I, Claud: Memoirs of a Subversive

by Claud Cockburn, Alexander Cockburn (Foreword)

The memoirs of British radical journalist Claud Cockburn are sardonic, hilarious, and filled with rich historical detail. They tell the story of an Oxford-educated Communist who rubbed elbows with everyone from Al Capone to Charles de Gaulle. From Times correspondent to foreign editor of the Daily Worker, Cockburn witnessed many of the twentieth century’s most important events. He shares his insights with unparalleled, and decidedly irreverent, authorial skill. Includes a new foreword by Alexander Cockburn.

Claud Cockburn (1904–1981) was a renowned journalist and novelist. His novel Beat the Devil was made into a film directed by John Huston.

Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Politics, History, Biography, Journalism, British Literature

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes twice as long as it should to read a book like this, because every few pages there's a reference to some long-forgotten person or event -- from the worlds of olde-tyme Communism, espionage, politics, high finance, warfare and journalism in Europe and the U.S. from the 1920s to the '60s -- that requires dog-earing the page and diving into Wikipedia. (In some cases, like the papal physician who supposedly tried to flog postmortem photos of the newly deceased Pius XII to the world's press, Wikipedia hasn't heard of them either.) It's not necessarily a problem, because you came here to learn something, after all. Likewise the occasional continuity glitch, which seems to be the result of Cockburn blending parts of his previous autobiographies, cutting others and adding new material. But still, not a big problem. This is a terrifically entertaining book for the most part.

As is customary in this sort of memoir, it begins with a description of his well-placed (Dad was the UK's ambassador to China) but amusingly eccentric family. Eventually we arrive at young Claud's years at the Times of London, both in the newsroom and as a correspondent in America; there's a vivid, street-level account of New York City in the days of stock-market mania and the shock that followed the 1929 Crash, as well as of the characters who produced Britain's most prestigious newspaper: "... I was told that the business of the Times was often held up for as much as a half-hour at a time while everyone present joined expertly in a discussion of the precise English word or phrase which would best convey the meaning and flavour of a passage in 'La Recherche du Temps Perdu.'" My God, at the New York Daily News we used to debate the correct spelling of "fuhgeddaboudit."

(Not that Cockburn's immune to intellectual preening. As we learn later, "Much of what might truthfully be said about the gathering at which the United Nations was founded turns out to have been said, about 90 years before the delegates assembled at the Golden Gate, by Dean Stanley in his exhilarating description of the Council of Nicaea which met in the year 325," which is the sort of thing that could have landed him in the Pseuds Corner column of his eventual employers at Private Eye.)

He was a card-carrying Communist for years, traveling widely as the chief diplomatic correspondent of the UK's Daily Worker as well as putting out his own mimeographed political rumor sheet, The Week, and even fought briefly in the Spanish Civil War -- but, at least as told here, he always enjoyed the company of a wide variety of people: socialist, capitalist, apolitical, celebrated, obscure. He left the Party after (to simplify things a little) growing bored with it. His temperament wasn't much suited to following orders, and -- again, at least as presented here -- he wound up as the sort of leftist whose ideology boils down, Orwell-style, to "Why can't governments and the upper classes treat people with common decency?"

The book suffers during a long section about his stay in a tuberculosis ward in the '50s, where he mines months of tedium without much payoff and fills less-than-riveting pages with his philosophy of life. At another point, it comes as a shock -- in an autobiography almost entirely devoted until then to his work -- to read a harrowing account of two of his children contracting polio during an epidemic in Ireland. Except for his months in the hospital, which feel like they're recounted in real time, this could have been just about perfect.

[Richard Bartholomew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining memoir by the fountainhead of a journalistic dynasty, full of amusing vignettes and arresting turns of phrase (my favourite was: "Though he died abruptly at the end of a rope, pronouncing me responible for his misfortune, historians ought not to forget Otto Katz"). The style is disgressive, and often the anecdotes hive off into general ruminations that in places go on too long, but there is much interesting material on a range of subjects: his mimeographed scandal-sheet The "Week" from the 1930s; his time in the Spanish Civil War; his involvement with Communism and his slow disillusion with it (which never hardened into anti-Communism - instead, his tone is unapologetically nostalgic); being in Chicago at the time of the Great Depression (and interviewing Al Capone); working for "Times"; a polio epidemic in Ireland and time spent in a TB ward (where a cancer scare provides a springboard for a meditation on mortality); memories of Malcolm Muggeridge at "Punch", and - as the climax - coming on board with "Private Eye".

Cockburn boasts that he won a competition at the "Times" for Most Boring Headline: "Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Dead". However, no record of this headline has been found, so perhaps some details should be approached sceptically. Certainly, much is left out - for instance, there is no mention of either of his first two wives.