Anthony Lejeune
Roving man of letters, Telegraph columnist, clubland habitué, broadcaster and crime novelist
ANTHONY LEJEUNE, who has died aged 89, was an oldfashioned man of letters, whose natural habitat was the offices of Fleet Street papers, small magazines and West End clubs, at which his sleek figure would arrive carrying a gold-banded walking stick. Writing with unfailing grace, he most notably defended the Englishman’s attachment to traditional values as a weekly columnist for the Telegraph colour magazine in the 1970s and 1980s. This meant championing common sense, manners and the correct use of language, while abhorring the foibles of politicians and other leaders of modern society. Yet he admired the US, hymned the cinema as an art form and broadcast a weekly radio essay for the South African Broadcasting Corporation for almost 30 years.
Born Edward Anthony Thompson at Pinner, Middlesex, on August 7 1928, he was brought up in the heart of the English film industry as the only son of Edward Roffe Thompson, psychologist and editor of the magazines Titbits and John Bull, who later worked as a publicist for Alexander Korda at nearby Denham Film Studios. His mother, Caroline, was CA Lejeune, the Observer’s trailblazing film critic; young Tony recalled her reading E Nesbit and John Buchan to him, and his father reading Rider Haggard.
He started accompanying his mother to press showings as a child, beginning with The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Leslie Howard. But watching scenes being repeatedly shot on set persuaded him that the process itself was boring.
This did not prevent him enjoying being with stars; he watched the Indian actor Sabu playing with electric trains; saw Vivien Leigh telling Laurence Olivier that she was going to play Scarlett O’hara in Gone with the Wind; and witnessed the family handyman’s astonishment at seeing Paulette Goddard tottering up the garden path in 4in heels.
When war was declared Alfred Hitchcock invited Anthony and his mother to Hollywood, but the offer was turned down. After going to Merchant Taylors’ school at Moor Park, he read Classics at Balliol.
After National Service as a naval education officer, preparing sailors to become coastguards, his first job was as an information officer with John Epstein’s Foundation for Social Understanding, an organisation concerned with the defence of Christendom.
By now having adopted his mother’s famous name, he became an assistant editor of the political and literary weekly Time and Tide, edited by the formidable Lady Rhondda. When she broke her hip in South Africa he ran the magazine, while referring all decisions to her.
He wrote leaders and book reviews and invited the American conservative William F Buckley Jr to become a contributor; Buckley later invited him to become London correspondent of his National Review in turn. Although not given to wild boasting, Lejeune claimed that he and Bill moulded Anglo-american conservatism.
When Lady Rhondda died in 1955, the magazine collapsed without her financial support, and he became a special writer with the Daily Express. He remembered being sent to newly independent Ghana, where he asked a man in the bush why he liked the idea of a republic, and was told: “No more elections.” Resigning after three years, Lejeune never held another staff job.
A swift, accurate writer with the wellstocked mind that reassures features editors, he could have had the choice of numerous jobs, including obituaries editor of The Times. But he preferred the freelance life, diligently reviewing crime stories at various times for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Tablet, and writing nine novels featuring sleuths who were journalists or academics.
His first, Crowded and Dangerous (1959), about a communist ship in the London docks, was greeted as “snugly readable, bustling, Buchanish”. Mr Diabolo (1960) was an attempt to create a macabre locked room mystery, but had a disappointing conclusion. The Dark Trade (1966, later retitled Death of a Pornographer) was about pornography but had the bedroom door firmly shut.
As his sales declined, partly because he showed little interest in using one main detective, it became clear that he could earn more with a handful of newspaper articles than one full-length novel. “Provincial detective inspectors and their sergeants are very boring,” he concluded.
Instead Lejeune wrote a wide variety of books, including Freedom and the Politicians and Shadow over Britain (both 1964), the latter about the unions’ influence on the Labour Party. Later he edited the compilation Hinch (1997), a celebration of the dashing Right-wing MP Victor Montagu.
He enjoyed writing The Gentlemen’s Clubs of London (1979), a brief but sumptuous history, containing their place in literature and associated folklore. It is still in print after almost 40 years. He also edited a judicious and highly enjoyable C A Lejeune Film Reader (1991), when he was surprised to discover how he and his mother had differed in their judgments, and he compiled a Concise Dictionary of Foreign Quotations.
In his later years Lejeune helped to launch The Week as an innovative news digest magazine, wrote introductions to Tom Stacey’s reprint series Capuchin Classics, and liked to come home from lunch in the West End to write a 400-word letter to The Daily Telegraph on a topical story. One, for instance, was on the merits of Pinner.
Although he had edited an early work on Namibia, he had little interest in Africa apart from his encyclopedic knowledge of Rider Haggard’s 36 novels. But in 1965 he was invited to broadcast a weekly London Letter for the SABC. With some similarities to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, these were recorded in London to run for 15 then 10 minutes, and earned a large audience among English-speaking South Africans who could not obtain British newspapers.
Unable to criticise apartheid, in the knowledge this would lead to him being banned, he indulged himself with exasperated words about politics at home. He was happiest discussing the change in the British people with the decline of Empire, praising President Reagan and recalling how General Booth asked some Salvationists if they were saved until one man replied: “Oh no, I’m from the Press.”
After Parkinson’s disease kept him to his bedroom, in 2010 he resigned from his five clubs, who each then elected him an honorary member. He enjoyed watching television and old films and maintained contact with a small circle of friends.
Tony Lejeune fell deeply in love with a friend to whom he wrote passionate love letters, but never went further than holding her hand.
Anthony Lejeune, born August 7 1928, died March 3 2018