A panel has been announced for the Literary Leicester Festival on the subject “Remembering Alexander Chancellor (1940-2017).” He was editor and contributor to several journals, including most notably The Spectator. The panel will he chaired by Alexander Waugh, his son-in-law and Evelyn Waugh’s grandson. The panelists will include journalists Ferdinand Mount, Craig Brown, and Geoffrey Wheatcroft and TV presenter Anne Robinson. According to an announcement in The Oldie it will consider the theme: “Editors are variously admired, hated, respected or held in contempt for their incompetence while being well-liked for their ability to buy rounds at the pub.”
The panel is scheduled to convene on Wednesday 15 November from 4-5:30pm. Entry is free and bookings may be made at this link. Thanks to Milena Borden for sending us this information.
UPDATE (17 November 2017): This report on the panel appears in The Oldie’s newsletter for today:
Ferdy described Alexander [Chancellor] with his cigarette in one hand and the metaphorical blue pencil in the other – often in a plume of his own smoke. They talked about his laid-back greatness and his contradictory nature, charming and brilliant; yet with a simmering streak of anarchism; as reflected by his regular recounting of his back-to-back sackings (never from The Oldie). Anne Robinson remembered that he even managed to charm the Guardian readership, despite occasional references to his privileged Eton schooling and Italian holiday home.
