The Times Great Women's Lives

by Sue Corbett

  The Covent Garden management has tended latterly to let the London-based Royal run down through too small a share of resources, while its artistic policy has been left to freewheel on the lines she laid down, without her commitment and capacity for renewal. Nevertheless, de Valois leaves, for future British dancers, the prospect of a career that did not exist when she was young; for audiences, two great companies that would not have existed without her; and for her country, a national asset beyond price.

  Dame Ninette de Valois, OM, CH, DBE, founder and director of the Royal Ballet, was born on June 5, 1898. She died on March 8, 2001, aged 102

  KATHARINE GRAHAM

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  PUBLISHER OF THE WASHINGTON POST WHO BROUGHT DOWN NIXON OVER WATERGATE, AND BECAME ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL WOMEN IN AMERICA

  JULY 18, 2001

  As controlling shareholder and publisher of The Washington Post, Mrs Katharine Graham was for decades one of the half-dozen most influential people in the American capital. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, senators and White House staffers came and went; Kay Graham remained a force to be reckoned with: wealthy, determined and with a reputation for absolute integrity.

  Her decisions were an important factor in the Post’s campaigns to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War, and in the decision to pursue the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974. Her moral courage in these two crises helped to win the Post a position alongside or only slightly behind The New York Times as the most influential newspaper in the country.

  It had not always been so. The Post had been bankrupt when it was bought at auction by her father, the successful Wall Street investor Eugene Meyer, who had put together the Allied Chemical company out of confiscated German chemicals and dyestuffs businesses.

  Katharine’s mother, Agnes Meyer, was a journalist, the first woman reporter on The New York Sun. She was a domineering personality with strong liberal views, and she and her daughter never got along easily.

  Katharine was born in New York and educated at Vassar and the University of Chicago, where she shed her Republicanism and became a left-wing Democrat. In 1938 she too became a reporter, on The San Francisco News, where she specialised in labour news.

  In 1940 she married Philip L. Graham, a brilliant lawyer from Florida by way of the Harvard Law School, to whom she had been introduced by John Oakes, of the family which owns The New York Times. Graham, who was a close friend of the future presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (and a protégé of the arch-networker Justice Felix Frankfurter of the Supreme Court), was expected to have a great career of his own either in the law or in politics. When Graham came back from the war, however, Eugene Meyer persuaded his son-in-law to help him run the paper.

  Philip Graham decided to buy Newsweek magazine, persuaded Meyer to buy up the Post’s only remaining rival of substance in Washington, the Times-Herald, and became one of the most influential figures in the Washington of the late 1950s. It was he who brokered the deal by which Lyndon Johnson stood down to allow Kennedy a clear run for the Democratic presidential nomination in return for the vice-presidency.

  He was, however, psychologically very ill, and by 1963 the mental strain and imbalance had become impossible to hide. He began to drink heavily and became publicly involved with a young woman who was a correspondent for Newsweek. With her, after several attempts to break off the relationship, he began careering around the country, his escapades culminating in his beginning to strip in front of an audience of his peers at the Associated Press convention. Finally he shot himself at the Grahams’ farm in Virginia. His wife was in the next room.

  Graham, a mother of four young children, now found herself sole owner of The Washington Post. Most of the executives and journalists expected her to hand the reins to them. Instead, with an extraordinary effort of will, she overcame the shock and took control herself.

  Although at first nervous about her own inexperience, she soon showed that she was determined to play an active part in running the paper and the group as a whole. (By this time the Washington Post Company owned several television stations in Washington and in Florida as well as Newsweek and minor properties.) She loved the buzz of the news, of the editorial conference and the newsroom, and for the next quarter of a century she was at the centre of a series of political storms and business dramas.

  One moment of decision came in June 1971, when Graham learnt through a social contact that The New York Times — chief obstacle in the way of her ambition of making the Post the best paper in the country — had obtained copies of a secret report on American policy towards Vietnam. It came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

  The Times had had access to the papers long enough to mount a careful checking operation. The Post faced a dilemma: let the Times have its great scoop to itself, or risk publishing the material imperfectly checked and lose all credibility by getting something seriously wrong. The choice was the more agonising for coming on the eve of the first public flotation of Washington Post Company shares on the stock exchange.

  The lawyers warned her against publishing. The journalists, led by the dashing Editor Ben Bradlee, were all for taking the risk. Graham overruled the legal advisers and agreed to publication — and she held to this course despite heavy threats of criminal prosecution from the Nixon Administration. The Post itself had, she felt, supported the war in Vietnam for too long.

  The experience of the Pentagon Papers added sulphur to the atmosphere when, 18 months later, Bradlee and two of his young reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, began to follow the trail of the various misdeeds and criminal activities in the Nixon White House that came to be known as Watergate.

  Especially in the earlier months, when the Post stood almost alone against an electorally triumphant and furiously vindictive Administration — which was determined to ruin her paper’s reputation — the personal pressure on Graham was formidable. But she never wavered.

  The Washington Post emerged from the Watergate struggle covered with glory — too much, it turned out, for its own good. Graham, meanwhile, was changing. Even before the Watergate showdown, she had distanced herself from some of the Post’s journalists, who were bitter opponents of the Nixon Administration. She was, in particular, on excellent terms with Dr Henry Kissinger.

  Although the paper continued to take a broadly liberal approach, in those same years she took a hard line with its unions. When the journalists went on strike, she reverted to her youthful experience as a reporter and even worked, taking down classified advertisements over the phone.

  During the far more bitter strike by the pressmen which followed, the underlying steel of her character became even more clearly apparent. She made no secret of her anger at strikers who physically attacked journalists and did millions of dollars-worth of damage to her presses. This shy woman first brought in helicopters to fly out plates to be printed elsewhere, and ended up seeking the help of the Newspaper Production and Research Center, a conservative organisation in Oklahoma, to break the union, which she effectively did.

  In 1979 Mrs Graham handed over her job as publisher to her son, Donald Graham, although she continued to play an important part in the affairs of the company as a whole. As a result of the victory over the pressmen, the company became more valuable than ever — and The Washington Post was only the flagship of a considerable business empire, which included television stations (which the Nixon Administration threatened to remove), as well as other communications companies and paper-making interests.

  As early as 1971 Graham was made nervous by a letter from Warren Buffett, then a comparatively unknown investor out in Omaha, which said that his investment vehicle, Berkshire-Hathaway, had bought 5 per cent of the Post Company’s stock. Over the following years, Buffett and Graham developed a close business and personal friendship. She claimed that he was her instructor in business. Together they weathered a number of business storms, and the Washington Post Company’s shares soar
ed steadily higher.

  Graham had taken to the business world with enthusiasm, and she took great pleasure in passing various milestones, such as seeing the company’s stock passing $300 a share, and an award that listed it as one of the five best-managed corporations in the United States. Its revenues multiplied nearly 20-fold under her management.

  The paper’s reputation, however, was badly dented by the disastrous Janet Cooke affair of 1981. Cooke, an African-American reporter, won a Pulitzer prize for what turned out to be an almost wholly untrue story about a child heroin addict; and on inspection it turned out that she had conned the editors about her own background and credentials as well as her story.

  Meanwhile, Graham’s politics were changing. She greatly enjoyed her participation in the Brandt Commission, which in 1978 produced the report North and South, about imbalances in the world economy, but by the 1980s it was really no longer accurate to identify her as a liberal. As she grew older she travelled a good deal and enjoyed meeting the world’s movers and shakers. Among her friends were the Reagans, Vaclav Havel, Diana, Princess of Wales, and Bill Gates. She also had a number of relationships of a more or less romantic nature with men, most of them distinctly rich and powerful.

  She remained, however, a strong feminist, and over the years her commitment to equality for women only intensified. She once interrupted a statement at an Allied Chemicals shareholders’ meeting to insist that female employees must be called “women” and not “girls”, a modest enough demand by today’s standards, but daring at the time. On another occasion she sent for her car and swept out of a dinner party at the British Embassy because she was expected to join the ladies in withdrawing from the men after dinner.

  In 1997 she finally confounded those — if there were any left — who still patronised her abilities by publishing an autobiography, Personal History, which instantly became a bestseller and won a Pulitzer prize. Like its author it was frank, courageous and full of ideas; it confronted the most painful aspects of her husband’s traumatic end and she even found the generosity to say something good about the young woman whose affair with her husband led to his final catastrophe.

  Graham is survived by her daughter and three sons.

  Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, was born on June 16, 1917. She died on July 17, 2001, aged 84

  QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER

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  A UNIQUE PUBLIC PERSONALITY, WHOSE SERVICE TO THE MONARCHY WAS SECOND TO NONE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

  APRIL 1, 2002

  The wife of King George VI was the first non-royal queen consort since Catherine Parr in the 16th century, and the first non-royal mother of a sovereign since Anne Hyde in the 17th. But these achievements — interesting as they may be for the record book — say nothing of the individual, whose achievements were of a quite different order.

  By virtue of qualities peculiarly her own, not the least of which was an extraordinary, even awe-inspiring, longevity, Queen Elizabeth came to occupy a special position in the country and throughout the world. As queen consort from 1936 to 1952, she was immensely popular and an incalculable asset to the monarchy. As queen mother she was, if possible, more popular still, and continued to make an outstanding contribution to the work of the Royal Family.

  It was not in her nature to behave as though her privileged position was a crushing burden. By temperament an enjoyer of life, she entered into everything she did with gusto, and never forgot what she owed to people whose lives were less comfortable, pleasant and interesting than her own. With this attitude, she could turn even an intrinsically tedious occasion into a party. As a Times leader once said of her: “She lays a foundation stone as though she has discovered a new and delightful way of spending an afternoon.”

  When she married Albert, Duke of York in 1923 she had no reason to imagine that he would ever be king. But 13 years later, she was more than equal to the double challenge of supporting him in a role for which, in many ways, he seemed to be unfitted, and of making a success of her own role as first lady. Though it is absurd to suggest that the monarchy itself was seriously endangered by Edward VIII’s abdication, it is true that, but for her, the institution might, at that time, have suffered some loss of glamour and prestige, if only temporarily.

  Without doubt it was her devotion and strength of character that enabled the new king to rise above the natural disadvantages of a stammer, and almost crippling shyness, to become a competent and, in time, a well-loved monarch. At the same time she took to her new position with apparently effortless ease, showing from the first the star quality that was never to desert her.

  During the Second World War, Queen Elizabeth was unchallenged as the woman to whom people looked for inspiration. If she had not been there, the monarchy might have been comprehensively upstaged by Winston Churchill (however unwillingly, on his part). Her conduct during the war showed her at her brilliant best, and deepened the affection and respect in which she was already held.

  By contrast with his father, King George VI was able, with the help of Queen Elizabeth, to give his children a home life that was as warm and intimate as any in the land; and it is immensely to the credit of both parents that they never thought of sending their daughters to invidious and probably unhappy safety overseas during the war.

  On the education of her children Queen Elizabeth’s instincts were conservative. As a result, the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were not sent to school but taught by governesses. It may be argued that after 1945 her essential conservatism may have somewhat delayed the process of evolution and adaptation of the royal household that the times required. But her relatively old-fashioned views never cost her any popularity, partly because they were widely shared in the community, but also because her personal charm prevailed over any criticism.

  However, behind the famous smile was a character that was tough as well as sweet and gracious. Without this toughness she could not have achieved what she did. In general, her strength was exerted to good ends, and helped to make her a unique public personality, whose service to the monarchy was second to none in the 20th century.

  Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon’s exact place of birth remains a mystery, although it was probably in London. It was always assumed to have been at St Paul’s, Walden Bury, the Hertfordshire home of her parents, the 14th Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, whose ninth child she was, but she herself denied it without ever elaborating on where precisely she entered the world. Lord Strathmore was a dignified but unremarkable backwoods peer. Lady Strathmore, daughter of a parson with ducal (Portland) connections, was the more forceful parent.

  Elizabeth and her younger brother, David, were respectively 17 and 19 years younger than their eldest sister, and their mother used to say that they might have been her grandchildren. Their upbringing and education had a distinctly Victorian flavour. The future queen’s early life was passed in an almost royal routine, alternating between the estate in Hertfordshire, with its Queen Anne house, a big London house in Grosvenor Gardens, and the historic seat of the family, Glamis Castle, which was used largely for holidays and shooting parties.

  A pretty child with striking eyes, she early showed the companionable disposition which was later to win her so many friends, as well as the not entirely friendly description of “a simple, chattering, sweet-hearted, little round-faced woman in pink”. (Her other distinctive dress colour was to be powder-blue.) As with most young women of her class, there were no plans for her to have a career beyond that of marriage. Her education was at home, apart from brief attendance at “select classes for girls” at a school in Sloane Street. For the rest, her childhood before 1914 was more or less happy and carefree.

  War changed all this and brought her into contact with harsher realities. Personal sorrows struck her family. One of her brothers, Fergus, was killed, and another, Michael, taken prisoner. The circle of friends which had gathered annually for the three-month holiday at Glamis was similarly reduced. Bu
t the war had positive value for Lady Elizabeth. The drawing-room at Glamis was converted into a convalescent home for wounded Australian soldiers discharged from Dundee Infirmary; their presence gave her an opportunity for service, which she relished.

  With the inventiveness of youth she and David improvised trivial comforts for the soldiers, ran errands for them and entertained them with stories and games. With her beguiling ways she became immensely popular with them — as later with a worldwide public. It was also good for her to find, at an impressionable age, that she could get on with men from backgrounds of which she had absolutely no knowledge. She liked to listen to what they had to say, and in return talked to them about herself without embarrassment or condescension.

  But when the war ended she returned to the conventional round. She belatedly “came out” (though she was never actually presented at court) and then threw herself into the social activities appropriate to a girl of her standing. She loved parties and was known as one of the best dancers in London, though she never became a familiar name to the readers of social gossip columns. Her reputation as a charming, eligible girl was confined to a fairly limited circle. She seemed to have no desire for early marriage and turned down a number of proposals before coming of age.

  The first postwar meeting with her future husband, Albert, Duke of York, took place in 1920 at a party given by his father’s friend, Lord Farquhar (later — posthumously — exposed as a crook). Soon the duke was visiting Glamis and beginning his long courtship, which was not to end until his third proposal was accepted by Elizabeth at St Paul’s, Walden Bury, on January 14, 1923. Joyfully, he sent a telegram to his mother —“ALL RIGHT BERTIE”. It was, indeed, a providential moment for him, and not for him only.