MY JERICHO
Andrew Graham
Growing up with Poldark
This meeting was held on November 13, 2019
Andrew Graham is truly the academic Renaissance Man. He keeps re-inventing himself from economic adviser to Prime Minister Wilson, to economics tutor, then master at Balliol College. In between he raised the money and invented the Oxford Internet institute in 2010 and then the Europaeum Scholarship Programme.
It must be in his genes. He is the ‘son of Poldark’. His father Winston wrote the twelve Poldark novels from his home in Perranporth Cornwall. Andrew thought his father wrote Ross the lead as his alter ego and his mother Jean was the basis for the female lead, Demelza. Both disguised but not totally so.
Poldark the novels, first published in 1945, begat three television series—two on the BBC and one on ITV. The latest series, just finished,starring Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson, was a runaway success worldwide. A new Poldark series is not expected for several years.
Winston Graham was not born to be a writer but desperate to be one. He took it up after a sickly childhood, supported by an income his mother derived from shares. Later he and his wife ran a guest house in Perranporth to keep the wolf from the door. It was only when one of his novels ‘Fortune is a Woman’ was published in the USA that the real money started flowing in. He then took the young Andrew into the garden and said he could now have anything he wanted. He chose a OO-gauge model railway .His father chose to send him to Charterhouse School which set him up for Oxford and a life as an economist.
Winston ‘never had a proper job’ according to Andrew. The closest he came was in the Coastguards during the Second War, having been turned down by the Royal Navy and the RAF. In this job he met real Cornish people for the first time and listened to their stories and their histories. That formed the basis for Poldark.
Winston’s routine was a strict two hours writing - always in longhand - in the morning, tea at 11.00 then more writing until he went off to the local golf course for four to six holes, home for lunch and more writing in the afternoon. He kept a detailed log in his diary of the word count achieved each day. His other entries were the vagaries of the Cornish weather.
It was only when Poldark was taken up by BBC TV in 1975 that he achieved literary fame. But on reading the first scripts he exploded in a rage—one of the only two or three times his son saw that side of his character .He felt that Demelza –his wife in literary form was depicted as promiscuous . He tried and failed to get the BBC to cancel the series and almost refused to watch it. Winston had relented by series two.
His son has been much more involved with the contemporary series .He met Mammoth Screen in 2014 was impressed by their enthusiasm for the books, gave his approval as literary executor and has been a consultant to both series. They have been rip-roaring successes .Must watch moments on a Sunday night.
Andrew has had a rather different life to his father. Economics at St Edmund Hall then the Department of Economic Affairs in London followed by a call to work with Thomas Balogh—Harold Wilson’s economic brain—in Number Ten Downing Street. “It was the most exciting time of my life. I was just 24”’ Andrew is still adept at doing impressions of the Hungarian Svengali. Later, he advised Labour leaders James Callaghan and John Smith. The latter he thought was the cleverest of the three and a great lost leader for the party..
He then toiled away as an economics fellow and tutor at Balliol for 25 years. His progeny include James Purnell who now runs half the BBC and Stephanie Flanders the former BBC Economics editor. Andrew himself advised the BBC panjandrums in the 1980s helping them fight off attempts by the Thatcherite right to destroy the licence fee by putting the economic case for public service broadcasting.
Declaring no interest in the job and after a false start he became the Master of Balliol for 16 years—11 years in his own right—five before that as a stand in for the Master who had gone off to be the Vice Chancellor. Like a mediaeval baron his job was to satisfy competing parties .He described his own style as a “What you see if what you get” Master.
Andrew took a term’s sabbatical to MIT (and Harvard) in 1994.That proved to be his Damascene moment attending a series of lectures on the very nascent internet. Andrew came back to Oxford determined to spread that gospel, raised £15 million and set up the Oxford Internet Institute in a Balliol back cottage in 2001. It still exists today. After that he set up Europaeum—an attempt at European university intellectual co-operation—and is today at the age 78 actively involved in that .
Poldark’s son has come a long way from Perranporth to Oxford and Leckford Place where he now lives. Asked what Winston would think of his achievement he said he would have reluctantly acknowledged it.
Report by: John Mair
My Jericho offers a series of independent events organized by Jericho resident John Mair. Many are at at St Barnabas. Others are streamed on YouTube.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
You can book on the My Jericho website
Forthcoming meetings
| Date | Venue |
|---|
Previous meetings
Visits