The boys done good

Abstract

Davis started out as a copyboy and the Daily Express, an inauspicious beginning to a long and hugely successful career as a writer. Looking back, he writes: "Even if I changed my name to Murdoch or Rothermere, I wouldn't land a national newspaper job today. No chance. No university degree, you see. Most of my Fleet Street contemporaries of more than half-a-century ago also lacked this desirable qualification, yet were formidably well read and informed - more so than the graduate journalists of today, it seems to me. But then we did not have television, pop music and obsessive football to distract us from furnishing our minds." And he concludes: "Journalism, like acting and prostitution, is not a profession but a vocation. You either have what it takes or you don't, and general experience shows that some of the best journalists, those who can write and instinctively know what is news, began as copyboys or printers' devils."