The London Evening Standard’s widely read Londoner’s Diary, the nation’s first gossip column, has just celebrated its centenary.
Many well-known people have contributed to it over the years. Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph, edited it in the late 1930s; for a short time Winston himself took over. He badly needed the money. He relied on newspaper work for much of his income and few commissions came his way because his attacks on Neville Chamberlain’s government made him deeply unpopular. He wrote about inoffensive matters for the Diary, noting for example that “there was much greater stiffness and formality among politicians in Victorian times than at the present day”.
Nevertheless, the Evening Standard deserves credit for providing him with badly needed work, as Alistair Lexden pointed out in a letter published in the paper on 31 May.
Sir, Winston Churchill did not fill in for his journalist son Randolph on the Diary in 1938 as a result of the latter “going to Munich as a young army officer” (26 May). The Nazis would have sent him straight back home. It was the year that Chamberlain reached his Munich deal with Hitler which both Winston and Randolph denounced. Winston’s Diary work let Randolph take time off for army training. Such was Winston’s unpopularity at this point that most of the press banned him from writing. The Evening Standard was a proud exception.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords