The late Karl Miller called his memoir of a life spent largely in literary journalism Dark Horses. No equine could be more subfusc than the incoming Times Literary Supplement, editor, Stig Abell, formerly the managing editor of a much more sparkling gem in the Murdoch diadem, the Sun. Although Abell’s appointment has been met with a certain amount of amusement in more elevated circles, it should be pointed out that his credentials for the exacting task of replacing Sir Peter Stothard in the editorial chair are impeccable. In fact, under the name Stephen Abell, this Cambridge double first has already made numberless appearances in the magazine over the last 10 years as a reviewer of fiction.
In any case, there is no law that all literary editors have to serve the same apprenticeship. These titans of the books pages tend to come from academe: Abell’s predecessor at the TLS, John Gross, for example, who taught at King’s College, Cambridge, or the New Statesman’s late 1970s incumbent, David Caute, a one-time fellow of All Souls Oxford. But a substantial proportion has always hailed from training grounds infinitely removed from the world of books. Another TLS editor, Ferdinand Mount, once headed up Mrs Thatcher’s policy unit, while George Orwell, Tribune literary editor from 1943-45, began his career in the Burma police. JR Ackerley, long-term gauleiter of the Listener’s books pages (1935-1959), was another old oriental hand, having spent time in India as secretary to the Maharajah of Chhatarpur. And even the academic recruits could come from unexpected backgrounds: the legendary Victorian Spectator eminence RH Hutton had once been professor of mathematics at Bedford College, London.
Equally, there are no prescriptions as to what literary editors are expected to do afterwards. Career options are legion, from Nigella Lawson, a former deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times turned celebrity chef, to Derek Verschoyle, employed by the Spectator in the 1930s, who was allegedly recruited by MI6 and in this capacity assigned to a postwar plot to blow up ships carrying concentration camp survivors to Palestine, or the Liberal politician John Morley (1838-1923) who moved on from the Fortnightly Review to an eventual berth as secretary of state for India. Thomas Carlyle’s 1840 On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1840) has a category entitled “The hero as man of letters”. Who knows what heights the TLS’s new custodian can go on to scale?
