Teddy Hodgkin; Times (UK) journalist
Hyfler/Rosner
The Times (London)
September 8, 2006, Friday
E. C. (Teddy) Hodgkin, journalist, was born on August 25,
1913. He died on September 6, 2006, aged 93.
Journalist whose breadth of knowledge and ability to set
down his thoughts at speed graced The Times for a period of
20 years
A MAN of a wide breadth of interests and deeply held
opinions, which he could express in limpid but forceful
prose, Teddy Hodgkin made a remarkable contribution to
journalism. For 20 years from the early 1950s he was a
pillar of The Times - for most of that time in the
pre-byline era -exercising knowledge and skills for which
its readership could be grateful. Sensation or the ephemeral
gloss of fashion were anathema to him. The purpose to which
he adhered was to uphold the standards of The Times in a
manner informative and persuasive and, above all, not at all
given to self-importance.
He had learnt what it meant to be an all-round journalist on
the prewar Manchester Guardian, where he took pride in
developing his skills as a sub-editor. Thanks to a thorough
historical grounding and an original taste in literature, he
could write at speed on any subject that might be required
by the events of the day.
This gift was exemplified in assignments as different as the
unerringly authoritative leader he wrote on the death of
Charles de Gaulle in 1970, and the beautifuly crafted
obituary he produced in a couple of hours for Gavin Astor in
1984.
In spite of his great qualities, Hodgkin's was an
uncompetitive spirit. For much of the time he appeared to be
an ego in retreat, his manner diffident and apparently shy.
But when the press of events demanded the mobilisation of
his talents, they were applied in a most surprising way,
like the energies of a torrent suddenly released.
Perhaps his personality was a reaction against the abilities
of his forebears and contemporaries. His grandfather, Thomas
Hodgkin, was a successful banker who found time to be an
historian as well. His father, R. H. Hodgkin, was an
historian and Provost of Queen's College, Oxford. His
mother's father, A. L. Smith, was Master of Balliol at the
turn of the century.
Edward Christian Hodgkin was born in 1913. The death, at the
age of 12, of a younger sister to whom he had been devoted,
was a shattering blow, reported to him as it was, awkwardly
and curtly, in his first term at Eton. His inability to
share his grief fully with his parents or elder brother left
a wound that was never completely healed.
From Eton he went to Balliol, where he took a first in
history. Lacking any clear idea of a career he took up his
tutor's suggestion of a thesis on Edward I's crusade, which
gave him the opportunity to spend six months in Palestine,
where his brother, Thomas, was in post as a colonial
servant. The thesis never got written, but the foundation
had been laid for Hodgkin's affection for the Arab world.
On his return to England in 1935 his godmother, Margery Fry
(Roger Fry's sister), introduced him to Crozier, then editor
of the Manchester Guardian. There he quickly found himself
in a milieu that exactly suited his temperament, and he had
no doubt that journalism in some form would occupy him.
Like many of his contemporaries in the 1930s he saw the
emergence of Hitler's Germany as the insistent threat. When
war was declared in 1939 he enlisted in The Manchester
Regiment, but was disappointed to be posted to India, where
the regular Indian Army seemed to him to be scarcely aware
of the issues at stake in Europe.
Fortunately he was able to return to England after a year,
and was commissioned in the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry in
1940. He was posted to the Special Operations Executive in
Cairo and then, in 1943, to Baghdad, where he was attached
to the British Embassy.
His three years there did much to expand his knowledge of
the Middle East. When the war ended he was appointed head of
the Near East Broadcasting Station (Sharq el-Adna) the
biggest station in the region, broadcasting from Jerusalem.
This extended his journalistic experience, since he soon
found himself at home at the microphone. It was in Jerusalem
that he married Nancy Durrell.
Returning to England in 1948 -there was then no job for him
on The Times, where Barrington-Ward, a relative, was
editor -he became assistant editor on The Spectator. Then in
1952, on Peter Fleming's introduction, The Times found a
place for Hodgkin to write leaders on Western Europe and the
Middle East, where his talent for clear writing and thorough
background knowledge helped in Sir William Haley's reshaping
of the paper.
But the Middle East was soon to find Hodgkin in the position
of having his advice discarded, as a result of The Times's
initially robust approach to the Suez crisis. By contrast
with Haley, Hodgkin could understand Nasser's nationalism.
He thought Eden's escapade was a mistake, and since the
paper adopted a position which he deplored it was thought
easier in discussion of the paper's policy to leave him out.
Fortunately this attitude did not last, and Hodgkin's
reputation as an expert on the region was relied on in the
later 1950s and 1960s. Nevertheless, he sometimes felt that
it was necessary to challenge the influential pro-Israeli
lobby, as when, in a visit to the region in 1969, two years
after the Six-Day War, he wrote an article severely
criticising what he saw as the iniquities of the treatment
of the Arab population of the West Bank under Israeli
occupation. This caused a furore, but it was followed by
articles written after a visit to Israel by then Editor,
William Rees-Mogg, which supported Hodgkin's position.
In 1961 Hodgkin had become assistant foreign editor and
later became one of a three-man rota sharing the late duty
of seeing the paper's first edition to press -a task he
particularly relished. In 1966 he succeeded Iverach McDonald
as foreign editor and was particularly valued for his
handling of the foreign correspondents. In 1967 he was
promoted to assistant editor, while retaining his foreign
editorship, and in 1969 to deputy editor.
In August 1970 he relinquished both foreign editorship and
deputy editorship, and was given the post of associate
editor (foreign). In July of that year he had been one of
the principal signatories of what became known as the "White
Swan letter" to Rees-Mogg, signed by 29 influential members
of the editorial staff. The letter, so called from its
having been decided upon at a meeting in an upper room of
the White Swan tavern in Farringdon Street, was an attack on
what its signatories saw as a diminution in the "authority,
independence, accuracy and seriousness of The Times" since
Rees-Mogg's appointment to the editorship, on the
acquisition of the paper from the Astor family by the
Canadian magnate Lord Thomson of Fleet in 1966.
The attack was aimed principally at the popularising
influence of those Rees Mogg had brought over from The
Sunday Times to help him, notably the energetic night news
executive Michael Cudlipp, stigmatised by Hodgkin to senior
colleagues as having "no conception of what a responsible
newspaper should be". Though Rees Mogg summoned the
rebels -who included the future Times Editor Charles Douglas
Home; Hugh Stephenson, soon to be appointed editor of the
paper's business news; and the future religious affairs
correspondent Clifford Longley -to his office and gave them
a severe dressing-down, he nevertheless treated most of them
with extraordinary magnanimity thereafter. According to the
sixth volume of the History of The Times: The Thomson Years
1966-81 he was most hurt by Hodgkin, his deputy and foreign
editor, whom he had furthermore solidly backed over his
controversial article on the West Bank.
In 1972 Hodgkin retired early. Perhaps the cut and thrust of
journalism in London had begun to create more pressure on
him than he relished. He also had other interests he wanted
to pursue. Pinned to his office noticeboard a card inscribed
"first prize for begonias" was a clue to his horticultural
tastes.
His serious historical reading had always been flanked by
the inexhaustible pleasure he took in the books of P. G.
Wodehouse. And his writing expressed itself in jeux d'esprit
like his mock-serious essay on the location of Anthony
Hope's Ruritania, pieced together from continental railway
timetables of the period; and his pastiche of Milton's
Nativity Ode, very privately circulated at a birthday lunch
given by Thomson soon after his acquisition of The Times. On
a more serious note he had in 1966 published The Arabs, part
of an OUP series The Modern World.
Hodgkin's journalism did not end with his retirement from
The Times. He had earlier been a regular broadcaster on
Middle-East affairs in the BBC World Service. He was an
interested collaborator with Mohamed Heikal in the books he
wrote on his experiences as editor of the newspaper al
Ahram, and as Nasser's confidant. He also assisted in the
fifth volume of the History of The Times: Struggles in War
and Peace 1939-1966, to which he contributed an epilogue of
the period from 1966 until the year of the paper's
bicentenary, 1985.
He was for long the chairman of the London committee which
organised support for the Arab Development Society, an
agricultural scheme for Palestine refugees established in
Jordan by Musa Alami.
His wife, Nancy, a gifted sculptor, who spent her last years
as a prison visitor, died in 1983. Two daughters survive
him, one a stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage to
Lawrence Durrell, the novelist.