Obituaries master, dies

Hugh Massingberd, the genealogical and architectural historian who transformed The Daily Telegraph's obituaries, died on Christmas Day. He was 60


Hugh Massingberd, a celebrated former obituaries editor of The Telegraph of London who made a once-dreary page required reading by speaking frankly, wittily and often gleefully ill of the dead, became the recipient of his own services after dying in West London on Christmas Day. He was 60 and lived in London.

The cause was cancer, according to The Telegraph. The newspaper announced Mr. Massingberd’s death in an expansive obituary that described, not unkindly, his being “invariably strapped for cash” and the “gourmandism” and “bingeing” that had turned him “into an impressively corpulent presence whose moon face lit up with Pickwickian benevolence.”
Sometimes called the father of the modern British obituary, Mr. Massingberd was The Telegraph’s obituaries editor from 1986 to 1994. He was also a shy autodidact who had never been to college; a past editor of Burke’s Peerage, the venerable record book of the titled families of Britain and Ireland; the author of dozens of books on the English aristocracy; a recognized authority on the country homes of England, stately and moldy alike; and a rabid theatergoer whose enthusiasm for “Phantom of the Opera” was undimmed by the fact that he had seen it more than 50 times and knew every word and every note by heart.
In 2002 The Spectator, a British weekly magazine, described Mr. Massingberd as “an English eccentric of the sort Hollywood imagines shoot snipe in their underpants.”
Mr. Massingberd did not actually shoot snipe in his underpants, but he did once pose for a photograph dressed as a Roman emperor garlanded with sausages, as his obituary in The Telegraph helpfully reminded readers on Thursday.
Traditionally, the obituary departments of most newspapers were little Siberias, and The Telegraph’s was no exception when Mr. Massingberd arrived. The long, leaden recitals of awards, club memberships and honorary degrees massed on the page were distasteful pills that writers, and readers, choked down dutifully each day.
Mr. Massingberd transformed the paper’s obituaries from ponderous, sycophantic eulogies into mordant, warts-and-all profiles of the delectable departed. His model, he often said, was the 17th-century English writer John Aubrey, whose collection of biographical sketches, “Brief Lives,” offered gossipy backstairs portraits of eminences of the time.
In Mr. Massingberd’s hands the newspaper obituary became unabashed entertainment, and the page attracted a passionate following that endures to this day. It also helped to set a benchmark for newspapers throughout Britain, where obituaries are now far more irreverent, more editorial and more prurient than their American counterparts. (Witness The Telegraph’s send-off of one Lt. Col. Geoffrey Knowles, “who as a subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear — he survived but the bear expired.”)
Typically unsigned, Telegraph obituaries are written by a stable of contributors. But during Mr. Massingberd’s tenure, observers widely agreed, every obit in the paper bore his droll, distinctive stamp. Naturally, he covered the presidents, kings and captains of industry who are the grist of obit pages everywhere. But Mr. Massingberd also sought out eccentrics; having the good fortune to live in Britain, he found them.
One Telegraph obituary, from 1991, opened this way: “The Third Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided through his character and career ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle. His chief occupations were bongo drummer, confidence trickster, brothel-keeper, drug-smuggler and police informer.”
Another, from 1988, memorialized Peter Langan, a London restaurateur: “Often he would pass out amid the cutlery before doing any damage, but occasionally he would cruise menacingly beneath the tables, biting unwary customers’ ankles.”
And there was this much-quoted line, also from 1988, which appeared in The Telegraph’s obituary of John Allegro. A once-renowned scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Mr. Allegro later advanced a theory that Judaism and Christianity were the products of an ancient cult that worshiped sex and mushrooms. His obit in The Telegraph pronounced him “the Liberace of biblical scholarship.”
To dispatch his subjects, Mr. Massingberd used the thinnest of rapiers, but also the sharpest. Cataclysmic understatement and carefully coded euphemism were the stylistic hallmarks of his page. Here, for the benefit of American readers, is an abridged Massingberd-English dictionary:
¶“Convivial”: Habitually drunk.
¶“Did not suffer fools gladly”: Monstrously foul-tempered.
¶“Gave colorful accounts of his exploits”: A liar.
¶“A man of simple tastes”:
A complete vulgarian.
¶“A powerful negotiator”: A bully.
¶“Relished the cadences of the English language”: An incorrigible windbag.
¶“Relished physical contact”:
A sadist.
¶“An uncompromisingly direct ladies’ man”: A flasher.
Hugh John Montgomery was born on Dec. 30, 1946, in Cookham Dean, in the Berkshire district of England. His family, The Daily Mail wrote in 1994, were members of the “stranded gentry.” Hugh’s mother was a schoolteacher; his father worked for the BBC.
But as young Hugh was dreamily aware, the Montgomerys had nobler roots: Through their blue-blooded Massingberd relatives, he stood to inherit two country houses. In the 1960s, in the hope of securing one, Hugh’s father changed the family name to Montgomery-Massingberd. But both inheritances fell through. In the 1990s Hugh shortened his name to Massingberd.
As a young man, Mr. Massingberd planned to go to Cambridge University, thought better of it and took a job as a law clerk. Hating the work, he found his way to Burke’s Peerage, where from 1971 to 1983 he was the chief editor.
When Mr. Massingberd joined The Telegraph as obituaries editor, he later said in interviews, friends regarded him with a mixture of pity and contempt. But he realized two things immediately: First, that a subject’s passage from cradle to grave furnishes writers with a built-in narrative thread from which to spin a ripping good yarn. Second, that personal stories, the odder the better, can be the stuff of deep, life-affirming levity.
One story belonged to this man, the John Allegro of the piano:
“The first sign that Liberace had embarked upon a road along which reticence would never ride came when he placed a candelabra on his piano. At this, the dam of discretion appeared to burst: first came a white tail suit, followed by stage patter about his mother and his philosophy of life, then a gold lamé jacket and a diamond-studded tailcoat.”
Mr. Massingberd’s first marriage, to Christine Martinoni, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Caroline Ripley, known as Ripples; and two children from his first marriage, Harriet and Luke.
His books include “Royal Palaces of Europe” (Vendome, 1983); “Blenheim Revisited: The Spencer-Churchills and Their Palace” (Beaufort Books, 1985); “Her Majesty the Queen” (Collins, 1985); a memoir, “Daydream Believer: Confessions of a Hero Worshipper” (Macmillan, 2001); and six anthologies of Telegraph obituaries, which, he often said, made splendid bedtime reading.
Mr. Massingberd also belonged to a spate of respectable clubs, but they will not be itemized here.

Obituary: Hugh Massingberd

Like most true eccentrics, Hugh Massingberd did his best to appear conventional.
He was naturally courteous (in his diaries, James Lees-Milne said he had the best manners of anyone he knew) and quietly spoken. But one of the great delights in having him as a friend lay in introducing him to other friends, and watching as he mesmerised them with his singular view of things.

Hugh Massingberd, who knew it was our peculiarities that make us who we are
He was a great obsessive, and his obsessions were never governed by fashion. For more than 30 years, his favourite pop group remained Manfred Mann: until he fell ill, he would travel to out-of-the-way places such as Basingstoke or Lowestoft just to hear them play. Though the chattering classes have long considered Andrew Lloyd Webber rather naff, Hugh went to see Phantom of the Opera more than 50 times, often standing by the stage door afterwards.
Though by nature shy, he loved performing, and was a wonderful after-dinner speaker, bursting into song at the slightest opportunity.
I sometimes think he might have been happiest treading the boards in pantomime, playing opposite a favourite comedian - Ken Dodd, Les Dawson or Frankie Howerd, and perhaps a couple of forgotten stars from 1970s soap operas.
Once, when Hugh was feeling depressed, a friend asked him what would cheer him up. He thought for a minute, then replied: "To sing patriotic songs in drag before an appreciative audience."

He was a great trencherman. After breakfasting at the Connaught Hotel in 1972, he was particularly proud when the head waiter shimmied up to inform him that he had eaten the biggest breakfast ever served, the previous record holder being King Farouk I of Egypt.
His background in genealogy earned Hugh the alias Hugh Massivesnob in Private Eye magazine (once, to his delight, they altered it to Hugh Massivepecker) but there was no one less snobbish.
His extraordinary memory gave him total recall for what it was like to be a tongue-tied child or a disaffected teenager, or jubilant, or hurt. He made people feel better about themselves.
In front of me, I have Hugh's copy of a book of Telegraph obituaries, complete with underlinings, showing details that particularly amused him.
Among the passages underlined are: "Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffrey Knowles (who as a subaltern was bitten in the buttocks by a bear - he survived but the bear expired)."
"Commander 'Braces' Bracegirdle of the Australian navy was asked by one of his sailors for compassionate leave on the grounds that his home town was under flood water 6ft deep, and his wife was only 5ft 3in high. Braces silently handed over an orange box and stamps to post it."
"Big Daddy, the 28-stone wrestler (real name, Shirley Crabtree) whose leotard was made from the chintz covers of his wife's sofa."
Hugh knew instinctively that it is our peculiarities - our failings, our embarrassments - that make us who we are.
This view of mankind as fallen, but redeemed through eccentricity, ran like a golden thread through all his obituaries; it is the same winning mixture that informs the Telegraph obituaries to this day.
His modesty was endearing. The last time I visited him in hospital, I told him what his old friend Hugo Vickers had just said to me about him: "There are more people who would claim Hugh as their best friend than anyone else I know".
By this stage, Hugh was very weak, so that he only just managed to whisper a reply. "Most undeserved," he said.