Actually, there were some critical voices even
while Dimbleby was in his prime. In 1956, the Daily
Mirror’s Cassandra wrote that he ‘shimmers in his own unction … he swells
in a glycerine respect for his subject that makes the Royal Family look like an
advertisement for an immensely costly hair tonic … platitudes coming hushed,
honeyed from their author, standing at waistcoated attention’.
Anthony Burgess complained of ‘those periodical
Dimbleby Ubiquity Weeks’ characterised by ‘a surfect of omnicompetence mingled
with upper-middle-class decency and articulacy, bulkily incarnated – an
excessive dispensation of Better Self, a beneficent incubus that, lying so
heavily on the chest, is bound to act like a nightmare … The Dimbleby
lineaments comprise quiet decency, literacy without intellectuality, staidness
untempered by quirkiness, above all an aura of utter integrity. These are rare
qualities, and we have to pay heavily to get them. We have to yield our right
to what makes life worth living and television viewable – namely, the
unpredictable, the lunatic, the indiscreet, the inefficient.’
It’s
true that about the nearest Dimbleby came to controversy was when he was told
off by his bosses for mentioning his tailor on air. And it’s true that he was a Burkean conservative who liked the gentle changing of the seasons
and the continuities of English traditions. His experience at Belsen, where he
had delivered an unforgettable radio report as the BBC’s war correspondent, had
persuaded him of the value of tradition as a way of ensuring that barbarism
would never again triumph over civilisation. His coronation commentary wasn’t
oleaginous, nor was it even hushed as Cassandra claimed; but its reverence was
implicit.
But Dimbleby was also an absolutely wonderful
broadcaster. The rhetorical flourish with which he matched words to pictures,
an adaptation of the older techniques of radio to the new medium, has not been
equalled since. And
if you don’t believe me, listen to his masterly commentary on Winston Churchill’s
funeral in 1965:
No comments:
Post a Comment