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The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg: Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw
In his obituary, The Times described Tom Driberg as “an unreliable man of undoubted distinction...the admiration and despair of his friends and acquaintances.” An Oxford Socialist, Driberg was also a flamboyant and promiscuous homosexual, an intriguer and a gossip, and a friend to the Sitwells and the Krays. Living in an era when the establishment looked after its own and the press looked the other way, Driberg was able to shatter almost every notion of polite society. His was a famously indulgent life that included a highly public wedding just a few years after he had concluded an extravagant series of affairs with soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Francis Wheen’s previous book was the highly praised Karl A Life.
452 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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118 people want to read
About the author
Francis Wheen
27 books85 followersFrancis James Baird Wheen (born 22 January 1957) is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster.
Wheen was educated at Copthorne Prep School, Harrow School and Royal Holloway College, University of London. At Harrow he was a contemporary of Mark Thatcher who has been a recurring subject of his journalism.[citation needed] He is a member of the 'soap' side of the Wheen family, whose family business was the long-established "Wheen & Sons", soap-makers, as was revealed in the gossip column of the Daily Mail on 26 March 2007. He was married to the writer Joan Smith between 1985 and 1993.
He is the author of several books including a biography of Karl Marx, which won the Isaac Deutscher prize. A column for The Guardian ran for several years. He writes for Private Eye and is the magazine's deputy editor. His collected journalism – Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies won him the George Orwell Prize in 2003. He has also been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard.
Wheen broadcasts regularly (mainly on BBC Radio 4) and is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, in which he often referred to the fact that he resembles the former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith. He is also one of the more frequently recruited guests for Have I Got News For You.
Wheen wrote a docudrama, The Lavender List, for BBC Four on the final period of Harold Wilson's premiership, concentrating on his relationship with Marcia Williams, which was first screened in March 2006. It starred Kenneth Cranham as former Prime Minister Wilson and Gina McKee as Williams. In April 2007 the BBC paid £75,000 to Williams (Baroness Falkender) in an out-of-court settlement over claims made in the programme.
Francis Wheen is a signatory to the Euston Manifesto and a close friend of Christopher Hitchens. In late-2005 Wheen was co-author, with journalist David Aaronovitch and blogger Oliver Kamm, of a complaint to The Guardian after it published a correction and apology for an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes. Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The writer Diana Johnstone also complained about references to her in the interview. The Guardian's then readers' editor Ian Mayes found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting the argument.
Wheen was educated at Copthorne Prep School, Harrow School and Royal Holloway College, University of London. At Harrow he was a contemporary of Mark Thatcher who has been a recurring subject of his journalism.[citation needed] He is a member of the 'soap' side of the Wheen family, whose family business was the long-established "Wheen & Sons", soap-makers, as was revealed in the gossip column of the Daily Mail on 26 March 2007. He was married to the writer Joan Smith between 1985 and 1993.
He is the author of several books including a biography of Karl Marx, which won the Isaac Deutscher prize. A column for The Guardian ran for several years. He writes for Private Eye and is the magazine's deputy editor. His collected journalism – Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies won him the George Orwell Prize in 2003. He has also been a regular columnist for the London Evening Standard.
Wheen broadcasts regularly (mainly on BBC Radio 4) and is a regular panellist on The News Quiz, in which he often referred to the fact that he resembles the former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith. He is also one of the more frequently recruited guests for Have I Got News For You.
Wheen wrote a docudrama, The Lavender List, for BBC Four on the final period of Harold Wilson's premiership, concentrating on his relationship with Marcia Williams, which was first screened in March 2006. It starred Kenneth Cranham as former Prime Minister Wilson and Gina McKee as Williams. In April 2007 the BBC paid £75,000 to Williams (Baroness Falkender) in an out-of-court settlement over claims made in the programme.
Francis Wheen is a signatory to the Euston Manifesto and a close friend of Christopher Hitchens. In late-2005 Wheen was co-author, with journalist David Aaronovitch and blogger Oliver Kamm, of a complaint to The Guardian after it published a correction and apology for an interview with Noam Chomsky by Emma Brockes. Chomsky complained that the article suggested he denied the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. The writer Diana Johnstone also complained about references to her in the interview. The Guardian's then readers' editor Ian Mayes found that this had misrepresented Chomsky's position, and his judgement was upheld in May 2006 by an external ombudsman, John Willis. In his report for the Guardian, Willis detailed his reasons for rejecting the argument.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 12, 2024
Tom Driberg is fascinating because he inhabited so many different worlds at once. This book could easily have been called The Lives of Tom Driberg. At Oxford in the 1920s he was part of the dandy aesthete circle which included Brian Howard, Harold Acton and Cyril Connolly: bottle-green suits, raspberry crêpe de chine shirts, poetic gibberish recited through megaphones and young men openly in each other’s embrace. All that kind of thing. At the same time he was a member of the British Communist Party, which he joined when he was fifteen and still at his public school, and being arrested for attempting to distribute pamphlets on their behalf during the General Strike of 1926. In the 1930s, as the original William Hickey, he became a famous gossip columnist for the Daily Express. The militant socialist and Lord Beaverbrook’s staunchly conservative newspaper were strange bedfellows indeed, but he did his best to smuggle his heretical views into the columns. Driberg moved freely up and down the social scale of a rigidly stratified class society. He dined in the finest restaurants and grandest houses and cruised the rather less stately ‘cottages’ of England in search of rough trade. He was as openly gay - not to mention recklessly so - as it was possible to be in a society that put gay men in prison (as Driberg very nearly was on more than one occasion). He was a left-wing Labour MP who adored the Royal Family, was a social snob, liked to hang out with aristocrats and lived in a mansion which he couldn’t afford (Driberg was simultaneously sybaritic and impecunious). He was a devout Anglo-Catholic and a friend of Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast himself. Driberg ‘acquired’ Crowley’s diary, eventually flogging it to Jimmy Page for a princely sum. His list of friends and acquaintances was dizzyingly eclectic: Evelyn Waugh, Guy Burgess, Edith Sitwell, W. H. Auden, Lord Mountbatten, Aneurin Bevan, Allen Ginsberg and the infamous gangster twins, the Krays.
It should be clear from all this that, if Tom Driberg hadn’t existed, no novelist would have dared to invent him; he simply wouldn’t have been a credible character. Given that the actual man was so fantastical, it’s hardly surprising that many myths have accumulated around him. It has been alleged that he was an MI5 informant who ratted on his socialist brothers and sisters and also a KGB agent who betrayed his country (accusations rebutted with sober factual authority, I thought, by Francis Wheen. On the other hand, who knows? Driberg’s life blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction so comprehensively that it might be safest to assume that everything said about him is both true and false). In his introduction, Wheen compares him to Woody Allen’s chameleonic character Zelig, and not without reason. Think of a key 20th century event and chances are that Tom Driberg was there or thereabouts: the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, the liberation of Paris, the relief of Buchenwald, the Korean War, swinging London in the ‘60s. He was in America when Pearl Harbour was attacked and in 1956 he went to Moscow to interview the Soviet double agent and defector Guy Burgess. His life was so inextricably bound up with world events that this biography also serves as a useful primer to 20th century political and social history.
Despite his opulent habits there was nothing insincere about Driberg’s socialism. As Wheen points out, extreme case though he undeniably was, there is actually no contradiction: socialists believe in greater equality and justice, not asceticism. Driberg was a lifelong opponent of colonialism and racism and one of the first British politicians to advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament. He was a constant thorn in the side of the establishment, not least that of his own party. Wheen argues convincingly that his Christianity and socialism were reflections of each other; a belief in fellowship and justice being at the root of both. And, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, there was no drift to the Right in later life. The rebellious spirit of the 1960s chimed perfectly with Driberg’s eternally rebellious spirit. Despite entering his own sixties mid-decade, he had a fine old time: singing the praises of pirate radio (unlike his own government which eventually outlawed the pirates), signing petitions supporting the legalisation of cannabis, contributing to the satirical magazine Private Eye, defending the countercultural press, speaking out against censorship, and trying to persuade his friend Mick Jagger to become a Labour MP.
Tom Driberg was clearly no saint. This upper-middle-class man of the people could be appallingly rude to ordinary people and woe betide any waiter who had the vulgarity to put a sauce bottle on his table. He was also a less than ideal husband. Driberg married in 1951 and, predictably, it was not a happy liaison. Wheen dismisses the suggestion that it was a cover for his continuing gay adventures (discretion was certainly never his thing) while failing to provide a plausible alternative explanation. Despite his faults, or possibly partly because of them, I found myself liking Driberg enormously. He had an admirably independent spirit, was never in the slightest danger of sliding into respectability (even when unexpectedly elevated to the House of Lords shortly before his death, where true to form he immediately proceeded to cause trouble) and possessed a rare gift for èpater la bourgeois. His profound love of the arts, and often avant-garde art, also stands out in a notoriously philistine Westminster. He was destined to remain a parliamentary backbencher but nowadays such a natural anarch would be unlikely to get past any party’s candidate selection procedure.
This biography is full of funny stories about Driberg’s often outrageous behaviour which sometimes give it a gossipy flavour that, as a former ‘gossip king’ himself, he would surely have approved of. But it’s more substantial than this suggests. Wheen provides a nuanced portrait of a complex and paradoxical man while also casting a sharp eye on the moral hypocrisies and legally sanctioned prejudices of mid-20th century Britain.
It should be clear from all this that, if Tom Driberg hadn’t existed, no novelist would have dared to invent him; he simply wouldn’t have been a credible character. Given that the actual man was so fantastical, it’s hardly surprising that many myths have accumulated around him. It has been alleged that he was an MI5 informant who ratted on his socialist brothers and sisters and also a KGB agent who betrayed his country (accusations rebutted with sober factual authority, I thought, by Francis Wheen. On the other hand, who knows? Driberg’s life blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction so comprehensively that it might be safest to assume that everything said about him is both true and false). In his introduction, Wheen compares him to Woody Allen’s chameleonic character Zelig, and not without reason. Think of a key 20th century event and chances are that Tom Driberg was there or thereabouts: the General Strike, the Spanish Civil War, the liberation of Paris, the relief of Buchenwald, the Korean War, swinging London in the ‘60s. He was in America when Pearl Harbour was attacked and in 1956 he went to Moscow to interview the Soviet double agent and defector Guy Burgess. His life was so inextricably bound up with world events that this biography also serves as a useful primer to 20th century political and social history.
Despite his opulent habits there was nothing insincere about Driberg’s socialism. As Wheen points out, extreme case though he undeniably was, there is actually no contradiction: socialists believe in greater equality and justice, not asceticism. Driberg was a lifelong opponent of colonialism and racism and one of the first British politicians to advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament. He was a constant thorn in the side of the establishment, not least that of his own party. Wheen argues convincingly that his Christianity and socialism were reflections of each other; a belief in fellowship and justice being at the root of both. And, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, there was no drift to the Right in later life. The rebellious spirit of the 1960s chimed perfectly with Driberg’s eternally rebellious spirit. Despite entering his own sixties mid-decade, he had a fine old time: singing the praises of pirate radio (unlike his own government which eventually outlawed the pirates), signing petitions supporting the legalisation of cannabis, contributing to the satirical magazine Private Eye, defending the countercultural press, speaking out against censorship, and trying to persuade his friend Mick Jagger to become a Labour MP.
Tom Driberg was clearly no saint. This upper-middle-class man of the people could be appallingly rude to ordinary people and woe betide any waiter who had the vulgarity to put a sauce bottle on his table. He was also a less than ideal husband. Driberg married in 1951 and, predictably, it was not a happy liaison. Wheen dismisses the suggestion that it was a cover for his continuing gay adventures (discretion was certainly never his thing) while failing to provide a plausible alternative explanation. Despite his faults, or possibly partly because of them, I found myself liking Driberg enormously. He had an admirably independent spirit, was never in the slightest danger of sliding into respectability (even when unexpectedly elevated to the House of Lords shortly before his death, where true to form he immediately proceeded to cause trouble) and possessed a rare gift for èpater la bourgeois. His profound love of the arts, and often avant-garde art, also stands out in a notoriously philistine Westminster. He was destined to remain a parliamentary backbencher but nowadays such a natural anarch would be unlikely to get past any party’s candidate selection procedure.
This biography is full of funny stories about Driberg’s often outrageous behaviour which sometimes give it a gossipy flavour that, as a former ‘gossip king’ himself, he would surely have approved of. But it’s more substantial than this suggests. Wheen provides a nuanced portrait of a complex and paradoxical man while also casting a sharp eye on the moral hypocrisies and legally sanctioned prejudices of mid-20th century Britain.
September 29, 2018
5*
The title goes quite some way to sum up Tom Driberg – The Soul of Indiscretion; Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw.
Having just finished reading Colin Wilson’s novel Adrift in Soho I find that Tom D was often adrift here too – his choice. His favourite cottage was here.
I’d read his unfinished memoirs, “Ruling Passions”,years ago. Francis Wheen’s biography is extremely readable, his subject largely ensured that. It is also a very balanced portrait of this colourful character who was larger than life in almost every way.
Like many of us, Driberg was a mass of contradictions. A communist until his expulsion from the party and a socialist, to the left of left all his life, he wrote for the right leaning Daily Express for many years, the first William Hickey columnist. He was to write a biography of his boss, Lord Beaverbrook (that is a story in itself!) Middle class, like many of his friends and public school educated, he was drawn politically and sexually to the working class. As far as the latter was concerned they had to be 18 ish, male and preferably rough. He chose to believe that large amounts of young semen, orally induced, would prolong his life. Wrong! but he probably died happy. His sex drive was phenomenal to the last. His privy member got him in no end of trouble, not least when he dallied frequently with convicted criminals.
An excellent journalist, he was the first to interview Guy Burgess, and his book on Burgess made Tom a lot of dosh, all of which he spent very quickly. His time in Moscow interviewing Burgess was mutually productive. Guy Burgess claimed to be sex starved in Moscow but Tom, the ultimate professional, sniffed out a promising cottage favoured by gay Ukrainians and so Guy got fixed up with his longstanding Ukrainian lover.
Tom loved youth, the more rebellious the better, he was their champion, challenging every puritanical killjoy in sight. He was friends with Mick Jagger (whose ‘basket’ he admired and tried to encourage M.J. to become a Labour MP) and Marianne Faithfull.
To pursue the contradictions theme: he was a young disciple of Aleister Crowley (A.C. saw Tom ashis natural successor) but he was also a devout Anglo-Catholic. An extreme left winger, he also loved the British monarchy. Very friendly with Mountbatten: they had similar leanings, in more ways than one. Massively mysogynistic (he claimed to have been put off girls from a very early age when a little girl, and play mate, apparently peed on his bedroom floor!) he was a fierce champion of women’s rights, equal pay and the like. For some unaccountable reason he married in middle age - and behaved abominably towards his wife.
Hopeless with money, he was frequently saved from financial ruin by friends and patrons. Was he an agent/counter agent, spying for Russia? Wheen thinks definitely not; Chapman Pincher believes otherwise.
Tom Driberg chose to live life to the full and preferably dangerously. He was often in physical danger, covering the fighting in the Korean War and elsewhere. He liked to muck in with the military. As one young serviceman was to say of him: “Tom Driberg conducted himself as a man-landing in enemy country, coming on night raids – and that outweighed everything else. He was accepted as a chap. He was a bit bent but he was well liked by the Royal Marines. We regarded him as a man of courage”. Tom would have appreciated such a tribute.
The title goes quite some way to sum up Tom Driberg – The Soul of Indiscretion; Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw.
Having just finished reading Colin Wilson’s novel Adrift in Soho I find that Tom D was often adrift here too – his choice. His favourite cottage was here.
I’d read his unfinished memoirs, “Ruling Passions”,years ago. Francis Wheen’s biography is extremely readable, his subject largely ensured that. It is also a very balanced portrait of this colourful character who was larger than life in almost every way.
Like many of us, Driberg was a mass of contradictions. A communist until his expulsion from the party and a socialist, to the left of left all his life, he wrote for the right leaning Daily Express for many years, the first William Hickey columnist. He was to write a biography of his boss, Lord Beaverbrook (that is a story in itself!) Middle class, like many of his friends and public school educated, he was drawn politically and sexually to the working class. As far as the latter was concerned they had to be 18 ish, male and preferably rough. He chose to believe that large amounts of young semen, orally induced, would prolong his life. Wrong! but he probably died happy. His sex drive was phenomenal to the last. His privy member got him in no end of trouble, not least when he dallied frequently with convicted criminals.
An excellent journalist, he was the first to interview Guy Burgess, and his book on Burgess made Tom a lot of dosh, all of which he spent very quickly. His time in Moscow interviewing Burgess was mutually productive. Guy Burgess claimed to be sex starved in Moscow but Tom, the ultimate professional, sniffed out a promising cottage favoured by gay Ukrainians and so Guy got fixed up with his longstanding Ukrainian lover.
Tom loved youth, the more rebellious the better, he was their champion, challenging every puritanical killjoy in sight. He was friends with Mick Jagger (whose ‘basket’ he admired and tried to encourage M.J. to become a Labour MP) and Marianne Faithfull.
To pursue the contradictions theme: he was a young disciple of Aleister Crowley (A.C. saw Tom ashis natural successor) but he was also a devout Anglo-Catholic. An extreme left winger, he also loved the British monarchy. Very friendly with Mountbatten: they had similar leanings, in more ways than one. Massively mysogynistic (he claimed to have been put off girls from a very early age when a little girl, and play mate, apparently peed on his bedroom floor!) he was a fierce champion of women’s rights, equal pay and the like. For some unaccountable reason he married in middle age - and behaved abominably towards his wife.
Hopeless with money, he was frequently saved from financial ruin by friends and patrons. Was he an agent/counter agent, spying for Russia? Wheen thinks definitely not; Chapman Pincher believes otherwise.
Tom Driberg chose to live life to the full and preferably dangerously. He was often in physical danger, covering the fighting in the Korean War and elsewhere. He liked to muck in with the military. As one young serviceman was to say of him: “Tom Driberg conducted himself as a man-landing in enemy country, coming on night raids – and that outweighed everything else. He was accepted as a chap. He was a bit bent but he was well liked by the Royal Marines. We regarded him as a man of courage”. Tom would have appreciated such a tribute.
September 11, 2025
Exhaustively researched yet hugely entertaining, this is how biographies should be, though obviously a lot of that work is done by the mesmerising subject. Born in 1905, Driberg wasn't quite a century baby, but still gives the impression of having interacted with anyone who was anyone in the Twentieth, sometimes with astonishing butterfly effects: he introduced Auden to The Waste Land, and Dennis Wheatley to Crowley. Sometimes less so, granted; Wheen is sceptical, and not without cause, of Driberg's claim to have nearly prevented the Vietnam War, and the attempt to talk Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull into starting a new political party reads more like a sitcom episode than a great missed opportunity. Still, from the backbenches Driberg was happy to be the permissive society's representative in the Commons, and understandably so when, since boyhood, one of his main aims seems to have been to suck as many cocks as humanly possible. Mostly he liked a bit of rough; it was one of the few times he could be relied on to be something approaching polite to waiters, though he respected the armed forces whether or not they reciprocated his interest, something which could sit awkwardly with his opposition to imperialism in the abstract. Still, a dick is a dick, and the main direction of his appetites didn't preclude propositions to Allen Ginsberg, Mick Jagger, Martin Amis – and, more successfully, Nye Bevan, which is handy for Michael Sheen as otherwise he might accidentally have played a heterosexual there. Even aside from the Very Different Time element of all this, Wheen certainly doesn't try to paint Driberg as a saint; he was a snob and a sponger, not to mention the sort of old-school gay who tipped from an interest in male bodies to a revulsion for female ones, and his treatment of his wife in particular, while the situation was always likely to tend towards the awkward, was abominable. But for all that, he was a courageous champion of progressive causes (so long as it didn't involve modern architecture or updating the liturgy), who absolutely relished the brickbats he'd receive from semi-literate bigots, not to mention an accomplished writer who'd tune up the punctuation in everything from Labour manifestos to Betjeman's poems. For all his many flaws, we could do with more like him instead of the loons, cowards and wafflers who sit on the benches now.
April 6, 2013
I knew very little about Driberg before reading this biography. What I did know was more about his reputation as a notorious gay politician in a time when such a label applied to no one. He deserved the label, there is no doubt about that and the book doesn't hold back about Driberg's indiscretions. He boasted about them quite freely himself and some of his colleagues dreaded being trapped in a car with him because they would have to listen to these endless tales of pick-ups and cottaging mixed in with tales of high society living and exquisite dining. It was very much a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. He preferred the working class men himself. Good looking, rough preferably, not too intelligent and completely unlike any of the gay men he would mix with in his political or social life. He made no bones about hiding them either and brought them along to social dinners much to his friends disquiet.
Apart from this side to Driberg the book covers his political stances on issues of the day - left-wing, liberal who joined the Labour Party reluctantly but would have left it had there been a more communist oriented party at the time. Ironically he lived quite a bourgeois life himself which would seem to have been completely at odds with his political views. His was a mixture of oil and water. His religious views, which meant a lot to him, seemed to have no effect whatsoever on his moral behaviour as he mixed with a lot of gay clergy and took their pronouncements on homosexuality with a nod and a wink. He seemed more concerned about the `frumps and frills' of the ceremonies than any doctrinal issues.
His journalism career is well covered and gives a good insight into the background of how these columnists came about their stories and the limitations under which they worked. Driberg was either liked or loathed in equal measure and his attitude to his long suffering wife is explored in detail. He was a complex man and the book does his life and indiscretions justice. It is well researched, indexed and very readable.
Apart from this side to Driberg the book covers his political stances on issues of the day - left-wing, liberal who joined the Labour Party reluctantly but would have left it had there been a more communist oriented party at the time. Ironically he lived quite a bourgeois life himself which would seem to have been completely at odds with his political views. His was a mixture of oil and water. His religious views, which meant a lot to him, seemed to have no effect whatsoever on his moral behaviour as he mixed with a lot of gay clergy and took their pronouncements on homosexuality with a nod and a wink. He seemed more concerned about the `frumps and frills' of the ceremonies than any doctrinal issues.
His journalism career is well covered and gives a good insight into the background of how these columnists came about their stories and the limitations under which they worked. Driberg was either liked or loathed in equal measure and his attitude to his long suffering wife is explored in detail. He was a complex man and the book does his life and indiscretions justice. It is well researched, indexed and very readable.
November 30, 2022
The subject of the book wasn't exactly a licensed eccentric, as Wheen calls Driberg's employer Lord Beaverbrook, though he definitely stood out in a crowd. "Indiscretion" covers a wide and interesting swath of 20th-century British life and moves at a good clip, but in the end I wasn't sure Driberg's work, either as MP or writer, justifies a biography of 400+ pages. Specifically, despite the excerpts Wheen includes, I was left wondering why so many people thought of him as the greatest UK newspaper columnist of his era. So my next job is to read "Colonnade 1937-47," the collection Driberg put together in 1949. We'll see.
September 15, 2023
A first rate biography of a fascinating character - I won't go and say again all the things that the summaries on goodreads and amazon say in such excellent detail - but Driberg is the sort of extraordinary character that flourished in the mid-to-late 20th century that just couldn't happen now. But what a wonderful and fascinating life and, he could not have done better than Francis Wheen for a biographer. Mr. Wheen is a writer of excellent prose and of considerable intelligence as well as a great sense of humour. I strongly recommend it.
April 12, 2022
This review contains spoilers.
Driberg emerges from this biography as a very unpleasant man. He didn't pay his bills, he was rude to waiting staff and treated his wife abominably.
An appalling snob, who prior to a Labour Party Conference, wrote to the manager of a leading hotel in Brighton requesting that no sauce bottles should appear on dining tables for the duration of the conference.
A promiscuous homosexual who avoided prosecution thanks to his guile and the machinations of his employer, Beaverbrook.
He married, probably as a front to give himself respectability. He treated his wife badly and her poor health was probably due to stress brought on by Driberg's cruelty.
This is a workmanlike, very readable biography. Wheen resists the temptation to speculate on aspects of Driberg's life and sticks to the facts, as far as they can be ascertained.
Driberg emerges from this biography as a very unpleasant man. He didn't pay his bills, he was rude to waiting staff and treated his wife abominably.
An appalling snob, who prior to a Labour Party Conference, wrote to the manager of a leading hotel in Brighton requesting that no sauce bottles should appear on dining tables for the duration of the conference.
A promiscuous homosexual who avoided prosecution thanks to his guile and the machinations of his employer, Beaverbrook.
He married, probably as a front to give himself respectability. He treated his wife badly and her poor health was probably due to stress brought on by Driberg's cruelty.
This is a workmanlike, very readable biography. Wheen resists the temptation to speculate on aspects of Driberg's life and sticks to the facts, as far as they can be ascertained.
June 12, 2018
A very entertaining book about a larger than life MP. At a time when the Thorpe murder case is being discussed we see another example of how a very public gay MP could get away with his sexuality in a time which officially society condemned it. It was interesting also for his other interests, many of which now run counter to the official line on what it is to be on the left. An interesting and engaging life well written.
July 9, 2024
I have no idea how I came to own this book. Nor did I have a clue who Driberg was when I started to read it. I now know he was a associate of the Bright Young Things between the war; a member of Parliament as an Independent and for the Labour Party; an outsnadi gossip columnist; a biographer of spy Guy Burgess and the first person named as a homosexual on his Times orbituary. To be frank, he didn’t achieve much but his life story makes a rollicking tale of debauchery; royal and political connections; critiques of many a well-known cultural icon (even Mick JaggerH who delivered in a rapid jour allistic style by the author, who has also been a fellow gossip columnist. Entertaining yes; fun yes; thought provoking hardly; profound no.
May 30, 2015
Tom Driberg was a legendary gossip columnist (the original William Hickey in The Daily Express), a onetime member of the Communist party, a suspected Soviet agent, an Independent and then later a Labour MP, a member of the Labour Party's National Executive for many years (Chairman for one year), in the final years of his life a member of the House of Lords, snob, close friend of Lord Mountbatten and a brave war correspondent. Ah yes he was also a notorious frequenter of gentleman's toilets at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK. He appears in fiction, GF Newman and Michael Dobbs for example, (and perhaps elsewhere)but only to add spice to the plot with his sexual adventures.
Francis Wheen's book can hardly fail, given his subject's extraordinary life and it doesn't. Due attention is given to his gay lifestyle but most of the book tells us what a brilliant columnist he was and how, despite his public school and Oxbridge education, he was a totally dedicated socialist. He could count amongst his close friends two of the most committed of all labour ministers, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot. His close dealings with Mountbatten showed the last viceroy of India shared his socialist ideals.
This is a superbly written and painstakingly researched biography which successfully sets the record straight on Driberg. For all his faults, and there were many, Tom Driberg was, essentially a good man
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil and Liberating Belsen (both published by Sacristy Press)
Francis Wheen's book can hardly fail, given his subject's extraordinary life and it doesn't. Due attention is given to his gay lifestyle but most of the book tells us what a brilliant columnist he was and how, despite his public school and Oxbridge education, he was a totally dedicated socialist. He could count amongst his close friends two of the most committed of all labour ministers, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot. His close dealings with Mountbatten showed the last viceroy of India shared his socialist ideals.
This is a superbly written and painstakingly researched biography which successfully sets the record straight on Driberg. For all his faults, and there were many, Tom Driberg was, essentially a good man
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil and Liberating Belsen (both published by Sacristy Press)
July 15, 2009
A sanatised view of a controversial British MP. Some reviews describe it as funny, but having personal knowledge of a lot of the individuals mentioned in the book I did not think some of the instances at all funny. But an interesting read - part of my 'political biography season'! I certainly did not like Driberg any more than I did before I read the book!
October 7, 2007
I think the subtitle says it all. Certainly all the adjectives I can think of seem rather pale and insubstantial next to the life led as written here.
Not for those of a nervous disposition, is all I can say.
Not for those of a nervous disposition, is all I can say.
March 31, 2013
Having previously read "ruling passions" this gives a lot more background, and helps to continue where ruling passions unfortunately finishes. Not sure I'd want Tom Driberg running the economy (he is forever in overdraft!) but he would make a fab dinner guest and gossip!
July 24, 2015
A fun read, though maybe slightly over-long. I started the book really wanting to like Tom Driberg, but instead I found him rather boorish and unpleasant, if occasionally amusing. Contradictions bordered on the hypocritical, which I guess the author himself identified.
January 6, 2015
Outrageous and hilarious!
September 16, 2016
An entertaining biography of a fascinating person. Communist, gay, high-church Anglo-Catholic, Labour MP and eventually a Lord, snob, gossip, journalist, loyal friend to all sorts of people ...
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