Although Levin had rejected Judaism when a youth, he quested after spirituality. Such religious sympathies as he had, he said, were "with quietist faiths, like Buddhism, on the one hand, and with a straightforward message of salvation, like Christianity, on the other". [11] With the help of Stassinopoulos he continued to search after spiritual truth. She later wrote, "He tried therapy, he tried Insight, a self-awareness seminar that I had helped to bring to London, he tried a stint in an ashram in India. Lesser souls would have avoided the ridicule that was heaped on him for his spiritual 'search' by simply keeping it to himself. But he didn't, because anything he was touched by he had to write about". [51] In 1980 he wrote extensive accounts in his column about his visit to the Indian commune of the meditation teacher Osho. [12] In 1953, he came across an advertisement in Truth, a weekly edited by the liberal journalist George Scott, appealing for editorial staff. At the time, Truth had a very rightwing, even anti-semitic, reputation that Scott was anxious to get rid of. Bernard arrived at their offices and explained that he was applying for a job. When the secretary told Scott the name of the applicant he was delighted by the Jewish name and said: "Show him in, he's got a job." Levin became a broadcaster, first on the weekly satirical television show That Was the Week That Was in the early 1960s, then as a panellist on a musical quiz, Face the Music, and finally in three series of travel programmes in the 1980s. He began to write books in the 1970s, publishing 17 between 1970 and 1998. From the early 1990s, Levin developed Alzheimer's disease, which eventually forced him to give up his regular column in 1997, and to stop writing altogether not long afterwards.

Equally strange were his insecurities. He never learned to drive, and this could upset him. Being driven by a woman to Glyndebourne, he became convinced that other drivers were sneering at him. He asked her to stop, went into a chemist and bought a sling. He put it on, reasoning that people would now understand why he was not at the wheel. Laughs] No, not just in the bedroom! Although Bernard did say that going to bed with him was a liberal education. I left London because I was still in love with him and he didn't want to get married or have children. I might still be there now if Bernard Levin had married me. You see how life works. His life in those times was very agreeable. He had an exceptionally wide circle of friends who, for some reason, he kept in separate compartments, a characteristic common perhaps to bachelors. No one was better at keeping his friendship in repair. He never lost or fell out with a friend. His generosity was exceptional, only with great reluctance allowing anyone else to pay for a meal with him. When Cyril Ray's house burnt down, Bernard offered to lend him a large sum to tide him over. When this did not happen, he decided to move on, at first going to the Daily Express as theatre critic, and from 1962 to 1965 working at the Daily Mail in the same capacity. He then became a Mail feature writer and in 1969 What The Papers Say columnist of the year. His contract specified that he should have complete freedom and that no one should change anything he wrote, either for opinion or style, without his consent.Levin wrote for a large array of different newspapers during his career, including the Manchester Guardian and the Observer.

Hart-Davis, Rupert; George Lyttelton (1987) [1983 and 1984]. The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters, Volumes 5 and 6 (seconded.). London: John Murray. ISBN 0-7195-4381-9. In later years, Liz Anderson (Elisabeth Anderson) was Bernard Levin's partner. Like Arianna Stassinopoulos, she was also Levin's junior by more than 20 years. [54] 1980s [ edit ] Keith is so deeply into books that he would like to see all racist, sexist and élitist literature cleared from the library shelves, so as to leave more room for the kind of books he is into. Eliot once said that the translators of the New English Bible were atheists without knowing it. Keith is a censor without knowing it, and Levin is good on censors of any kind. His review of The Longford Report is an exemplary job of demolition, made all the more convincing by his generous willingness to regard Lord Longford as something better than a buffoon. It would be impossible to quote all the phrases we use in everyday speech that first appeared in a Shakespeare text. Similarly he is good on unions. Levin has been personally active in the freelance branch of the journalists’ union, the NUJ, where by his energies he has done a lot to frustrate the plans of those giftless radicals who wait around at meetings until there is no one left to interfere with a unanimous vote. Levin published lists which helped write-in voters to support sane candidates. He did the same with regard to the actors’ union, Equity, thereby materially helping to stop that organisation passing into the control of the zanier members of the Redgrave family. For a writer it is not a very exalted level on which to be politically effective, but it counts, especially when you consider how few writers are politically effective on any level.It will, but one of the exciting things about expanding is the way the international editions act like bureaus. So when we had the French elections, the best pieces and blogs were immediately translated and were published in the UK, in our Québécois edition, and so on. We've launched in France in partnership with Le Monde, in Spain with El País. We're launching in Italy in September and then Germany, Brazil, India, Japan.

They will tell you I am, in that I have certain ground rules. Everyone I work with knows that if the phone rings and it's one of my children, I will interrupt anything. I've always worked so they're very used to that, but they also know they come first. I think that's what matters most to children. They don't necessarily want you to be waiting for them in the kitchen when they come home. Levin’s proposal for our salvation is a change of heart. This new Weltanschauung has noticeable affinities with the political theories of Arianna Stassinopoulos, of which the best that can be said is that they catch votes in the debating chamber. In the Spectator, Christopher Booker has been emitting, by instalments, a speculative pontification which echoes the same uplifting sentiments. Perhaps these philosophers should be thought of as forming a school, like the Vienna Circle. Perhaps sitting in London is, after all, the best way of probing the soul of Western Man. But it seems more likely that they are all simply fanning the air in the usual manner of those who can’t live without an Answer, and that Levin, in particular, has a thirst for mystical transcendence which not even regular exposure to the Ring cycle can assuage.

Levin, Bernard (1970). The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-61963-2.

Bernard Levin, who has died aged 75, after many years of Alzheimer's disease, was one of the most famous as well as one of the most controversial British journalists and broadcasters of the second half of the last century. His ever-restless pen provoked emotions that varied from rage, even hatred, to affection and admiration. Employed during the last three decades primarily on the Times and the Sunday Times, his career had also taken him to such publications as the Observer, the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator, the New Statesman, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. In 1957, Bernard started to write the column which was to set the seal on his fame. He called it Taper. The subject was the doings of Parliament. He invented comical names for politicians - thus did the then Conservative attorney general Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller became Sir Reginald Bullying Manner. Are you a Greek mother to your two daughters [with ex-husband and former Republican congressman Michael Huffington]? D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel, published in other countries but never, until 1960, in Britain, tells of a love affair between the wife of an English landowner and his gamekeeper. Lawrence gives the latter a blunt Anglo-Saxon vocabulary with regard to the sexual act and the relevant body parts for which Penguin Books, as publisher, was prosecuted unsuccessfully for obscenity. The prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, famously made himself look foolish by asking the jury if they would want their wives or servants to read the book. [25]

In some senses he had mellowed. He enjoyed the best relations with successive editors of the Times. They liked and admired him for several qualities, loyalty being the most outstanding. His capacity for work was legendary. If he was going away for a few weeks, he would write 12 articles to be used in his absence. Gradually he came to write fewer vituperative articles and more ruminative ones on music (especially Wagner), literature and the arts, never forsaking his pet hates - lawyers, especially judges, and home secretaries. Your life has gone through many incarnations - biographer, Republican wife, aspiring politician, campaigner, internet mogul. Do you ever wish it had been less complicated? In 1957 he started to write the parliamentary column, Taper, which was to set the seal on his fame. He invented comical names for politicians, famously renaming a Conservative attorney general, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, Sir Reginald Bullying Manner. Bernard's first piece for Truth dealt with his disillusionment with the Labour party. Soon he, Oakes and Alan Brien were all sharing an office. It was a tempestuous room. Alan was forever arguing some involved point; Bernard, always capable of doing two things at once, would be contesting the point while correcting proofs. Philip, more likely than not would be laughing at them, while pondering on a poem he was writing.