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Auberon Waugh once said, of himself, 'Looking back…at all the people I have insulted, I am mildly surprised that I am still allowed to exist'. Presumably, he would have been even more surprised that, far from taking the opportunity of his death late on 16 January to get their own back, his peers and critics were all sweetness and light.
| Yes, Auberon Waugh might have gained a reputation for rudeness; but as the Daily Telegraph's obituary put it, 'Anyone who knew Bron Waugh knew that he was an exceptionally pleasant man in private'. Yes, he might have been a self-styled scourge of socialism and communism, but his great friend AN Wilson stressed that 'kindly left-wing sentiments, particularly when entertained by women, never annoyed him'.
| Yes, some had unfavourably compared his literary talents to those of his father, Evelyn Waugh, but 'the difference between Auberon and Evelyn', said his brother-in-law the Earl of Onslow, 'was that Auberon was a nice man and Evelyn was a shit'.
| And so, from the ashes of a writer who inspired fear and loathing in so many, rises the ghost of a nice man who said these things but often didn't really mean them.
| Without having known the man they now call 'Bron', I don't doubt that the positive qualities attributed to him are true. But given how many people's backs he managed to get up, I was quite pleased to hear the odd dissenting voice. When asked for an instant radio obituary, the BBC's Nick Higham remembered him as a 'racist, sexist snob'. And on 19 January, the Guardian's Polly Toynbee wrote a vituperative (although without the wit) rant against the 'Auberon Waugh coterie', under the simple headline 'Ghastly man'.
| 'We might let Auberon Waugh rest in peace', says Toynbee, 'were it not for the mighty damage his clan has done to British political life, journalism and discourse in the postwar years'. Waugh, argues Toynbee, represents 'a coterie of reactionary fogeys centred on the Spectator and the Telegraph', who have 'perpetuated the myth of the superior cultured English gent as an archetype'. She continues: 'Effete, drunken, snobbish, sneering, racist and sexist, they spit poison at anyone vulgar enough to want to improve anything at all.'
| Blimey. By the end of this bitter outpouring, you are reeling: from the strength of Toynbee's hatred, from the earnestness of her anger. You think, Christ, I knew he was unpopular among some people, but why take it so seriously? But that, of course, is Toynbee's point.
| | Toynbee clearly disliked Auberon Waugh as a person. She is clearly repulsed by everything he stands for: the 'forces of conservatism' personified. But beyond all that, what Toynbee really, really hates is Waugh's style of journalism: his flippant tone, his biting wit…ultimately, his sense of humour.
| The journalistic style of the 'Waugh coterie' is 'empty and destructive', says Toynbee, as 'all that matters is a joke or two'. It's lazy: Waugh's 'knee-jerk abuse of any politician' was not a badge of honesty, but 'an idle unwillingness to engage with any politician's attempt to make life better for anyone else'. It's immoral: 'The pens of these lofty jeerers drip with universal indiscriminate malice over good and bad people alike.' It's not journalistic 'genius', as AN Wilson claimed, but bad and dangerous journalism.
| But since when was journalism supposed to be so worthy? Since when were opinion pieces, gossip, comment and wordplay expected to change the world? How did the morality of those on the op-ed pages or in the personal columns become endowed with such importance?
| Pundits are not politicians; nor are they social workers or priests. From Auberon Waugh to Ms Toynbee herself, the power of the pen - however poisonous - is limited to the production of words. We journalists like to think we are the new crusaders, and it's much more gratifying than the image of the journalist pigs, evoked by erstwhile Spitting Image puppets. Yes, this is the age of spin. And the leaked internal memo, reported today (Monday 22 January 2001) on what New Labour thinks of the views and connections of various political journalists, does show that the UK government is increasingly sensitive to the impact of newsprint. But let's not get above ourselves. Ultimately, all we do is write.
| Journalists might write badly; they might write well. When Waugh's brand of literary journalism first hit the scene, the objections came not from newshounds, but from the literati. George Gissing's 1891 classic New Grub Street pits the fate of noble Edwin Reardon, scratching away in poverty at his masterpiece, against that of the scurrilous Jasper Milvain, whose success in the flippant new world of reviews represents the slow decay of good literature. But the Toynbee brand of criticism is not about the writing. It is about something that op-ed journalists were never expected to have: political power, social consciences and a schoolteacher's attachment to 'constructive criticism'.
| Nobody expected Auberon Waugh to exhibit these qualities - and only the most naive should expect it from any other journalist on the newest Grub Street. Waugh was successful, because he could write. He stands out because he was not afraid to make enemies - a rare thing, in our hyper-sensitive times.
| Having said that, I wasn't a particular fan, so I often turned the page. The great thing about the written word is that nobody forces you to read it.
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