Read Online Letters from London by Julian Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

page before its rivals did; it teasingly produced a color supplement largely in black-and-white, and offered broad, vivacious obituaries, which contrasted sharply with the turgid necrologies of Sir Tufton Bufton and his ilk to be found in
The Times
. While being “independent,” the new paper has swiftly built up its own establishment, which alarmingly overlaps with that of the old
Times
. A small but pertinent distress signal blew when Graham Greene, inveterate writer of letters to
The Times
and genial provocateur, started addressing his envelopes to
The Independent
instead. In one of his earliest statements after taking office, Simon Jenkins, asked to say which of his immediate rivals he was targeting, named them all, but added, “There is only one paper which, five years ago, put its tanks on our lawn and that is
The Independent?
This is indeed the case, though it has to be said that the tanks went in with hardly a shot being fired, while the front fence hadn’t been mended for years.
    And when you get inside this famous stately home you find that the walls are peeling, the linen-fold paneling has been ripped out, and most of the (probably genuine) Old Masters have been sold off Visitors are still happy to pay the entrance charge, but many leave shaking their heads at the way the old place has been run down. All of which makes the appointment of Simon Jenkins thoroughly appropriate not just in fact but also in metaphor. He first made his name in the early seventies as a journalist campaigning to save bits of London from the property developers and helped found an organization called Save Britain’s Heritage. Now he has been handed the biggest heritage-saving job of his career.
    Jenkins, who is forty-six, is a cultivated and charming man, dapper in appearance, scrupulously polite yet intellectually steely; very English, while also being married to the American actress Gayle Hunnicutt. He is a writing editor, with an excellent track record: as campaigner; as editor, at thirty-three, of the
London Evening Standard
, and then as political editor of
The Economist
for seven years. Until recently he was a columnist on the
Sunday Times
, while also occupying himself with the sort of great-and-good roles (on the board of British Rail) which normally come later in life. He had resigned from the
Sunday Times
and was just about to join
The Independent
when headhunted by
The Times
. Ironically, he now has to go into daily battle with the paper he nearly joined, convincing himself that it isn’t really as good as he thought, scouting for weaknesses, and giving added credence to any whispers of financial instability.
    But does
The Times
still have any symbolic value? Is it still “the newspaper of record”? (And does that phrase, in any case, meanmuch? Surely all newspapers aspire to be newspapers of record; the phrase is as redundant as “investigative journalist”) Rather to his surprise. Jenkins says, he finds that the
Times
legend retains its force. “There’s something about British newspaper readers,” he says. “They want there to be a
Times
even if they don’t read it. It’s like wanting the Royal Family to be there, or a rural station to be kept open even if they don’t use it.” Much goodwill remains, though of a rigorous kind:
The Times
doesn’t just have readers; it has fingernail monitors. If a journalist puts “Lady Miranda Spofforth” instead of “Miranda, Lady Spofforth” (or vice versa), stern letters flow from rectory and dower house. After Lord Rothschild’s death recently,
The Times
obituary muddled up his succession, and the rebukes came in like thrown fish knives.
    When Jenkins is asked to locate his politics, he describes himself as an “enthusiastic Thatcherite,” applauding her “iconoclasm” and finding her economic policies “wholly salutary.” (Asked about the Rowland-Fayed squabble, he murmurs, “A plague on the whole bloody business,” and judges Minister Ridley’s