the opposite,” Michael told me. Why did Michael admire Beaverbrook so much? In part, it had to do with Beaverbrook’s openness to people. “He had no kinds of prejudices such as the English people have. Of course, he hated the English aristocracy,” Michael observed.
Michael and Jill were connoisseurs of personality, transcending politics. They loved Randolph Churchill, who ran two losing campaigns against Michael in Plymouth and they adored Benjamin Disraeli, Mrs. Pankhurst, Lady Astor—all of them affiliated with the Tories. Sometimes, as I would later learn, Michael would go into contorted arguments to support those he liked even when they manifestly stood for views opposite to his own.
Friendship was, I think, a deep enchantment for Michael. He built up his favourite as a nonpareil. He touted you. But if you broke the spell, he would erupt with fury and then subside in a silence that just cut you out entirely.
8
William MacQuitty, then ninety six and still handsome, had a spacious flat overlooking the Thames near the Putney Bridge underground station. A world class raconteur, his conversation ranged from his upbringing in Ulster, where he saw the Titanic launched (he later made the film classic, A Night to Remember), to his years as a banker in India learning about Hinduism and other world religions, to his study of psychology with Wilhelm Stekel, to his renowned collection of two hundred and fifty thousand photographs (he was a superb photographer), to his entrepreneurial start in the film industry with a self-produced documentary entitled Simple Silage (based on his years as a farmer). His wife Betty brought in tea, which I proceeded to serve to this ancient.
MacQuitty, Jill’s producer during the war, had wanted to marry Jill—or so Michael, Julie and everyone else then on the scene except William MacQuitty-—told me. When I pressed him about his feelings for Jill, he changed the subject, portraying a woman who believed in a world he could not conceive of ever coming to pass. He thought Jill and Michael were fantasists, their socialism a pipe dream.
“The dog and the duffle coat and the flowing hair. They’re a lovely couple,” MacQuitty said, laughing. But he believed they had no idea of what was up. He remembered one of Jill’s first meetings with Michael. When Jill and Liam (as she called him) went to see Michael during the making of Jill’s film The Way We Live, about the rebuilding of Plymouth, they were treated to an “oration,” MacQuitty recalled. Michael was “inspired, talking Jill’s language,” MacQuitty said. “Where there is no vision, the people perish and here was a man with vision.”
But where was that vision leading? Jill and Michael reminded MacQuitty of a joke. A pretty Liverpool girl wanted to get to the Far East, but she had no money. So she stowed away. A fortnight later she was discovered aboard ship. The Captain said, “You look very spruce, well fed and turned out. How come?” She said, “One of the crew took pity on me.” After more questioning, she revealed that her benefactor was the second officer. “What did you give him in return?” the Captain asked. “Well,” she replied, “You might say he took advantage of me.” Then the Captain said, “I can confirm that. You are on the Liverpool-Birkenhead ferry.”
MacQuitty was full of this kind of badinage, but he was a wary gent who kept referring me to his published memoirs. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea of straying from his text. I would make several return visits, but I was only slightly successful in penetrating his persiflage.
9
MacQuitty’s joke reminded me of Ronnie Neame’s view of Michael. Before my June visit, I had called Neame at his home in Beverly Hills. He was nearly as guarded as MacQuitty and almost as old, telling me he was now put together with string. He remembered that Jill introduced him to Michael in the late 1940s. Ronnie had heard that Michael was a Communist and not a very nice man. On television, Michael came across as soapbox strident, a monomaniac:
People used to come up to Jill and say, “What a shame you are married to that awful man.” In fact, Michael is an absolute sweetheart. The only thing about him is that he is up in the clouds. He would like a world that is just not practical or possible.
Ronnie’s arguments with Michael were always friendly and though he had not seen Michael in many years, he was obviously very fond of him.
10
Ronnie Neame echoed Michael’s editor and publisher, Mike Bessie—another witness I interviewed before setting off for London in June 2000. Mike talked at his apartment off of Washington Square in New York City. Bessie, Michael’s friend since the Second World War, regarded Michael as a brilliant writer, but also an imperceptive personality and a bungling politician. Almost the first thing Mike said was, “I wonder what kind of a source on Jill Michael is? He is so kindly a person.”
But beneath that veneer was a controlling personality, Bessie went on. Michael often attempted to short circuit Jill, calling her “My dear child,” a habit Barbara Castle regarded as a form of “gentle bullying.” Mike Bessie interpreted the phrase as the effort of a man exerting his patience. Often the outspoken Jill did not give ground, but Mike never saw Michael lose his temper, no matter how outrageous her comment.
To Mike there was a mystery about Michael. For forty years he had asked his friend to write a book entitled “Why I am a Socialist” and for four decades Michael Foot had written books that avoided confronting that important issue, Mike thought.
“You know the central criticism of Jill?” Mike asked. She was ambitious for Michael and forced him into a political career, which ended sadly. “If it can be said that there was anybody not qualified to be the leader of the Labour Party at the time Michael became the leader of the Labour Party, it was Michael!” Mike said, his voice rising. “He has none of the aggression — when he speaks he is a demon,” but that is not enough to make a leader, Mike implied.
Then Mike described a different Michael Foot:
To Jill has been attributed what many see as a wrong turn in Michael’s career. If you didn’t know them well, watching them in a room together, you would think that she was very dominant because what you wouldn’t necessarily observe is that he would allow that to seem so. It didn’t deter him from doing what he felt he had to do. He just didn’t fight back in terms of argument or discussion.
Mike wanted to know if I agreed. On two occasions I had watched the dynamic he described while working on my Rebecca West biography. I sensed it again when another biographer sent me a recording of Jill arguing a point while Michael played second chorus, so to speak.
Why did Michael permit such an impression to be created—one that would continue even after Jill died, when he would attract a kind of female confederacy around him? Or did Mike feel otherwise, that Jill could orientate her husband in directions he might not otherwise have taken?
I think the turn in the road was after Nye died. The party came to Michael and said you must take Nye’s constituency. “You are Nye’s heir and you must do that.” I think Michael had made up his mind about writing—God knows I wanted him to write and we had begun talking about the books he would do. But going back into politics that way—I think Jill was one of the elements that persuaded him to do that. But immersed in Labour Party politics through my friendship with Dick Crossman, I certainly understood why Michael did that.
If Jill did have a significant impact on Michael’s political decisions, it was, in part, because he really liked women, Mike emphasised. Michael Foot saw a great future role for women in politics.
When I entered Michael’s life, he was rebuilding his support system, superintended by Jill’s close friend, Jenny Stringer. He had an enlarging circle of new and old companions shepherding him not only around London, but also accompanying him to Dubrovnik, Plymouth, Grassmere (to meetings of
