Bill dug into the cavernous holdall he carried everywhere and pulled out a
manuscript of his autobiography, Dear Bill, named after the spoof column in
Private Eye made up of letters he supposedly wrote to Denis Thatcher, his
chum. He wanted me to read it and put “rude stickers” on the boring bits. I
was to pay attention to the chapter on our working partnership at The Daily
Telegraph, he said: “With every book like this there is an element of
cherchez la femme.”
Bill, a former soldier, cabinet minister and newspaper editor, had done a good
job of explaining our unusual partnership. “Despite a gap of more than 50
years between us, Victoria and I found we had the same eye for what makes a
good news story at home or abroad, the same ear for a joke,” he wrote.
“Furthermore we could put together a joint piece on the screen expeditiously
and harmoniously. On the office computers or on the road using our laptops,
we played a duet.”
Now another book, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, is about to be
published. I had my suspicions that Stephen Robinson, the author, was trying
to find some sort of romantic intrigue when he asked to meet me for a coffee
while Bill was still alive.
Did I think Bill was in love with me, he asked. Did I think he was sexually
attracted to me? I told him there had never been a moment in the 13 years I
had known and worked with Bill when he had given me so much as a longing
look, let alone made a pass. He was my dear friend and mentor, nothing more.
Now that I have seen what he has written about Bill and me, I realise that he
failed to grasp that we had a far more interesting relationship than the
dull cliché of “Sad Old Man with Infatuation for Young Blonde” that comes
across.
Last week there was further snide comment about us. Why people have regarded
our friendship with cynicism and suspicion, I don’t know. Bill was 80 when I
met him and it is perfectly possible to have a genuine friendship that
crosses generations and the gender divide without it being in any way sexual.
We were brought together in 1994 by Trevor Grove, then the deputy editor of
The Daily Telegraph. Bill was the paper’s venerable elder statesman. I was,
at 27, a young reporter, just back from a stint as a stringer in Bangkok.
Trevor thought it would be interesting to get our different perspectives on
Britain in the run-up to the general election. So we took off on a journey
through Conservative constituencies and produced our first article, “Travels
in Toryland”.
It was the beginning of a long writing partnership that took us to fascinating
places including Sudan, Pakistan and Sarajevo. On our travels, inevitably,
we talked about our lives. Bill took an interest in my work, my friends and
my search for Mr Right. He was delighted when I met an army officer and
became engaged – hardly the reaction of a lovelorn old fool.
It is true that Bill bought me presents, and that was sweet of him, but I also
bought him gifts for birthdays and Christmas: we were friends. When I was
particularly broke, he picked up some of the bill for a trip I had taken
with him to visit a charity project in Africa.
He once told a mutual friend, Mary Ann Sieghart, another woman journalist he
had befriended and nurtured, that the reason he liked to help young
journalists and aid workers starting out in their careers was because he
felt so guilty about the young officers killed under his command in the war.
By offering us his guidance and encouragement he sought to atone for those
untimely deaths.
He was always the perfect gentleman. Reading Robinson’s interpretation of
Bill’s supposed feelings I would be almost amused by his clunking innuendo
if it did not concern me.
Describing a trip to Mozambique, Robinson verges on the Mills & Boon:
“They lingered briefly on the balcony, staring though the darkness at the
Indian Ocean . . .” It gets worse. “Bill bedded down in his suite, no doubt
contemplating what might have been,” writes Robinson, “but before long there
was a knocking on his door. He fumbled for a match to light his bedside
candle and stumbled to the door to find Victoria standing in the corridor
with a torch, asking for the return of her insect spray.”
As a former Telegraph hack I can see a fellow pro struggling with a shortage
of tantalising material. The fact that the punchline is a bottle of mosquito
repellent says it all.
The book’s most unpleasant claim is that Bill’s friendship with me was the
reason why his wife Hilary left the family home in 1997 (the year I married)
and moved to the Borders.
They had been married 51 years when I first worked with Bill. Throughout their
marriage he had travelled extensively, often spending the week in London,
playing golf all Saturday or dealing with constituents when he was an MP,
leaving only Sunday for the family.
He travelled to the office in Canary Wharf every day from Kent until he was
more than 90. Who can blame his wife for getting fed up? But was that my
fault? Thankfully Robinson acknowledges in his book that there were other
reasons: “It is certainly true that the problems in the marriage had been
apparent long before Bill and Victoria began travelling together – indeed
they were obvious even before she was born.” Bill was private. When his wife
moved north he simply told me and others that she had had an operation and
wanted to be near her youngest daughter, Lucy, to recover. “She has never
liked Kent,” he said. He had intended to spend long weekends with his wife
and divide his time between Kent and Berwick-upon-Tweed but he could not
bear to stop working and travelling.
I can understand why there might be some resentment and jealousy within his
family. He had paid little attention to his children when they were young,
devoting his life to politics and journalism. I was lucky because I met Bill
when he had reached a stage of life when he had time for friendship.
He read a Bible extract at my wedding and later visited us in the army
barracks where we lived in Londonderry and Belfast and came to mess events.
He became godfather to our son Gabriel.
One thing I must put to rest is the ludicrous story of the pansy at Bill’s
funeral. Robinson claims in his book that I delayed the hearse by insisting
my flower be placed on the coffin. In fact the pansy was a gift from
seven-year-old Gabriel, who came to the funeral. I handed it to the
undertaker at the church porch and he gave me no inkling that I was breaking
a ban on flowers or upsetting anyone in any way.
George Deedes, Bill’s grandson, never “remonstrated” with me as Robinson
claims, nor did I ever “approach the coffin” with the pansy. It was an
innocent gesture and it is horrid to see it twisted into some flouncing
“scene”.
Robinson has a challenging task as the biographer of Bill to present an honest
and unvarnished account of his life. Bill became something of a national
treasure in his final years – regarded as the last gentleman of Fleet
Street. The nature of modern biography means there is pressure to uncover
the grand old man’s faults and expose his private life, but in his hunt for
“la femme” Robinson has presented our friendship as something I do not
recognise.
It is also upsetting to see The Daily Telegraph – the paper Bill served for 75
years and which has serialised the book – publishing something so unkind
about Bill, let alone about me.
Bill never pulled any strings for me at the Telegraph or anywhere else; it was
not his style. But he was a great adviser and I am grateful for his
encouragement. Our working partnership was symbiotic. I benefited from his
wisdom, his extraordinary grasp of history and his gift for words. Bill
gained from working alongside a younger journalist who could cast a fresh
view on stories as well as help with the logistics of getting interviews and
travelling.
Bill was petrified of becoming an old bore and thrived on the company of young
people. He loved sitting at a table over a meal or a drink with young aid
workers or journalists.
One of the charming things about him was that he was always open to new ideas.
He would listen as respectfully to the views of the mother laden with
shopping bags as to the archbishop behind his desk of books. He always
introduced himself as Bill, never as Lord Deedes. He travelled by Tube, ate
in the staff canteen and insisted on carrying his luggage.
Some friends have suggested that I say nothing and let the whole fiasco blow
over, but Robinson’s anecdotes have begun to be repeated and embellished and
I feel I owe it to Bill – who can no longer defend himself – and to my
husband and myself to challenge the prurience.
Bill continued to travel with other writers and photographers after I left the
paper in 2002 when my husband was posted to Turkey with Nato and our second
child was born. He did not write with anyone else again – and nor have I.
Ours was a particular alliance.
He left an instruction asking that all the notes he made of our trips together
be passed to me on his death – but nothing has materialised – and he kept
all his notes on our trips and correspondence with me in a locked trunk with
a covering note, which Robinson found, saying, “because the world is
uncharitable I keep our papers in a cabinet under lock and key”.
When he was bed-bound he failed to lock it – and the consequence has been as
he had predicted.
