Henry Fairlie
Encyclopedia
Henry Jones Fairlie was a British
political journalist and social critic. Sometimes mistakenly believed to have coined the term "the Establishment
", an analysis of how "all the right people" came to run Britain largely through social connections, he spent 36 years as a prominent freelance writer on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing in The Spectator
, The New Republic
, The Washington Post
, The New Yorker
, and many other papers and magazines. He was also the author of five books, most notably The Kennedy Promise, an early revisionist critique of the U.S. presidency of John F. Kennedy
.
In 2009, Yale University Press published Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations (ISBN: 9780300123838), an anthology of his work edited by Newsweek
correspondent Jeremy McCarter.
; his mother, Marguerita Vernon, was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Fairlie attended Byron House and Highgate School
before studying Modern History at Corpus Christi
, Oxford
.
After taking his degree in 1945, Fairlie began his journalism career at the Manchester Evening News
, followed by a brief stint working for David Astor
at the Observer
. During this time he married Lisette Todd Phillips, with whom he would have a son and two daughters.
, rising at an early age to become the chief writer of its leaders on domestic politics. In 1954, he gave up the security of that post to assume the greater independence of a freelance writer, which he remained until the end of his life. As the author of the "Political Commentary" column in The Spectator -- first under the nom de plume "Trimmer", then under his own byline -- he helped define the modern political column.
In September 1955, Fairlie devoted a column to how the friends and acquaintances of Guy Burgess
and Donald Maclean
, two members of the Foreign Office widely believed to have defected to Moscow, tried to deflect press scrutiny from the men's families. He defined that network of prominent, well-connected people as "the Establishment," explaining:
The term was quickly picked up in newspapers and magazines all over London, making Fairlie famous. Though he would later determine that he hadn't been the first to use "the Establishment" in this fashion -- awarding the distinction to Emerson
-- the Oxford English Dictionary
would cite Fairlie's column as its locus classicus.
As Fairlie became better known, his personal life grew chaotic. He drank heavily and conducted a series of extramarital affairs, including one with the wife of his friend Kingsley Amis
that nearly ended their marriage. Never responsible with money, he amassed thousands of pounds of debts. And in 1965, he insulted Lady Antonia Fraser on television, leading to a libel suit against him and the I.T.A.
. That year, he visited America for the first time, and fell immediately in love with the country. A few months later, he moved there for good.
whose unique brand of conservatism frequently left him more sympathetic to the Democrats
than the Republicans
. These heterodox politics helped him find a perch at The New Republic
, where he was a regular contributor from the mid-1970s until his death in 1990. In the mid-1980s, when he was unable to keep up payments on his apartment, he was even reduced to living in his office there, sleeping on a couch next to his desk.
Fairlie devoted much of the second half of his career to trying to explain America to Americans. Between 1976 and 1982, he wrote "Fairlie at Large," a bi-weekly column for The Washington Post
. In those pieces he often abandoned political subjects to write about American manners and morals: for instance, why Americans would do well to give up showers in favor of more contemplative baths. His romantic attachment to the possibilities of American life found its fullest expression in a long essay titled "Why I Love America," which The New Republic published on July 4, 1983.
In the winter of 1990, Fairlie fell in the lobby of The New Republic, breaking a hip. After a brief hospitalization, he died on February 25. His ashes were buried in the family plot in Scotland.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
political journalist and social critic. Sometimes mistakenly believed to have coined the term "the Establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...
", an analysis of how "all the right people" came to run Britain largely through social connections, he spent 36 years as a prominent freelance writer on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, and many other papers and magazines. He was also the author of five books, most notably The Kennedy Promise, an early revisionist critique of the U.S. presidency of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
In 2009, Yale University Press published Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations (ISBN: 9780300123838), an anthology of his work edited by Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
correspondent Jeremy McCarter.
Biography
Fairlie was born in London, the fifth of seven children in a family of Scottish descent. His father, James Fairlie, was a heavy-drinking editor on Fleet StreetFleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
; his mother, Marguerita Vernon, was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Fairlie attended Byron House and Highgate School
Highgate School
-Notable members of staff and governing body:* John Ireton, brother of Henry Ireton, Cromwellian General* 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, owner of Kenwood, noted for judgment finding contracts for slavery unenforceable in English law* T. S...
before studying Modern History at Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom...
, Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
.
After taking his degree in 1945, Fairlie began his journalism career at the Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
The Manchester Evening News is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. It is published every day except Sunday and is owned by Trinity Mirror plc following its sale by Guardian Media Group in early 2010. It has an average daily circulation of 90,973 copies...
, followed by a brief stint working for David Astor
David Astor
Francis David Langhorne Astor CH was an English newspaper publisher and member of the Astor family.-Early life and career:...
at the Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
. During this time he married Lisette Todd Phillips, with whom he would have a son and two daughters.
Fleet Street
In 1950, Fairlie joined the staff of The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, rising at an early age to become the chief writer of its leaders on domestic politics. In 1954, he gave up the security of that post to assume the greater independence of a freelance writer, which he remained until the end of his life. As the author of the "Political Commentary" column in The Spectator -- first under the nom de plume "Trimmer", then under his own byline -- he helped define the modern political column.
In September 1955, Fairlie devoted a column to how the friends and acquaintances of Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
and Donald Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
, two members of the Foreign Office widely believed to have defected to Moscow, tried to deflect press scrutiny from the men's families. He defined that network of prominent, well-connected people as "the Establishment," explaining:
By the ‘Establishment’, I do not only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in Britain (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.
The term was quickly picked up in newspapers and magazines all over London, making Fairlie famous. Though he would later determine that he hadn't been the first to use "the Establishment" in this fashion -- awarding the distinction to Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
-- the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
would cite Fairlie's column as its locus classicus.
As Fairlie became better known, his personal life grew chaotic. He drank heavily and conducted a series of extramarital affairs, including one with the wife of his friend Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBE was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism...
that nearly ended their marriage. Never responsible with money, he amassed thousands of pounds of debts. And in 1965, he insulted Lady Antonia Fraser on television, leading to a libel suit against him and the I.T.A.
Independent Television Authority
The Independent Television Authority was an agency created by the Television Act 1954 to supervise the creation of "Independent Television" , the first commercial television network in the United Kingdom...
. That year, he visited America for the first time, and fell immediately in love with the country. A few months later, he moved there for good.
America
Fairlie was an anomaly in Washington, a ToryTory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
whose unique brand of conservatism frequently left him more sympathetic to the Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
than the Republicans
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
. These heterodox politics helped him find a perch at The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, where he was a regular contributor from the mid-1970s until his death in 1990. In the mid-1980s, when he was unable to keep up payments on his apartment, he was even reduced to living in his office there, sleeping on a couch next to his desk.
Fairlie devoted much of the second half of his career to trying to explain America to Americans. Between 1976 and 1982, he wrote "Fairlie at Large," a bi-weekly column for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. In those pieces he often abandoned political subjects to write about American manners and morals: for instance, why Americans would do well to give up showers in favor of more contemplative baths. His romantic attachment to the possibilities of American life found its fullest expression in a long essay titled "Why I Love America," which The New Republic published on July 4, 1983.
In the winter of 1990, Fairlie fell in the lobby of The New Republic, breaking a hip. After a brief hospitalization, he died on February 25. His ashes were buried in the family plot in Scotland.
Books
- The Life of Politics, Methuen, 1969.
- The Kennedy Promise, Doubleday, 1973.
- The Spoiled Child of the Western World: The Miscarriage of the American Idea in Our Time, Doubleday, 1976.
- The Parties: Republicans and Democrats in This Century, St. Martin's, 1978.
- The Seven Deadly Sins Today, New Republic Books, 1978.
- Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations, edited by Jeremy McCarter, Yale University Press, 2009.
External links
- Tory in America, by Fred Siegel, City Journal online
- Reagan Was Wrong: To conservative Cassandra Henry Fairlie, Republicans sowed their present-day destruction from the start By Jeremy McCarter of NewsweekNewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
- Review of Bite the Hand That Feeds You, by Christopher Hitchens in the New York Times