Observer Review: Home Truths By Penny Junor Essay, Research Paper

The king of beasts and the ratHome TruthsPenny JunorHarperCollins? 18.99, pp367Many old ages ago, I went on a imperativeness trip to New York. In the party were John Junor and David English. The first, who had been editor of the Sunday Express for 32 old ages, was a arch old hellraiser. The 2nd, who was one of Junor & # 8217 ; s foremans at the Mail on Sunday, where Junor was now passing the dusk of his calling as a editorialist, was capturing and urbane.John Junor & # 8217 ; s green-eyed monster of the younger adult male was tangible. & # 8216 ; The problem with David English, & # 8217 ; he growled into my ear over drinks one dark, & # 8216 ; is that he & # 8217 ; s deeply superficial. & # 8217 ; I now realise, from reading his girl & # 8217 ; s obliging life of her male parent, that I had merely the faintest glances of the temper swings of a adult male who was a public king of beasts and a domestic rat.When I began Home Truths, I had considerable uncertainties about the whole undertaking. Surely some things are private and should be left that manner. Dominic Carman was hammered in the imperativeness for uncovering the private sordidnesss of his male parent, the superb QC, George. But I was rapidly won over.Penny Junor & # 8217 ; s male parent and brother, among the people who would hold been most hurt, are both dead, her female parent is in a nursing place, and the book is an history, every bit much as anything else, of her ain emotional journey to unknot her feelings about a adult male who both frightened and infuriated her.The consequence is an unfailingly clear mixture of life and soul-searching, frequently anguished but punctuated by some really amusing anecdotes. Junor met his married woman, Pam, during the war. She was a gently reared Englishwoman ; he came out of a respectable but joyless Glasgow working-class place. After their matrimony irretrievably soured, her female parent poisoned her girl & # 8217 ; s head against her male parent, painting her matrimony as an accident of war. Penny has discovered from letters and journals that they were, in fact, passionately in love.They had 10 old ages of felicity, populating in a house on Lord Beaverbrook & # 8217 ; s estate. There was no rent but it did non come without a monetary value. Junor was at Beaver & # 8217 ; s beck and name ; when the head was in abode, the household came second. If his owner began the corruptness of Junor & # 8217 ; s domesticity, his occupation at the Sunday Express completed it. He was a workaholic and a control monster. Lunch and dinner, lubricated by great oceans of drink, were the supreme establishments of his life, although Junor ne’er succumbed to the alcohol addiction which carried off his eldest brother and his lone son.In the grea

t world in which he moved, he was feted and feared; at home, he was a horror. A man who is never contradicted in the office may find it hard to adjust in his own family circle. Though not physically violent, he habitually insulted his wife, reviling her food, scorning her housekeeping, tongue-lashing her as ‘an evil woman’. But the episode which brought an end to the marriage, though they never divorced, was his affair with the sister of one of his son’s girlfriends. Penny found a fictionalised account of it in an unpublished novel he kept locked in a desk drawer. In it, Curtis, a newspaper editor, has an adulterous relationship with a 19-year-old model.Junor’s attitude to women was that sex was a cheerful gift of God but it shouldn’t lead to unpleasantness, like divorce or separation. He divided women into two categories – sluts or virgins – and he was determined that Penny should remain in the second. He did his best to subvert any relationship she developed if it looked serious, taunting the men she brought home. But when she married, he invited the great and the good to the ceremony and gave her away with pride, though he continued to belittle her husband and, latterly, to shun their home, where his wife had taken refuge.Penny’s conclusion is that the job and the power that went with it destroyed the man, turning him into a monster who left numerous victims. He had, as she insists, many qualities. In Fleet Street, he is largely remembered with real affection and, in some cases, love. His column, which established the otherwise unremarkable Fife village of Auchtermuchty as the touchstone of reason, was much imitated. If he was faithless to his wife, he was intensely loyal to his staff, though he dumped friends who crossed him.He was a great companion, an incorrigible gossip, but a friend only on his terms. Fawn he might to Beaver, but he once came within a whisker of resignation on a matter of principle.Despite his behaviour, Penny Junor remains proud of him. But she counts her blessings that he died when he did (after an operation, in 1997, for a gangrenous gut), still writing, still active and did not live into a cantankerous old age, when the task of looking after him, she fears, would have fallen to her.Although Penny Junor’s judgments are harsh, they are not unreasonable, are never malicious and are balanced with praise and affection. This is an eloquent and heartfelt epitaph. It is dedicated to her mother and perhaps its true purpose is to give a voice to a woman who largely suffered in silence.