Meet Jo, Beaverbrook’s right-hand woman, still flying the flag aged 93

Cherkley Court, Beaverbrook’s home in Surrey

Now here's an intro I had never dreamed I would be able to write: Last week I had lunch with Lord Beaverbrook's secretary from the 1950s. 

Yes really, an afternoon with the brightest 93-year-old on the planet with total recall who, when she was barely 18, went to work for the little giant who had bought an ailing Express and turned it into the greatest newspaper in the world with a circulation of four million. And, almost as a sideline, often overlooked, was instrumental in victory in WW2 by building enough Spitfires and Hurricanes to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. 

So, Mrs Jo Yorke, what first attracted you to the Canadian, once described by Lady Diana Cooper as 'a strange attractive gnome with the odour of genius about him'? 

But first, some background. Jo, now a widow, living in the village of Shawford, just outside Winchester, was born Josephine Rosenberg in St John's Wood, overlooking Lord's. Her father's family was from Poland and Russia but had settled in the UK for all the obvious, ghastly reasons. Like so many Jews who came here, he instilled in Jo a pride in being British and today she flies the Union Flag in her beautiful garden. It's not the plastic thing we saw during party conference season but the real deal, full size.

In her own words: “Well, I was a member of the Conservative Party and somebody asked if I would like to meet Lord Beaverbrook. Of course, I said, and when I was summoned we seemed to get on well enough that he asked if I would come to work for him. I spent five years at his side, rarely in the Black Lubyanka but at his many houses; Cherkley in Surrey, Arlington House in Mayfair, La Capponcina in Cap d'Ail, and wherever he travelled in the world, the US, West Indies and Canada in particular. 

"It was a case of wherever he went, I went too.  Our first trip was on the Queen Mary to Canada, to New Brunswick where a very young Max Aitken had once worked for the Montreal Star.”

Jo is small and slightly stooped but has the personality of a rather naughty 20-something. Quite a few F-words spoken in a cut-glass accent and gossip galore which would explain why the two — age gap in 1951, 54 years — got on so well. It helped that she was young and very pretty and ready to work at the Beaver's formidable pace. "He never stopped, always on the phone to his editors or dictating memos. And always entertaining, particularly at Cherkley where the gossip really flowed.

"I was at many of those dinner parties and guests would be the political figures of the day and others, what we now call 'celebrities'. He had so many friends, not just Conservatives but from Labour too. People like Nye Bevan and Herbert Morrison who I always knew as Stanley, his middle name, and the Feets as I called them. Michael, Dingle and Hugh Foot. One regular was Elias Avery Lowe, an academic who developed a crush on me —strictly one way I hasten to add. He clearly passed on his Lothario ways to his great grandson, Boris Johnson!

"My absolute favourite was Sir Winston who was Max's greatest friend and ally. Yes, they would fall out but in no time would fall in again. Churchill was a sweetheart and I adored him. Do you think I am the only person still around who knew both these great men really well? I suppose I must be.”

Here's how I came to meet Jo; I am researching for a new book on the crucial relationship between Churchill and Beaverbrook because it is my belief that if the newly-installed wartime prime minister had not persuaded the Beaver to take the role of Minister of Aircraft Production in May 1940, we would have been even more outnumbered in the air than we were when the Battle of Britain came two months later. My old friend John Kidd, the Beaver's grandson, contacted his relative Michael Montagu who he knew was visiting Jo while over from Barbados. Would he ask if she would see me?

Her answer was an emphatic Of Course and when I arrived at her house she warned me that Lucy, her spaniel, was about to deliver her litter and that I might have to don the rubber gloves. In fact I dodged the midwife duties but the following day Lucy had three tiny spaniels. Lunch was a treat, asparagus, anchovies, gravadlax, cold meats, salad, cheeses and tarte citron, prepared by housekeeper Amber. And a fine Chablis, the sort that generous exes used to buy.

Back to Jo: "Lord Beaverbrook seemed to like my company, we would sometimes go the theatre together and out to a restaurant when he was in New York. My favourite in his family was his granddaughter Jeanne who married Ian Campbell, the future Duke of Argyll. And do you know I had a little fling with Ian, it was so romantic, waking up to the bagpiper at Inverary. Well, I was very young!"

As for the Express editors, she thought Arthur Christiansen "so lovely and such a success"; John Junor she didn't like or trust and his predecessor as SX editor, John Gordon, another apparently solid Presbyterian, who would retire to Claridge's each Saturday after putting the paper to bed where his mistress was waiting to put him to bed. Oh Jo, you would have been a great addition to the Hickey team in its golden era.

 

I am seeing this wonderful lady early next month and there will be more good gossip then I hope, and lots of pictures, having failed spectacularly in that department on my first visit. (Frambo, you're fired - Ed)  

*****

It really is the story that keeps on giving (and I suspect will continue to well into next year). Jeffrey Epstein may be six years dead but the fall-out of the scandal has a life of its own thanks to a book out next week by Virginia Giuffre and the continued lies by those uber-thick Yorks. Will they never learn that modern technology, and in particular emails, will always find you out?

We will learn more when Giuffre's beyond-the-grave revelations are published but here's a warning: Do not believe all she has written. I have just finished editing a book in which author Jay Beecher presents his findings after nearly five years of forensically examining every piece of evidence in the case, the police documents, the court depositions and dozens of his own interviews with almost everyone involved in the scandal.

One thing shrieks out: Giuffre, abused as a little girl and a very sad case, may have started as a victim of the vile Epstein but for years acted as his main recruiter bringing dozens of other females to this monster. And the trouble with her lies;  they contradict other porkies she told earlier.

Back to the Yorks and specifically Andrew; it is now generally accepted that King Charles has to cut him adrift once and for all. No more royal trappings, get rid of all his titles, all the silly robes and garters and medals if unearned. Cast him aside utterly and let him scrounge off his dodgy pals in dodgy areas, like parts of the old Soviet empire and the Middle East.

His finest hour was as a pilot in the Falklands war. So why not go back there to live, though not as the island's governor. Maybe a spell as a sheep farmer. 

AND FINALLY

I may be the only journalist not to have met Jilly Cooper and it's clear I would have loved her company if all the accounts following her death are anything to go by. She was clearly a hoot but I have been told of one incident when she took great offence. My informant tells me that a few years ago Dame Jilly was at Hickstead for the show jumping when the commentator spotted her and announced that "Jilly Cooper the sex writer is here folks.” 

At which point she strode across to the commentary box and demanded an apology... "I'm a novelist, not a sex writer". But pardon me Jilly, in a programme shown following her death she admits to being quite shocked when she was reminded that in Riders, she described Rupert Campbell-Black as picking pubic hair from between his teeth and one of his gals cleaning off the semen which was running down her shapely leg.

As the commentator didn't say: I rest my case...    

ALAN FRAME

14 October 2025