James Evans writes: Much has been made of Bernard Levin’s hatred of lawyers (obituary, August 10), but he made exceptions. When I was legal adviser to Times Newspapers, I invited him to the annual lunch of the legal staff. He wrote: “What an agreeable occasion. I never realised how pleasant it could be to put one’s head in so many lions’ mouths at once.”
It fell to me for some years to vet his columns for The Times in order to try to eliminate the legal problems. These encounters were usually an enjoyable sparring match. Many journalists are apt to resist suggested changes to their copy on grounds of a kind of amour propre. That was not Bernard’s way, at least if he thought I had raised a reasonable point. I was frequently amazed at the fluency with which he could devise a different version which removed his difficulty. I would then ask him to repeat it at dictation speed. He never failed to repeat it word for word, even though the passage was, like some of his sentences, quite long. It was a pleasure to watch his brain at work, as he walked restlessly round my room — never taking off the Sherlock Holmes cape which he wore whatever the weather — and apparently quite oblivious to the fact that he had a taxi waiting for him. Taxi drivers must have loved him for his waiting time.
He wrote to me a number of times, thanking me for advice I had given. Doubtless tongue in cheek, he addressed me as “Solon” and signed himself “Thersites”, defined in the the Oxford Classical Dictionary as a “foul-mouthed fellow”. On one occasion, he denied that he was seeking to provoke letter writers, “which is not, despite appearances, ever the case”. On another, he wrote: “I hope you don’t feel that I dice with death for the fun of the thing or out of a desire to tweak the law by the tail. I do feel strongly about these matters . . .” On another, when he had taken my advice to tone his column down a bit, he wrote: “I will thank you to take note of my amazing self-restraint. My only regret is that we cannot chalk it up in the form of a credit, so that I can have 19 defamatory bisques within a fortnight.”
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Betty Barker writes: In 1989 I was teaching a class of ten-year-old children. Bernard Levin’s article about Easter Island had just appeared in The Times and it was so beautifully written that I took it into school to read to my class. They were fascinated by the mystery surrounding the giants and we had a lively discussion about them. The article caught their imagination and we decided that the children, in groups, should write letters to Bernard Levin, telling him their own ideas on the purpose of the statues and how they got where they are.
To our great surprise and pleasure, each group received a handwritten reply. All the replies were addressed to the children, by name. Each reply thanked them for their interest, but each was different, showing that he had taken their thoughts seriously and giving his own comments on what, individually, they had said. Perhaps most importantly, though, it was not just what he said to the children, but — as always — the beautiful way he said it.
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Rosemary Athay writes: I have long maintained a wishlist of dinner party guests whom I am unlikely ever to encounter in real life; Bernard Levin was one of those. It was Mr Levin’s sharp wit that earned him a place at my table. The remark which I remember with particular affection — although I am sure that it was for once inaccurate — is his description of Mr Wedgwood Benn’s brain as “the thick end of the wedge”.
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Michael Percy writes: In the obituary of Bernard Levin reference was made to his becoming “besotted with the charms of Kiri Te Kanawa”, a state of mind that he recorded for posterity in one of his articles in The Times. In his opening paragraph he stated that he was sitting in her dressing room “cuddling her cat”, a phrase that was immediately followed by the entreaty (and here my memory of quotations may not be as exact as Levin’s was): “Oh, Mr Compositor, please delete that last noun”.
A service of thanksgiving for the life of Bernard Levin will be held at 11am on Thursday, October 21, at St Martin-in- the-Fields. Tickets are available from The Assistant Managing Editor, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Tickets will be posted by Thursday, October 14.