Geoffrey Bocca
He was a member of one of the many Italian families, like Forte, Manzi
and Broccoli, etc, who came to England to escape poverty, and his parents
settled in Horden, County Durham. From these humble beginnings, he became
Lord Beaverbrook's assistant and dined with Winston Churchill, and he
became an author after leaving the Daily Express.
Bocca had been torpedoed twice in the North Atlantic on the Murmansk run. He
parachuted with the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, was taken prisoner, escaped
from Stalag 11B, returned to Germany as a war correspondent and was on the jeep
with Richard Dimbleby, driving into Berlin ahead of the army, when Dimbleby made
his famous broadcast.
One of Bocca's early books was The Adventurous Life of Winston Churchill . He
was well qualified to write it, for both had sought adventure in journalism and
experienced shot and shell. The pity is that Bocca was always too busy to finish
writing his memoirs, entitled The Lark Above, the Guns Below, a line from Wilfred
Owen. He could have described the journey from Arnhem to the POW camp in Germany,
when the cattle wagon packed with paras were told by the senior officer: "One
third of you will lie down and sleep, a third will sit and a third will stand,
four hours on, four off. We will cut a hole for peeing but no one will defecate.
I estimate two days' journey. We will show these German bastards what British
army discipline is." When they reached the railways station near Stalag
11B the men dashed for the toilets and the Germans inspected the wagon which
was spotlessly clean.
The Duchess of Windsor wanted her memoirs ghosted. Bocca was chosen by Beaverbrook
who would serialise them in the Sunday Express. The meeting in the Duke's Paris
home with Bocca and a French photographer did not go well. She hated him on sight
and he was not exactly enamoured with the former Mrs. Simpson. It did not help
when they were shown the door and the French photographer shocked them by pissing
at the side of their doorway..
Beaverbrook said: "No matter. Mister Bocca will write her biography, with
access to all my private papers, and we will serialise it, and he will write
a better book."
He did. Hers was dull and pedestrian and his was colourful and interesting. To
stop him taking her sales she paid Bocca £40,000 to hold back publication
and serialisation, for which he was also paid by Beaverbrook.
Beaverbrook liked small men, preferably his height or less so that he could walk
with them, arm in arm, in Green Park in the mornings and give them a copy of
Men and Power, signed: To a brilliant journalist from a tough proprietor.
Staying in Beaverbrook's villa in Cap Ferrat, the arrival of Churchill was suddenly
announced, and Beaverbrook shoved Bocca into a cupboard near the entrance and
greeted Churchill with the words: "Macmillan is doing well in the election,
Winston." "Who?" Churchill growled. "Harold Macmillan,
doing well in the election." "Who?" he growled again. "HAROLD
MACMILLAN," "Never heard of him" Churchill said. " Oh,
for Gaad's sake come out Geoffrey and help me get through to him," he said,
opening the cupboard door.
Once, when they were dining together at Chartwell, Beaverbrook left the room
and Bocca asked Churchill what he should read as he wanted to write books.
"Kinglake" said Churchill
"I'm sorry, sir?"
"Read Kinglake" snapped Churchill.
In a second hand bookshop in Charing Cross Road, he found a book by Alexander
Kinglake, read it, and next time he dined with Churchill, told him he had read
a book by Kinglake and did he have any more advice?
"More Kinglake" Churchill growled, glaring at him.
Back at the shop he was offered a full set of the volumes of Kinglake's History
of the Crimean War and reading late into the night he was amazed to discover
Churchill's famous phrases from his wartime speeches in the volumes of beautiful
English prose that Churchill was urging him to emulate. Churchill clearly believed
in the Grub Street axiom: one book is plagiarism, two books, research.
Bocca, a football fanatic and qualified referee, who had crossed the Atlantic
80 times, decided to introduce English soccer into America. He failed. They preferred
their own football. He ended up as a bartender in New York.
One of his customers was the private detective who had worked on the murder of
Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas. Realising it would make a great book, Bocca borrowed
the 'tec's notes, researched the story thoroughly, and in 1960 The Life and Death
of Sir Harry Oakes was a best seller. A phrase in Chapter 3 "The Call of
the Wild" describes Harry Oakes, who made his millions in gold mining, as "an
iron-hard little fellow, with almost no physical weaknesses."
That exact same description could be applied to Geoffrey Bocca, who worked on
his books from 5 a.m. until noon every day, even if he was wrapped in two overcoats,
sneezing and with streaming eyes from a cold. Like Somerset Maugham, another
tough small man, they carried on with their writing no matter how ill they were.
Bocca wrote a series of books about a female James Bond, called Commander Amanda
Nightingale, while living on the Riviera with his Canadian wife and son and daughter,
but left for New York when the French police warned him off for writing the English
language propaganda for the OAS, the secret army who wanted Algeria to stay French.
He died in hospital in London, correcting his proofs right up to the fading of
a life which, like Churchill's, had been filled with adventure from early manhood
until the very end.
Afterthought: Living in the villa next door to his in Ibiza, I would
see his lights blazing at 5 a.m. By 11 a.m. he was ready for a pastis
or a sherry and at mid-day we would drive into town for lunch. "I
hear you are in a couple of American books of quotations, Geoffrey," I
said. "Yes, quite flattering, really. Have you a bon mot or two?" "I
have never committed them to print, but in my heavy drinking days in The
Street I said: "Life is just a bowl of sherry...and then I thought
of an inscription for a gravestone: Here lies the Duke of Windsor, Inventor
of the Windsor Knot....but later, when I started to write books and was
conscious, like most writers, of my own mortality, I thought: Life is
a Confidence Trick, in the Worst Possible Taste."
"Very good, and true, but which quote of mine do you like? (shades of actors: "We've
talked enough about me, let's talk about you now -- what did you think of me
in the play?").
"'Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it
is possible to stab oneself in one's own back' Also true, and an example of it
was the Duchess of Windsor when the Royal ladies were discussing what to wear
in mourning for the old Queen Mary's funeral and they told her black fishnet
stockings were de rigeur. She laughed and told them: 'I haven't worn black fishnet
stockings since the last time I did the Can-Can.' They were horrified. Such vulgarity.
They never spoke to her again, and you know why, Geoffrey."
"Sure. When the crowned heads of England were sneaking over the Channel
to visit the Moulin Rouge, the girls in the chorus line doing the Can-Can didn't
wear knickers..."