“Spanking Times” – a Tynan memoir
An extract from Paul Johnson’s memoirs, in the Daily Mail of 24 May:
I first set eyes on the future theatre critic Ken Tynan in October 1946 when I arrived at Magdalen with my regulation school trunk, and found a commotion. Tynan had half a dozen trunks, and was ordering the porters around: ‘Have a care with that, my man. It is freighted with golden shirts!’
He was dressed in his favourite plum-coloured suit. His fair hair was long, and floated. His voice, accent and cultivated stammer were straight from the 1890s. He was determined to be not only the most talked-about man in Oxford but a national figure.
Tynan was not homosexual, as many surmised. Far from it. He was keen on girls – very keen – but his interest was spanking and caning. He told me: ‘You’d be surprised how many girls are willing to be spanked.’
He told me he regularly got a journal called the Spanking Times, and liked to open it up and read it during a train journey. ‘How the other passengers stare, especially the women.’
I never knew anyone more dependent on cigarettes than Ken… I begged him to give up, as it was clear it would kill him. He said: ‘no possibility. It makes my enjoyment of spanking seem very feeble by comparison. And I can do it any time or all the time if I want.”
