Michael Foot (1913-2010)
Faber Finds Editor John Seaton on the giant of the British Left, who died last week at the age of 96.
In his biography of Michael Foot Kenneth Morgan wrote, ‘His passing will symbolize a world we have lost.’ That moment has sadly arrived. Michael Foot died yesterday.
Michael Foot was famous for having heroes about whom he wrote with such eloquence. It is perhaps appropriate therefore (as Faber Finds Editor) that one of my heroes, was Michael himself. Noticing that most of his titles were out of print, I set about acquiring their rights. In that process I had the memorable experience of being invited to Michael’s Hampstead home for a morning coffee. Although frail, he was spellbinding, talking with undiminished verve and knowledge about Heine, Hazlitt, Nye Bevan, H. G. Wells, Swift and many more. He also spoke repeatedly and with moving affection about his late wife, Jill Craigie: it was an unforgettable an uplifting encounter.
In Faber Finds The Pen and the Sword (his book about Jonathan Swift, one of his heroes, and his most scholarly work) and his Aneurin Bevan biography (in the original two volumes) have already been published.
Due to be published are Guilty Men (one of the most effective polemics of the twentieth-century) and the two best collections of his essays, Debts of Honour and Loyalists and Loners. These three books will now be reissued as soon as possible.
Despite its leanings to hagiography the Nye Bevan biography is a great work, about a flawed but great man to whom, as the political architect of the NHS, we are all indebted. There was no one better suited to write this book than Michael Foot.
On Michael Foot, let Kenneth Morgan have the last words:
He stands, and feels himself to stand, in the great tradition of dissenting “trouble-makers”, the heir to Fox and Paine, Hazlitt and Cobbett. He played in his life many parts. As icon of the socialist left, he was custodian and communicator of British socialism. He was the greatest pamphleteer perhaps since John Wilkes, a formidable editor, and author of a glittering biography of his idol Nye Bevan. He was a scintillating parliamentarian, an inveterate critic and peacemonger as Bevanite, Tribunite and founder member of the CND, yet also a belligerent patriotand internationalist from Dunkirk to Dubrovnik.
This could hardly be more removed from the venal political world of duck ponds and moats.
