{"id":456,"date":"2015-01-29T16:02:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T16:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/?p=456"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:22:18","slug":"face-to-face-with-waugh-john-freeman-1915-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/2015\/01\/29\/face-to-face-with-waugh-john-freeman-1915-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Face to face with Waugh: John Freeman (1915-2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 20 December last year John Freeman \u2013 soldier, Labour politician and television interviewer \u2013 died aged 99. As an interviewer for the BBC, Freeman will be remembered for his series <em>Face to Face<\/em> (1959-62) with its distinctive format and Freeman\u2019s brand of incisive questioning. His style was at the core of the show\u2019s depth and success. Impeccably polite, Freeman\u2019s technique was calculated to negotiate the tricky boundary between friendly probing and impertinence. Freeman secured interviews with an astonishing number of cultural and political icons: Carl Jung, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King Jr., Edith Sitwell, Henry Moore and, in a memorably edgy exchange, Evelyn Waugh. Recalling the 1960 interview with Waugh in later life (as can be seen in the YouTube clip below), Freeman told the BBC of his disappointment that, he says, \u2018I didn\u2019t succeed in getting more out of him because of all of the people on the list of <em>Face to Face<\/em>s he is the one whom I think I hold in most honour\u2019.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Evelyn Waugh Face To Face BBC Interview\" width=\"620\" height=\"465\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UvtjUt0GzKg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Waugh was well aware of the potential dangers he faced in entering Freeman\u2019s territory. Christopher Sykes described <em>Face to Face<\/em> as a programme where \u2018Well-known people of the day were interrogated on their tastes, beliefs and hopes by one or other of a team of skilled questioners\u2019. And of these interrogators, Freeman was the \u2018acknowledged master of technique\u2019.\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[i]<\/a> Waugh was suspicious of Freeman from the outset: \u2018Who is this man? Will I be able to ask <em>him<\/em> a few questions?\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[ii]<\/a> A few weeks before the interview Waugh wrote to Tom Driberg, who knew Freeman from his time in left-wing politics, to ask for some ammunition with which to mount a defence against his questioner. His anxiety over the interview is clear: \u2018I have let myself in for cross-examination on Television by a man named Major Freeman\u2019 he writes. \u2018Do you know anything damaging about him that I can introduce into our conversation if he becomes insolent?\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn3\" name=\"_ednref3\">[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Though likely a (half-)joke request, the letter betrays Waugh\u2019s misunderstanding of the format of <em>Face to Face<\/em> as a piece of television. Interviews for the programme were conducted face to face (as its title makes plain), but it is only the interviewee who fully appears on camera. The parity implied by the title is not translated into any on-screen competition for the camera\u2019s eye between presenter and guest. The interviewee remains the sole visual subject of the interview while Freeman keeps himself out of shot. His voice is not entirely disembodied, however, as his head and right shoulder are sometimes visible, but only from behind.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-457\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski1-300x164.png\" alt=\"WaughTopolski1\" width=\"300\" height=\"164\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski1-300x164.png 300w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski1.png 865w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Waugh\u2019s hope that he might ask Freeman a question or two, however unserious, presumes that the interviewer\/interviewee relationship could be reciprocal. Waugh had form on this. Charles Templeton, an interviewer for Canadian network CBC, remembered Waugh asking him several times during an interview \u2018Are you sure you\u2019ve read any of my books? [\u2026] Are you <em>certain<\/em>, Mr. Templeton, you have actually read my books?\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[iv]<\/a> But the rhythm of Freeman\u2019s questions on <em>Face to Face<\/em>, by contrast, was not to be interrupted by questions from the subject. And, it is clear in the programme, Freeman\u2019s excellent research into Waugh\u2019s work far exceeds Templeton\u2019s (whose memoir recalls speed reading three of Waugh\u2019s books \u2018holed up in my hotel\u2019 before the interview). The interviewer\/interviewee dynamic demonstrates that one of the unique strengths of <em>Face to Face<\/em> was that Freeman\u2019s questions, however much Waugh affected a pose of boredom, could rattle his subject to such a large extent. Waugh does get at least one kick into Freeman, though. When asked whether he holds \u2018in fact a particular deep feeling\u2019 about the BBC based on how it is represented in his novels, \u2018Well,\u2019 Waugh replies, \u2018everyone thinks ill of the BBC, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m more violent than anybody else\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Freeman\u2019s questions were delivered rapidly and in a relatively dispassionate manner, sometimes prefaced with a qualifying phrase hoping to limit the offence taken at his more probing enquiries. Waugh took particular dislike to one of Freeman\u2019s psychoanalysis-infused questions about how he felt the absence of a female sibling in the family home had impacted on his development. He wrote to Nancy Mitford shortly after the interview that \u2018The man who asked the questions simply couldn\u2019t believe I had had a happy childhood. \u201cSurely you suffered from the lack of a sister?\u201d\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn2\" name=\"_ednref2\">[v]<\/a> Waugh, then, was quite justified in his pre-interview fear that he was about to be put on trial. Only a couple of months after Waugh\u2019s <em>Face to Face<\/em> interview, Freeman brought Gilbert Harding to tears when he asked if Harding had ever been in the presence of a dead person. Harding later revealed that he had been present as his mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably, however, the seriousness with which <em>Face to Face<\/em> treated itself and its subjects created a space where Freeman\u2019s questions about death, sex, mothers, fathers and class represent legitimate intellectual enquiries. This atmosphere was achieved in part by the series of often-grotesque portraits of the subject by Polish-born draughtsman F\u00e9liks Topolski with which each episode opened. The drawings of Waugh are infused with particular menace. The camera pans over Topolski\u2019s images in various sketchbooks and then, after pausing on the final portrait, fades into a close-up shot of Waugh in the interview chair. The one image makes way for another and those of Waugh\u2019s features that Topolski had exaggerated in his drawings become\u00a0evident.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-458\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski2-300x165.png\" alt=\"WaughTopolski2\" width=\"300\" height=\"165\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski2-300x165.png 300w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/files\/2015\/01\/WaughTopolski2.png 865w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The slippages between the drawn portrait and the television image allude to one of the implied aims of <em>Face to Face<\/em>\u2019s interviewer\/interviewee dynamic. The portraits serve as\u00a0manifestations of some of the interviewee\u2019s many public faces. Freeman\u2019s task in the interview was to put Waugh in dialogue with these faces and, in doing so, reveal something of the mind beneath. As such, Waugh is less \u2018face to face\u2019 with Freeman than he is put in a more symbolic interaction with himself, with Freeman functioning as conduit. This is further evidenced when Freeman invites Waugh to consider how his lived experience of a breakdown maps onto Gilbert Pinfold as a novelist\u2019s rendering of himself in fiction. Waugh had earlier coyly parried Freeman\u2019s assumption that his time as a schoolmaster resulted directly in <em>Decline and Fall<\/em> (1928), but he willingly informs us that Pinfold\u2019s auditory hallucinations can be read as largely verbatim transcripts of his own experiences. It is this slippage between fiction and autobiography that <em>Face to Face<\/em> is most concerned to pronounce through the course of the interview.<\/p>\n<p>Freeman\u2019s intention to disappear into the background of the programme represents something of a contradiction based on the way that <em>Face to Face<\/em> has been remembered since the end of Freeman\u2019s involvement with it in 1962. Often it is Freeman himself who was at the centre of the debates brought about by the programme. Sykes recalls watching the Waugh interview with outrage at Freeman\u2019s insolence and admiring his friend\u2019s composure: \u2018[Waugh] refused to show the indignation he felt at the disregard of privacy which such a performance implies; as preposterous question followed preposterous question, he smiled indulgently, failed to rise to the questioner\u2019s bait, made his views clear in a calm manner which did not disguise his contempt\u2019.\u00a0<a href=\"#_edn1\" name=\"_ednref1\">[vi]<\/a> The interviews with Tony Hancock and Gilbert Harding in particular have been remembered for the questions raised over Freeman\u2019s insensitivity towards his guests when probing their insecurities.<\/p>\n<p>But <em>Face to Face<\/em>, defined as it is by Freeman\u2019s experiment with presence and absence, forms a suitably complex medium in which to explore complex public figures. And it is Freeman\u2019s characteristic tendency towards over-earnestness that gave the show the prestige with which it was and continues to be held. In the act of removing himself from the screen Freeman made himself the enigmatic centre of the show. His presence is implied by the interviewee\u2019s reactions to his questions and physicality. Waugh\u2019s refusal to meet the off-screen figure\u2019s eye might suggest an insecurity to regard with sensitivity, or \u2013 as is more likely \u2013 an opportunity for Freeman to press on and probe deeper. Contrary to what has often been remembered of Waugh\u2019s interview the exchange was not as barbed as it might have been. Though certainly more amicable and symbiotic than Waugh\u2019s interview, Freeman\u2019s meetings with Bertrand Russell and Carl Jung, for instance, are possibly\u00a0less revealing for the absence of real discord. At its best, <em>Face to Face<\/em>, with Freeman pulling the strings, turned the interviewee\u2019s anxieties and reservations about appearing on television \u2013 which were profound Waugh\u2019s case \u2013 into the content of a programme which was essential in the development of the television interview as it exists today.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[i]<\/a> Christopher Sykes, <em>Evelyn Waugh: A Biography<\/em> (Harmondsworth, 1977), p.540.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[ii]<\/a> John Woodford, \u2018Mr. Waugh Succumbs\u2019, <em>Daily Telegraph<\/em>, 20 June 1960. [Quoted in Stannard, <em>No Abiding City, 1939-1966<\/em> (London, 1993), p.430.]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref3\" name=\"_edn3\">[iii]<\/a> <em>The Letters of Evelyn Waugh<\/em> ed. Mark Amory (London, 1980), p.544.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref1\" name=\"_edn1\">[iv]<\/a> http:\/\/www.templetons.com\/charles\/memoir\/tv-start.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[v]<\/a> <em>Letters<\/em>, p. 545.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ednref2\" name=\"_edn2\">[vi]<\/a>\u00a0Sykes, pp.540-41.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 20 December last year John Freeman \u2013 soldier, Labour politician and television interviewer \u2013 died aged 99. As an interviewer for the BBC, Freeman will be remembered for his series Face to Face (1959-62) with its distinctive format and Freeman\u2019s brand of incisive questioning. His style was at the core of the show\u2019s depth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":459,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/waughandwords\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}