The Pendulum Years: Britain in the Sixties

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He was offered the post of "general editorial dogsbody, which was exactly what I had been looking for". His illiterate grandparents' stories about life in Russia must have instilled in him the passionate belief in the freedom of the individual that lasted his whole life. Levin was twice assaulted on air, once by the husband of an actress whose show Levin had reviewed severely, [31] [n 8] and once by a woman astrologer who squirted him with water. His impersonation of the LSE's much revered professor of political science, Harold Laski, arguing with himself, knocking down his own propositions one by one, revealing the fallacies in each, was evidently a tour de force.

n 13] He wrote about performers he admired, including Otto Klemperer, Alfred Brendel, and Kiri Te Kanawa. Levin, who wrote for the paper between 1971 and 1997, died on Saturday after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for a number of years. The next morning the debate was taken up by theatre director Sir Peter Hall and the director of the Royal Court on Radio 4's Today programme. The last of the three series was in 1989, A Walk up Fifth Avenue in New York, from Washington Square to the Harlem River.By now, Levin's political views were moving to the right, and he was no longer writing so much against the grain of his newspaper. As an adult Levin retained his love of Jewish cookery along with his passion for French haute cuisine. But the media organisation with which he became most closely identified was the Times, particularly under the editorship of William Rees-Mogg in the 1970s. He was educated at Christ's Hospital and the London School of Economics, where he read government, expecting to pursue a career in politics rather than reporting it. And the reason is that it offers, in addition to great technical skill and great cinematic excitement, a view, and a view, moreover, of great richness and plausibility.

The journalist and author Bernard Levin has died at the age of 75 after a 50-year career most celebrated for his columns in the Times. Philip Levin abandoned the family when Levin was a child, [1] and the two children were brought up with the help of their maternal grandparents, who had emigrated from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century. Levin became a skilled debater; he wrote for the student newspaper The Beaver, on a range of subjects, not least opera, which became one of his lifelong passions. He and Cyril Ray used to shout abuse at each other across the office, with such insults as "little Jewish runt". Levin reviewed television for the Manchester Guardian and wrote a weekly political column in The Spectator noted for its irreverence and influence on modern parliamentary sketches.

Thus did he invite some 80 members of his circle to an evening at the Cafe Royale, at which he encouraged us to enrol. She later wrote, "He tried therapy, he tried Insight, a self-awareness seminar that I had helped to bring to London, he tried a stint in an ashram in India.

Levin never published an autobiography, but his book Enthusiasms, published in 1983, consists of chapters on his principal pleasures: books, pictures, cities, walking, Shakespeare, music, food and drink, and spiritual mystery. Not long ago, as I was going into the theatre for Scottish Opera's excellent new production of Das Rheingold ( keep calm, have I ever lied to you? n 2] In The Guardian after Levin's death, Quentin Crewe wrote, "His illiterate grandparents' stories about life in Russia must have instilled in him the passionate belief in the freedom of the individual that lasted his whole life. Levin was born on 19 August 1928 in London, [1] the second child and only son of Philip Levin, [n 1] a tailor of Jewish Bessarabian descent, and his wife, Rose, née Racklin. Levin became famous for his long, sentences, full of clauses, subclauses, parentheses, semi-colons and diversions.

The book is an easy read - it came to my attention through a walking magazine, as one section is dedicated to rambling - city or county - particularly a walk he completes in London criss crossing the bridges. I shall never forget my last professional encounter with the journalist who inspired me more than any other.

He remained true to his declared intention of eschewing all forms of vehicular transport, and walked all the way, with the exception of his crossing the Rhone, rowing himself in a small boat. In other words, mosquitoes don't mind varying the straight and narrow with a bit on the side when they can get it: not, you will agree, an attitude entirely confined to mosquitoes".

The first, Hannibal's Footsteps, screened in 1985, showed Levin walking the presumed route taken by Hannibal when he invaded Italy in 218 BC. His fellow pupils, mostly from a very different kind of background, renamed them the Little Levin Library - eventually throwing them out of the window. Levin's noticeably Jewish surname, together with such skills as he had acquired in shorthand and typing, gained him immediate acceptance.