Life with - and without - Harry

Abstract

In 1986, when Andrew Neil called Sunday Times journalists to a meeting around the corner from the paper's Grays Inn Road offices and commanded them to go to Fortress Wapping or else — the silence was broken by a mild-mannered, bespectacled senior editor. With 17 years' service behind him, Don Berry accused Neil of treating the journalists with contempt: they had been lied to, their house agreement had been flagrantly violated, and their herding to Wapping was a Murdoch ruse to evade redundancy payments. Though Berry was cheered to the rafters, it was the end of his career with the Sunday Times. But his talents and high prinicples were quickly seized by Max Hastings, newly appointed editor of The Daily Telegraph, whose reliance on Berry then was proven later when Hastings took him to the Evening Standard. Below me publish Berry's retirement speech describing his first days on five different papers.