Abstract
The Daily Mail has shedloads of enemies, most of whom simply cannot understand why it is so successful (and often why they are not). They should read this often hilarious, gossipy and revealing book. Somehow the bien pensants nurse the illusion that if only the editor Paul Dacre (who's had the job for the past 25 years) were defenestrated, all would be well and the Mail's millions of readers would eventually come to their senses.
Anti-Mail hatred is mostly centred on the figure of Dacre, a large, socially clumsy hulk of a man who is, according to Stephen Fry, “as loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid, vengeful and disgusting a man as it is possible to be”. Another voluble enemy is The Guardian's Polly Toynbee, who is so obsessed with loathing for Dacre and his aggressive organ that she seems at times to have gone a bit loopy.
Surprisingly, both Fry and Toynbee produced coverline encomia for the book that made me wonder whether they'd actually read it; perhaps they'd been looking forward to reading a hatchet job in their favour. “Tremendous … A damned good read” (Fry) and “This diamond-sharp analysis of the Mail phenomenon … A riveting read” (Toynbee).
Mail Men is not a hatchet job, but it is indeed “a riveting read”. The paper's demonic reputation among the liberal tribes is bizarrely inflated by them. After all, as the author calmly states in his first sentence: “It's only a newspaper. Yet some believe the Daily Mail is imbued with almost supernatural powers – it can handpick government policy, and almost single-handedly scared over half the electorate into taking Britain out of the European Union”.
The first, shortish section of the book is an efficient round-up of the oft-told history of the Harmsworth/Rothermere/Northcliffe clan and the paper's birth in 1896. An eccentric, half-bonkers lot most of them were, with myriad confusing family nicknames – Buffles, Puggy, Bonch, Sunny, Bunny. It was Bunny, aka the first Lord Rothermere, who fell madly in love with Hitler and fascism; Hitler cynically returned the compliment, declaring that this star-struck oaf was “one of the very greatest of all Englishmen”.
But the book is chiefly devoted to the two men most responsible for the Mail's current success: the late Sir David English and the Stakhanovite 14-hour-day Dacre. English was a gleeful, flamboyant, slightly spivvy, feline, untrustworthy, manipulative figure – and I adored him. He believed that encouraging “creative tension” – namely the Mail's standard working atmosphere of fear and loathing – would keep the place fizzing.
After all, he'd seen what happens to a newspaper when it loses energy and begins to die of complacency and genteel good taste – which was what was happening to the Mail when he arrived as editor. He shook the place out of its torpor and fired most of its editorial staff in what became known as “the Night of the Long Envelopes”. I never received a deadly long envelope because I chose not to join the staff; my obstinacy rather amused him. Now and then he would call me into his office on the pretext that he needed my views on various personnel changes, because “you're an insider/outsider”.
And one day he asked me whether he should make Dacre features editor. “You'd be mad to do that,” I spluttered. Dacre was then news editor and his towering rages and bullying behaviour were legendary. “That sort of behaviour is fine for News,” I grandly informed English, “because young baby reporters are like squaddies in a war. They have to be terrified and bullied into going over the top. But Features is Poets' Corner, full of delicate flowers whose petals would fall off if they were shouted at. They'd all disappear to go and have a good cry on the fire escape”.
A couple of weeks later English rang me, giggling triumphantly: “My darling, as so often, I've totally ignored your advice. Paul is now features editor. But I've told him he's not to contact you in person because you seem a bit allergic to him! I'll deal with you direct”.
This was sheer mischief on English's part and the resulting creative tension did indeed make things tricky for a while. But Dacre's social awkwardness, even shyness, with women meant he didn't shout at me, or accuse me of being a “cunt”, a favourite term of abuse (always directed at men, never women). The paper always lambasts “bad language” when uttered by others, but its editor's language is certainly among the filthiest around; during daily editorial conferences executives are often called the c-word (hence the conference nickname – The Vagina Monologues).
As this book makes abundantly clear, Dacre does not share English's gleeful enjoyment of journalism; English loved stunts, plots and parties (although I never saw him drunk; there was a certain inner iciness about him which would not allow him to relinquish control). Instead, Dacre seems to be permanently fired up by a genuine visceral anger that the modern world is not as he would wish it to be: no inner iciness evident.
One day he invited me to lunch in the office dining room with Paul Condon, the then head of the Metropolitan police. In 1993 a young black architecture student called Stephen Lawrence had been set upon and murdered by five white racist thugs, but there had been no charges. Dacre is not much given to small talk and it soon became evident from his reddening face that he was about to explode with frustration when, over the dainty starters, Condon excused the lack of any charges: “We're faced with a wall of silence in the area”. Wall of silence? A red rag to a bull. Dacre, having roundly insulted his guest, suddenly fell silent and soon terminated the meal.
None of us in that small lunch group could have guessed what would happen next: the publication of the Mail's famous and controversial front page, with the word “Murderers” splashed across it, illustrated by photographs of the thugs in question. This blatant contempt of court could have resulted in a jail sentence, not for the thugs, but for Dacre himself.
Whatever people think of him, his politics or his somewhat old-fashioned view of society he is, in my experience, a brave, painfully sincere and often generous man, and – as this book makes clear – the consistently brilliant editor of a remarkable newspaper.
