rich as a way of enraging working-class opinion and helping the Communist Party. Driberg used the column to introduce readers to up-and-coming socialites and literary figures, Acton, Betjeman, Nancy Mitford and Peter Quennell among them. Sometimes he introduced more serious causes: capital punishment, modern architecture, the works of D. H. Lawrence and Jacob Epstein, and the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, which had been denounced in the Express editorial columns as "infamous". By prior arrangement with Waugh, the column included a discreet announcement in September 1930 of Waugh's conversion to Roman Catholicism; Driberg was his only guest at the service. He further assisted Waugh in 1932 by giving him space in the column to attack the editor of the Catholic journal The Tablet, after it had described Waugh's Black Mischief as blasphemous. As William Hickey Sewell retired in 1932, leaving Driberg in sole charge of "The Talk of London" column. He grew increasingly frustrated with the trivial nature of his work. Following the intervention of Express proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, the column was relaunched in May 1933 as "These Names Make News", and its by-line changed to "William Hickey", after the 18th century diarist and rake. Driberg described the new feature as "...an intimate biographical column about ... men and women who matter. Artists, statesmen, airmen, writers, financiers, explorers..." Historian David Kynaston calls Driberg the "founder of the modern gossip column", although it soon began to move decisively away from chit-chat and towards social and political issues. The tone of the column was described by Driberg's ODNB biographer Richard Davenport-Hines as "wry, compassionate, and brimm[ing] with ... open-minded intelligence". Beaverbrook, who had developed a fondness for Driberg, was amused by the disparity between his columnist's professed left-wing sympathies and bon vivant lifestyle. The proprietor knew of Driberg's persistent mismanagement of his personal finances, and on various occasions helped out with loans and gifts. During his time in London, Driberg had continued to indulge his taste for rough, casual sex; his memoir records many such instances. In the autumn of 1935 he was charged with indecent assault, after an incident in which he had shared his bed with two Scotsmen picked up late one night, in the bohemian district of London which Driberg had christened "Fitzrovia" in the Hickey column. Beaverbrook paid for a leading counsel, J. D. Cassels, and two unimpeachable character witnesses were recruited by the