This Time, Veteran Writer Paul Johnson Digs Into His Own Past

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Paul Johnson has written more than 40 books and befriended countless presidents and prime ministers, but it is his temper that has become the stuff of legend. In his columns for the Spectator in England, he has called for a neutron bomb strike against Los Angeles in retaliation for a film that offended him, and he has argued that it would be undesirable to invite homosexuals to stay, because “other guests may not like living in the same house with people who could have AIDS.”


“Hom-osexual,” Mr. Johnson corrects me, when I raise the matter, “not Ho!-mosexual. It’s a short ‘o’ – it comes from the Greek, not the Latin.”


“People have always assumed I’ve got a temper, simply because I used to have very red hair,” he says, raising a hand to his now graying scalp.


“It’s a form of racism I’ve always suffered from. James Baldwin was once moaning on to me about how he’d been discriminated against, but I said, ‘Look here, Baldwin. If, like me, you’ve been born left-handed, red-haired, and an English Catholic, there’s nothing you don’t know about prejudice.'”


In fairness, Mr. Johnson has provided us with more than red hair as evidence of his ferocity. But he has unveiled a starkly different persona in his latest book, “The Vanished Landscape: A 1930s Childhood in the Potteries” – a memoir of life in the Johnsons’ middleclass, Catholic household. Lyrically written, it presents our hero (he is 76 now) as an angelic, curly-haired child – “Little Paul” to his father, who was headmaster of the local art school – innocently pondering the mysteries of life, such as why tomcats howl in the night.


The only hint of the Big Paul to follow comes in a comment he makes about his devoted, sharp-tongued mother, who was 42 when he was born and saw him “as a special gift from God” in compensation for a daughter she had lost shortly before. As he recalls: “She loved to divide the world into sheep and goats; her sheep were very, very white and her goats as black as pitch.” Is his decisiveness inherited from her? “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I think my mother believed in speaking her mind, but she always tried to be fair. Maybe fairer than I’ve been because I’ve been a very controversial journalist in my time.”


That is one view on which he is unlikely to be challenged. I have come to see him at his home, a pretty, rambling house in which I find a benevolent looking Johnson padding round in leather slippers, dithering as to whether we’d be more comfortable in the drawing room or the library. “Oh… I don’t know,” he says, hovering in the hallway. “You’re the boss, you decide.” The telephone rings in the library, so we proceed there.


In conversation, his tone combines childlike enthusiasm and hints of his trenchant prose. Take, for example, art. A prolific amateur painter, his memoirs are illustrated with his own (highly praised) drawings, and the walls of his house are chockablock with watercolors, which he knocks off at the rate of one-an hour. At one moment he will enthuse about his battles with his paintbrush (“The most exciting thing is not knowing exactly where I’m going… feeling I have so much to learn”); the next he is back on his old, columnist form: “If you can’t draw, you can’t paint. That’s why Francis Bacon was no good.”


A few years ago, a selection of his Spectator writings was published under the title, “To Hell with Picasso,” which gave the general flavor, while his regular why-oh-why? pieces bemoaning modern life were famously unyielding. In contrast, his more recent essays have been gentler, tackling relatively safe subjects, such as “autumn.” What happened?


“When I had my 70th birthday, Marigold said to me, ‘Don’t you have enough enemies? Do you really want any more? Why not stop making them?’ I took her advice.” Does he not miss the thrill of controversy? “Not really,” he says, his expression a study in mischief. “I’ve forgiven all my enemies and I hope they’ve forgiven me. A lot of them are dead, thank God!”


Mr. Johnson’s own guns are still very much blazing. He produces, on a good day, 5,000 words by teatime (“Nothing compared to a chap like Sartre – he could do 20,000!”). On one wall there is a large crucifix, with Christ pouring blood (“Marigold wouldn’t let me have it in the drawing-room – she thought it would upset the grandchildren”), next to which are photographs from the 1980s of Mr. Johnson with Margaret Thatcher (“lovely girl, bless her soul”), Ronald Reagan (“only had about four ideas but a great president”), and the Pope, who is seen receiving a copy of Johnson’s The History of Christianity (“In Polish! Marigold was so moved she burst into tears”).


For the most part, Mr. Johnson writes big history, with big themes: “A History of the Jews,” “A History of the Modern World,” “A History of the American People” – there was even “Intellectuals” (a history of). Although “The Vanished Landscape” has only just reached the bookshelves in England, a proof of his next book, a life of George Washington, has already been posted to his publishers in America, where his fan base extends to the White House: “In a quiet way, I think Bush is a friend of mine. You see, he read my book on Napoleon. So I’m told.”


As a writer, Mr. Johnson cites his main gift as concentration – a concentration so complete that he has still not learned how to turn on the television in his library. In contrast, his political allegiances have famously been less steady. He says that he is more interested in leaders than in ideology, and baffled his critics when, in 1995, following the fiery Thatcherism of his middle age, he declared his faith in Tony Blair. “He’s not what I’d call an educated person – he never reads a book – but he’s splendid on foreign affairs and things like that. I liked him then, and I like him now, but I think he’s surrounded by idiots. What I’d really like to see is Tony leading the Tory Party.”


The two spoke regularly before the 1997 election. “I used to say to him, ‘When you become Prime Minister, always stick close to the White House, because it’s in Britain’s interests that our two countries should march together.’ And he’s always done that. That’s leadership. I think he has a lot of influence on Mr. Bush. I still drop him a note from time to time saying, ‘Well done, Tony! Keep it up!'”


How much influence does Mr. Johnson have on Mr. Blair? “Oh, I don’t know. How can you tell? I always give a lot of gratuitous advice to people. I used to advise that beautiful princess, Princess Diana, and she’d always say, ‘Ooh! You’re so right Paul!’ And then she’d go and do something quite different.”


What advice did he give her? “I said, ‘No sex. And if you think that’s unfair, hard cheese!’ But she didn’t listen. You never know if people are going to listen to you.”


His support for Blair was not his first change of political allegiance. In the mid-1970s – as a former Socialist and one-time editor of the New Statesman – he turned his back on the Leftism of his youth and embraced Margaret Thatcher.


One Tory commentator wryly commented at the time that for Mr. Johnson the switch was “like having a new love affair.” In fact, he speaks of Ms. Thatcher with tempered affection, even conceding that she can be “boring at times.”


“I still see her occasionally. She’s a nice old girl and she’s perfectly okay. People say she’s confused but, whenever I see her, she makes perfectly good sense. I usually say, ‘Well, I think Tony Blair is doing very well, Margaret, but I wish you were in charge. And she says, ‘So do I!'”


Mr. Johnson’s colleagues have frequently battled to decide where his political heart really lies, a problem he seems unwilling to help them solve.


Mr. Johnson says that his Catholicism has always been the sheet anchor of his changing allegiances. “Your religious faith is much more important than your political views. Political views are very transitory.” He still goes to church most mornings, on his way to pick up the newspapers. What does he pray for? “I thank God for blessings. You have to thank God before you start praying for more.” Does he suffer from feelings of the old Catholic guilt? “We live in a society which is always feeling guilt about things. They think we should apologize for the slave trade. And they think the Queen should apologize to the Maoris. To hell with that! We brought them civilization and…”


Mr. Johnson pauses for a moment, his tone immediately softening. “Ah, good!” he says, hearing a sudden crashing noise coming from the kitchen.


“Marigold’s home!” He and his wife have been married for 47 years, and produced four children and six grandchildren, with a seventh on the way. What’s the secret? “I think our division of labor is quite good. I mean, I let her do everything. She decides what clothes I wear and buy, and when I need a haircut, and all things like that. The only thing I have the upper hand on is which pictures to buy and where to hang them. There I am the absolute master.”


Marigold now works as a counselor. “I was rather scathing about it when she started, I have to say,” he says. “But I’ve learnt from observing her progress that therapy can do a lot of good. Particularly bereavement counseling. It’s a pity Queen Victoria didn’t have it when Prince Albert died.” Hang on a minute. Paul Johnson – right-wing polemicist and scourge of homosexual houseguests – lamenting the lack of therapists in Victorian England? Is he not going a bit too soft? “No,” he says, slowly ushering me towards the door. “I’m not getting soft. But gentler, perhaps.”


“The Vanished Landscape” can be ordered from amazon.co.uk or the Heywood Hill Bookshop.


The New York Sun

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