Perry hits back over ‘stinking mob’ Barclays

Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, columnist for The First Post and former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has taken the unusual step of complaining to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) after the Spectator magazine altered a book review he wrote for them, in order to save the blushes of their proprietors, the Barclay brothers.

The change was made to Worsthorne's review of the new biography of Bill Deedes, the veteran Daily Telegraph journalist who died last year. It was, said Worsthorne, a "blatant piece of blue pencilling". And the edit was doubly egregious because in changing the wording, editors made it look as though the much-loved Deedes had despised not his bosses, but his journalistic colleagues.

In Worsthorne's original review of The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes by Stephen Robinson, he referred to Deedes's description of the Barclay brothers - who own the Telegraph newspapers and the Spectator - and their senior executives as a "stinking mob".

The review was changed to read like this on publication: "Almost on his deathbed, throwing caution to the winds - as he must frequently have done all those years ago on the field of battle - Deedes does the duty which any journalist worth his salt must do at least once in a lifetime. Dear Bill lets his last colleagues feel the rough edge of his tongue, calling them 'a stinking mob'."

Worsthorne complained: "It totally stands on its head what Bill was really like." He said it was hard to believe that the Spectator had become "so subservient to a proprietor who lives abroad and has no interest in these things. It can't be healthy that such a blatant piece of blue penciling should go unnoticed."

The PCC will now examine the complaint before deciding whether to act on it. The Spectator's editor, Matthew d'Ancona, has not commented. ·