I am looking at a letter from Tom Burns dated November 4, 1969, offering me an editorial position at the Tablet. My salary was £1000 a year; I worked there for the next two years. I remember Tom, then in his second year as editor of the London-based Catholic magazine, as affable, somewhat remote, seemingly always on his way to or from the Garrick Club, that haven for writers, (...)
September 24, 2010
Books
Burns. Tom Burns.
Papa SpyLove, Faith, and Betrayal in Wartime SpainJimmy BurnsWalker, $26, 396 pp.
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It is to the great credit of my friend and former Financial Times colleague Jimmy Burns that he makes no secret in Papa Spy of his father's attraction - even engouement - to British and Spanish high society. Yet Tom's aristocratic tendencies, clear to anyone who observed him editing The Tablet, were never haughty or savage. Thinking back to the Tablet parties he gave in the flat he and his wife Mabel occupied overlooking Westminster Cathedral, I certainly recall the fun of meeting such men as Graham Greene but also the humble side of a man with a heart of gold.
HO'S