Frank Giles
Frank Thomas Robertson Giles(31 July 1919 – 30 October 2019)[1]was an English journalist, historian and diplomat, who was editor of the BritishSunday Timesnewspaper[2]from 1981 to 1983, having served as its foreign editor (1961–1977) and then deputy editor (1967–1981) under his predecessorHarold Evans.He stood down in the wake of theHitler Diariesscandal.[3]
Biography
[edit]Giles was the only son of ColonelFrank Lucas Netlam Giles(1879–1930), DSO (1915), OBE (1923), and Elgiva Mary Ackland-Allen (1890–1970). In 1946, he married Lady Katherine Pamela Sackville ('Kitty'), only daughter of the9th Earl De La Warr;they had three children, the youngest of whom, Belinda, is married to television broadcasterDavid Dimbleby.[4]
In 1940, the youngBermuda Government HouseADC Giles encountered theEdward, Duke of Windsorand his wifeWallis Simpsonduring their brief visit on their way to theBahamas.Giles described his impressions at the time most lucidly in his memoirs.[5] He thought that Wallis was: 'a very clever woman,… She is not intrinsically beautiful or handsome but she has a good complexion, regular features and a beautiful figure....More than all the charm of her physical appearance, though, is her manner: she has, to an infinite degree, that really great gift of making you feel that you are the very person whom she has been waiting all her life to meet... With old and young and clever and stupid alike she exercises this charm and during the week she was here, during which she met a number of people, I never saw anyone who could resist the spell — they were all delighted and intrigued… She is never anything but stately, and when she had to wave to the crowds on her arrival, and subsequently whenever we drove through [Hamilton], she did it with ease and charm and grace which suggested that she had been at it all her life.” On returning fromHamiltonwith a pair of swimming trunks the former king told the ADC:It’s I who wear the shorts in this family, you know.
In his review (New York Times,17 January 1993) ofRupert Murdoch,MurdochbyWilliam Shawcross(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)Andrew Sullivanwrote: 'THE best story in this sprightly, undemanding biography of the media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch is apocryphal. When Mr. Murdoch fired Frank Giles as editor of The Sunday Times of London in 1983, he proposed that Mr. Giles assume the title "editor emeritus" for the two years remaining before his retirement. Mr. Giles asked what on earth "editor emeritus" meant. "It's Latin, Frank," Mr. Murdoch reportedly replied. "E means 'exit' and meritus means 'you deserve it.'"
Giles published a memoir in 1986,Sundry Times.In his retirement, he lived in London. Heturned 100in July 2019[6]and died on 30 October that year.
He was a member of theSociety of Dilettanti,Brooks's Club,andBeefsteak Clubsand a member of theSt James's Club.In 2009, his 'Hobbies and other interests' were listed as 'Wine (especially claret and burgundy), opera, watercolor painting, visiting his holiday home in northernCorfu,Greece'.[7]
Bibliography
[edit]- Frank Giles:Sundry Times.London, John Murray, 1986.ISBN0-7195-4289-8.[8]
- Frank Giles:A prince of journalists, the life and times ofHenri Stefan Opper de Blowitz.Lasalle, Open Court, 1974.ISBN0-912050-51-9(1st ed.: London, Faber and Faber, 1962).
- Frank Giles:Napoleon Bonaparte: England's Prisoner(ISBN1841195995), Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2001.
- (Editor)Corfu: The Garden Isle,presented by Count Spiro Flamburiari, photographs by Fritz von der Schulenburg and Christopher Simon Sykes, John Murray (London) and Abbeville Press (New York, NY), 1994.
- Frank Giles:The Locust Years: The Story of the Fourth French Republic, 1946–1958,Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1991, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 1994.[9]
References
[edit]- ^Obituaries, Telegraph (November 2019)."Frank Giles, journalist who edited 'The Sunday Times' during a turbulent period and was unfairly blamed by Rupert Murdoch for his part in the 'Hitler Diaries' fiasco – obituary".The Telegraph.
- ^Chancellor, Alexander (16 March 2002)."The buck stops where?".The Guardian.Retrieved20 January2011.
- ^The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch,Broadway Books, by Michael Wolff, 2008.
- ^Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 1, 2003, p. 1076
- ^Bernews,'The Duke Of Windsor's 1940 Bermuda Detour', 31 May 2013, from Giles' 1986 memoirs.
- ^POLITICO London Playbook: The last leg — Lambs to the slaughter — No deal? No sex life
- ^(Contemporary Authors,New Revision Series, Gale, 2009)
- ^Reviewed inTimes Literary Supplement,19 September 1986.
- ^Giles also told Contemporary Authors: "The favorite among my books is The Locust Years: The Story of the Fourth French Republic, 1946–1958, because a) it is a work of original research and expertise—the result of years of close observation of the French political and social scene; b) it got mostly glowing reviews; and c) it is judged to be eminently readable."
- 1919 births
- 2019 deaths
- 20th-century British journalists
- 20th-century English historians
- 20th-century English memoirists
- Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford
- British diplomats
- British Army personnel of World War II
- British newspaper editors
- English Anglicans
- English centenarians
- English male journalists
- English newspaper editors
- British men centenarians
- People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire
- The Sunday Times people
- The Times people