Journalists who believe in heaven and hell, as David Twiston Davies undoubtedly did, probably live their lives with a degree of uncertainty about where they will end up when the time comes. Ours is not a uniformly saintly trade.
But if we can at least assume there’ll be pass-outs from the Pearly and Hades Gates for residents to meet up in the Great Newsroom in the Sky, the composition of The Daily Telegraph editorial team for the afterlife has taken another step towards completion.
Twisters, as he was known to anyone who didn't call him the Twister, died from cancer on Sunday, aged 75.
He was a wonderfully irreverent character, amply equipped to serve either as letters editor or chief obituaries writer for this fanciful reincarnation of what was until recent years a great newspaper. Since he fulfilled both roles with distinction in his 40 years on the paper, he may combine them when reacquainted with the many fine reporters, specialists, sub-editors, photographers and executives who were his colleagues and mine but have also passed away.
Twisters by Stephen Lock. Reproduced with Stephen's kind permission
It seems odd to reflect on the death of a man who spent so much time chronicling the lives of others immediately after they had died. One of his former colleagues - I shall withhold the name since obituaries are customarily anonymous - approached the task of doing so with diligence and obvious affection. You will find the appreciation of Twisters's life at this link but it is behind a paywall so I shall offer this short extract capturing the essence of an eccentric and entirely likeable reactionary:
The commotion of his daily routine, the sound of his voice on the telephone, the banter passing between him and Dorothy (Dot Brown, his secretary), and the bluff conservatism of his old-school opinions broadcast at full volume made Twiston Davies a character impossible to ignore, unique on the newspaper’s staff, but also helped to foster a sense of corporate camaraderie.
He was a one-off, his eccentricities bolstered by an underlying conviction that things would work out. He liked to quote a remark by his English master at school that the young David 'was like a character in a novel', and at times it even seemed as if The Twister or Twisters was taking part in a theatrical production; there was always a strong element of self-parody in his performance and he took the joshing of colleagues in good part.
Telegraph journalists pinched themselves as they heard him opine sagely into the telephone on some matter of grave consequence – the value of birching, perhaps, or National Service – long since consigned to history. (In his entry in Debrett’s he listed his recreation as 'defending the reputation of the British Empire'.
David's time as letters editor coincided with the reign of Max Hastings. Max, a superb editor even if his management style was abrasive and sometimes seemed unfair, is a one-nation Conservative who challenged much that the old Telegraph epitomised and it was under his leadership that Torygraph ceased to feel an entirely accurate sobriquet. One of Max's early moans was that the letters page was predictable and dull. Twisters made it much less so, soliciting contributions from eminent, outspoken individuals and persuading them to express their views with some force.
Another former colleague to pay tribute to "the great David Twiston Davies", as he calls him, is Harry Phibbs.
Writing in The Critic magazine, he says:
He was devoted to the readers. Frequently he would recite a choice missive – often one putting forward a remedy for some national predicament with an outspoken and mischievous flourish. 'Twisters' would bellow across the editorial floor.
David would spend much of the day on the phone to readers to agree edits to their letters. Often the sentiments expressed were already pretty ferocious. But rather than seeking agreement to tone them down, he would urge his correspondents to toughen up the message.His secretary, Dorothy Brown, provided the perfect foil. She would accuse him of being drunk, or rile him in some other way. The indignant scenes made for vintage comic performances.
He approached obituary writing with similar idiosyncrasy and made his page a must-read section of the Telegraph.
Long after my own departure from the newspaper, Twisters would call me at home in France or London, that friendly, booming voice of his demanding anecdotes about people I had known who had just died.
David Twiston Davies was a devout Roman Catholic. He was born in Montreal and never lost his fierce attachment to Canada, not to Quebec but to the "senior dominion”. The first of my images above is the cover of Canada From Afar, one of his compilations of obituaries. He produced several volumes; that one should have dealt exclusively with Canadian subjects might seem another example of his eccentricity until it is remembered that the Canadian-born author of its foreword, Conrad Black, then owned the Telegraph.
Faithful readers of Salut! will know that the politics of people like Twisters, Harry Phibbs, Conrad Black and even Max Hastings are not mine. At the Telegraph for which I worked from 1977 to 2006, it did not matter. Very few of the reporters or subs were ardent Tories if they were Tories at all; that sort of thing was left to the leader writers and hierarchy. We merely got on with doing our best to produce what we fondly believed to be the best newspaper in the English-speaking world.
One such fellow-reporter, who shall also remain nameless in the spirit of anonymous obituaries, said this: "As you say, Colin, a wonderful character .. one of the last of the King and Keys (a favoured Fleet St watering hole) lunchtime patrons. They don’t make them like that any more. He represented all that was best about the paper."
* David Twiston Davies is survived by his wife, Margaret Anne (Rita), their daughter Bess and sons Benedict, James and Huw. Bon courage to them.
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