At 80, He Was All A-flutter Over Victoria

In Today’s Daily Mail, I read a long story about the legendary editor and journalist Bill Deedes, who left a trail of stories, a bitter family, and an aura of mystery when he died at 94. His legacy was of an indifferent grandparent, lousy husband, devoted friend and brilliant writer. But the most interesting aspect of his long life was his decades-long infatuation with a young reporter.

Victoria Combe, a 27-year-old reporter who got to know Bill when he was 80 was the young woman he showered with gifts, traveled around the UK writing articles with, and whom his family resented terribly. “He was Lord Deebes but everyone knew him as ‘Bill.’ When he died, he was still working for the Daily Telegraph and traveled often with the young reporter Victoria.

“Intriguingly, almost in the manner of a love-struck adolescent, Deedes kept every intimate note he made about their times together, every scrap of paper involved, even airline ticket stubs, in a box marked “Victoria file” found after his death.

On one trip to Southern Africa, which Deedes was making alone on behalf of the charity CARE, Victoria went with him, treating it as a holiday.

The trip gave him days of spare time and they swam together in the Cape waters, Victoria contriving, as Deedes noted, “to look her most fetching in a black bathing dress…V enjoys dazzling men, and I suspect she always will.”

When Victoria expressed alarm at how much her holiday was costing, Deedes insisted – according to his notes – on paying for both her Cape Town hotel bill and her flight from London, warning her: “Please do not talk about it because people are uncharitable, and those who know I have paid some of your bills will conclude the worst.”

Deebes wife Hilary and his grown children were never comfortable with his love for Victoria, and though no one ever claimed there was a sexual relationship, his son Jeremy spoke for the whole family.

“There is no denying,” writes Robinson, “that Victoria awoke in Bill a powerful sexual yearning that he had never before acknowledged, if indeed had ever experienced.” Deedes’s son, Jeremy, former Chief Executive of the Telegraph, takes a crushing view of the relationship.

“This girl was just a sort of temptation, really, lurking round an old man’s infatuation and making him all a-flutter and furthering her career,” he said yesterday.