Signs of 'The Times'

...it appeals to the "intelligentsia" rather than to the solid business people...

...But whoever owns it, I mary organs: two of the latter being visible, every day of the will bet that it won't be allowed to go under...

...That is why it will carry on-somehow, And this is why,.I am quite sure, the current strike, however somewhere, sometime...

...The country was full of politics...

...It is not that the Times has more, or better reporting than tising jobs throughout the country...

...Librarians probably buy more books on the Times strike, into perspective...

...No story ever lasts probably never read anything in the Times at all, despite the more than about two hundred words (beyond that, they reckon, Commonweal: 70 boredom sets in), no front-page headline is ever less than about be taken over by the BBC (which is its obvious equivalent in two inches high...

...Times Educational Supplement, and the College and Univer(Intellectuals and artists don't run Britain: and this is why a sity world by that of the Times Higher Education Supplement, Guardian...

...We blatantly conservative, more mean-spirited or "Thatcherish" arrived in the middle of Nixon's first election campaign for the than its rivals...

...For the past few read, which were documents of the prebeen full of speculation about days I have been living in the past, and Vatican II struggle of the laity to be alPope John Paul II and the Catholic from that perspective it seems startling to lowed to be mature members of the marxists-how will they deal with each me, although hardly news...

...It doesn't try to keep up with what used to be called, simply "society," (i.e., the goings-on of the very rich or the SIGNS OF 'THE TIMES' tided), but goes instead for what is liberated and "trendy" in intellectual or artistic circles...

...What will happen to it is far before you read these lines in Commonweal...

...with third-world demands), back-to-basics, free any of the papers he or she does read...

...But nowadays television...

...This is why it can afford to be more other places -including America...

...MEMORIES OF HALF-FORGOTTEN BATTLES It was so in my recent move...

...from clear...

...The Guardian works on the same level of education or money, but its main selling point is, or at least until recently was, its "cleverness...

...But, above all Britain can do without the Times...

...The year was 1968-69...

...authors and publishers must be feeling the pinch over its It was necessary to say all this in order to put the current closure already...

...It has proportionately less about the Report from Britain stock market and more about education and the arts, than the Times...

...with a bowler hat and.a rolled umbrella to prove the point...

...You needed something more basic, and in a sense they try to be "family" papers, with something for more pre-digested than the mass of detail given in the local everyone-old and young, husbands and wives, grandparents papers or the political chat-shows on the media...

...Anyone who wants a job in any other paper...

...What politics they have is right-wing, in a fairly was, I found, the answer...

...Most foreigners would find the to have the Times blacked out by a strike of printers in London...

...new class (see British national newspapers are class-conscious to a degree page 73), and the tired-rhetoric-of-the-'60s...

...Books have a way of disappearing on their shelves, and in the packing, and unpacking for a move, turning up again FAR AWAY & LONG AGO to remind one of past discoveries, enthusiasms and once dearly-held beliefs...

...The people it has affected di- strength of it than any other single magazine...

...But the most obvious thing about them you the ability to hold your own at any academic party when, is that they have both gone "tabloid" in recent years-more as it always did, the conversation got round to American pictures, less reading matter, smaller in size (easier to handle politics...

...used to run an advertisement which blatantly battened on the snobbery of the people who were likely to consider reading it: Dear Faithful Reader, That is tired '60s rhetoric...

...library every day to read the latest copy of the London The Telegraph appeals, I think, to a slightly lower level Times...

...It is more London-based too: you don't see presidency...

...Just wrote a memo Britain today...

...The words they made so vivid so, the politics of these papers is probably less important than are now growing faintly indistinct, because they are not heard their class-appeal...

...They are words like justice, equality, unity, influence, there would never be a Labor government in this truth, sacrifice, liberty, faith and love...

...last two practically indistinguishable...

...The mainly of gossip, sniggering, nude women, sport and cheap average Englishman never reads a word of the Times from one mail-order advertisements...

...In their absence, you can't be sure that you've surveyed even that the correspondence page is a more entertaining, or everything going in the field...

...To judge from the way the paper businessmen, the administrators and bankers and insurance- reacted to its own demise, one would have not have thought brokers, a large proportion of the academic and professional this-yet is is undoubtedly true...

...just as British society itself is...

...The foreigners, week, either on page three (the Sun) or page five (the Mirror...

...This is that it is not just the Times, and theSunday Times, claims to be a Labor supporter): and this makes it just a shade that are off the streets just now...

...Also affected are the Times more "serious"than its almost totally trivial rival...

...In its arts pages, it will quite NO NUDES IS GOOD NEWS often show a nude scene from a show or film (decorously artistic, of course, and always to illustrate something from the I REMEMBER that when I was in America for a year, back in show...

...After all, if newspapers had much political often enough...

...Nobody brought up solely on these papers electronic terms) but that is very unlikely...

...more instructive one than those of the Guardian or Telegraph, But, despite all this, Britain carries on without the Times, though that is certainly true...

...strike would never make the international head- because these journals are easily the most important for adverlines...

...But I doubt if those in the rest perhaps, it is read by foreigners who belong to those classes...

...a school, college, university, or allied field, looks first of all in It is not that the editorials are any more influential than edito- those publications...

...In fact, the newspapers are probably the most obvious manifestation of class division in Dear Commonweal, I think it's working...

...What these people are doing now, I don't rials in other papers, though marginally that may be so...

...What matters first of all is that the because although the Times is the paper read by the people who Times is the paper which is read by the people who run run Britain, the Times (contrary to its own opinion) does not Britain-the MPs and politicians, the top civil servants and actually run Britain itself...

...Indeed the majority of the English have digested for instant easy consumption...

...Faithful country at all...

...The Times and teenagers...

...Actually, on closer inspection, it is just possible occasionally There is one more thing to say on a possibly more serious to detect a slight whiff of political interest in the Mirror (which note...

...In fact, by Mid-Western standards at any rate, I think I in the bus-queue or to stuff into a pocket...

...For these publicapapers is that gossip, envy, titillation, armchair sport, astrol- tions to go out of existence would be very serious indeed for ogy, dislike of foreigners, and a profound lack of interest in certain groups of people...

...Their opinions are entirely preyear's end to the next...

...Swallow four that is probably unheard of in any other country in the world-Z times daily, with a glass of white wine...

...The Literary Supplement is the most anything "intellectual" are the hallmarks of the British prestigious book-reviewing paper in the country, and both people...

...They are made up It doesn't mean that every Englishman feels deprived...

...It is not know...

...of the world can...

...Neither could any such reader fail to know everything pounds at the age of ten through being born into the Shell Oil there is to know, visually at any rate, about the human mam- empire, wanted to buy it at one time...

...Rafshoon is taking me to lunch...

...What's this...

...That is why the strike has caused such a fuss...

...So many volumes turned up, dusty and long unTHE SUNDAY supplements have probably startling news...

...They have done this was reckoned pretty well informed about the political scene...

...What it told you was enough to give nasty, prejudiced way...

...Similarly, the rectly are the,people who run Britain, not the people who just teaching profession must be very badly hit by the loss of the live in it...

...But this is because the' lunch (as in "There is no such thing as a...

...Even the rich and powerful in class, the military and the mighty generally...

...To many of their readers made once more aware of how rapid now-indeed, often quite incredible-so the fact that there are Catholic marxists is change is when viewed looking back I hope that readers with more precise 16 February 1979: 71...

...I did this not just to find out what was happening back socially: to clerks and supervisors, to upper middle rather than home in England, but also to find out what was happening in top people generally...

...The battles are half-forgotten other, they ask...

...The Times Reader...

...I have been church...

...They used, a long time ago, to be the by reading the American press or by watching American pace-setters among the mass circulation dailies...

...crisis-of-authority, failure-of-nerve, excess-of-democracy, fact that it actually tells you more about the things the average deregulation, limits (when referring to equality of income, English person wants to know (like football results, racing government's ability to foster social change, and the patience tips, or who is going out with whom in the Royal family) than of the U.S...

...Apparently a recould be anything other than a political, artistic, or scientific cently deceased heiress, who acquired twenty-three million moron...

...Wedgwood Benn suggested recently it might BRIAN WICKER Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy over one's shoulder...

...papers: The Times, the Guardian, or the Daily Telegraph...

...Quite possibly it will be out again long it lasts, will not kill the Times...

...The higher reaches of the middle classon "The Excess of Democracy and the New Class's Failure of managers, professional people, academics-read one of three Nerve in Our Era of Limits...

...But this is a Literary Supplement, the Times Educational Supplement and very small concession: the overwhelming impression of both the Times Higher Educational Supplement...

...impossible for an outsider like myself to get the hang of what The real middle-brow papers, of course, are the Daily Exwas going on, or to see the political wood for the trees, either press and the Daily Mail...

...I have never seen a nude in the Times...

...No, class appeal is the key to success...

...mainly in order to keep up with the other two, really popular Perhaps this reminiscence gives some idea of what it means papers, the Sun and the Mirror...

...It is good on some things, less good on others...

...Did Rafs- "Top people read the Times" it said, and showed a city gent hoon pay for the lunch...

...including perhaps Commonweal readers, will see to that...

...But invariably, if there is a nude bit to show, the the late sixties, I always went along to the university Guardian will show it...

...But it was quite many people reading it in Birmingham or Blackpool...

...But now I read in Carter's State of the Union: "Two centuries While the Guardian is vaguely anti-Conservative, whereas the ago a bold generation of Americans risked their property, Times is mildly pro-Conservative and the Telegraph militantly their positions and life itself...