Memoir: Self-effacement is not a customary characteristic of the autobiographer. It would appear, however, to be one of Patrick Skene Catling's most pronounced traits, writes Robert O'Byrne.
The author's name will be familiar to readers of these pages, where he regularly puts in an appearance, albeit in the guise of book reviewer. They will, therefore, also be acquainted with his style of writing, which is terse, graceful and elegant. How he learnt to write such prose is entertainingly explained in the present work which sketches lightly over Catling's life and career.
Like so much else in his life, he is inclined to suggest that whatever professional success might have been achieved over the past 60-odd years came about almost by accident. His father, who was employed by the Reuters news agency, encouraged him to try journalism, saying: "I think you'll like it. It's better than working". In fact, despite Catling's best efforts to conceal all evidence, he must have worked quite hard, even while serving time as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun. And harder still when investigating the complex political scenarios of successive Latin American regimes.
Catling had the knack of being not only in the right place at the right time, but in the right - if not the best possible - company. Presumably there was an abundance of other foreign correspondents in Costa Rica during that country's troubles with neighbouring Nicaragua in 1955, but only one of them was befriended by the then president, José María Figueres, who personally dispatched Catling's cables to the Sun. Mrs Figueres, by the way, invited him to the presidential palace to sample her banana cream cake. It was, he still remembers, delicious.
Of course memory, especially across an expanse of time, is inclined to play tricks. The presidential spouse's cake was, no doubt, fine enough, but can Catling really have been as consistently lucky as he is inclined to imply? Might he not actually be downplaying the importance of two other factors that stood in his favour: talent and charm? With regard to the former, only someone possessing it in sufficient abundance could have hoped to secure well-paid jobs with the Guardian and Punch, to be offered what sounds like a comfortable sinecure at Newsweek (under the disingenuous title of Associate Editor) or to be invited regularly to contribute to the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator and even, on occasion, this newspaper. Catling writes a fine paragraph and has proven so, to his profit and readers' pleasure, for more than half a century.
As for his charm, this is best demonstrated not by the names of friends sprinkled through the pages of his reminiscences but by references to his amorous history, however oblique some of these might be. Catling is an old-fashioned gentleman; if he kisses and tells, he does so in the most discreet fashion. At the close of a night out with the notoriously nubile Jane Russell, for example, he writes that "she kissed me so effectively that she felt she had to get down on her knees to pray for detumescent peace". There are other ways to say the same thing; none of them is Catling's way. But whatever that might be, it has clearly led him to enjoy considerable success with a series of women, including Peggy Lee with whom he lived for a period in Beverly Hills. His telling of that particular liaison, presented as a sequence of tightly-framed vignettes, is typical of the entire book's tone: simultaneously amused and amusing.
Given that he has been married three times, presumably there have been a few uncomfortable moments in Catling's personal life but these pass unmentioned. He proposes that every newspaperman should serve, at least for a period, as a war correspondent and has done so on several occasions, emerging from all of them - as from his marriages - with his person and his sense of humour equally unscathed. On one subject only does he allow himself to become overtly excited and that is jazz, which, like a leitmotif in an extended riff, puts in an appearance in almost every chapter. Otherwise, he remains the slightly wide-but-clear-eyed youth who met the Duke of Windsor on a golf course in Nassau during the second World War. That was more than 60 years ago, since when Catling has seen and done a lot more notable things. His inclination is towards understatement, especially where his own considerable achievements are concerned, but anyone wishing to know what the latter might be should look inside the present book's cover to discover a list of 23 others. For Catling, the choice of writing as a career seems to have been not just better, but also more productive, than working.
Robert O'Byrne is a writer and critic. His book, Living in Dublin, was published last autumn
Better than Working. By Patrick Skene Catling, Secker & Warburg, 294pp. £16.99