapes of one royal-obsessed newspaper seeing itself being outdone by another. It appears that the Mail's propri- etor, Viscount Rothermere, who has a sur- prisingly sure sense in his ivory tower of what the middle classes will and won't put up with, intervened with his editor, Paul Dacre, who had hurriedly confected a last- minute Prince Philip sex-scandal story two days earlier in order to match the Times. The Mail, at least, has now decided to ring- fence the Queen and Prince Philip and pro- tect them. There is more than a little self- interest in this decision. Mr Stothard's greatest problem is that he does not have a proprietor who can help him.
Stephen Glover will write on the media every week.
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