`I have made a heap of all the things I could find, lest they perish." The quotation is from Welsh historian Nennius, about the year 762 - and about the only thing he's now remembered for.
That's the altruistic ideal in trying to defy oblivion. There's a harder-headed approach in the adage to any journalist about a personal diary: You keep it when you're young and it will keep you when you're old.
Enter Frank Kilfeather with gleanings from forty years in newshoundery, covering politics, tragedy, farce, potholes and planning permissions. It is, he says himself, history seen unfolding from the front seat. If, by definition, journalism is what interests people, then journalists' shop-talk is usually fascinating, and Frank's list includes the start of the Northern Troubles, the Dublin bombings, the Arms Trial and the Beef Tribunal.
Learn, gentle reader, that there are two tribes within media, those who gather and those who edit, and they never understand each other. This division is illustrated in Frank's discussion about The Irish Times: the public figures of Douglas Gageby and Donal Foley balanced by the private craftsmanship of leader writer Bruce Williamson and news editor Gerry Mulvey.
It was Donal Foley's idea to put a reporter's by-line on every story and give everyone an area of specialisation, including Frank. This was adopted generally and it spelled a sea-change. Formerly, a newspaper stood over the work of its reporters and by-lines were awarded for work of exceptional merit. Nowadays, each sector of news activity has its own cosy little circus and stars, for which various media are outlets. The work of the general reporter has been downgraded, and the content and range of coverage has declined. Amateur arts and culture, for example, are notable casualties.
Journalism is like democracy or a clematis: even in full flower it can suddenly wilt and die. It can be trivialised and hollowed out from within by manufactured celebrity. Gresham's Law applies: bad drives out good and the long struggles from Cobbet to our own day for freedom of speech and information are disregarded.
Journalists, overdosed on the adrenalin of deadlines and caught in the front seats of the historical theatre, often can't see the broader trend, the plans of those who think in years and millions of pounds and rezoned acres. With politicians Frank is at once horrified and fascinated, a symbiosis like that between pilot fish and shark.
I found some inconsistencies in his recalling of the good old bad old days, where alcohol and licensing laws ruled one half of the country and emigration and cultural repression the other. Remembering John Feeney who died in the 1984 Beaujolais air crash, Frank lauds his mischievous "Ad Lib" diary column in the Evening Herald. Yet in his own days in the same newspaper, he had a most unhappy time flamming up stories in sensational style and left to find his anchorage in The Irish Times. Perhaps too much of a natural gentility is there, a reluctance to name names: God knows, the Irish love to speak ill of the dead, and yippee, they can't sue for libel. Today's news stories become tomorrow's history. To see how it happens, look at Frank's characters and incidents: Maurice Liston and the Reverend Mother (Maurice's poker-playing philosophy came in the nugget: "There's no known cure for the second-best hand.") or the Herrema kidnapping when photographer Cyril Byrne hid in a wardrobe to get an exclusive for the Irish Press. Frank deals too with the Press closure; for those who were involved, it's still very painful and sadly pointless to rake the ashes.
There may be better yarns than Frank's, but he has done what so many others have only threatened: he kept the cuttings safe, did the work and polished the memories. Being from the tribe of editors, I balk at a sentence fifty-three words long, but that's what reporters are made of, and it keeps subeditors busy
The collection is like a happy chance meeting in Grafton Street where old ghosts meet, with a carefree adjournment to select snug, or the impromptu party that becomes an epic. This is a great dip-in bedside book, and if you find yourself in better company this Christmas, lucky you. Legends are the stuff of literature, and so much the better when they're true. Nennius knew that.
John Brophy is a writer with Irish Music magazine, and a lecturer
