Very sad news: Michael Wharton has died. He was for decades the author of the “Peter Simple” column in the London Daily Telegraph. There is a fine obituary in today’s Telegraph.

Sample extracts from that obit:

“He had no answers, no hope. Instead, he offered escape…” [You can see why I was a fan–JD].
“Young Michael was educated at Bradford Grammar School and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he learned to drink and to be idle…. Eventually he was rusticated for throwing an egg at High Table and dismantling a sofa which was then pushed out of a window.”
“On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Artillery, under his mother’s maiden name of Wharton. After obtaining a commission, he was sent to India, where he became an intelligence officer, eventually being attached to the General Staff and rising to the rank of acting lieutenant-colonel. … While studying the few facts available on some dull Japanese generals, he conjured up a one-eyed officer of the Imperial high command who had developed a fierce hatred of England after living in Harrogate where he had learnt the secret of toffee-making.”
“At the age of 43 he had his first salaried job…”
“Perhaps Wharton’s most significant achievement in his later years was the second autobiographical volume, A Dubious Codicil (1990). This was a sharp departure from earlier Fleet Street memoirs, with their endless stories of colleagues who were supposedly ‘great characters’ and recollections of ‘great moments in history’ which a journalist had witnessed and perhaps considered he might have helped to create. Instead, it gave a clear-sighted picture of what journalists were really like, seated at desks, frequently confused and usually leading the dullest of lives…”

If they built statues to plow-your-own-furrow literary bohemians, Wharton’s would he six hundred feet tall. May he rest in peace.

[The Telegraph obit is well up to their usual high standard. Still, I wish they had found space to mention, among the peculiar fruits of Wharton’s imagination, the name of the newspaper he liked to quote from: The Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald. Some enterprising billionaire should actually start up a newspaper with that name. I’d be glad to supply copy.]