The Hugo Young Papers [antikvár]

Foreword by Harold Evans Hugo Young was deceptive. This is not to say he was deceitfuh he was incapable of artifice. On first meeting him, many people - including me - got the wrong impression because his convictions and indeed his passions were subordinate to his modesty and forbearance. Reading this book with its historically important record of political leaders speaking with unbridled candour, I'm reminded of how I misread him in 1966. I'd just joined the Sunday Times, supposedly being groomed to be managing editor, but in those early days very much the new boy from a provincial editorship, finding my way round the leading national newspaper of the day. On my first Thursday morning, I was invited to go along to the office of the deputy editor, William Rees-Mogg, for the leader writers' conference designed to decide the paper's attitude to some policy emerging from the rather frantic last days of Harold Wilson's Labour government, holding on with a majority of only 4. The Sunday Times's editor, Denis Hamilton, took no part in setting political policy: his trust in Rees-Mogg was total. I found the 'conference' consisted only of Rees-Mogg and Hugo, doubling as social-services correspondent and leader writer. He was a fresh-faced 28, another provincial newcomer, almost as new to the paper as I was. Rees-Mogg was a supremely confident columnist of fluency and wit, his reputation already made. Hugo, tall, bespectacled and reticent, looked like a head prefect, and in William's presence then had the deferential manner of one summoned to the beak's office. Both he and William were Roman Catholics, and I presumed that the absence of any cut and thrust that morning was in part because they shared a common faith; they were both of the liberal centre. Hugo's manner gave no inkling of how he would translate such consensus as emerged into an editorial. The two qualities that took me by surprise when I read this leader and others from future meetings of the three of us was how faithfully he reflected the nuances of a discussion, but yet how forceful he was in expressing a conclusion. Rather rambling exchanges between us on the pros and cons of allowing television into Parliament or the minutiae of negotiations with the rebellious white