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On this visit there was much talk of my Gellhorn biography, which had just appeared and had received excellent reviews, with a few very negative ones, including a personal attack on me by one of Gellhorn’s friends, the journalist John Pilger. Michael wanted to know why. “Well, he said I wrote a salacious book,” I told Michael. Of course, it was nothing of the kind. Michael’s response was “Dirty sod. I tell you, I’ve got very strong feelings about him. The way he’s behaved over the breakup of Yugoslavia. It’s absolutely outrageous. Pilger bilge, I call it. But we have to be careful about it because Paul is a close friend of Pilger.” I said, “Paul may not have a good opinion of me anymore if he’s been talking to Pilger.” Michael dismissed the idea.

Later that day Julie and I got into a conversation about authorised biography after I told her about Owen. “It [authorised biography] verges on autobiography,” she said. “Yes, it does,” I agreed. “You’re not going to be able to put in the shit,” she declared. But she fully understood my position. “There have been a number of cases,” I pointed out, in which biographers had signed agreements with estates stipulating they could not interfere “because the biographer is afraid that as in a romance, when the family falls out of love with you, then you’re stuck. But I just think that changes the atmosphere, to face Michael with a contract and say, ‘Sign this.’ I couldn’t do it.” Julie agreed, “I don’t think that would work with Michael. He would put his back up."

We got onto the subject of Barbara Castle again. Michael was determined to stay in her good graces. Thus he had turned down the request of an unauthorised biographer for an interview about Barbara, knowing that Barbara would not like him to cooperate with anyone she had not sanctioned. I understood his loyalty to friends, but I put it to him that there was “another argument”: [MF] Yes, go on. [CR] When someone tells you “Please don’t talk to this biographer who is writing a book about me,” that person is asking you to not talk about what is a part of your experience. From a certain point of view, it is a form of censorship. [MF] Yes. You bet. Mostly my sympathies are naturally on the side of the writers. Michael thought Orwell was rather arrogant in forbidding a biography. He also thought publishers were quite nonsensical in calling Michael Shelden’s biography of Orwell authorised. Michael did not like Sheldon’s book because of its treatment of Sonia Orwell, who had been a close friend of Jill’s and Michael’s. “He had no compunction about what he said about her.” Michael added, “Wipe Shelden off the books.” Declaring war against the term authorised biography, he said, “So you’re not writing the authorised biography of Jill.” But he was on my side, he assured me. “Carl, I’m glad you’re doing it. It’s the best thing, from Jill’s point of view."

DMU Timestamp: January 22, 2016 23:23





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