Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews Read Online Free PDF Page A

good time at the Café Royal, I found him already settled at the bar, fondling a large pink drink. ‘Ah,’ he said, without guilt. ‘There you are.’
    ‘I say,’ I said, with anguish. ‘That can only be a Negroni.’ It was indeed a Negroni, the gin and Campari mixture with a velocity of intoxication that is both feared and loved by those who know it. This lunch would be, in the poet’s own phrase, ‘a thick one’.
    Once upon a time the Grill Room of the Café Royal was a bohemian place. When Ewart came there in his youth, it was packed with chess-playing intellectuals.
    The ripe Edwardian decor still gleams around the tables, but the earnest beards have disappeared. No wonder. A Negroni or three later, two bottles of Rully, and a wander into à la carte territory, and we had no trouble in running up a plump three-figure bill. At the time I was horrified. But glossed as a funerary banquet, it now seems fitting.
    In fact, our chat began on the topic of the death of another poet, StephenSpender. While W. H. Auden was Ewart’s mentor, Spender was his first hands-on helper in the literary workplace.
    ‘Hands on?’ I queried, pruriently.
    ‘Oh no, he never fancied me. He was a very decent man, too nice, probably, for his own good. You could tell from his face. He looked angelic from youth to the grave. Whereas Auden …’ he paused.
    ‘Had a face like an old potato,’ I suggested.
    ‘Exactly. Pure debauchery,’ concluded Ewart. ‘But always the superior craftsman. You know his lines, “For what as easy / For what thought small … Who goes with who / The bedclothes say”, and so on. They’re what my old English master used to call “poetry in pyjamas”. Light, funny, sensuous.’
    As it happens, Ewart’s English master, T. C. Worsley, was for many years the
FT
’s drama and then television critic. The poetry in pyjamas that Worsley encouraged Ewart to write had its own success, even notoriety. And it was perhaps natural that he turned his skills to copywriting, with the Walter Thompson agency. He spent 20 years in the business. What, I asked him, were his triumphs there?
    He mused. ‘There was something for Andrews Liver Salts. We needed to convince women to take them. I think we succeeded. Then there was my new name for Bulmer’s cider, “Strongbow”. I just thought it was a good strong name, but it turned out that Strongbow was also a local hero of Herefordshire, where the cider is made. That tickled Bulmer’s no end.’
    He went into a reverie, perhaps induced by foie gras, which was an evident treat for him. ‘You’re too young for this one. But it was quite a hit.’ And he began to croon: ‘We must give them lovely Cheeselets, Twiglets must be on the scene. Do you get me, Mr Peek? You’ve said a mouthful, Mr Frean.’
    Even when an aged bard is reciting his most banal work, it is enchanting. For a moment, the Café Royal returned to its inspirational heyday. Heads turned to catch the rhyme.
    ‘Then,’ he resumed, gloomily, ‘they put me on to GKN screws. Technical copy. A screw is a screw is a screw. You can’t write poetry about screws.’
    This was a distinct admission of failure. For it was the singular hallmark of Ewart’s work that you could indeed craft a poem from any subject whatsoever. I asked him if he were still turning them out.
    ‘Oh yes. In fact I’ve just finished one. A paean of praise to the recently retired captain of the Scotland rugby team.’
    ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘What rhymes with Hastings?’
    ‘It’s a wee ballad,’ said Ewart, ‘about how he and his team gave the Ivory Coast one of time’s most tremendous pastings.’
    I had to remind him that his collected works were out of print. ‘But the good news,’ I said, ‘is that you’ve made the official grade. You’re listed in Harold Bloom’s
Western Canon
as one of the essential writers of the 20th century.’
    A naturally modest man, he permitted himself an expression of enormous satisfaction.