Bernard Levin remembered

I knew Bernard Levin when we both worked on The Spectator at the end of the Fifties, during its uncharacteristically radical period. He wrote a parliamentary sketch under the name of Taper, and was about the first to treat the political scene as theatre — and amateur theatre at that — rather than a court of high seriousness, though the idea of doing it that way came from the editor, Brian Inglis. Bernard called it ‘the principle that you mainly record the slipping false teeth of those with whose views you disagree’.

Inglis, the man who invented the phrase ‘fringe medicine’, had plucked Bernard from the magazine Truth, where he was doing theatre criticism. Our happy band included Cyril Ray, who had resigned from the Sunday Times and wrote mainly about wine, Alan Brien as arts editor and Karl Miller on books. Alan and Bernard often found it convenient to meet in Karl’s office, which was between theirs, Karl’s impotent fury at their antics being half the fun.