The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties

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D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel, published in other countries but never, until 1960, in Britain, tells of a love affair between the wife of an English landowner and his gamekeeper. Lawrence gives the latter a blunt Anglo-Saxon vocabulary with regard to the sexual act and the relevant body parts for which Penguin Books, as publisher, was prosecuted unsuccessfully for obscenity. The prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, famously made himself look foolish by asking the jury if they would want their wives or servants to read the book. [25] Levin's interest in indexes developed from his work on The Pendulum Years. He compiled his own index for the book, "and swore a mighty oath, when I had finished the task, that I would rather die, and in a particularly unpleasant manner, than do it again". [35] He contrived to include in his index an obscene joke at the expense of the hapless prosecutor in the Chatterley trial, [n 10] but found the difficulty of indexing so great that he became a champion of the Society of Indexers. He wrote several articles on the subject, and when reviewing books made a point of praising good indexes and condemning bad ones. [37] The Times [ edit ] Levin was once punched on live television while appearing on the satirical programme, That Was The Week That Was.

The greatest tribute one could pay Levin is that it is doubtful The Times would survived the suspension in the late 70's without him as a columnist. On the paper's return he was the principal reason to but the paper once again. He also hated bad food and bad opera. But some of his best writing was enthusiastic. He wrote wonderfully about music, and could write an entire column about a good dinner.Levin published his first book in 1970. Called The Pendulum Years, [n 9] its subtitle, Britain and the Sixties, summed up its subject. In 22 self-contained chapters, Levin considered various aspects of British life during the decade. Among his topics were prominent people including Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson – dubbed the Walrus and the Carpenter by Levin – and institutions such as the monarchy, the churches and the British Empire in its last days. Among the individual events examined in the book were the 1968 student riots and the prosecution for obscenity of the publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover. [34] Levin may have claimed he could not teach, but I learnt from him how to exercise patience and mercy. He taught me to enjoy opera, even the Ring and to be unafraid to state what I believed in. In these and so many other ways he civilised me which my teachers in school and university had never achieved. And yet I never met him; just read his thoughts as expressed in his columns. I remember a piece he wrote in the 70s analysing the huge popularity of Star Wars: he attributed this partly to the film's clear distinction between 'goodies' and 'baddies', at a time when the public - as I recall him writing - were finding it more and more difficult to decide what was right and what was wrong. My biggest priority is sleep. There is clear medical evidence now that sleep deprivation makes us less healthy, less productive, less joyful. I try to sleep seven or eight hours a night, although I don't always succeed. I also love napping. We have installed two nap rooms in our US offices.At first people were reluctant to disappear to nap but now the rooms are so busy we're going to have to install a third. The UK office is demanding one too, quite rightly. Other publishing credits included Newsweek and the International Herald Tribune, and he had a distinguished broadcasting career, with radio and TV appearances on the BBC and ITV.

Obituary of Joseph Cooper", The Daily Telegraph, 6 August 2001, and Barker, Dennis. "Joseph Cooper", The Guardian, 9 August 2001 In 1963 he moved into television to become a household name. He became an important figure on BBCs late-Saturday-night satire show, That Was The Week That Was, and later on its less renowned successor, Not So Much A Programme More A Way Of Life. From Simon Jenkins’ comment in The Times, “A master matador in the bullring of opinion”, Wednesday 11 August 2004:It will, but one of the exciting things about expanding is the way the international editions act like bureaus. So when we had the French elections, the best pieces and blogs were immediately translated and were published in the UK, in our Québécois edition, and so on. After a vitriolic review of a play starring the actress and singer, Agnes Bernelle, her husband Desmond Leslie came to the studio and hit Levin in front of 11 million viewers. His last column, in which he mounted a sterling defence of smokers, was published in November 1997, and he continued to write occasionally for the paper after that.

On the issue of Watergate, Levin went on proclaiming Nixon’s innocence when even Rabbi Korff must have been thinking about giving up. Compared to what the Russians got up to, Levin argued, Watergate was nothing. From his position on the bench of the Supreme Court of the Universe. Levin should have been able to see that Nixon had been subverting the Constitution of the United States by attempting to form a Presidential party, and that this was why many patriotic Americans took such exception – because they didn’t want the United States to become a country in which such things meant nothing. Levin missed the point. Print journalism aside, I think many people will remember his appearances alongside Richard Baker, Robin Ray and Joyce Grenfell as a regular panellist on 'Face the Music'. He was always popping up on TV during my childhood in the 60s and 70s but then seemed to disappear from view. Perhaps the 'leaving of Levin' was the first casualty in the dumbing down of television?I will never forget his classic one liners such as when he wrote "the question we should be asking about Lord Longford is not is he bonkers? But is he right?" Two lines from Hamlet have become the most quoted lines by the closest to the deceased at countless funerals of famous men: “ Good night, sweet prince/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” Besides, it is good copy. Levin’s Trot-busting activities invariably yield rich plunder in the form of the enemy’s own verbal communications. Levin is adept at collating such material and letting it speak for itself to a wider world. For a find like the marvellous senior librarian Keith Harrison; we can only be grateful. Keith, it transpires, is a leading light in an outfit called Librarians for Social Change. ‘It’s books that I’m into,’ says Keith. Levin, Bernard. "A man burnt to his soul's bones", The Times, 25 January 1972, p. 14, "Music's sublime summit", The Times, 21 December 1987, and "Here at last, Strauss fit for the squeamish", The Times, 2 February 1985, p. 6 Bernard Levin was the reason I started reading The Times at an impressionable age... his writing was intelligent, thought provoking and yet kind; not to mention he could write the longest sentences in the world, just like the one I'm writing now in his memory!

Levin, Bernard (1987) [1986]. Hannibal's Footsteps (seconded.). London: Sceptre. ISBN 0-340-40433-7.

Footnotes

Thus did he invite some 80 members of his circle to an evening at the Cafe Royale, at which he encouraged us to enrol. It was a strange experience to hear this paragon of logic, sceptical of all humbug trotting out stories that normally he would have scoffed at. At the end of it my neighbour turned to me and said, "I feel I have lost a friend tonight." His style was a mixture of wit, sharpness and schoolboy sarcasm, with large shots of Wodehouse and Beachcomber. The comments about his shyness are interesting. I remember him as a frequent sight on the London concert scene. He would scurry - at lightning speed - out of the concert hall to a waiting taxi - as soon as the performance was over. Whether it was to commit his thoughts to posterity or avoid having to engage with other departing audience goers, I was never sure. The quality of Levin's matchless prose, his limpid and accurate ability to tell a story, his intellect and his moral fervour are perhaps best exemplified by his fine article in the International Herald Tribune of 8 August 1967 about the Aberfan disaster and its outcomes.