Books by Eleanor Berry

It becomes gloriously obvious, only a few pages into My Father Was a Newspaper Man, that Eleanor Berry is a unique individual with an uncommon outlook on the world.

Admitting that she has a macabre gene on the first page gives you  some idea of what is to follow, as Eleanor’s black humour leads you down  alleyways you’d possibly rather not tread.

A fascination with funerals as a child, and attending gruesome trials  for fun, are just two of Eleanor’s hubristic hobby confessions. Indeed,  the description of seeing the love of her life ‘Peachey’ laid out in a  neglected manner in a hospital mortuary is described with some relish –  as is the revenge she enacted upon the mortuary assistant.

Watching the funeral of Winston Churchill from the balcony of her father’s newspaper, The Daily Telegraph (her father Lord Hartwell also owned The Sunday Telegraph)  is another occasion that Eleanor recounts – how all her family were  emotional, and that she and her friend openly wept. Even the cranes  above London’s skyline bent down in homage.

On another occasion Eleanor prevents ‘copy’ being phoned through to the Telegraph offices  by her father’s journalists as she was hogging the ‘hot line’ to her  father’s front desk (this telephone line also came to the Berry home).  And why? Because she was trying to track down the actor Peter O’Toole,  whom she believed was in a hospital somewhere in central London!

Her father is subsequently furious for having no front page stories – in fact the paper comes out with a blank front page!!

Eleanor’s friendship with the late Mirror Newspaper owner Robert  Maxwell is a riotous romp through garden parties, visits to his palatial  home in Oxford and electioneering for his Labour Party seat in the  General Election of 1970 - even though she returned to London to vote  Conservative!

It is clear that Eleanor admired ‘Bob’ greatly, as she declares, “How  I loved him, even after he was laid in earth. He was my beautiful big  black labrador.” Later she inveigles her way into Ian Hislop’s office at  Private Eye to threaten him over his coverage of Robert Maxwell’s  funeral!

It is her obsession with medical matters and the more gruesome side  of life that sees Eleanor taking jobs as a medical secretary in various  roles around London, and to her seeing various psychiatrists in Harley  Street – often with humorous conclusions.

But it is the encounters with her parents’ very high profile friends  that offer a more entertaining and illuminating aside to the swinging  60s and 70s. The crazy antics of ‘Bubbles’ Rothermere, catty comments by  Elizabeth Taylor and how Vivien Leigh set fire to a chaise longue with  her cigarette holder, are just three of many amusing anecdotes.

This autobiography of Eleanor Berry is perhaps the most entertaining  and interesting of all her books, as it revolves around the most  intriguing and fascinating character that she has created – and that  character is Eleanor herself.

Joanna Macaulay in the Oldie