It was John Thadeus Delane, Editor of The Times from 1841 to 1877, who first saw that the death of a leading figure on the national stage was an event that would seize the public imagination as almost nothing else could, demanding more than a brief notice recording the demise. “Wellington’s death,” he told a colleague, “will be the only topic.”
Delane instituted the practice of preparing authoritative obituaries of the most important personalities of the day while they were still alive. The Times has carried on doing that ever since, and for the past half-century or so there have been about 5,000 advance notices on file at any time.
These “stocks” seem to exercise a curious fascination. Spike Milligan wrote to the paper near the end of his life to suggest that his obituary be dusted down “as I have not been feeling well lately”. One former MP has spent years badgering anyone whom he suspects of having the slightest influence at The Times, determined that there should be an obituary for him on file, doing full justice to his talents.
Dame Barbara Cartland went so far as to compile an exhaustive account of her career — like her prodigious Who’s Who entry, but with adjectives. She sent it in with every apparent confidence of publication. (She was thanked politely and told that we would be glad to add it to our files. Which is where it remains.)
It was only in the 1920s that The Times appointed an obituary editor, and later began to run daily obituaries in a regular column or page. Then, of course, the big question became who to include.
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There’s no pleasing everyone here. In 1956 the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis complained that “the obituary arrangements at The Times are haphazard and unsatisfactory. The smallest civil servant — sewage disposal officer in Uppingham — has at least half a column about him in standing type at the office, but writers and artists are not provided for until they are 80”.
That was a little unfair, even at the time. Today the complaints are slightly different. Not enough women. Too many foreigners (this most likely from the friends and relations of retired sewage disposal officers in Uppingham who feel that they no longer get enough space). Too much jazz (probably all too true).
One of the best accounts of the obituaries editor’s job was given by my predecessor, Colin Watson, who held the post for 26 years. On his retirement in 1982, he wrote: “You may read . . . turn on the radio; listen for rumours of ill-health and write endless letters. But never dare to say that you are on top.”
Another Times obituaries editor, Frederick Lowndes, was thought in the 1930s to spend many hours in the Athenaeum, scrutinising his fellow members for signs of mortality.
Many Times obituaries are written in-house, in a terrible scramble if we have been caught out. Others are commissioned from distinguished outside contributors with expert knowledge of the subject.
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“Just as every man is said to have a book in him,” Watson thought, “so most people have one obit in them, except actors and musicians, who can’t or won’t write.”
Personally, I’d add lawyers to that list.
The only problem with these “notable men and women in the outside world”, Watson observed, is “a) to find them, b) to persuade them to write and c) to get them actually to deliver”. The difficulty is compounded by the far-from-generous pay — a guinea per hundred words in Watson’s time and much the same, I blush to admit, today.
The tradition of anonymity in Times obituaries has its advantages, nevertheless. An unsigned piece is much more likely to be written — and read — as an account of the subject’s life and not of his relations with the author. What is more, Times notices may be elaborate composites, updated over many years by several people. The obituary of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, for instance, would have needed half a dozen bylines, some for writers who had predeceased their subject.
Obituaries are about lives, not death. “Read no history,” Disraeli enjoined in his novel Contarini Fleming: “nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” That is misleading, of course. For biography to serve as a prism through which history is viewed, biographers must shape unruly lives into tidy narratives of courage rewarded, virtue triumphant or promise unfulfilled. Obituarists mostly have to do that faster than they would like, yet the results are expected to stand the test of time. That, for the obituarist, is both the challenge and the reward.
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Ian Brunskill is the Obituaries Editor of The Times
Great Lives: A Century in Obituaries is published by Times Books at £20