A Very Private Celebrity (37 page)

According to another colleague at Davis, Geoffrey Wandesforde-Smith, Freeman was one of the few teachers who seemed to like setting and marking exams. These were written at the end of a ten-week course in the Blue Book, an eighteen-page, lined exercise book; three questions had to be answered over two hours. ‘It is fair to say John was under-whelmed by the results. He found the students hard-working but not challenging.’ He did not attend official staff meetings because he was not a member of the academic senate, but he was punctilious at coming to birthday or leaving parties held for the administrative staff at coffee time; sometimes he was the only teacher there. Perhaps this was Freeman’s army background again. He took his duty to ‘other ranks’ seriously. For instance, back in London he had not only attended the wedding of Cynthia Gomes, but he would also attend the wedding of her son many years later. John Freeman was admired and liked by all his professional colleagues; probably most of his students were impressed that he was on campus but took him for granted, like students everywhere.

That summer of 1987, when Matthew Freeman was studying nearby on the University of California campus at Berkeley, he visited his father at Davis. In order to watch him in an academic setting he attended a political science seminar at which his father was questioned about his political career. Afterwards he wrote to his mother: ‘Dad’s style was slick, witty, with some sharp observations, but not terribly thoughtful or academic. He acknowledges this as his way and I can see how he flourishes. He acts as a foil to some of the high-minded, intellectual, but perhaps rather dull, professors.’

He included some of his father’s one-liners on prime ministers he had known. On Attlee: ‘He was saved from anonymity and perhaps even ignominy by his blinkered view.’ On Wilson: ‘A quick thinker able to turn any situation to his advantage but with no political vision.’ On Thatcher: ‘I dislike her but would certainly have voted for her.’ This last statement obviously provoked the audience because he was then asked about his own change of political allegiance, from hard left to hard right. Matt noted his answer with care:

This reminds me of an interview Freeman had given in his
Face to Face
years. ‘The one thing I really care about is dissent,’ he told the interviewer. ‘All establishments ought to be kicked against, struggled against, teased, prodded and made human. Emblazoned in letters of fire in
every classroom should be the words, “Remember, the teacher may be wrong”.’
9
For ‘teacher’ read ‘state’ and there you have Freeman’s dislike of the dirigiste government. That, at heart, was his political philosophy.

For Matt the experience of watching his father required to talk about himself was an eye-opener. ‘I learned a lot more about his politics than I’ve ever managed to get out of him myself.’ His father was in the hot seat and the experienced eye could tell that he loathed it: ‘You know how reluctant he is normally to discuss his past life,’ Matt reminded Catherine, ‘well, he was unable to avoid it this time!’
10

Soon after he arrived, Freeman handed in a proposal ‘for an interdepartmental scrutiny of a subject of major international or domestic importance to senior professors in business administration, economics, governmental affairs, history and political science. This recommended an invitation to a statesman of the calibre of Dr Henry Kissinger to give a keynote speech to invited members of the public and students from the different disciplines. It would be called the President’s Lecture. It would be followed by a week of scrutiny in group work, which would close with a seminar under the chairmanship of the departmental head most concerned in order to draw conclusions. There would be a rapporteur and video-taping.
11

The concept does not seem to have been followed up but the proposal did result in the visit of Henry Kissinger in October 1987. As the set piece of a three-day visit organised jointly by Gary Walton, Dean of the Graduate School of Management, and John Freeman, Kissinger spoke to an audience of several thousand, the largest ever gathered at Davis for this kind of lecture. When Cynthia Basinger saw Professor Freeman introduce the former Secretary of State she was amazed, for he had told none of his students about his friendship. Dr Kissinger remembers his visit without the rosy glow of Freeman’s ‘Indian summer’: ‘John was in his declining years and working below
his capabilities; but he carried out his work without complaint and with aplomb.’
12
Freeman was also responsible for the invitation as Visiting Professor of his old
New Statesman
colleague Paul Johnson, now an historian and author of
Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s
(1984). He reported on his visit in The Spectator that Freeman was ‘universally revered, by staff and students alike, as a fount of wisdom, a mould of everything an English gentleman and scholar should be’.
13

Freeman developed a particular friendship with Larry Berman, who succeeded Siverson as chair of the political science department. His expertise covered the Nixon years about which he took a critical view. The author of
Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Vietnam
, he held a course called ‘Watergate’ that was the most popular in the department, attracting up to 300 students. Berman remembers that Freeman took a particular interest:

As early as 1986, Freeman wrote to his old friend Woodrow Wyatt that he ‘wished to stay in California’. He added that he had asked Tony Howard ‘to get references that would make sure the authorities would allow me to stay’. ‘Odd,’ adds Wyatt in his diary, ‘considering
he had been ambassador in America.’
15
It soon became clear to their friends at Davis that the Freemans were not just passing through. They seemed relaxed and happy, although John was showing early signs of prostate cancer, which he never spoke about. The life was ideal for small children; the weather balmy, the avenues free of traffic except bicycles, the play facilities excellent. Victoria went to the local school in north Davis. John cycled around smoking a pipe and wearing blue jeans, a sign for students that he was accessible. He joined a local bowls club, went for long walks, and together with his old friend Dan made a habit of bartering at garage sales (the equivalent of car boot sales). He was particularly fond of the twice weekly farmers’ market, where local farmers sold organic produce direct to the public: ‘the bounty of California, with berries, figs, olive oil, chestnuts, asparagus and dozens of other offerings,’ boasted the local
YOLO County
magazine, acronym for ‘You Only Live Once’. Although Davis was a small-town university with a combined population of only 50,000, the social life around campus was cosmopolitan and the Freemans enjoyed the parties.

Geoffey Wandesforde-Smith joked that John was turning into ‘Mr Chips’, as in the British film of 1939
Goodbye Mr Chips
, meaning that he was like the rigidly orthodox schoolmaster who married a young wife, moved with the times and ended up as a beloved and inspiring figure round the school. I doubt if Freeman liked that comparison. It looked as if, Wandesforde-Smith continued, he was putting down roots as part of the community, wanting to lead as ordinary a life as possible, the sort of life denied to him before. When Elizabeth Sherwin asked him if she could write a profile for a San Francisco paper, she was given one of his dusty answers: ‘No.’ As ever he guarded his privacy.

The Freemans bought a typical 1960s ranch-style bungalow, timber-framed, with the kitchen and master bedroom at the front and a ‘grand
room’ (combined dining/sitting room) at the back, facing a patio with a play area. He put in for, and was given, a pay rise. The political science faculty planned for him to continue beyond the age of seventy-five. In 1988, he and Judith left for a long vacation in South Africa, leaving Cynthia Basinger with her two young children to look after the house. On the way they stopped over in London and found themselves in Woodrow Wyatt’s
Journal
. He is writing up a dinner party held by Lord Montagu:

Freeman liked the United States. It appealed to his egalitarian instincts. He wanted to be what Americans call ‘a regular kind of guy’, though how far he succeeded is debatable. Politically he was increasingly drawn to the free market economy and the libertarian values that are exhibited to the full in California. In fact he intended to end his days as an American citizen, which, for someone who always travelled light and believed life should be a sequence of change, had its own logic. He asked Henry Kissinger and Wes Pruden to act as referees and Pruden is certain that this request was not for
an extension of his Green Card, which would expire after five years, in 1990, but to begin the process of citizenship. It was not to be.

Judith probably liked the California life less than he did and she was sure the girls would get a better education in England. John confided to Larry Berman that this time he was going to put his family first, but it was a hard decision. She returned to London with the girls several weeks before John. He remained to finish the term and attend hospital appointments for his prostate cancer. Larry Berman acted as his chauffeur and remembers that when Freeman left him at the airport he was almost too weak to lift his bags unaided. ‘We’ll stay in touch,’ they promised each other, but Berman never heard from him again. Freeman asked Cynthia Basinger to sell his Dodge minivan and when she transferred the money to London he wired back a commission. ‘I didn’t expect this; he was so gracious, that’s the word I always use about him.’

A few months later, Freeman returned to sell the house in Oak Road. The California idyll was over. ‘I really enjoyed teaching. I wish I had tried it before,’ was his verdict on the Davis experience.

Chapter 13

‘The ordinary man'

I
N
1990,
J
OHN
Freeman and his third family moved to a 1930s semi-detached house with bay windows looking onto Suffolk Road near the Thames in Barnes, south-west London. He was now looking old, wasted by cancer, though in recovery. So began the ninth of his lives, the two decades of ‘the ordinary man'. He had tried to be ordinary at Davis, but he could not avoid standing out as a celebrity, ‘the English gentleman and scholar'. In any event, the role he had given himself was university professor and that was now behind him: another closed door. A profile of Freeman written in the 1960s said, ‘This is a man who lives in the present; he is rarely an ex or future anything' – and this was as true in the 1990s as it had been then.
1
He was always self-aware and self-controlled, and the part to which he applied himself now, with his usual concentration, was as
‘an ordinary bloke', a phrase that kept coming up when I spoke to former friends of his from the Barnes Lonsdale Bowling Club. Forty years before Freeman had written a tribute in the
New Statesman
to the socialist and educationalist R. H. Tawney: ‘Man cannot be whole or dignified until he lives in a community where his private motives lead him to seek the public good.'
2
Much as he closed his mind to the past, I wonder if this truth resonated with him in old age?

His girlfriend from university days sixty years before, Susan Hicklin, was clear that the famous Freeman concentration was now being applied to joining a community. When she went to stay with the Freemans for the weekend, John took her shopping at Sainsbury's:

Freeman and Judith had joined Barnes Lonsdale Lawn Bowling Club before they went to Davis. When they returned the club had closed down and its members had moved to Priory Park in Kew. He had stopped playing serious bowls by then but he would often go along to Sheen Common for a ‘roller', that is a casual game to include all-comers. He also played at Richmond Indoors because the playing surface is more of a smooth carpet and, unlike grass, does not require much effort to propel the bowl onwards. He still smoked a pipe and carried it in a holster when he was playing. At Richmond the games were in the morning and John is remembered among the elderly bowls fraternity for frequently arriving late. ‘It's not my fault,' he would say, ‘I've been taking my little daughter to school.' That was Jessica.

The Freemans were keen club members. They used to watch the club championships on a Saturday; they attended the annual dinner and were always gregarious. ‘They fitted in,' club member Percy Kimber told me. ‘They were both really nice people. He always spoke to everyone the same. He was a man who would extend the hand of friendship and he didn't want to say, “I am the big me.” He wanted to be an ordinary man. An ordinary man.' His wife Isobel Kimber remembered how John would greet her across the street or in the supermarket. ‘He would come and give me a big hug,' she said. This would
surprise most of those who knew him from the old days, including his son Matthew, who described his father's manner as ‘distantly polite, with the carapace of an Edwardian gentleman'.

When the Kimbers visited California on holiday, Freeman collected them from Sacramento airport and took them back to Davis for the day; the first stop was his bowls club. ‘He was a lovely man,' added Percy, ‘and the thing I think about him, he always wanted to be ordinary. I spoke to Judith at John's funeral and she said, “Yes, that was him.”'
4

In Freeman's playing days at Barnes Lonsdale Bowls Club he always ‘led', meaning that he ‘set up the head' or gave a good lead for others to follow. This requires a steady nerve. You need a cool temperament, the Kimbers told me, and a killer instinct, I would add, for there is surely a sadistic pleasure in sending down a fast bowl to knock either the jack or your opponent's bowls out of play. This is called a ‘drive'. The game played to Freeman's strengths. Percy recalled the first time they played together in a club pairs competition:

It is tempting to imagine what Freeman saw as he stared down the green: the German tanks at El Alamein? Winston Churchill on the opposition front bench? Tony Hancock sweating with nerves on
Face to Face
? But
then, was it not Chan Canasta who always said, ‘Concentrate, concentrate'? Freeman probably just wanted to win a game of bowls.

John's particular friend at Barnes was John Triggs, known by all as ‘Triggsy'. The two together, said the Kimbers, were like chalk and cheese, for John was ‘the English gent' and Triggsy was all ‘gor blimey'. The two started learning bowls together at Barnes Lonsdale in the mid-1970s. Apparently Triggsy was very competitive, whereas John, although competent, preferred the more relaxed club games. Triggsy was a Brentford boy, an ex-boxer who had fought for money in Scottish boxing booths, and was a Barnes building contractor. ‘Whereas John would sit quietly in the club house, you always knew when Triggsy was around,' said the Kimbers. He was loud, brash, a ‘rough diamond' and no respecter of persons, and John was very fond of him.

Triggsy's widow Janet, his third wife, told me that when the Freemans' daughter Jessica was born in California, the first person Freeman rang, only ten minutes after the birth, was Triggsy. When they first met in the mid-1970s Triggsy had been in the midst of an acrimonious divorce from his second wife that left him with custody of his six-year-old son. He would bring young Jonathan along to Barnes Lonsdale where the two met the Freemans. John was full of admiration for the way Triggsy was bringing up his son on his own and frequently invited them for Sunday lunch in the Freeman household. They were popular with Victoria and Jessica too. In 1984 the Triggs, father and son, were on holiday in Swanage when Freeman arrived with a Harrod's hamper and took them to lunch at Corfe Castle. An evening of very special importance for Triggsy was the black-tie boxing event organised by Ron Miller. He sat at the top table next to the former world heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson, who had come because Freeman had interviewed him for
Face to Face
many years ago, the two sitting in a boxing ring.

When Triggsy introduced Janet, Freeman said, ‘I'm delighted to meet you' and gave her a kiss. John was devastated by Triggsy's unexpected death in 2007. Janet recalled: ‘There were about 150 people at his funeral and the cortege diverted past his local pub where all his drinking buddies and staff were standing outside.' After Triggsy's death, Freeman and Janet stayed in touch. ‘He always gave me a big hug when we met,' she told me:

The Freemans last entry in Woodrow Wyatt's Journal was on 7 April 1992:

Judith taught in a private junior school in the 2000s, where Victoria joined her to teach art. ‘Mother and daughter working in the same school – unusual I should think,' wrote John proudly to Geoffrey
Wandesforde-Smith.
8
In 1995 he celebrated his eightieth birthday with a small party. One of the guests was Paul Johnson, who afterwards wrote an effusive encomium for
The Spectator
entitled ‘A man of many epiphanies to remind us what England was once about'. Apparently the man concerned sent him a dusty response. His privacy had been invaded.

At this time John Freeman met Nigel Lawson (the Rt Hon. Lord Lawson of Braby PC) at a weekend house party in Northamptonshire. They had much in common. Both had been at Westminster School, both had been editors of political magazines (Lawson was editor of
The Spectator
, 1966–70), both had been in government (Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1980s serving under Margaret Thatcher) and both had moved subsequently into different areas of life (Lawson, for instance, wrote
The Nigel Lawson Diet Book
, became a campaigning critic of climate change and an opponent of the European Union under current conditions). More important, Lord Lawson told me that he shared with Freeman a determination to live in the present and not in the past. He did not keep up with political colleagues, he did not like to reminisce and he moved from one interest to another. He said this ‘did not require any explanation'; it was self-evidently the right way to lead your life. He had no intention of writing an autobiography and, moreover, he guarded his privacy. Both had given the broadcasting psychiatrist Anthony Clare a hard time. Despite warning the producer that he was not prepared to be introspective, Lawson had sat
In the Psychiatrist's Chair.
The result had been ‘extremely boring for all concerned'.

Lord Lawson said he recognised John Freeman at that first meeting as ‘a man of great stature' whom he would like to know better. Subsequently, he realised like everyone else that Freeman was not only fascinating but hard to know. The two went off to Lawson's house in
Gascony where they played
pétanque
, a French form of bowls. More important, Lord Lawson and Sir Christopher Bland nominated Freeman for the Beefsteak Club, an elite dining club in Irving Street, London, for men of the arts, letters and politics, where members sit round one long table and, apparently, call all the waiters ‘Charles'. For a radical, anti-establishment man like Freeman this was a gesture towards becoming a ‘joiner'. In fact, he thoroughly enjoyed the club and only stopped going when his frail legs could not negotiate the stairs. He told Lord Lawson that one of his few regrets was declining a peerage, because sitting in the House of Lords seemed a congenial way for retired people to spend the afternoon.

When I failed to obtain John Freeman's permission to write his biography in 2004, I asked Lord Lawson to intercede on my behalf. He had tried but replied, ‘You will not be surprised to know that I have been unsuccessful.' In 2014 we discussed the subject again: