Michael Wharton
Encyclopedia
Michael Wharton was a newspaper
columnist
who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Simple in the British Daily Telegraph. He began work on the "Way of the World" column with illustrator Michael ffolkes
three times a week in early 1957. In 1990 he began a weekly Peter Simple column in the Sunday Telegraph
, before returning to the Daily Telegraph as a weekly columnist in 1996. He remained there until his death, aged 92, in 2006, his last column appearing on 20 January 2006.
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
("Wharton" was the maiden name of his mother). Wharton was educated at Bradford Grammar School
and Lincoln College, Oxford
. His career at Oxford was undistinguished, partly because he spent his time writing Sheldrake, a novel that had little success when published in 1958. After Oxford, Wharton served in the Royal Artillery from 1940 to 1946. He then worked for the BBC
as a producer and scriptwriter, but left in 1956.
His two volumes of quasi-autobiography, The Missing Will and A Dubious Codicil, combined his fantasy world with the mundane reality of the life as a jobbing journalist. Wharton married three times. His daughter and literary executor, Jane Wharton, works as a psychotherapist.
The column satirized what Wharton saw as modern, fashionable ideas and readers often claimed to recognize his invented characters in real people. The columnar Dr Spacely-Trellis was the keenly progressive
bishop
of Bevindon, part of Stretchford, a fictional conurbation
somewhere in the English Midlands
, possibly named after Stechford, the area of Birmingham
once represented in Parliament by Roy Jenkins
, a figurehead of the political ideas Wharton despised.
The progress of the local football team, Stretchford United ("The Deckchairmen"), was regularly reported. With their lethargic, goal-conceding goalkeeper, Albert Rasp, United generally did not win games at their subsidence-plagued Effluent Road ground and inspired the similarly hapless Neasden F.C.
in Private Eye
. Elsewhere in Stretchford was lovely, sex-maniac-haunted Sadcake Park with its resident, council-subsidised Indian hermit
, but the conurbation was also roamed by dangerous gangs of middle-aged women affiliated to rapidly changing fan-clubs and anti-fan
-clubs. Of the resulting violence, the expert psychoanalyst
"Dr. Heinz Kiosk" was always ready to assure journalists that "We are all guilty!" The nearby Mountwarlock Estate, with its deadly wyvern
s, gorgon
s and upas tree, was owned by the eight-foot, cyclops
-eyed Earl of Mountwarlock and overseen by his butler
Phantomsby, "one of the few practising werewolves
left in the Midlands".
Wharton also regularly chronicled the life of the august Alderman Foodbotham, perpetual chairman of the Bradford
City Tramways and Fine Arts Committee, who was said to be buried in the grounds of his country seat Green Garth just outside town and awaiting a glorious resurrection. Not fictional was the column's presiding spirit, Colonel Sibthorp
, an eccentric and reactionary Victorian
Member of Parliament
, about whom Wharton made a BBC radio documentary in 1954.
Wharton was accused in his Times
obituary of "sometimes veer[ing] into the area of straightforward racism" and of being "prone to anti-semitic innuendo" for such passages as this:
Given Wharton's own background, The Times commented that these innuendos were "curious". His obituary in The Guardian
pursued the same thread to an even more precipitous minefield, hinting that Wharton's satirical writing suggested he had been a Nazi
sympathizer:
In September 2006, British National Party
official John Bean
claimed in an article on their website that he and the BNP leader Nick Griffin
had "both had the pleasure of corresponding with [Wharton] in his latter years". Bean did not divulge the extent or nature of the alleged correspondence or provide evidence of its existence.
In December 2006, further claims of Simple's links with the far-right emerged from Griffin himself, who described
Wharton's death as "a sad loss to honest journalism" and alleged that Wharton wrote him "a short but kind and supportive letter after my first Race Act trial back in 1997". Again he provided no evidence for his claim.
Wharton's columns were also (along with those of other conservatives such as Peter Hitchens
) often quoted approvingly in "The Things They're Saying", a section of John Tyndall
's Spearhead
magazine which surveyed the mainstream media.
However, no published evidence is available to indicate the extent, if any, of Wharton's sympathy with any figures of the British right. The Telegraph writes that "particularly after anthologies of the columns started appearing in book form, he attracted a few distinctly sinister "fan" letters. These welcomed, at last, somebody who could "understand" their conspiracy theories about Social Credit, international Jewry or Satan's Second Coming".
and for ten years (1990–2000) by Auberon Waugh
. It was later written by the satirist
Craig Brown
until he left the Telegraph late in 2008. A. N. Wilson
began to write a column under the title Peter Simple II in The Sunday Telegraph on 26 February 2006, but it did not last long.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
columnist
Columnist
A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....
who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Simple in the British Daily Telegraph. He began work on the "Way of the World" column with illustrator Michael ffolkes
Michael ffolkes
Michael ffolkes, born Brian Davis , was a British illustrator and cartoonist most famous for his work on the Peter Simple column in The Daily Telegraph. He also worked for Punch and Playboy....
three times a week in early 1957. In 1990 he began a weekly Peter Simple column in the Sunday Telegraph
Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...
, before returning to the Daily Telegraph as a weekly columnist in 1996. He remained there until his death, aged 92, in 2006, his last column appearing on 20 January 2006.
Life and career
Wharton was born as Michael Bernhard Nathan, the son of a businessman of German-Jewish origin, at ShipleyShipley, West Yorkshire
Shipley is a town in West Yorkshire, England, by the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, north of Bradford and north-west of Leeds....
, in the West Riding of Yorkshire
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
("Wharton" was the maiden name of his mother). Wharton was educated at Bradford Grammar School
Bradford Grammar School
Bradford Grammar School is a co-educational, independent school in Frizinghall, Bradford, West Yorkshire. Headmaster, Stephen Davidson is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference . The school was founded in 1548 and granted its Charter by King Charles II in 1662...
and Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...
. His career at Oxford was undistinguished, partly because he spent his time writing Sheldrake, a novel that had little success when published in 1958. After Oxford, Wharton served in the Royal Artillery from 1940 to 1946. He then worked for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
as a producer and scriptwriter, but left in 1956.
His two volumes of quasi-autobiography, The Missing Will and A Dubious Codicil, combined his fantasy world with the mundane reality of the life as a jobbing journalist. Wharton married three times. His daughter and literary executor, Jane Wharton, works as a psychotherapist.
Wharton's characters
See also List of Peter Simple's characters.The column satirized what Wharton saw as modern, fashionable ideas and readers often claimed to recognize his invented characters in real people. The columnar Dr Spacely-Trellis was the keenly progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
of Bevindon, part of Stretchford, a fictional conurbation
Conurbation
A conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially developed area...
somewhere in the English Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
, possibly named after Stechford, the area of Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
once represented in Parliament by Roy Jenkins
Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician.The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in...
, a figurehead of the political ideas Wharton despised.
The progress of the local football team, Stretchford United ("The Deckchairmen"), was regularly reported. With their lethargic, goal-conceding goalkeeper, Albert Rasp, United generally did not win games at their subsidence-plagued Effluent Road ground and inspired the similarly hapless Neasden F.C.
Neasden F.C.
Neasden F.C. is a fictional, spoof football team, the subject of a long-running joke in the British satirical magazine, Private Eye. It was invented by writer Barry Fantoni to satirize the clichés and hyperbole of football journalism and first appeared in the mid 1960s...
in Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
. Elsewhere in Stretchford was lovely, sex-maniac-haunted Sadcake Park with its resident, council-subsidised Indian hermit
Sadhu
In Hinduism, sādhu denotes an ascetic, wandering monk. Although the vast majority of sādhus are yogīs, not all yogīs are sādhus. The sādhu is solely dedicated to achieving mokṣa , the fourth and final aśrama , through meditation and contemplation of brahman...
, but the conurbation was also roamed by dangerous gangs of middle-aged women affiliated to rapidly changing fan-clubs and anti-fan
Anti-fan
While fan studies, as part of media audience research, has traditionally positioned the fan as one who engages with ideas related to a topic they are exceptionally interested in and enjoy, little research has been done for those who engage just as obsessively with media they claim to oppose, but...
-clubs. Of the resulting violence, the expert psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
"Dr. Heinz Kiosk" was always ready to assure journalists that "We are all guilty!" The nearby Mountwarlock Estate, with its deadly wyvern
Wyvern
A wyvern or wivern is a legendary winged reptilian creature with a dragon's head, two legs , and a barbed tail. The wyvern is found in heraldry. There exists a purely sea-dwelling variant, termed the Sea-Wyvern which has a fish tail in place of a barbed dragon's tail...
s, gorgon
Gorgon
In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a terrifying female creature. The name derives from the Greek word gorgós, which means "dreadful." While descriptions of Gorgons vary across Greek literature, the term commonly refers to any of three sisters who had hair of living, venomous snakes, and a...
s and upas tree, was owned by the eight-foot, cyclops
Cyclops
A cyclops , in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead...
-eyed Earl of Mountwarlock and overseen by his butler
Butler
A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its...
Phantomsby, "one of the few practising werewolves
Werewolf
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
left in the Midlands".
Wharton also regularly chronicled the life of the august Alderman Foodbotham, perpetual chairman of the Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
City Tramways and Fine Arts Committee, who was said to be buried in the grounds of his country seat Green Garth just outside town and awaiting a glorious resurrection. Not fictional was the column's presiding spirit, Colonel Sibthorp
Colonel Sibthorp
Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp , popularly known as Colonel Sibthorp, was a widely caricatured British Ultra-Tory politician in the early 19th century. He sat as a Member of Parliament for Lincoln from 1826 to 1855 .Sibthorp was born into a Lincoln gentry family, and was commissioned into the...
, an eccentric and reactionary Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, about whom Wharton made a BBC radio documentary in 1954.
Allegations of racism
Wharton consistently criticised and ridiculed what he described as the "race relations industry", and one of his most famous comic creations was the "prejudometer", an anti-racist instrument that supplied readings in prejudons, the "internationally recognised scientific unit of racial prejudice", when pointed at a suspected racist. Concerned individuals could even point the prejudometer at themselves:- At 3.6 degrees on the Alibhai-BrownYasmin Alibhai-BrownYasmin Alibhai-Brown MBE is a Ugandan-born British journalist and author, who describes herself as a "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani...a very responsible person"...
scale, it sets off a shrill scream that will not stop until you’ve pulled yourself together with a well-chosen anti-racist slogan.
Wharton was accused in his Times
The 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...
obituary of "sometimes veer[ing] into the area of straightforward racism" and of being "prone to anti-semitic innuendo" for such passages as this:
- Almost single-handed, Ariel SharonAriel SharonAriel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
may have ended the Jews' virtual immunity from hostile criticism that HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's persecution assured for more than 50 years. Anti-semitism is stirring. So far it may be only the so-called "anti-semitism" of people who think of the immense influence the Jews have in the world, and wonder whether it is always, everywhere and in every way an influence for good. First that; but later, for worse, the real thing.
Given Wharton's own background, The Times commented that these innuendos were "curious". His obituary in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
pursued the same thread to an even more precipitous minefield, hinting that Wharton's satirical writing suggested he had been a Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
sympathizer:
- In his comment paragraphs, he aired a conservatism light years to the right of most conservatives, stealing sometimes into fleeting, only half-retracted, laments for the Europe that Hitler's New OrderNew Order (political system)The New Order or the New Order of Europe was the political order which the Nazis wanted to impose on Europe, and eventually the rest of the world, during their reign over Germany from 1933 to 1945...
might have created.
Alleged support for BNP
Since his death there have been a number of (as yet unsupported) claims by members of the British far right trying to suggest that Wharton endorsed their views.In September 2006, British National Party
British National Party
The British National Party is a British far-right political party formed as a splinter group from the National Front by John Tyndall in 1982...
official John Bean
John Bean
John Edward Bean is a long-standing participant in the British far right, who has been active within a number of movements during the course of his life and is the voice behind the BNP election broadcasts.-Early life:...
claimed in an article on their website that he and the BNP leader Nick Griffin
Nick Griffin
Nicholas John "Nick" Griffin is a British politician, chairman of the British National Party and Member of the European Parliament for North West England....
had "both had the pleasure of corresponding with [Wharton] in his latter years". Bean did not divulge the extent or nature of the alleged correspondence or provide evidence of its existence.
In December 2006, further claims of Simple's links with the far-right emerged from Griffin himself, who described
Wharton's death as "a sad loss to honest journalism" and alleged that Wharton wrote him "a short but kind and supportive letter after my first Race Act trial back in 1997". Again he provided no evidence for his claim.
Wharton's columns were also (along with those of other conservatives such as Peter Hitchens
Peter Hitchens
Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an award-winning British columnist and author, noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, The Broken Compass and most recently The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for...
) often quoted approvingly in "The Things They're Saying", a section of John Tyndall
John Tyndall (politician)
John Hutchyns Tyndall was a British politician who was prominently associated with several fascist/neo-Nazi sects. However, he is best known for leading the National Front in the 1970s and founding the contemporary British National Party in 1982.The most prominent figure in British nationalism...
's Spearhead
Spearhead (magazine)
Spearhead was a British far right-wing magazine edited by John Tyndall until his death in July 2005. Founded in 1964 by Tyndall, it was used to voice his grievances against the state of the United Kingdom...
magazine which surveyed the mainstream media.
However, no published evidence is available to indicate the extent, if any, of Wharton's sympathy with any figures of the British right. The Telegraph writes that "particularly after anthologies of the columns started appearing in book form, he attracted a few distinctly sinister "fan" letters. These welcomed, at last, somebody who could "understand" their conspiracy theories about Social Credit, international Jewry or Satan's Second Coming".
Related columns
When the Peter Simple column and the Way of the World column became separate entities in the late 1980s, Way of the World was written briefly (1989–1990) by Christopher BookerChristopher Booker
Christopher John Penrice Booker is an English journalist and author. In 1961, he was one of the founders of the magazine Private Eye, and has contributed to it for over four decades. He has been a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph since 1990...
and for ten years (1990–2000) by Auberon Waugh
Auberon Waugh
Auberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
. It was later written by the satirist
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
Craig Brown
Craig Brown (satirist)
Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown is a British critic and satirist from England, probably best known for his work in Private Eye.-Biography:...
until he left the Telegraph late in 2008. A. N. Wilson
A. N. Wilson
Andrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views...
began to write a column under the title Peter Simple II in The Sunday Telegraph on 26 February 2006, but it did not last long.
Admirers of Peter Simple
- Simon HoggartSimon HoggartSimon David Hoggart is an English journalist and broadcaster. He writes on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator. Until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on Radio 4...
— parliamentaryPalace of WestminsterThe Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
sketch writer for The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. - A. N. WilsonA. N. WilsonAndrew Norman Wilson is an English writer and newspaper columnist, known for his critical biographies, novels, works of popular history and religious views...
— novelist and journalistJournalistA journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. - Auberon WaughAuberon WaughAuberon Alexander Waugh was a British author and journalist, son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was known to his family and friends as Bron Waugh.-Life and career:...
— wrote The Daily TelegraphThe Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
s Way of the World column after Wharton's semi-retirement. - Alexander WaughAlexander WaughAlexander Waugh is an English writer, critic, composer, cartoonist, record producer and television presenter. He is most known for his biography of Paul Wittgenstein published in 2009....
— writer and son of Auberon Waugh. - Kingsley AmisKingsley AmisSir 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...
, who wrote an introduction to The Stretchford Chronicles: 25 Years of Peter Simple (1980).
Compilations (illustrated by Michael ffolkes)
- Way of the World (1) (1957)
- Way of the World (2) (1963)
- Peter Simple in Opposition (1965)
- More of Peter Simple (1969)
- The Thoughts of Peter Simple (1971)
- The World of Peter Simple (1973)
- The Stretchford Chronicles: 25 Years of Peter Simple (1980)
- The Best of Peter Simple (1984)
- Peter Simple's World (1998)
- Peter Simple's Century (1999)
- Peter Simple's Domain (2003)