The two met in the late 1950s when they were both sent to cover the Algerian war of independence, and given how much I enjoyed Behr’s own work, I bought One Clean Englishman and read it. I now have to admit I don’t share Behr’s enthusiasm, not by a long chalk.
Mine is the Penguin edition, published in 1969 four years after Gale’s memoir was first published by Hodder &
No publisher have ever been known to undersell one of its authors, but if that was an honest appraisal of One Clean Englishman rather than a piece of professional puffery, I’ll venture that the bar had long been rather low.
Behr didn’t publish his work for another sixteen years and it will certainly have raised the bar quite a bit.
Hodder & Stoughton republished the book eleven years ago, in 2015, and, once again I suspect, setting both eyes on sales, the house also chose to adopt publisher speak and puffed the work as ‘one of the brilliant evocations of English life. From growing up in rural Kent to joining the Coldstream Guards and drunkenly dancing with the young Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, Gale’s early years seemed untroubled by darker shadows . . . Witty, ironic, sharply observed and deeply moving, John Gale’s memoir is a unique record of a young man struggling to make sense of the world’.
Reading that, I have to quote Evelyn Waugh’s Mr Salter, foreign editor of Lord Copper’s Daily Beast in his novel Scoop: ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’
Hodder & Stoughton republished the book eleven years ago, in 2015, and, once again I suspect, setting both eyes on sales, the house also chose to adopt publisher speak and puffed the work as ‘one of the brilliant evocations of English life. From growing up in rural Kent to joining the Coldstream Guards and drunkenly dancing with the young Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, Gale’s early years seemed untroubled by darker shadows . . . Witty, ironic, sharply observed and deeply moving, John Gale’s memoir is a unique record of a young man struggling to make sense of the world’.
Reading that, I have to quote Evelyn Waugh’s Mr Salter, foreign editor of Lord Copper’s Daily Beast in his novel Scoop: ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’
To give context to make my judgment, whether it’s good one, bad or indifferent, comprehensible here is a relevant passage from Scoop:
Certainly Gale did ‘struggle to make sense of the world’, but that observation must also be qualified by the fact that he as an adult he was eventually diagnosed as bi-polar (once called ‘manic depression’) and that conditions might well have influenced is outlook from an early age.
He also, but his own admission, often drank too much, thought whether that went with the job or was, as we are no inclined so say, ‘self-medication’ I can’t say or guess.
Eventually, on a trip to the United States with a group of other journalist in the early 1960s, Gales had noticeable and serious psychotic breakdown and once back in Britain was sectioned and locked away in a mental health facility for four months. He describes his breakdown, in some detail at the end of his memoir.
Gale did not spend a great deal of time reporting from Algeria but, like Behr, he did witness some true horrors. It is suggested that these contributed to his deteriorating mental health, but frankly that is just, at best, pop psychology. We simply cannot know, of course, and I am willing to be corrected by anyone who demonstrably does know more about these matters, but I doubt there is any such causal connection.
Furthermore, many folk have suffered a psychotic breakdown who have never experienced such horrors. Similarly, many others witness such terrible sights, including as we now know, a great many servicemen simply ‘going to war’, who are often affected by them, but whose poor mental health – depression, booze and drug addictions does not culminated in a psychotic breakdown. One such might be Behr himself, who years of war reporting war exceeded those of Gale but did not, either.
My older brother, who has now died, suffered many such breakdowns and they became increasingly severe. His condition was never named to me by any of his doctors and was well-controlled by medication until, as one of his nurses once explained to me, there always came a point where in himself he felt fine and would decide he no longer needed medication and stopped taking it.
She also explained that although I and others might find his behaviour increasingly alarming, he himself and others like it were usually rather enjoying life. But from no longer taking his medication it was downhill until he was yet again sectioned. This happened often
We kept in close touch until a few years before his death when in the depths of one such episode he made such lurid death threats to me that I feared for the safety or my then young children and thought it best to break contact, though we were back in touch in the last few months before of his life.
In his case it was apparent to my parents that something was amiss when he was still young and he was taken to a child psychologist. I eventually became aware – he was just 21 months older than me and we were brought up ‘as a pair’ – of unusual behaviour which began compulsive behaviour and then evolved.
Yet at no point did my brother have any experiences which might have triggered his poor psychic health, and I suggest Gale would have been the same. I tend to think such ‘traits’ are in us from the off.
Why did I find Gale’s book, unlike Behr’s disappointing? It’s simple: unlike Behr, and despite working as an apparently respected journalist on a respected ‘serious’ Sunday paper, Gale is in no way a storyteller and seems to have had no gift in that direction.
His account – of his background and early childhood in a comparatively wealthy family, his years at prep then public school, his service in the Coldstream Guards, times spent in Europe and then Algeria – is oddly and disconcertingly flat.
There is no shape to any of it and it consists largely of a long litany of brief facts – where he was, things he and his brother did and so on – what pile up but are never taken further. Gale’s memoir never becomes plain dull but it also never at all comes alive as does Behr’s.
As for wit, well where to goodness was it? It might well be my shortcoming, though as a rule I am reasonably sensitive to wit when I come across, but in One Clean Englishman I came across none at all.
The writing is also uneven in that the final ‘part’ – the autobiography consists of a foreword, a prologue and then five ‘parts’ of unequal length – is just an almost hourly description of his visit to America, his odd behaviour and concludes with flying back to Old Blighty where a psychiatrist declares him to be ‘very, very ill’ and takes him into care.
Yet again, this ‘part five’ is quite flat. I can’t suggest how Gale might have gone about writing it but I am allowed to suggest that it is up to each individual writer to find a solution, however individual her or his approach might be.
As a former reporter and then newspaper sub-editor, booth ‘in the provinces’ and what was once known as Fleet Street – OK, ‘journalist’ but I dislike using the term as the work different ‘journalist’ do is so varied that it is meaningless to compare – I was keen to hear how Gale landed his job on the Observer.
I don’t doubt his background and his father’s position as a Lloyd’s underwriter impressed some as it did in those days, though these days a great deal less attention is given to ‘what school you went to’, but it might have been interesting. We get none of it.
If my review of Behr’s memoir encourages you to buy a copy and read it, and I certainly do recommend it, I’m pleased. But if you do decide to buy and read One Clean Englishman, you are on your own. Sorry to be brutal, but . . .
That evening Mr Salter, foreign editor of the Beast, was summoned to dinner at [Lord Copper’s] country seat at East Finchley . . . [at dinner] Mr Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right, he said, ‘Definitely, Lord Copper’; when he was wrong, ‘Up to a point.’As for the verdict by the then well-known British novelist John Wain in Gale’s own paper, the Observer, that Gale’s also utilised by Penguin that Gale’s ‘account of 40 years as an Englishman of our time in not likely to be surpassed for truthfulness and immediacy’. Sorry, but quite apart from being at a loss as to what Wain might mean by ‘immediacy’, I do think he misses the point by a country mile.
‘Let me see, what’s the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn’t it?’
‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’
‘And Hong Kong belongs to us, doesn’t it?’
‘Definitely, Lord Copper.’
. . .
Certainly Gale did ‘struggle to make sense of the world’, but that observation must also be qualified by the fact that he as an adult he was eventually diagnosed as bi-polar (once called ‘manic depression’) and that conditions might well have influenced is outlook from an early age.
He also, but his own admission, often drank too much, thought whether that went with the job or was, as we are no inclined so say, ‘self-medication’ I can’t say or guess.
Eventually, on a trip to the United States with a group of other journalist in the early 1960s, Gales had noticeable and serious psychotic breakdown and once back in Britain was sectioned and locked away in a mental health facility for four months. He describes his breakdown, in some detail at the end of his memoir.
Gale did not spend a great deal of time reporting from Algeria but, like Behr, he did witness some true horrors. It is suggested that these contributed to his deteriorating mental health, but frankly that is just, at best, pop psychology. We simply cannot know, of course, and I am willing to be corrected by anyone who demonstrably does know more about these matters, but I doubt there is any such causal connection.
Furthermore, many folk have suffered a psychotic breakdown who have never experienced such horrors. Similarly, many others witness such terrible sights, including as we now know, a great many servicemen simply ‘going to war’, who are often affected by them, but whose poor mental health – depression, booze and drug addictions does not culminated in a psychotic breakdown. One such might be Behr himself, who years of war reporting war exceeded those of Gale but did not, either.
My older brother, who has now died, suffered many such breakdowns and they became increasingly severe. His condition was never named to me by any of his doctors and was well-controlled by medication until, as one of his nurses once explained to me, there always came a point where in himself he felt fine and would decide he no longer needed medication and stopped taking it.
She also explained that although I and others might find his behaviour increasingly alarming, he himself and others like it were usually rather enjoying life. But from no longer taking his medication it was downhill until he was yet again sectioned. This happened often
We kept in close touch until a few years before his death when in the depths of one such episode he made such lurid death threats to me that I feared for the safety or my then young children and thought it best to break contact, though we were back in touch in the last few months before of his life.
In his case it was apparent to my parents that something was amiss when he was still young and he was taken to a child psychologist. I eventually became aware – he was just 21 months older than me and we were brought up ‘as a pair’ – of unusual behaviour which began compulsive behaviour and then evolved.
Yet at no point did my brother have any experiences which might have triggered his poor psychic health, and I suggest Gale would have been the same. I tend to think such ‘traits’ are in us from the off.
. . .
Why did I find Gale’s book, unlike Behr’s disappointing? It’s simple: unlike Behr, and despite working as an apparently respected journalist on a respected ‘serious’ Sunday paper, Gale is in no way a storyteller and seems to have had no gift in that direction.
His account – of his background and early childhood in a comparatively wealthy family, his years at prep then public school, his service in the Coldstream Guards, times spent in Europe and then Algeria – is oddly and disconcertingly flat.
There is no shape to any of it and it consists largely of a long litany of brief facts – where he was, things he and his brother did and so on – what pile up but are never taken further. Gale’s memoir never becomes plain dull but it also never at all comes alive as does Behr’s.
As for wit, well where to goodness was it? It might well be my shortcoming, though as a rule I am reasonably sensitive to wit when I come across, but in One Clean Englishman I came across none at all.
The writing is also uneven in that the final ‘part’ – the autobiography consists of a foreword, a prologue and then five ‘parts’ of unequal length – is just an almost hourly description of his visit to America, his odd behaviour and concludes with flying back to Old Blighty where a psychiatrist declares him to be ‘very, very ill’ and takes him into care.
Yet again, this ‘part five’ is quite flat. I can’t suggest how Gale might have gone about writing it but I am allowed to suggest that it is up to each individual writer to find a solution, however individual her or his approach might be.
As a former reporter and then newspaper sub-editor, booth ‘in the provinces’ and what was once known as Fleet Street – OK, ‘journalist’ but I dislike using the term as the work different ‘journalist’ do is so varied that it is meaningless to compare – I was keen to hear how Gale landed his job on the Observer.
I don’t doubt his background and his father’s position as a Lloyd’s underwriter impressed some as it did in those days, though these days a great deal less attention is given to ‘what school you went to’, but it might have been interesting. We get none of it.
If my review of Behr’s memoir encourages you to buy a copy and read it, and I certainly do recommend it, I’m pleased. But if you do decide to buy and read One Clean Englishman, you are on your own. Sorry to be brutal, but . . .
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