Charles Moore
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In his new book At War with Waugh – whose publication and the author’s 90th birthday we celebrated last week – W.F. Deedes reproduces the laissez-passer for his Abyssinian journey of 1935. Addressed ‘TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN’, it was given him by his editor, H.A. Gwynne, of the Morning Post, and states that Gwynne ‘shall be obliged for all permissible facilities which may be granted him’. It bears an impressive seal. This explained something for me. When I was a young journalist on the Daily Telegraph and setting off for an infinitely less adventurous visit to India in 1982, Bill Deedes called me into his office. ‘Here, dear boy, I think you’ll find this useful. Your bona fides. The Indians like this sort of thing.’ He handed me a ‘TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN’ document, bearing the Deedes family seal (with the motto, perfectly unsuitable for a journalist, Acta non verba). Sure enough, whenever I produced this talisman, I found that I jumped to the front of interminable Indian railway queues. Gwynne had been editor since 1911 and had reported the Boer war. The great Deedes became a reporter in the year my father was born and was my editor for the first four years of my career. I suppose that document is the nearest thing to an apostolic succession that a journalist can have.
We are lucky, in our Sussex village, to have a railway station at all, but it provides a painful example of how central management (Connex South East) works. The station is a very pretty Victorian building, including a station-master’s cottage. Connex rules dictate, however, that the man who does the train tickets, the only employee regularly present at the station, may not do anything else. The cottage is derelict, and the blameless ticket man is not even permitted to sell parking tickets to passengers. The station clock has been out of order for some weeks now and he is not allowed the budget to buy a new battery for it. As a result of all this, what could be one of the most idyllic rural stations in Britain is squalid.
What a contrast to the enterprise being shown by our village shop a couple of hundred yards away. The shop was swept away by the great floods of 2000. Determined not to give in, the village banded together and 44 per cent of us on the electoral roll have bought shares in a new concern on the same site. The premises have been restored, partly by volunteers, and grants and loans have been raised. Next week, my wife and I shall open the Community Stores, under the management of Andy Patel, from Groombridge, who retired from running the shop there and found that he wants to be working again.
As I flew over the Shatt al Arab into Iraq at the end of April, I fell into conversation with the British officer in the seat next to me. He told me he lived in a place called Groombridge. ‘Oh,’ I asked, ‘do you know a man called Andy Patel?’ ‘Of course I do. Great bloke. Unfortunately, he gave up running our shop….’
Charles Moore is the editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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