A Great Editor R.I.P.: Melvin Lasky (1920-2004).(Obituary)(Obituary)

MELVIN J. LASKY, the legendary and controversial editor of the London Encounter and the Berlin Monat, used to be called all sorts of names. To his friends he was "the last of the Cold Warriors" and one of the great "intellectual troubadours". To his enemies he was "a repulsive war-mongering fascist", "a pocket Trotsky", and a Schmutzfink.

Three vivid incidents will always recall him to my mind. The first was in Berlin three or four years ago at the end of an international conference on the European Union and the Congress for Cultural Freedom which Lasky had helped form in 1950. He was stooped and frail. He had had major heart surgery, he was a little hard of hearing, his oriental eyes seemed partly filmed over, and his familiar Lenin goatee was grey. But his mind and wit were as lively as ever, as Germans and foreigners milled around to hear him reminisce about the great events of a long life.

He seemed to have seen everything in the Cold War, from the first working-class uprising against the Stalinist dictatorship in East Berlin in 1953, to Budapest for the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, on to West Berlin for the fall of the Wall. He had also met, known or interviewed almost every key figure from Churchill and Adenauer to Brecht, Koestler, Sartre and Muggeridge. He had published George Orwell, Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Cyril Connolly, William Faulkner and Norman Mailer.

The group crowding around him in Berlin would have stayed for hours. It was like listening to History--informal, good-humoured and personal. This child of the Bronx had become an unlikely grand old man of Europe. As I said goodbye he asked me about some Australians he had known or published--Murray Sayle, David Stove, Michael Charlton, Ken Minogue ...

The second episode was in London where I interviewed him several times for my book on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, The Liberal Conspiracy. I recall his long oral memoir of his soul-mate, Michael Josselson of the CIA and the presiding genius of the cultural Cold War. Now shouting, now whispering, Lasky relived the triumphs and prolonged death rattle of the CCF. My only worry was that my time in London was running out and I had not yet been able to examine the records of Encounter Lasky then offered me the keys to his Haymarket office and filing cabinets. Why not, he said, spend the weekend on them?

Given the break-ins, lies and leaks that had marred the last days of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, not to mention the bad faith of some of the key figures, this was an extraordinary and moving act of trust. The files were an invaluable treasure trove.

Lasky's openness remains with me. It is irritating (to put it mildly) to come across hacks who still defame him as "oily", "devious" or "deceitful".