The editors in my life (19)

To be music critic of The Scotsman in its heyday was the job I had envisaged from boyhood.  But as the paper’s cultural correspondent in London in the early 1960s, I continued to deem it a far distant prospect. What suddenly brought it within my reach was the decision of my predecessor Christopher Grier to resign after sixteen years of reviewing the Scottish National Orchestra on Friday nights at the Usher Hall.

Summoned to Edinburgh to discuss things with my editor, Alastair Dunnett, I could not help feeling that Christopher had decided wrongly.  A tall,  peaceful, genial man, he had been educated at Glenalmond before working for the British Council in Scandinavia. At ease on the ski slopes, he seemed well suited to the Scottish life. Dunnett described him as a diplomat. Wearing his fur hat, he fitted the name, and maybe that was what he should have been. He had  simply, I think, become bored, because Scotland at the time was far from being a nest of singing birds. What he did not realise was that it was on the brink of a musical renaissance, and it was my good luck to succeed him and to chronicle what  was happening.

Once it was agreed that I would be the next music critic,   I was granted a day of talks with Dunnett and his assistant Eric Macaky, who would eventually become his successor. Dunnett was not only an editor but a great  impresario, whom you could imagine wearing a coat with a fur collar. Striding into the office, he would accost you in the corridor and ask “How is culture?” He liked to receive good tidings, but even if he didn’t he was happy to reply, “Give them waldy” - an expressive Scottish word for “tear them to bits.” Whatever he thought privately, he never stood in the way of me writing what I thought, and always encouraged me to speak out, whenever I thought it was the right thing to do.

But we had not yet reached that point. I was still the newly  appointed novice music critic, and he wanted to hear my views on criticism and how I was to pass my time. The ground rules were as expected. I would review all major Scottish musical events. Inside and outside Edinburgh, and a good many minor ones also.

Once a fortnight I would write a “Log,” which was the space on the leader page traditionally filled by Wilfred Taylor’s witty and popular  column, “A Scotsman’s Log.”  In alternation with the elegant drama critic Ronald Mavor, I would enable Wilfred to have a day off each week and be given a chance to air my views on important topics of musical interest.

Christopher had regularly devoted this space to record reviews, but Dunnett said he wanted a change. I said I would be pleased to supply one. It was, after all, one of the best spaces in the paper, and Taylor and Mavor were big names to be sharing it with.

Dunnett also had other changes in mind. Conscious of my work in London, he suggested that I might like to become the paper’s art critic as well as its music critic. This was an example of his  one-size-fits-all attitude to the arts.

I did not feel too sure about it, but I complied in the knowledge that it might never happen. It didn’t. I was far too busy, not least because I agreed to continue the Saturday column I had begun in London on the arts in general and  would continue writing musical profiles, something Christopher never did nor felt any urge to do.

Thus were the  lines of my job set out. Moreover there was a little perk I had not been told about. The Scotsman music critic had an  annual budget for foreign travel,which Christopher cherished  and which amounted to what, in those days, was the princely sum of £300 - enough for three or more trips a year.

With the details of my new appointment fixed, I returned to London for my final months there. Tom Dawson, my London editor, was displeased and said that going back to Scotland was retrogressive. I did not agree and was soon proved right.
20 November 2014