The talents which made Tony Howard an exceptional journalist – a clear mind, the power of lucid expression and an ability to recall a dozen facts on the most recherche subjects – enabled him to write or broadcast, with authority, about almost anything except sport. At the Listener, where I worked for him for two years, he wrote, cogently and entertainingly, about whatever was the broadcasting topic of the week and, more recently on arts programmes, he expressed informed, if sometimes controversial, views on plays, films and exhibitions. But his real interest was politics, particularly the business of politics.
Howard was fascinated by the drama of unfolding and unexpected events – the way in which the Profumo affair had, by sounding the death knell of deference, altered the political landscape and, more recently, the effect of the expenses scandal on the relationship between Parliament and the public. Both sensational revelations appealed to the iconoclast who lurked inside a man whose origins and habits made him appear a natural member of the establishment.
Howard was a paradox – a convinced social democrat who so revered the rules of polite conduct that he reproved me for using a mobile telephone in a restaurant. For years, he attended a gathering of soi-disant socialist intellectuals who aimed, over supper, to change the world. He thought of the evenings as amusement – enjoyable, pointless and a fruitful source of the dismissive jokes which he made, with relish, to his more politically engaged friends.
Tony Howard was a genuine radical. His belief in a world free of prejudice was born at Westminster school where he witnessed and abhorred the bullying of Jewish boys. As a national service subaltern at Suez, his objection to the conspiracy that sought to justify the invasion was so strong that he kept and – despite the threat of court martial – published a diary which exposed the fiasco which ended in humiliating retreat.
His position on the political spectrum, like his Labour party membership, endured to the end. He attempted, without success, to persuade me to vote for Diane Abbott in the election of the party's national executive and was an enthusiastic admirer of Ken Livingstone. Yet he moved effortlessly, if slightly cynically, among sections of society with diametrically opposed views.
He remained Michael Heseltine's friend, and admirer, for more than 50 years – partly because he was, by nature, socially ecumenical and partly because his friendships, once made, were indestructible. In effect, he wrote Heseltine's autobiography. Because we talked to each other about work he often described the progress he was making – or failing to make. A frequent complaint was that the book was too long. "I keep taking pages out and Michael keeps putting them back." The discussions always ended with Howard's firm reminder: "It's Michael's book, not mine. I'm just the subeditor." Loyalty was one of Howard's conspicuous virtues.
Work on Heseltine's autobiography provided an opportunity to see inside the mind of a senior, successful and highly ambitious minister. Howard was not a politician manque. Had he wanted a career in Parliament, he would have pursued with more determination his two opportunities to make progress towards Westminster. He examined the way in which politicians work in the way that anthropologists study the behaviour of primitive tribes.
His best books were biographies of RHS Crossman and RA Butler – opposing parties, differing personalities but similar commitment to the art of the possible. And his most erudite reviews were of works about politics and politicians. He took a benevolent interest in several other human species, particularly obscure bishops. But his speciality was politicians.
His admiration was selective and he believed, wrongly in my opinion, that the quality of MPs had severely deteriorated. Not for him the "professionals" who worked away all day on charts and diagrams. The House of Commons was, in his opinion, a place for oratory, not statistics. After last year's debate on parliamentary allowances, he telephoned me to express delighted surprise that John Selwyn Gummer had made what he called "a proper speech". Howard had few illusions but remained a romantic who believed that courage and convictions were the politician's essential ingredients.
My generation still thinks of Tony Howard as an elegant writer, incisive polemicist, hugely successful editor of two national magazines and deputy editor of this newspaper. But during the last 10 years of his life he became best known as the all-purpose political pundit who appeared on innumerable radio and television programmes to discuss either affairs of the day or some historical event which was somehow in the news.
His success in that role was not just the result of his inexhaustible knowledge. He always spoke like a man who believed what he said as well as one who knew what he was talking about. Tony Howard exuded the slightly remote integrity which prevented him from rising right to the top of his profession. Perhaps he was right to observe, rather than practise, politics.
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