PRESS LORD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 901, 9 November 1956, Page 12

PRESS LORD

BEAVERBROOK, by Tom Driberg; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, English price 21/-. NE might have expected that a writer holding Mr. Driberg’s political views would find little to admire in the career and character of a man who stands for almost everything that a Labour politician deplores. He has, however, laid aside all bias and produced a study which, though relentlessly analytical in parts, is certainly not unsympathetic. As a subject Lord Beaverbrook is the answer to a biographer’s prayer. The son of a Presbyterian minister, brought up in a sternly religious atmosphere at Newcastle, New Brunswick, he showed a remarkable aptitude for business very early in life, and actually edited a newspaper when only fourteen years old. Money-making presented no difficulties; and when he arrived in London in 1910, thirty years old but already a millionaire, his influence in politics began to be felt within a surprisingly short time. His intrigues were largely responsible for bringing down the Asquith Government in 1916, In the throes of disappointment at not receiving the expected reward-a position in Lloyd George’s Cabinet-he accepted a peerage, thereby committing

"a form of political suicide," and concentrated on the quest of power as a press lord. Worsted at every turn in. his long feud with Baldwin, he also failed signally to mould public opinion in the direction of his ideals. "I run the paper (Daily Express) purely for the purpose of making propaganda," he confessed, and it was probably due to a general perception of this fact that his propaganda was largely ineffectual. As Minister of Aircraft Production in World War II he worked wonders, and for a while there were rumours that he might sueceed Churchill as Prime Minister, but his temperament was difficult and volatile, his judgment, when regarded in the light of after-knowledge, highly unreliable.

The vapidness inseparable from most success stories is altogether absent from Mr, Driberg’s portrait of this tempestuous figure. The tale winds through political intrigues and affairs of: high national importance, throwing beams of light here and there on the human impulses that exerted a "backstairs" influence on events. One wonders, while reading this book, whether its statements and implications will be unchallenged by Lord Beaverbrook, or whether he will remain true to his own candidly confessed profession of principle-‘"I always dispute the umpire’s decision."

R.M.

Burdon